Author Topic: Character Bad Ideas  (Read 23724 times)

Tadanori Oyama

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Character Bad Ideas
« on: August 31, 2010, 07:07:01 PM »
Episode 48's story about Aaron's original character concept for Dark Sun (a warforged) got me thinking about fun ideas with major holes in them.

Post characters who seemed good but had major flaws in their design, either mechnical or story, and either how to fix them or just rip on them.

I see a huge hole with a warforged in the Dark Sun setting but it isn't the one Tom, Cody, and Ross picked out. Warforged are designed with little metal in their bodies (their natural armor bonus is +2 in 3.5, it's not even as high a bonus as studded leather). Warforged are mostly wood and leather with stone and metal elements holding them together. Eliminating the metal elements is a pretty minor narrative adjustment (though it does still leave the problem of wood). And using the materials Athas has on hand for warforged sounded awesome. Bone-forged would be fucking metal and I don't care what you guys say.

The hole I wanted to jump on was that warforged are alive and self aware because of complexly webbed enchantments, which makes them walking active spells. A warforged on Athas should be drawing energy all the time, it'd be like a Defiler who wanders around casting small spells constantly.

You totally should've made Aaron play a warforged and forced him watch as his mere presence blighted the world around him.

Ryo

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #1 on: August 31, 2010, 08:27:38 PM »
I haven't check, but maybe you know. Do zombies and other undead defile? I would think they would be similar to Warforged. I do agree warfored are animated. They don't eat, etc, so the power to operate must come from something and if that something is magic they might defile. What if the amount of magic is constant, but very small? Or they run on psychic energy?

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2010, 08:46:27 PM »
Your probably right. I don't claim to be an expert on how magic works in Athas. I know alot about Eberron (ergo my warforged rant above), but I never played Dark Sun. There are warforged based around psionics (psyforged) which might actually work in Dark Sun.

I just think that making Aaron play a race that sucks the life out of the world around him would be funny.

Vega Baby

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2010, 09:09:34 PM »
This is one a player of mine tried to make that was particularly terrible for my current 4E game.  It was a Warforged who was actually a man in a robot body, which was an okay concept.  It's what he wanted to do with it that was so awful.  Basically, he wanted to play a different character at first that was searching for his actual character, who had been deactivated and hidden away to keep him from being used as a weapon against his will or somesuch.  Again, a bit odd, but okay.  

The real problem was that he wanted, no, INSISTED, that the only way for his actual character to be reactivated was for his temporary character to not just sacrifice his life, but his IMMORTAL SOUL.   When I asked him why the guy needed to sacrifice himself, he insisted that there needed to be 'equivalent exchange' to bring a life back.  This of course was not only a complete ripoff of Fullmetal Alchemist, but completely against the magical system of D&D, where, with enough money, you can just pay a Cleric to bring someone back from the dead.

Not only that, but he insisted that the temporary character wouldn't WANT to sacrifice himself, and the players would be forced to MAKE him do it so his uber-badass character could save them.  I tried to convince him that this would never work, because the party was majority Good-aligned, so they wouldn't damn an innocent man to lose his soul just to save their own skins, and even if they did, there was no way in hell they'd be willing to travel with the robot that apparently runs on the souls of the damned afterward.

Eventually, I managed to talk him into having all the self-sacrifice stuff happening before he even met the party, as that was the ONLY way his stupid concept would work, but he ended up quitting the game shortly thereafter anyway.  I imagine it was partially because he couldn't play the Mary-Sue he wanted to, and also because he couldn't stand the setting.  You should've seen how pissed he got when he found out you needed to have a license to delve into dungeons there. ;D

There was also the guy who wanted to play a kid in Monsters and Other Childish Things where his monster would be a succubus slowly draining his dad's soul and planning to do the same to him one day.  It wasn't a completely bad concept for a dark game, but when the other characters were Troy and a moose-ataur version of Rowsdower from The Final Sacrifice and an expy of Edgeworth from Pheonix Wright with a demonic butler,  he wasn't really fitting with the tone of the group.

As for myself, I had a character for a Mage game who wasn't terrible exactly, but, well, was a bit too nuanced for me to handle, so to speak.  That, and he was overly angsty in his background, as it was my first WoD character.

 

clockworkjoe

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2010, 09:52:59 PM »
but when the other characters were Troy and a moose-ataur version of Rowsdower

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

that player did good

Vega Baby

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2010, 10:09:36 PM »
but when the other characters were Troy and a moose-ataur version of Rowsdower

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

that player did good

He's actually Dogfish on these forums.  And he had the character down perfectly, throwing in lightly whispered Rowsdowers in whenever he was nervous.  He definitely stole the show.

Mckma

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2010, 10:26:44 PM »
but when the other characters were Troy and a moose-ataur version of Rowsdower

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

that player did good

He's actually Dogfish on these forums.  And he had the character down perfectly, throwing in lightly whispered Rowsdowers in whenever he was nervous.  He definitely stole the show.
I think that may just be my favorite MST3K episode.  And awesome thinking on the moose-bit...

Dogfish

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2010, 11:13:25 PM »
Thank you. If I recall his powers were Hockey Hair (as defense and attack I believe), Booze Breath (an area attack with burning I believe), Charge of the Mountie and Drifters Know-How as a useful shared ability.

Mckma

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #8 on: September 01, 2010, 01:29:25 AM »
Thank you. If I recall his powers were Hockey Hair (as defense and attack I believe), Booze Breath (an area attack with burning I believe), Charge of the Mountie and Drifters Know-How as a useful shared ability.

And this just makes it that much more awesome.  Congratulations sir...

IDaMan008

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #9 on: September 01, 2010, 02:37:23 AM »
I think that may just be my favorite MST3K episode.

I went ahead and added it to my Instant Queue. It looks fantastic.

My story involves a character in the last campaign I ran. My PCs had all started out as decent people who were tempted to serve a demon in exchange for the fulfillment of their deepest desires. Over the course of ten or fifteen games, many of them had devolved into remorseless killers, and there was a serious PVP situation brewing as each of the corrupted characters angled for power against the others. A friend of mine who had been away at college during the bulk of these games came home long enough to attend a session or two, so I suggested that he play a character who was similar to the people that my regular PCs had been before they dabbled with infernalism, a sort of benchmark character who could serve as a reference point to illustrate how far the group had fallen. He dreamed up Charlie Webb, a NYC detective who was sort of a Monk ripoff in that he was looking for his dead wife's killer. He was a good person with a chink in his armor: he would give anything to learn the identity of the man who killed his wife. The character sounded pretty solid--at least enough for a two-session appearance--but when I tried to introduce him to the game, we had to retcon a whopping five times to prevent the other PCs from killing him almost the moment they laid eyes on him. Part of the problem was the way the player handled the roleplaying, as his character was very pushy about nosing his way into the PCs' affairs and refused to back down when they threatened his life, but in hindsight, introducing a character like that was a terrible idea. It proved my point, but it wasn't fun for anybody involved.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2010, 02:45:08 AM by IDaMan008 »

Kroack

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #10 on: September 01, 2010, 09:24:15 PM »
The Final Sacrifice is one of the better MST3k episodes.

crash2455

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #11 on: September 01, 2010, 10:47:07 PM »
The Final Sacrifice is one of the better MST3k episodes.

I just watched that and am trying to write up a Road Trip side adventure loosely based on it (and ideas in this thread) now.

clockworkjoe

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #12 on: September 01, 2010, 10:49:12 PM »
The Final Sacrifice is one of the better MST3k episodes.

I just watched that and am trying to write up a Road Trip side adventure loosely based on it (and ideas in this thread) now.

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doctorscraps

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2010, 07:37:59 AM »
There was one time two players in a friends Star Wars game who rolled droids...One was essentially an easy bake oven, as all she did was dispense cookies out of her cude shaped chassis, and the other made a sex droid who continuously did an impersonation of the washer-humping robot from Robot Chicken.
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crash2455

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Re: Character Bad Ideas
« Reply #14 on: September 02, 2010, 11:51:10 AM »
They should have teamed up with the Rancor Jedi and the Sarlac Monster.