Roleplaying Tics?

I'm always the token evil teammate. And if the entire party is evil, I'm evil enough to make them look good in comparison.

My orcs can only speak broken common, but are fluent in Dwarven and Draconic.

Any class with a summoned pet has the pet say "Yes Boss" to acknowledge orders.

I try to be the funny guy.

More, now that I think about it:

ALWAYS:

• I always play characters with a high Intelligence score. ALWAYS. I fucking love world-building, so making knowledge checks is always fun.
• All of my characters are bisexual, yet I rarely do romance subplots. Bromance arcs, on the other hand. . .

USUALLY:

• Most of my characters are one thing but act like another (IE a rogue who beats people to death with a mace) or are hybrid classes (Magic Knight etc.)
• I play certain races a lot more than others. Humans, Dwarves, Warforged/whatever other robotic thing the setting has, and any and all really out-there races that I can explore in a sort of mental Xenofiction. Minotaurs, Thri-kreen, etc.
• I love illusionists and artificers.
• I also play a lot of very weird concepts, depending on how flexible the system is. For instance, compare my Legend characters for Kyle Jacobs ' game: A barbarian-slash-lightning mage, and a war-dancing battle-mage Dwarven Pankration werewolf.
• Also. I fucking LOVE familiars. Seriously, I cannot describe how awesome familiars are.

edited 9th Jul '12 10:54:25 AM by Exelixi

All my characters carry knifes on them as an emergency weapon even if they are normally not smart or Genre Savvy enough to think of that.

Ooh, another one. All my characters usually have all the skills required to live on their own. By that, I mean most of them know how to cook, to drive/ride a horse, to fight (most of the time), enough lore to survive on a daily basis, etc.

I sometimes get called on that habit on some very optimized games, where character roles are very defined, and those skills are seen as a waste. My usual answer is: "My character lived XX years before meeting you guys. He didn't wait all that time to learn how to [skill], on the odd chance he might run into someone who knows how to [skill] in his place".

edited 11th Jul '12 4:13:15 AM by Talden

Beyond what I mentioned earlier, my characters tend to be the team chef rather frequently. For example, my last character was a food-obsessed barbarian who actually worked as a chef before he got exiled from his hometown and started doing the adventurer thing. He eventually started questing for the ultimate cookbook.

Very often, if not always, I roll someone with high perception and ranged combat abilities (usually shooting). And I usually end up as the team's pointman or backup of some sort.

When creating a character of a higher level I think more about how the events in their life has effected their class choices rather then what build would be best. So I often end up with spellcasters who know handful of weak spells in one area and a handful of stronger spells in an totally different area.

In science fiction games, I like to play tough sword-swinging luddites. It's great for shoving people around in situations where guns aren't allowed, and half of the real fighting happens at close quarters anyway.

"I make a grapple check and hold the space pirate next to the grenade. Let's see your Guns Skill 20 help you now!"

I almost always come up with an interesting concept, and then embrace it as I try to build a character around it. My most recents were a librarian at a monastary(monk with lots of knowledge skills), and a Druid who didn't know any spells except the required flame seed, due to leaving his clan and living in the wild. However, he had basically ALL of the wild shape combat powers. Also, he turned into a displacer beast.

Any game I'm in will involve Eldritch Abominations in one form or another. Even when I'm not D Ming.

Any game I'm in, I will be the character with the most health. It does not matter if I have min-maxed the shit out of my character or not, I will somehow end up with the most health. Even by complete accident. And it is always by a large margin.

I almost always play a character who's hiding something from the rest of the party. Sometimes malevolently (eg, in a Planescape campaign, my character was an Anarchist), mostly not (eg, in an Eberron campaign, my character was a member of a dragonmarked house who went incognito so he could get noble titles too). I tend to find things more interesting if there's some conflict of interests among the party (but not so much that things devolve into player-killing), so I usually do stuff that involves that — with permission from the DM, naturally.

My group mainly plays Mutants And Masterminds, and I've noticed that virtually all of my characters that I create:

• Are science-based in origin (whether wearing Powered Armor, an android, used by a Mad Scientist as a "lab rat", etc.)
• If their powers are technology-based, my sketches (if I include one) have very a Kirby-esque feel to them.
• Most of my characters make rather obscure references (if any), rather than staying in the small pool (damn you, Alan Moore and MST3K!)

For whatever reason, my characters are always roleplayed as much smarter than their stats would suggest. Even if I start playing them at average intelligence, over time they'll start slipping towards using larger words and becoming gradually more and more Genre Savvy, to the point where they may become the meta guy.

Also? I never play humans, and try to stay away from core races, simply because I think a monster may have a more interesting story to tell.

My characters always have a name from a mythology or literature their race is associated with. Elves and Eladrin (well, actually just Eladrin since I never play regular Elves) always get names from the Tain or Cycles; Dwarves always draw on Norse stuff or operas based on Norse stuff; Tieflings and Devas are either angels or are taken out of the Ars Goetia (it depends on the alignment for Tieflings).

I rarely ever play humans. This is not because of Special Snowflake Syndrome, but because I want those two extra stat points for my secondary or the racial feat/ability support. Sometimes I just can't contain my inner munchkin.

Most of the dudes I play kinda look like girls. This is less a matter of preference than it is to explain in-game why other players (and the DM) keep forgetting my character's gender.

My mage/wizard characters always border on the Mad Scientist side.

edited 14th Jan '13 3:56:10 PM by Sparkysharps

All my characters are "borrowed" from other series. Okay, I only had one character who was like that, but I only played D&D twice and I'm certain that I'll actually do it. (My first "fictional character" character was Blockhead )

edited 4th Feb '13 3:39:00 PM by MaplePlatoon

I generally play humans, in both TTRPGs and CRPGs.

edited 15th Mar '13 10:42:44 AM by Archereon

I like the humens, mainly because it is fun to play the human in the mass of non-humans I've played with. Except the occasional gnome/goblin-esque character so I can reuse Creig Cornswaggle who I have had far too much fun with.

I tend to have the opposite response; everyone I know plays Human, so I play non-Human most of the time.

My characters are apparently always eccentric or flamboyant.

Some of them have included..

A Manipulative Bastard Time Abyss witch.

A Motor Mouth Mad Hatter who runs on cartoon physics.

A demonic-looking person with a very kind, if odd, disposition.

A Smart-Ass Clairvoyant.

A Mildly Psychopathic Halfling Cook.*

edited 1st Apr '13 12:52:12 PM by Matues

Despite my best efforts or initial intentions, about nine-tenths of my characters turn into Guile Hero Knights in Sour Armor. The second case isn't a constant, but it still happens rather often. I also tend to initially play them as distant and rather serious-minded in comparison with some of their compatriots, often winding up as the straight man. My love of puzzles and mysteries also tends to bleed over into my characters. This led to my character masterminding the plan to snatch a planet out from our enemies noses and becoming a folk hero in the process, being given directorship of a planet by one set of allies, and eventually becoming intelligence officer for the entire cluster in our most recent Savage Worlds/Battletech game.

edited 15th Apr '13 6:58:24 AM by Drenius

For me, every character I do has to have some kind of gimmick to them to seperate them from the rest of the characters. Like, if I'm doing D&D 3.5, I can't just take a Half-Dragon sorcerer. No, he's got to be a high-class stage magician with plans to turn the secret dinosaur island he discovered into a theme park. (Man, I miss that campaign.)

I also tend to play my characters goofier than most, although lately I've been working on that with my Dragonstar campaign. Cool, collected, by the book Half-Dragon Space Marshall. Then again, the other PC in this campaign is a guy in a robot dragon body who's always panicking, so it balances out.

Yeah, I like playing as dragons and other scaly things a lot, if you couldn't tell. If the game supports it, 9 times out of 10, that's what I'll go for.

I normally play monks. Theirs just something about using only fists and martial arts prowess to defeat your foes. Especially if they are Eldritch Abomination. Also, almost all my characters have a red scarf of some kind. For great justice!