Not mine, but a collaborativr effort: Young dryad loses physical body and is imprisoned in a robotic shell. She escapes and now all of her former magical druid powers are a combination of mechanical contraptions and just a dash of magic. She runs on magic energy, but her acid spray cantrip is truly a small vaporizer embedded in her palm. Really cool, but the Player stop playing that char vecause we restricted her wild shape to much :/ in hindsight, i really dont like my dming decisions regarding that char

I had a really neat idea about playing a changeling bladesinger who most likely pretended to be elven to learn the art, although I did have a not-quite-RAW idea about the old switched-at-birth changeling myth, where his elven “parents” would have taught him before he slipped up and they realized what he was.

He was actually three characters in one: a mostly nondescript human “bard”, spinning extremely tall tales about a mysterious elven bladesinger who doled out vigilante justice at night (also the changeling), and the changeling himself, who hated the way people looked at his true form, would only have revealed it to the party if he had no other choice, and really just wanted to be a hero in a group of adventurers, doing the kind of stuff he made up and sang about in taverns.

I came up with this concept a few years ago, but even before COVID I was kind of my group’s forever DM, so even if I ended up at a gaming table again soon I probably wouldn’t get to play it, so if you like it, feel free to use it. You cannot steal what is gifted!

A Reborn Necromancer that acted like a Children’s Edutainer. All my undead were just guests on the show to teach people morals, math, and words.

Delightfully deranged.

A wizard whose primary job was at a (magical) Whitesmith’s guild. He etched his spells onto sheets of metal, inlaid his armor, and constantly talked about how guilds were part of a functioning society, unlike those peasants and lords, and definitely not a bunch of monopolistic corporation-cum-ruthless-gangs and how it was definitely just a coincidence that the son of the previous ruler was always elected in their city.

It’s been so long, either a Mega Juicer or Titan Juicer from RIFTS. https://rifts.fandom.com/wiki/Juicer . Essentially a steroid user but with super science. Massive person. Think Strong Guy from X Factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Guy . He loved western wear, but often got into situations where mega damage would destroy his outfit, so he had cargo crates full of the same black cowboy hat and duster. He became a juicer to save his sibling, they were both poor kids and sibling needed medical help, so he answered an ad for experiment subjects.

Big beefy warrior with a heart of gold and a peanut brain that could crush anyone easily but she would rather be friends with everyone and have everyone play along. It’s a heartbreaking character to play in games that just assume all you’re gonna be doing is killing, but it could be pretty cute as the muscle of more diplomatic sorts of campigns.

I’ll preface this by noting that the sin of sloth has traditionally been understood to be a sin of omission, not just commission, i.e., you are insufficiently devoted to the things you ought to be.

Which means you could, in theory, have a (reflavored tiefling) devil paladin so devoted to sloth he works against evil causes. He’s not interested in good per se, it’s just that advancing the interests of good and traveling with a good adventuring party has the best ROI for failing to carry out his evil responsibilities.

Naturally, this has caused a fair amount of controversy among sloth devils, and there is a multi-century trial going on in the Hells about whether this ought to be allowed. This is not expected to be resolved in the foreseeable future because the advocates for both parties keep filing their responses well after petition deadlines expire.

Shadowrun 4e. A hacker who was way into drag racing. I got really into statting his race car, and even made driving equal to hacking. He was in deep in the underworld, trying to buy his childhood friend out of her indentured servitude at a brothel.

Mad Max style wasteland campaign: A Shepard boy, skilled at archery, wandering the wasteland with a talking dog (who was named Blood, but wasn’t evil). I saw this kid as being on the more idealistic and good side, and I picked a concept connected to society in contrast to what the other PCs picked (A reformed Mohawker, a powerful mutated woman wielding a stop sign, and a “priest of KISS” following the concert routes his roadie parents took before the bombs dropped, mistaking them for religious pilgrimage)… sorry that one had a lot of gas.

Superheroes: A jewish journalist who learns he is the inheritor of the Golem of Prague, and with it, a tradition of Talmudic magic. The other party members were a Bisexual paramedic/ vigilante by night (me and her player agreed that we were roommates lol) and the last one was a black teenager who killed a cop after he had paralyzed his brother. The campaign started and we were “the cop killers” and were protecting a small minority community but I keep thinking that had so much gas in the tank and room to grow and I might spin that off into its own campaign.

I’m just so sick of heroic high fantasy

Game: Scion

A Scion of Odin, my concept is that when Odin gouged out his eye at Well of Urd at the base of Yggdrasil and tossed said eye in, he inadvertently created something new.

The droplets of blood and the eye were infused by the waters and bled into the roots of Yggdrasil. The most resilient among them trickled into the other realms. My character ultimately arrived in Midgard, in Venice Beach. Little more than a sentient blob of blood with a lone eye contained inside, he fed on smaller creatures and grew in the darkness.

Discovered by a bunch of surfers, he was taken in as a pet. He grew big and strong enough to take a form, amalgamating the looks of the other surfers into a new form entirely. At the start of his adventure he is called Grom, short for Grommet. He lives as a surfer bum, begging food and a few bucks off of people and living in an abandoned building by the beach. So long as he has the waves and his friends, he has everything he needs.

That is, until the arrival of a one-eyed young man who tries to kill him and cut his eye out. Grom wins the scuffle, coming out barely injured. It is only then that Odin comes to visit him, pleased at his victory. He forewarns Grom that because he has Odin’s other eye, others like him will be coming to try to claim that eye.

Grom is very physically adept, with points mostly put into Str, Dex, and Con. He’ll also have Appearance and Wisdom as backup stats. In the party he is the reluctant hero, wanting nothing more than to hang with his friends, but understanding that he must undergo this trial before he can live in peace again.

Reborn tabaxi artificer armorer with a mechanically different though RP similar “living armor”. The living armor is the reason i was “reborn” as its keeping me alive longer but the curse of the living armor is of divine nature as i stole it from an evil cult, so removing it required a monumental effort (high level NPCs basically didnt exist).

The character reached an actual satisfying conclusion as there was an “enlightenment” challenge we managed to find that was heavily skill based and artificers are obscenely good at skill challenges (dm also liked tool checks where relevant, and was lenient with the skill training rules, reborn helped too, resulted in being able to roll d20+stat+prof*expertise+int+guidance(d4)+reborn(d6) on checks i needed to push). The enlightenment ultimately lead to access to enough divine power to break both the curse of the armor and of my undeath.

Ultimately though, despite how fun the RP around it was, it was one of my more OP characters considering how much it trivialized skill checks which that DM really loved.

I tried and failed to tone it down with my next character, which thanks to party dynamic became the single most OP BS i ever made even if it wasnt crazy good alone. Wanted to make a magic infiltrator and went with changeling + aberrant mind sorcerer. Ended up getting a shadowfell shard too. Mindsliver leading to a subtle quickened shadowfell shard boosted CC spell (fav was psychic lance since it wasnt concentration and almost nothing is immune to incapacitated, though hold person, and hypnotic pattern, and the like were also thrown frequently too) was an obscenely powerful combo, and since another new player made a DPS rogue+gloomstalker build, the only way for anything to have any chance of living is lots of legendary resistance and an obscene health pool. This was also a crazy fun build, that the power of it ended up being its downfall as everything we fought ended up being several CR higher than anyone of our level had any right to tangle with. (also yes, i know you can’t normally subtle + quicken, read the Psionic Sorcery power of aberrant sorcerers)

I got to play this character for several sessions, but he deserved more.

A lesser Devil modified bard chef. D&D Pirate Game with a drow captain of a haunted ship.

My bard powers were all based on cooking. In order to buff the crew I had to feed them. I had a constant supply of hors d’oeuvres, tiny deserts, etc. After combat, I would heal the party by cooking 5 star gourmet meals. I fought with a meat cleaver.

My back story: I was basically on the run. I was Gold Star Master of Sauces and Boilings, 3rd Degree Initiate of the Sulfur Ovens and Bonded Sous-chef of the School of Flesh and Broth in the City of Dis, 87 years into a 500 year Sous-chef contract that I was AWOL from. I got summoned to the Prime Material Plane in order to cater a wedding party for the daughter of a shady wizard and I managed to exploit a loop hole in the contract I signed with him to leave to get ingredients and never come back. He was pissed at me for ruining his daughter’s wedding reception and my masters at the School of Flesh and Broth told him “Capture and return our Sous-chef, or else!” So he was my primary antagonist.

But I had a plan! I wrote up a contract for people to sign to try to get them to be my apprentices. By Prime Material Plane standards, I was a genuine gold star level chef. All those poor sods you see competing on Hell’s Kitchen would kill to study under someone of my skill level. Basically, the contract was structured such that if they managed to complete an apprenticeship with me, they should be able to obtain employment with kings, popes and sultans. However, if they failed to complete their apprenticeship, I would own their soul. My goal was to be a complete dick to my apprentices to the point that they would give up and run away and fail to complete their training. Then, when I had a small collection of souls, I could return to the 9 Hells and buy out my contract and get them to stop chasing me.

Sadly, the campaign only lasted three sessions.

A few of my favourite clauses from the contract:

Apprentice certifies that, to the best of their knowledge, their Mortal Soul is in sound and original condition, not bound into their body through any enchantments, curses or blessings of undeath or deathlessness (or other mystical bindings), not owed to any other being of the Lower Planes or other Outer Planar Origin, not claimed by any deity or near-deity for any purpose and in no other ways is it’s transfer into Chef’s lawful possession in the event of a breach (5.0). impeded. Furthermore, that they will NOT promise, commit, sell, license or gift their soul to any third party during the terms of this contract.

Neither party shall be liable for any failure to perform their obligations under this agreement if prevented from doing so by a cause or causes reasonably beyond their control. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, such causes include Acts of deities or near-deities, disruptions to the structure of the planes of existence, infernal war operations (the Blood War), temporal disruptions, Wishes made by third parties or other similar cause or causes which could not with reasonable diligence be controlled or prevented by the party. This clause IN NO WAY waives the obligations of the Apprentice with respect to clause clause 1.1 i.

If Apprentice abandons the apprenticeship due to unanticipated death (2.5), a grace period of 3 days will be granted, during which time Apprentice may be resurrected or otherwise returned to life (including as an undead being), upon which event Apprentice agrees to immediately and without delay return to their Apprenticeship. Failure to do so shall be considered a breach of this contract.

From Deadlands Classic:

A snake handling Pentecostal Blessed with the “grim servant of death” flaw. As he genuinely tries to save souls, people often get bit by the rattlesnakes he carries with him. Technically he doesn’t break the law but most sheriffs don’t want him sticking around. Sadly the campaign never got started.

I had a quite literally hottest character I ever came up with: A wizard that liked fire a bit too much for his own good. He was a master of flames, the best from the Monastery he spent decades on. But the more power he gained through the fire, the more and more he lost his own mind. At the time of the campaign, he was in a sort of Limbo. He couldn’t remember most of his life, and he couldn’t shake off the insatiable desire to spread the flames he encountered. If he spent too long besides a fire, he would start to hear It louder and louder, to the point where he would lose control and be possessed by his flaming desire, which had full memory and access to the spells he no longer remembered, which often resulted in the complete destruction of everything around.

I actually got to play this character, and was a ton of fun with the party I had, but unfortunately the campaign was put on hold indefinitely due to personal matters of the DM.

Changling College of Eloquence Bard. They were basically a con artist.

Came into the campaign a few sessions late.9 The party was looking for a healer to replace another player that had to drop. When they encountered my bard they were pretending to a cleric of Lathander in order to run a scam in the local village. The scam was played out and my character was looking for a fast exit.

Oh Trullius, my poor bard of oration, a rhetorical master of sophistry. He may never see the light of a campaign, and maybe that’s for the best.