I can’t play with my friend because we play the same guy.
Both rogue. Both street tough types rather than the shadowy assassin type. Both used to end up taking a couple of levels of either Bard or fighter and ended up with a swashbuckler. No strength, all dex and cha.
We did play together a few times and would swap out which one of us got to play that guy. The other always played a very angry wizard. Just grumpy as shit. Good at a lot of things, but preferred to either fireball or magic missile his way out of situations. Talking to NPCs? I think I’ve got potions brewing. Must be off!
Before we played together we played the same MUD separately. Yep, same character. We ran into each other from time to time.
In high school we played at the same place but a couple of years apart. I started going when he left for the Navy. The guy who DM’ed there said my character reminded me of that guy a lot.
I want to play BG3 with him remotely and both play swashbucklers.
Have you ever thought about taking him on a trip to El Dorado?
Play identical twins.
Me and my best friend played halfling twin brawlers one time who would use each other as improvised weapons and crawl in big guys Shadow if the Colossus style. It was the most fun thing ever, but the DM turned out to be the “if someone doesn’t lose a limb during every encounter I have failed” kind of DM so it didn’t last long.
Separated at birth. Completely oblivious to their similarity.
If we didn’t both know who our fathers were and if he weren’t a few years older that would absolutely describe us anyway. Went to school not far from each other and I played baseball against his younger brother, then was on the team with his brother for fall ball. Different churches that were part of the same cult. Similar teenage interests. Same social circles just a few years apart. Same branch of the military and same rate (this is where we went from being aware of each other to being friends). Both married and divorced young. Super similar career paths. Both settled in the same large city several hours from our small hometowns (I got here first, for once) and played music with the same people. Super similar adult interests completely separate from our teen interests. It’s fucking freaky. We didn’t even realize it for years until it was pointed out.
He eventually moved out east while I stayed. I’m one of like 3 people he still keeps in contact with in the state.
Reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/Dzner6zTEVs
One I did was “joke character who ended up being very serious.”
#5 is always fun. Especially when I accidentally become #1
Also missing: pure random-roll character who makes no sense and contributes nothing other than needing to be rescued a lot.
That’s actually an intentional mechanic in Monster of the Week. The Mundane gets bonus XP by wandering off on their own and pushing the plot forward by needing to be rescued a la Xander.
I actually like point-buy systems where you get better at what you actually use (like in Morrowind).
I start at average values in everything and see where the story takes my character.And the corollary, overbuilt min-max character based solely on researching the meta for hours but only rolls good at things they’re not built to do
Definitely not my fursona
Does D&D even have any official furry races outside turning a monster into a PC or the two bird-type people? 🤔
I know Pathfinder has Kitsune. But it’s only “definitely not my fursona” because, afaik, there is no dog people race 🤣
Not counting Tabaxi, Leonins, Shifters, Minotaurs, Satyrs, Harengons, Loxodons, Giffs, and potentially Bugbears? No, I don’t think so. Because Yuan-ti, Lizardfolks, Dragonborns, Tortles, Kobolds, Locathahs and Grungs count as scalies. And I think Aarakocras, Kenkus and Owlins count as feathery.
Wait, how are we handling druids? Cause they can be any race…
Can I interest you in hearing the gospel of the Shoony?
you can always be an awakened animal or take the beastkin versatile heritage too
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: in PF2, you can be any type of character you can imagine
i was going to say you can’t be a floating eye with tentacles for limbs but a leshy could easily be shaped like that
and if not a leshy, a fleshwarp could be that too
Does D&D even have any official furry races
- Centaur
- Hadozee
- Harengon
- Leonin
- Minotaur
- Satyr
- Tabaxi
And that’s just the ones with fur, there’s plenty for the scalies too
Do centaurs count as furry? Centaurs are half-regular-person and half-regular-bestiality, and furries always seemed like a bit more of a blend.
Half-human and half-horse sounds like the bestiality had already happened!
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You are aware that most of DnDs mechanics are focused on simulating fights? If you do not like that, you are maybe playing the wrong system. Beyond that, how are you totally useless in combat? All classes get combat-abilities in one way or another and are designed to be at least moderately useful.
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My personal favorite aspect with respect to combat is, “I look around, what objects and furniture are in the room?” Then proceed to use that stuff in combat. Long rug? I’ll attempt to trip the opponent by pulling it up. Chandelier? Yeah I’ll throw a hand axe and try to break that chain. Some DMs thrive off of it, some are put off.
Ooh, or my other trope: be a cleric with heavy armor and a shield. On your first turn in combat, walk out in front of everyone, cast Shield of Faith, and take the Dodge action. As a free action, yell “come at me, fucknuts!” If you can pick up the Shield spell, you’re mostly invulnerable, and it’s pretty much viable at level 1.
Have you tried PBTA games, because the whole consequences things really push that kind of play
You are my favourite kind of player.
One of the reasons I despair D&D is the most popular RPG. It’s almost all combat, and not even great combat at that.
I don’t hate D&D, but I did notice how much harder combat gets from DM’s side to prepare, and also how much more bored of it the players are. My players started doing everythign to spend more sessions on their own shenanigans, character moments, roleplay and NPC interactions. The thing is we love our campaign and characters, but are too high level to switch systems. So we’re taking break to play short Mage: the Ascension campaign.
I am now learnign two different new systems, Mage and WFRP, pray for me.
Being useless in combat is a personal choice that can absolutely be avoided without hampering your ability to be a skillmonkey. You won’t be obliterating the enemy en masse, but that’s what the casters are for.
Play a Thief rogue and have a blast with fast hands when initiative is rolled, or be almost any bard and hand out bardic inspiration while you stand as a mild speedbump of meat between the wizard and the enemy.
Or maybe chat with your DM about game expectations prior to playing? I know it’s an impossible ask for the internet at large.
Chat with the whole party. Some of them might not be happy with you avoiding all the combat.
Absolutely, there should be some level of “okay who stands in front of the skeletons, who fireballs the skeletons, who puts the fighter back together after they get fireball’d too, and who stops the whole party from getting killed by a trap before they even reach the battle”. If you’re gasp optimizing, you might even tailor your skillmonkey around the gaps in your party’s abilities - you probably don’t need the world’s best arcana checks with a wizard in the party, but it would be nice to grab face skills if you don’t have any other charismatic fellows around.
That is a lot more optimization than I’m used to. In my group people just come up with characters they want to play and the GM works with that.
Mind you, we do discuss what kind of game we’re playing so we don’t end up with four pure noncombatants doing a dungeon crawl. But ending up with four wizards? Yeah, that might happen or even be encouraged.
I really don’t wanna have to discuss who has to change their character concept because we need a healer or our party composition won’t be optimal.
The idea that players all make their characters in isolation and just show up on session 0 with them sounds like such a recipe for disaster. I know it can work sometimes, much like “just grab four things from the fridge and throw them into the soup” can work sometimes. But sometimes you get like gummy bear pizza bites with shrimp and mayo topping.
I think a lot of games that came after D&D figured out solutions to common problems, but D&D insists on staying kind of archaic.
Yeah ime players tell the gm what they’ve decided to play when they know and the understanding is they pick something that works with everything else. Or we all decide what we’re playing collaboratively, that way if we’re all squishy controllers at least it’s on purpose
It’s not about who has to change their character concept. But about building a party which can work together.A session zero and common character creation is universal seen as a good practice
I’ve seen campaigns where players had to actively avoid PvP due to big difference in goal/loyalties/alignment. Let’s avoid the my family hates your familytrope.
Then, indeed, not doubling the skills or have skills not matching the campaign. You don’t want to have 5 pilots for one space ship. Especially if it means you don’t have a social character.
There is more character I’d like to play than games where I could play them, so not that much of a problem anyway
I find that a lot of D&D players seem to have a fairly mechanistic view of the game, more so than with other games. This is probably a result of D&D, as an offshoot of a tabletop strategy game, being designed in such a manner. Now, your approach is already a lot softer (and I agree that some preplanning is recommended) but the “every party needs a tank, a caster, a healer, a skill monkey, and one of the needs to be the face” I responded to is fairly common in the D&D world.
I don’t agree with that level of party planning. I find it awfully reductionist and belying a mechanistic view on how the game works. I also never found it necessary. Every single element in that list is optional if the players and GM can deal with it. Heck, I’ve never even been in a game with a semi-dedicated healer. For something with clear, limited in-world roles (like your starship example), you do need to allocate them but games like that are rare.
Of course, like I mentioned that D&D’s design informs the way it’s talked about, my experiences are colored by the systems I’ve played, particularly The Dark Eye. TDE affords players much less power than D&D. Spellcasters are much weaker due to slow resource regeneration – they use a mana point system and a high-powered spell will take multiple long rests to recover from. Sure, you can combat heal or throw a fireball but only when necessary. Also, there are way more skills so even with all party members pitching in you won’t have expertise or even competency in everything.
As a result, the idea of having a party that can take on any challenge (and/or deal with several high-stakes battles in a short time frame) is unrealistic. This actually frees up a lot of conceptual space since there’s no one party that can do every kind of adventure. So with some coordination you can make anything work, even a party with no combat or magical skills who Shawn Spencer their way through quests.
What absolutely needs to be worked out are things that could set the party against itself or keep a player from interacting with the others. But that’s more of a player behavior thing; e.g. you can play a perfectly selfish, evil character who still puts the party’s interests ahead of their own – if they’re played to consider having reliable friends worth more than short term gain. So yeah, I also expect a certain amount of character tailoring, just on the roleplay level rather than mechanically.
Just for clarification - you don’t want ensure your party has, say, someone with the ability to talk to people, but you also don’t want to talk to your DM ahead of time to ensure you’re not playing a politics heavy game where a face will be absolutely necessary to make any progress?
Not everyone needs to be specced into being the perfect version of one of those four basic archetypes. Like you mention, “dedicated healer” is essentially gone in place of short rests and healing word spam. But won’t it feel awful goofy to have a player die as the three other 8 wisdom barbarians fail their medicine checks to stabilize?
The problem is that while combat focused PC have armour, high initiative, multiple attack per round, and don’t fail their roll. You’re like acting at the end of the round, once when other PC do it 3 times, fail your attack and as soon as you get hit you’re unconscious. The cool part of putting the big combat at the end of the session is that you can take a nap, and have the GM waking you up at 5 combat is over, let’s give the XP and the first train homes leaves in 30 minutes
Ah so we’re complaining that dumping constitution makes you die faster? Yeah if you roll up with 8 strength 8 dex and 8 con you’re going to get split in half by the first kobold you encounter, what a concept.
If you’re playing a bard with 14 charisma(or heaven forbid, 16 like a filthy minmaxer), you’re only a few percentage points behind your team on your vicious mockeries. You genuinely have to try to be truly useless.
True in pathfinder, not so true in DnD 5ed
One of my favorite characters I’ve ever had fits perfectly into #15. She was a tiny goblin that was on a quest to collect as many skulls as possible and had a sheep that she won in a contest as her steed. (She was about 2.5 feet tall and the rest of the party was human-sized or larger, so I had to roll endurance checks to keep up with them sometimes if we were traveling a long distance.)
- Whatever lets me create the biggest explosions
Where does the “ridiculous minmaxed character to game the mechanics” fit in? We had a miner/scribe once.
I think that’d fall into #8, biggest explosions
I’ve done a few of these, but I once did a #5/#10 combo. I made a character years ago whose only purpose was to blow people’s heads off with a .44 Magnum. He had virtually no other relevant skills. It was a GURPS/Car Wars mash-up, the former for roleplay and the latter for vehicular combat since we were in the Car Wars universe. I wasn’t much use for anything until the shooting started.
RIP Jerry “Magnum” Carrost: you were a terrible character, but you were fun.
I’ve done too many of these. I tend to fall on 1 often though.
From the title I thought this was going to be about personal computers and upon opening the image I was very confused for a second.
No, I don’t look at what community the post is from when I’m scrolling all.
“Okay, tell us about your character.”
“Hm? Oh… human fighter.”
“That’s it?”
“Mm-hm.”
“What do they look like?”
“Middle sliders on the character creator.”“Any motivations?”
“Do quests to earn money.”“How about a backstory?”
“Did quests and earned money.”
haha that’s cool and I’m not a furry
6 sessions in and no one has identified/mentioned the person my character is based on, probably because I’m not good enough at doing a Rodney Dangerfield voice
No respect. I tell ya!
