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The moment you knew your character concept had jumped the rails...

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TeChameleon Since: Jan, 2001
#1: May 20th 2012 at 10:44:01 PM

I'm just wondering if there are others out there who were designing a character for whatever reason, added one detail, and all of a sudden a relatively standard character snaps into something completely insane in your brain.

For me, it was when generating a character for our group's nascent Shadowrun game. I'd wanted to try a Trollish Adept ever since I discovered the possibility existed, and I figured 'troll that hits things' is a standard enough concept that it'd be hard to botch.

So, I'm sitting there working out his backstory and exactly why he could do the stuff he did. Still don't really know a whole lot about the Shadowrun setting, so I figured he'd have a relatively sheltered upbringing, someplace isolated. The 'fighting monastery' trope immediately suggested itself, but I didn't want to do the cliche'd Shaolin thing.

So I came up with a joint operation between the Mossad and the NSA- a secret combat instructor training facility high in the Rockies that was created as an experiment in hyperfocused learning, with almost no possibilities of outside distraction (well, aside from mountain climbing, one supposes). It was a deep black operation that was orphaned in the first great crash, so far down that they didn't even realize they'd been cut off for years. And it eventually morphed into a monastery courtesy of surprisingly similar lifestyles (somewhat questionable logic there, I know, but whatever tongue ). Also, I wanted him to practice Krav Maga >.>

Anyhow, I was putzing through the skill listings, and threw 'Hebrew' in as a second language for him, since it seemed to make sense. Then I sat there and looked at it for a moment.

And realized that 'Headjuice' had abruptly gone in my head from 'generic troll badass' to something that looked like what you'd get if you had a Yiddish Jackie Chan exposed to Marvel Comics-brand gamma radiation. Admittedly, my mind is a strange place, but that was weird, even for me >.>

edited 20th May '12 10:45:02 PM by TeChameleon

AckSed Pat. St. of Archive Binge from Pure Imagination Since: Jan, 2001
Pat. St. of Archive Binge
#2: May 21st 2012 at 5:33:57 AM

These things rarely happen without external input. I haven't been playing long,but my Toph analogue started off as pretty much an exact rip - a fightin',rock-chucking TK psion that had been plotting to overthrow a corrupt king. Then my GM asked me if she could be a halfling. "Noo... but she could be short and stocky enough to be mistaken for a halfling, fighting with her halfling brothers in the resistance!" She acquired an adopted home city of non-humans and escaped slaves, and a father who wished to see the town dead.

The story was supposed to start with our resurrection. My end was pretty spectacular - my head exploded trying to topple a house on her pursuers.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Talden Since: May, 2009
#3: May 21st 2012 at 7:43:29 AM

I had one, although it derived from a weird loophole of rules than took over my whole character after a while.

The game is Metal Adventures, basically pirates IN SPACE!, with more mutants and lasers. I usually play someone not combat-heavy, like a pilot or a archaeologist, but when it came to launch a new campaign, I decided to play someone more battle oriented, a good ol' gunner.

While browsing through the book, something hit me. Usually, characters have stats around 3, 4 being your primary stat in almost every character. However, using a combination of native planet, mutation and special advantage, I could pump up my Physical stat up to 7. There wasn't any example or character with more than 6 in any stat anywhere in the game, but nothing prevented me to go 7. Which means I would throw around 10 to 12 dice when doing something I was made for (combat, for instance), while most expert character might hope 7 or 8 dice tops. I'm no Munchkin, I asked my DM with great care if he would accept such a character; I was afraid myself that he could potentially break the game system entirely. He gave me his blessing, and lo and behold, Vagor the Strongest Man in the Whole Empire was born.

Ooooooh boy, did he end up breaking the rules, but for all the good reasons. I think the turning point was when we realized he would do more damage with a sword than a full-automatic laser blaster. Even a simple punch, doing non-lethal damage, would pretty much knock out any non-armored fighter we could find. This was the beginning of a series of weird feats of strength.

Physical is used for a lot of things in this game. It would determine your HP, which became huge for Vagor, of course. We realized that when he took a full automatic laser salvo in the chest, unarmored, and only suffer a light wound thanks to his special abilities. Anyone else would have been KO or dead from the same attack, but it would have taken two more blast to take Vagor down! His stamina also allowed him to do stupid things, like jumping in the void of space from a ship to another, wearing no space suit and ending up just fine. (The rest of the crew did the same shortly after, but they had to spend a Hero Point to do it, and got some nasty wounds from it)

Speed is measured with the Athletics skill, which of course... depends on Physical. Not only Vagor was strong, he was fast. He once outrunned a decompressing room (in space!), punch the door open, and close it quickly before a flabbergasted audience. Once, to avoid being hit by a grenade, he jumped in a ventilation shaft so well, the DM couldn't say anything but "ninja-like escape". And then, he gave me a bonus in Intimidation when I jumped on the startled soldiers from my hide.

One last stupidly awesome thing he did: you're allowed to spend a Hero Point to do something impressive and unique. It resulted in Vagor catching mid-flight two jumping Tygrons (think tigers, but twice as big), and bumping their head against each other to stop them from eating another crew-mate. Someone else shot the beasts dead, but he was allowed to keep the pelts, and now has one sewn to his space suit, barbarian style!

You would think the rest of the group would take offense of such a display of broken rules. It's quite the opposite! Vagor is a beast when it comes to man-to-man combat, but it's only a part of the game. When it comes to space fight, he's a good cannon operator or a (surprisingly decent) radar-monkey, but nowhere near as good as our pilot or cannonier. He can't interact in a subtle way except for pure Intimidation, and can't repair machine. He is, however, the only guy in the crew who's at ease with a medikit, and can read space maps just fine. And he's so large, he can be used as a shield when shooting becomes too intense, much to my dismay.

In fact, they are the one who keep upping the ante in terms of awesomeness. Vagor has to be a powerhouse and made out of the stuff of legends, otherwise he doesn't deserve his increasing title of Strongest Man on the Planet, in the System, in the Quadrant, in the Empire, and soon in the Entire Galaxy!

So yeah. At first, I wanted to play just another grunt in our team of pirates. By a simple rule (ab)use, he became a Ninja Hulk with barbarian blood, impervious to anything the universe could throw at him, and most famous pirate in the whole crew. If this is doing it wrong, I don't want to be right!

edited 21st May '12 7:43:57 AM by Talden

SlendidSuit Freelance Worrywart from Probably a Pub Since: Oct, 2011
Freelance Worrywart
#4: May 21st 2012 at 8:01:53 AM

I had a moment where I not only derailed my character, but derailed the PLOT of a game of Dark Heresy. It was my first time playing and I rolled up an assassin character. However, I preferred the image of some sort of free-wheeling rogueish type to the standard poe-faced sniper so I made him specialise in duel-wielding and gave him a twisted backstory about originating from Gun Metal city. Aaaaaand then I made him a drug dealer.

Seriously, I'm not too sure how it happened, but after a back-and-forth discussion with my GM we realised I'd given myself too much starter money. I really didn't want to lose it, so I erased my allowance of Stim and some other minor drugs to balance it out. He made an offhand joke about me seeling them on the sly when my Inquisitor wasn't paying attention, and I actually decided to run with the idea. Weirdly, so did he. It got to the point where whole story arcs revolved around me desperately hiding my illicit second job from the rest of the group, narrowly avoiding repeated exposure only by killing off and replacing half of my operation, covering up murders with a variety of things from anonymous acid-baths to heresy-laden fram jobs. And then our Psyker found out... only after he'd entered a Chaos Pact for some power, given he assassinated a noble on the planet we were investigating. And that's when things got REALLY interesting...

Gimme yer lunch money, dweeb.
SilverFayte Since: Feb, 2010
#5: May 21st 2012 at 9:26:10 AM

The game was Warhammer 40,000: Black Crusade, with he GM having decided that all the characters were to be humans rather than space marines, and characters would be created using the point-buy system rather than rolling (one of the other players expressed great relief at this, as his last character created using the roll system in a Deathwatch game is now known only as "The Worst Space Marine"). The system being new, and not wanting to munchkin too much, I decided on what I thought at the time to be a sub-optimal build: a melee-based psycher. The character? A 14-year old girl, daughter of a governor-general, having developed psychic powers focusing on precognitive abilities, is forced to flee when she receives visions of the black ships coming to take her, and is forced to turn to the only group that accepts her: the forces of Chaos. Her statline was fair, with above-average agility and weapon skill (explained as her having taken fencing lessons all her life), she could barely hold a gun, let alone shoot one (17 Ballistic Skill, due to dumpstatting) and she had the minimum amount of health possible (9 wounds, where most characters get about 12-18 or more, depending) to get in the game. I honestly didn't expect her to last more than a few sessions.

Then one of the other players suggested that I spend some XP on Warptime, which gives bonuses to Weapon Skill and Agility. I realized that you could push the power, and effectively hold it the entire session safely.

Then she got a force sword.

About 20 sessions, thirty-thousand-odd experience points, two infamy-burning near-death experiences, and one in-game year later, she's now an absolute terror on the battlefield, wielding a daemon-infused force sword in one hand and a power sword in her other (now mechanical) arm, warping time to slow her enemies and using her visions of the future to read her enemies' movements before they even begin to make them. She's fighting to destroy the Imperium of Man not because the Great Powers will it, but because she believes the Emperor Himself has given her a mission to end the Imperium-Chaos 'civil war' and reunite humanity under a single banner.

She once killed two Grey Knights singlehandedly. While too shaken by their presence to approach them. With only one arm (as the other had been lost to a horde of Khorne bloodletters... but not before she reduced their number from 50 to 5). In a single turn.

The GM once asked me what her theoretical maximum damage was. Keep in mind, most player characters have a maximum of around 30ish wounds. Her damage output, given best conditions?

Over 700 wounds.

Per turn. (Admittedly, that's with something like 30 10s rolled, but even her average in normal conditions is somewhere between 50 and 120, already well over the amount needed to one-shot pretty much anything.)

I'm not entirely sure when this small, scared girl turned into a paladin-like glass cannon of game-breaking proportions, really. It sort of just... happened.

Xiphoniii Cheeky son of a.... from Florida Since: Aug, 2009
Cheeky son of a....
#6: May 21st 2012 at 11:33:13 AM

In a game of Legend Game System I decided to roll a monk. Not my usual fare, I'm pretty skill-based most of the time, with Bards and Rogues as my main classes. But I started thinking about maybe a heavily skill based monk. So I declared him as the librarian of his monastary, and gave him good knowledge skills, as well as pretty decent athletics and acrobatics. Then this happened.

"Hmm....librarian monk, sounds cool enough, let's see if I can pull him off....."

-Reads monk skills-

"Wow, high level monks are like planeswalkers! Haha, wouldn't it be funny if he read books from our world?"

-Hour later

"Yeah and he's always reading, ALWAYS, even in combat, ESPECIALLY IN COMBAT, and carries around a copy of Lord of the Rings(Complete collection) and quotes it all the time.....this is awesome. Not at all what I had in mind...but AWESOME."

Needless to say, my Lord Of The Rings jokes are all in character.

:smug:
EviIPaladin Some Guy Or Something from Middle-Of-Nowhere, NS Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: Noddin' my head like yeah
Some Guy Or Something
#7: May 21st 2012 at 12:10:00 PM

I'm tempted to regale you all with the tale of how I created CREIG CORNSWAGGLE, COURAGEOUS AND CRUDE CAPTAIN OF THE CREW, but that would imply there were anything resembling rails when I built him.

No, allow me to tell you the tale of Benjamin Blair; a human cop from a two-man World Of Darkness game. So I am often a defensive/support character in most of my games*

, so I figured that I would roll with a physical character. As a human in a World of Darkness game. Needless to say, I was not all that well acquainted with the system.

Benjamin was a cop. He was kind of a rookie in the force but was an ace shot. Unfortunately, he had some... Issues. So the campaign starts off with the other party member*

getting arrested for having some... Less than legal items on his person. Mainly drugs but also a weird mummy hand thing. A few minutes later, some goons showed up with some auto weapons and shotguns and laid waste to the station, killing everyone but us.

An encounter later and Benjamin is limping out of the station with brat in tow, leaving the place to burn down with one of the twogoons trapped inside. Making our escape the second goon starts chasing us. Gritting his teeth, Benjamin leans out the window of a very spiffy sports car and starts opening fire with dual pistols, blowing out the tires and causing the van to crash, killing the goon. Makes a smartass remark about killing some person he pretty much had never met and passes his Humanity test with flying colours.

Those goons? Supposed to be reoccurring characters. So yeah, the character used the rails to beat up the plot while making crude and obscene references.

That's not even getting into the disownership of the brat which caused him to have to change his concept and the stripper devil gunwoman who joined our party later.

...Yeah that was a weird campaign...

"Evii is right though" -Saturn "I didn't know you were a bitch Evii." -Lior Val
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#8: May 21st 2012 at 2:50:05 PM

A Time of War: I created a ComStar (think AT&T with guns mixed with a dash of Scientology and a little Adeptus Mechanicus) scout infantyman. Then the GM decided to make the campaign Elite rated and gave us a lot more experience; the character quickly evolved into a lethal special forces operative. However things got a bit wonky when I decided to load up on the disadvantages to get even more experience. When I was finished by character had gone from a competent if socially inept covert operative to a husk of a man who had a psychotic hatred directed at a rival faction, an addiction to a really nasty designer stimulant (with crippling withdrawal), a full blown paranoid delusion (he takes his "orders" from a superior office who bled out in his arms a decade ago) and the ability fear and hatred in every animal he comes across. He was also a killing machine; it was almost impossible for him to miss in melee or ranged combat and he was proficient in any weapon that wasn't mounted on a vehicle or a warship. Another character commented that he was more like a force of nature or a machine than a human being but his mental problems ironically ended up making him relatively sympathetic despite the fact that he was pulling things like bombing field hospitals.

edited 21st May '12 2:53:07 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Nomic Exitus Acta Probat from beyond the Void Since: Jan, 2001
Exitus Acta Probat
#9: May 23rd 2012 at 1:10:19 PM

I rolled "there is no substitute for zeal" as a fortune for my asassin in Dark Heresy, and decided to play him as a religious type, saying a prayer to the Emperor whenever he pulls the trigger and the like. Then, after some lucky diplomacy rolls (for some reason, my asassin eneded up having the second highest fellowship in the group. The highest was our techpriest...) he ended up converting a nation on a non-Imperial planet to Imperial Creed. After that I decided to make him into some kind of asassin-preacher, bringing the word of the Emperor to the faithful and asassinating heretics. The GM even let me take some cleric skills. Then the whole campaign got off the rails when we convinced the GM to give us a voidship and the whole thing become a Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader mashup.

Also in Black Crusade, one of us was planning to make a Khornate berserker who does combata and little else. However, he rolled his stats randomly and got a really high intelligence. So he changed his concept and made a scheming Tzeentchian. He also randomly rolled "betrayer" as his failing, which ended up becoming a major part of the plot (the campaign BBEG is the chaos lord he used to serve and tried to betray). I ended up taking the Khornate concept (altough my character is a female human renegade instead of a marine) but so far all I've done is broken the combat system. We had to house rule swift attackto the Dark Heresy version, and even then I do 6 attacks a round, thanks to my character growing an extra arm from her shoulder. She might be a glass cannon with a pathetically low wounds, but she will tear apart anything she gets her power swords onto.

edited 28th May '12 6:25:37 AM by Nomic

lordGacek Since: Jan, 2001
#10: May 27th 2012 at 1:41:44 PM

Once upon a time, in a homebrew system, I wanted to play a brooding and antiheroic Magic Knight-type elf with a drug habit. I guess the off-the-rails moment was when I described the drugs as having the form of dried leaves, you know, for smoking. At this moment, the character became an elven stoner.

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#11: May 27th 2012 at 5:42:30 PM

I don't think I've ever had a character concept that jumped the rails. I guess my bard in a forgotten realms game was a little "Da Vinci Code"ish though.

Annoyingly, the kinds of skills that woulda worked for him were not those that matched his ability scores-hence why I despite Dungeons and Dragons' skill system regardless of version (since they ALL specifically play up the importance of ability scores).

Exelixi Lesbarian from Alchemist's workshop Since: Sep, 2011 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Lesbarian
#12: May 27th 2012 at 5:56:59 PM

Hopefully some day I will be able to tell the Tale of Aisling.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-
Hydronix I'm an Irene! from TV Tropes Since: Apr, 2010
disruptorfe404 Since: Sep, 2011
#14: May 27th 2012 at 9:07:00 PM

My last character in 4th Edition D&D was an Elf barbarian (with avenger multiclass).

By about 13th level (I think that's where it was, anyway), she would slam things with her fullblade (static damage modifier of around +30) with a Rage Strike, action point for another massive attack that provokes an attack (because barbarians are like that), and react to that attack with another attack. She also had excellent movement, and was very accurate with attacks (re-rolls and what have you).

Once our DMs (our group's DMs rotate, and I was one of them) got together and asked me to tone down my 'ballistic barbarian' because they were being forced to design around her (I didn't have to, because obviously would never have to play against my own character).

So I toned her down, but played... well, not many more sessions before I decided to stop playing D&D altogether.

edited 27th May '12 9:07:52 PM by disruptorfe404

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#15: May 27th 2012 at 9:11:07 PM

Wait, was there a conceptual difficulty? Or were they concerned about your character being overpowered or something?

TeChameleon Since: Jan, 2001
#16: May 27th 2012 at 9:49:23 PM

Pretty sure they just mean that either any encounter that would have posed even the slightest threat to the 'ballistic barbarian' would smash the rest of the party flat, or else that it was becoming too difficult to design encounters that could challenge the barbarian without the aforementioned problem.

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#17: May 27th 2012 at 9:50:04 PM

Elven Barbarian doesn't exactly sound like the most OP thing in the world.

Were you running 2 encounter days or something?

And how did you get +30 damage at 13th level?

  • 5 ability... +4 iron armbands of power... +2 weapon focus... +6 power attack? +3 enhancement bonus... still only up to +20.

Maybe there was custom stuff going on, but a barbarian shouldn't be the twinkiest thing in 4E by a long shot, unless you MC Warlock and take Destiny Inversion and Strength of Enduring Pain (Min level 16), in which case, with Storm of Blades and an AP, yeah, they can be really powerful.

But the bottom line is, the numbers and the description don't line up. I don't recommend swearing off 4E just because someone threw some really bad numbers at the game.

edited 27th May '12 10:02:29 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

disruptorfe404 Since: Sep, 2011
#18: May 27th 2012 at 10:32:00 PM

[up][up] Pretty much this exactly.

[up] Reckless weapon as well as something else, I'd have to dig up the character sheet to be sure. It might have just been +26. But it was definitely close to +30 (or would have been +30 when someone in my party decided to buff me for some reason). Likely I would have stopped playing not long after, regardless of toning myself down. They got to the point where they now play a house-ruled version of 4th where they're perpetually third level and get new powers as 'loot' and a bunch of other house-ruled things.

For the record, I like 4th, though I much prefer the... meatiness (is that what I'm looking for?) of multiclassing in 3rd/3.5.

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#19: May 27th 2012 at 10:32:39 PM

Oh, I see. You were using since-nerfed equipment out the wazoo.

That makes sense.

I found that the hybrids system in 4E replaces a lot (but not all) of the "meat" that you get from 3.5's multiclassing system (it comes at the cost of some significant game balance elements, but nothing compared to 3.5's problems).

edited 27th May '12 10:33:47 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

disruptorfe404 Since: Sep, 2011
#20: May 27th 2012 at 11:39:55 PM

Yeah, hybrid was pretty cool. And a very good option for what I liked about multi-classing.

Found my old character sheet. It was level 16, not level 13. Was using a bloodclaw weapon rather than a reckless weapon. The breakdown goes: +6 Str +3 enhancement +9 Bloodclaw weapon +2 feat +6 Power Attack. +4 when raging, extra +6 against bloodied. The only other character in my group I recall coming close was the slip'n-slide warlock. Who actually took a power that would give me fire damage on my attacks or something, because he just loved the numbers I was throwing at the DM.

That might have been a factor as well actually, none of the others were doing similar damage (other than warlock, who was definitely on par); but then none of them were strikers. Who knows? Very fun while it lasted! I regret nothing.

doorhandle Since: Oct, 2010
#21: May 31st 2012 at 2:04:28 AM

I agree, but I'm disappointred that A) you can't use striker class-features from one class with another and B) hybrid monk does not come standard with an improved unarmed strike.

Matrix Since: Jan, 2001
#22: May 31st 2012 at 2:39:58 AM

Hmm... The character I played in the year-and-a-half-long Spirit Of The Century campaign Ironeye ran. Sarah the Singed. Not so much "off the rails". More like "trainwreck". Pretty much from go. I was very mistaken about what Pulp Adventure was when we were doing character creation, so I made her into a pyromaniac gangster. I never really roleplayed the pyromaniac bit well, and she was more of an anti-hero in a game where it's better to just be a hero. After some skill shuffling near the beginning, she ended up having Guns as her top skill, which ended up being a bad thing. Because of the conventions of pulp, guns are not as useful as you'd think, since it's more exciting to get all in up close and such. Also, I had Intimidation as one of her higher skills, which again didn't usually work out well. She did end up sort of working, and I certainly had fun moments. She even ended up being the Spirit of Defiance. Still, a trainwreck. I guess this is an example of when this sort of thing goes completely wrong instead of incredibly right.

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#23: May 31st 2012 at 10:10:00 AM

Hybrid monk is kind of a ripoff yeah. And the "you can't use striker class features with other class' powers" is working as intended. Otherwise you'd be able to get double striker benefits, and be better than a single classed striker!

HINT: Executioner/Avenger + Power of Skill. Executioner/Warlock, alternatively.

SECONDARY HINT: Avengers can get Oath of Enmity on RB As with a feat-this overrides the limitation from hybrid. No spoilers on how THAT can be used for cheating.

Exelixi Lesbarian from Alchemist's workshop Since: Sep, 2011 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Lesbarian
#24: May 31st 2012 at 10:20:07 AM

When my Knight somehow turned into a Drunken Kung Fu Dwarf.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-
Night The future of warfare in UC. from Jaburo Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
The future of warfare in UC.
#25: May 31st 2012 at 2:05:29 PM

About the point where I won the argument about being able to crash MDC power armor through most non-reinforced structures if it was accelerated to a high enough speed for a Rifts game, five years ago. Suddenly I was painting a flight-capable suit of power armor red and rigging the speakers to broadcast "OOOOH YEAHHH!" on impact.

An otherwise respectable, normal Coalition soldier who was The Kool-Aid Man in his spare time. And while that may have been ridiculous over the top, winning that argument did a lot of good for the various campaigns we've played since.

Nous restons ici.

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