I’ve had this happen once. Abandoned in the Underdark to fend for myself. Talked with the DM and we agreed my Goliath would survive only to come back as the BBEG for that same party the next game.
@@simplicityisoftenthebest7856 Really fun actually, they had the same characters as when they abandoned him. I had a new one obviously. The moment they first came face to face with this massive Goliath barbarian/fighter, equipped with gear specific to the underdark and scarred beyond belief, was priceless. They thought they could take my old character no problem. I was now a bard so I said “Nope” and stayed back to buff the party. Meanwhile two got downed and the third was well on his way, so the DM pulled a narrative yank and got us out of there by means of a Dwarven Steam engine that came to our rescue. I couldn’t help but smile the entire encounter as the rest of them were panicking. It eventually ended in a win, but they were very very cautious in the final encounter which was, in the underdark again.
"I'm just playing my character." "So are we." Best answer to that stupid sentence. Pro Tip: Don't play someone whose character makes it unlikly to be accepted bei the other members of the party.
@@nealbarrett4500 Sure! But changes need time. I prefer people not doing something, their Character wouldn't do right now instead of giving them a 180° Change on the spot. And for that reason... Choose a character, that wouldn't betray the party/one specific party member to begin with.
Why do players need to stay friends???? Real world friends play for the story. Missed a huge opportunity in this campaign to tell a very unique story to the game Im new to D&D but in my few short months here i have helped create a game thats truly open Its also extremly fun See the problem is everyone expects to work together. People are people. They are gonna do them. A good story will play off of that The more people planning their own story and playing off of eachother . thats the spirit of the game. Team mates or enemies. The players can create a story they enjoy. The DM is there to lend his point of view but the dice determine the outcome. It should not be win or.lose. it's a story See we used D&D to world build a whole new game. I decided that we would all pick a god Together we all decided we would kill out god and take their place. That opened the game up to player plans verse other players amd the GM amd made for a true story
@@richlight A good story don't need betrayal. Or more like... As a long time goal, betrayal is fine. Still, if you want your character to be a part of the group, he should at least give them a reason to keep him around. Being a useless dick to them isn't. Making it clear from the beginning, that he will betray the party contradicts most reasons to keep him around. That's what I meant. Should have made that one more clear, sorry.
Indeed, though admittably... in games where I DM I usually give the players a few NPCs, as side characters, to offer advice, support, fullfill roles not covered by the players (though usually less competent) and sometimes 'nudge' them in the right direction. In that case... one might have suggested that they could use that player's character as a hostage or such. That way the player's character could tag along, but basicly have the roles reversed... giving the players and their characters a chance to define themselves and put them in each other's shoes, potentially learning more about each other and themselves... then sprinkle in a nice dilemma which forces them to work together in order to survive and presto! :) (could be anything from the ship crashing, to them encountering an imperial Patrol who might just have 'we dont negotiate with terrorists' approach, showing the Guard that in the Grand Scheme of things he's utterly worthless to the Empire and that he might have to change his views on a few things.) But that's just my approach. :)
I think it could've been a interesting angle; but just needed to provide a reason to even be hanging with the prisoners. Being basically their executioner isn't a particularly good reason.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 agreed, you can make a serial rapist, but if you dont hide the damn thing, then you cant get mad that the party turns you in/kills you.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 I think it would be cooler if he was there to conscript the prisoners. Offer them freedom in return for military service. Basically Suicide Squad.
@@brotherhoodz97 Pretty much. That and most people aren't solely determined by their particular occupation. At the end of the day, the character has to be more useful than it is inconvenient to keep around. Firefly Jayne is a massive arsehole for example, but he's a great marksman and generally is obedient enough if his balls are kept in a tight enough vice. @Funnyblog100 Interesting concept, though I would rather make that character an NPC. I wouldn't want to necessarily have one player outright controlling all others, though I could see that working with little buy-in. I mean, if Amanda Walker ever lost influence over her squad, you could bet that she would be the first person they would all enjoy killing.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 Prehaps he has the passwords for the orbital defense system, fuel depo and so on,. It would actually be great if the guard and prisoner swapped roles with the guard being the prisoner, and prisoners being the guards. Rich chance for character development.
I’ve only pulled the old “it’s what my character would do” twice. The first was down to inexperience, selfishly pocketing some gold instead of sharing with the party because my first ever character was a CN a-hole. The second time came around the middle of a long-running Ravenloft campaign. The party were in some underground caves and started hearing the sounds of creatures all around us. Trying to confirm if we were surrounded, my fighter split off from the group a little to check around a corner. The wizard’s player (not the wizard) started hissing at me to stay with the group, but my fighter’s flaw was that he was stubborn to a fault, so I went through with the action knowing the potential consequences. Turns out we were surrounded by ghouls, but we still won the ensuing fight.
He could have totally played a cruel prison guard without directly immediately betraying the party by character motivation. Because he could have been motivated to further investigate them himself to try to earn a promotion. Further playing the asshole without sending them session 1 to an execution.
He also could have been allowed to hunt them down. I mean, it's Star Wars for crying out loud. How many times does the jerk you think the good guys got rid of comes back to hunt them down? I'm... split on this story. For all the DM and other players could have known, this Todd guy might have been planning to let RP lead his cruel guard to a redemption arc, but was shut down by everyone who, I suppose, had locked-in ideas about the game and weren't open to going with the flow.
@@hexxidelux6224 I get that, yes. You'd also think that the character wouldn't want to be in the same escape ship as the rebellious prisoners after his execution plan failed. It should have been that the guard told a higher officer they would pursue the traitorous rebels, got their own ship to follow (perhaps with some disposable troops), and session 2 could start with PC going after the rest of the party and maybe end with the guard PC getting captured and interrogated which will eventually lead down the road of the party working together and such. That may have been aligned with the player's plan. But, maybe once the player rolled a new character the DM saved the guards character for a later DMPC battle with them nearer the end of the campaign.
I probably would have just gone with playing a normal guard instead of an asshole, wonder over to the other players to oversee their work because of reports I had gotten that their progress was slow so I could see what they were up to, when they found the holocron had the character retire to the barracks to think on it for the night for what I should do since standard procedure would be to report it but curiosity and a nagging feeling in the back of my head would tell me perhaps I should look more into the situation instead of just reporting it, and either help when they got to the landing pad because I wanted to get out of this frozen place anyway, or tried to set things up so i could "transport" the "prisoners" via the craft on "official business"
@@emberfist8347 Depends on the time frame, if we're talking a couple years after the clone wars then clones were being phased out and humans were being put in to replace them.
There’s a girl in my party like 90% of the campaigns, and she is the most lawful good un-metagame person, and all the other players weren’t problem players and wouldn’t leave someone behind, but this girl gave 110% for being the nicest person, she would just hit bandit’s pressure points to knock them out, she was a pacifist, I guess.
I'm playing Humblewood right now, playing a pacifist. It's been the hardest, but most fun, I've had with a character since I first played. Has to fit the right group and campaign but yeah, it's been a blast. Your friend is creative using "pressure points". Pretty nice.
@@nightfall89z62 I'm playing a cleric, so early levels was pretty support-focused. As we leveled up, I had to figure out a way to "help" (i.e. fight). The DM and I talked about merging my familiar with Spiritual Weapon. So while Friar Berry continues to be a pacifist, his ladybug, Queen Bea, is a cold-blooded killer.....nature's a bitch sometimes..... :)
That is the kind of thing a GM would do to introduce a villain in their campaign so the party will hate him and it will thus be more satisfying to finally kill them. And it worked. I hated that dude right away.
Naw, in the Stanford experiment, the guards didn't set out to be aholes, the situation made them that way. I'd have played a correctional officer having doubts on the treatment of the prisoners.
I once had a character who was quite cowardly. When we came into a cave inhabited by an ogre, a bear, and a hill giant, she wanted nothing to do with running about foolishly. She was fairly sneaky and got a bit separated from the group when they happened upon the bear. Being further away, she wasn't certain things were off until the first round completed. At that point she concluded the party would likely die, and didn't want to reveal herself. Instead she went and released the hill giants goats while he was distracted by the sounds of fighting. Once I spooked them with a little thaumaturgy, they bolted from the cave bleating loudly. The giant gave chase and I decided to go help my party since I had gotten rid of the giant already and felt a bit more confident. I love playing characters I have already created fun backstorues for, because I have a much greater attachment that makes me more cautious.
I kind of want to make a fighter character that was a town guard and got fired for sleeping on the job. He'd see the money adventurers bring in and decide that was a good way to get rich quick. He'd be by traits and skill the tank, but he'd also be a bit lazy and cowardly. He would be the sword and board guy, but when the party says, "Let's go into the cavern" he'd sorta hold back and be like "I don't know, it looks kind of dangerous."
I had a druid once that was just kind of air headed and conflict avoidant. He didn't want to fight things head on, instead opting to distract enemies and go around them. Accidentally wiped about half the party though. He snuck through a hole in the wall to a mechanical cart (Essentially an armored truck like they use for transporting large sums of cash) by wild shaping into a rat. This skipped the entire fight to the cart, but the rest of the party was ready to go in guns blazing and started doing so. I snuck onto the cart and started driving it out as they fought a giant security golem that was meant to be a boss fight. In my flight I ended up driving down the hall they were in (leaving many of the guards as road kill) and accelerated to the top speed in the final hallway aimed right at the golem. Our DM made them roll perception to determine if they saw the giant cart barreling towards them. 2 of them did, with one diving out of the way completely, and one basically trying to vault off the golem to gain enough height to avoid my cart of doom. End result was that one of our players became a macabre throw rug, another got thrown into the ceiling (but survived) and another was ejected from the building out the wall that the cart created as an impromptu exit as my druid wild shaped again into a crow after jumping from the cart. They laughed for like 10 minutes and one of them rolled a new character. Other guy tended to just play for 1 session randomly here and there and was almost always just playing throwaway characters with the expectation he wouldn't make the next session. His character was unintentionally revived as a malicious spirit though through a weird plot device thing one of our surviving characters had. Rolled a d100 to determine if he brought him back, and like 1-70 meant nothing happened, 71-90 meant he was successfully revived, and above that was a list of 10 possible outcomes that were all negative. He managed to roll the malicious spirit thing. So he seemed to have been revived normally but was really inhabited by some cunning evil creature that played along like he was fine so that he can backstab us later. Never did finish that campaign sadly.
Bard: are any of the barmaids hot? Dm: yes all of them and they're identical triplets *bard rips away his pants* Bard: from this point forward I cannot be held accountable for my actions And that is how Nicky Stardust the drow bard contracted every STD in existence
I once had a bard ask that question Is the barmaid hot? DM:Yes? I flirt with her. DM: Okay, after about a minute of talking. Roll a perception check with disadvantage because you’re distracted. Why? DM: Because you failed to notice her husband who is about to punch you in the face.
@@johncollie4544 Nicky: hey baby wanna go to bed with me Barmaid:I'm with my husband Nicky: lose the zero, get with the hero Husband:*punch* Nicky: a little violent don't you think Husband: *punch* Nicky: ... I'll be over there
See I did the opposite in a recent game in wooing the bard with my swashbuckler rogue. She turned out to be an infamous thief that would flirt and "mingle" with nobility to gauge their wealth before robbing them blind but given my characters proclivities for a shady enterprise back home not too bad a character flaw, an interesting quirk as it were.
Finn was force sensitive, fine enough justification. Moment comes to act like Finn and turn against the empire and instead, he just steered harder into the imperial side. If you want to be like Finn, then be like Finn. Turn against the empire when the moment comes.
He actually could've pulled off that type of character and still ended up with the party and maybe have a redemption Arc, which is what I think he was going for. However, that's something you need to let the DM know prior to the session. From the sounds of it, they very much didn't know. So once again, the lack of communication ruins another potentially cool rp.
That isn't really justification seeing as it never comes up in the films and that wasn't the Empire. He could have cited the two dozen odd force-using groups that worked for Palpatine but they would too high level to be pulling guard duty at a prison unless they were all captured at Palpatine's Citadel at which point the guards were too indoctrinated and too well trained to be level one PC's. At a lower security prison, the guards were mostly clones.
@@emberfist8347 They wouldn't even be clones. Hiring or conscripting locals is cheaper - history proves that it's easy to recruit thugs willing to along with an evil regime.
Aye, the First Order largely seemed to be made up of children who were abducted during the Empire's dying days and were raised from childhood to be blindly loyal. In principle it was a pretty cool idea, but by the end of that run time it was pretty much ruined as a "lul Da EMPEOROR AREN'T REALLEH DEAD." XD
Character deaths usually aren't fun, but there was one I will always remember. I was playing a warforged barbarian in 3.5 Eberron and the party was up against three fire elementals that had been used as power sources for a Cannith warmachine. The DM was playing smart and using the elementals long movement to back them out of our range and charge us every other round. I had finally had enough, so on my turn I held action and waited for the last elemental to charge, charging at it myself. One mutual destruction later, and the party wins. Best character death ever!
My Warforged Fighter (used to help round out the party, as I was DMing) was confronted with a worse situation, a Rust Dragon…but luckily survived even when he finally decided to risk it by charging in when the others (Artificer, Sorcerer, and Rogue) were definitely in danger of dying.
1) Why make a group character that is opposed to the rest of the party? 2) How can you not understand your own builds? I mean character two and three even had GM rattle. 'Are you sure?' A GM asks you that you say NO!
I made a home-brew and sent it to the DM before I was actually told exactly what everyone was. Imagine a lawful good suit of living armor surrounded by a bunch of Tieflings, an Imp, and a elephant man paladin of helm. The paladin and I were basically brothers by the end of the first session.
That seemed more like a problem with the brother and his parenting than anything related to the game itself. Even if you're a new player, if you die so foolishly, without trying to ask and listen if you should do it and die very quickly, I think you should not be able to Just create new character. Waiting for a new game should be enough punishment, so that you don't try to do something as stupid the next time.
I have to play "its what my character would do" because my character is a jerk in a party of jerks. We play as bad guys and my guy is a necromancer. So I don't really want to waste a spell slot, but after chasing this guy for 3 months and finally killing him, my character would definitely resurrect him as just a head so we can taunt him and kick him around like a football.
Yea, any time you do something you know is stupid out of character, but their is no reason your character would know it. I mean how bad is it to tell the fey your name?
I was playing the Tyranny of Dragons adventure path in D&D5e. I was a lawful good clerc, in a party with a octopus-girl sorceress, a tortle ranger, human warlock, and dwarf barbarian, none of whom were good (although I didn't know this until far into the game). Due to backstory, the human warlock was undead and sustained by the pact with his patron and this is important to this particular story. As a result of various shenanigans, the DM gave my cleric a spear that was the personal weapon of her lawful good goddess which had the (ostensible) function of supercharging my various cleric powers, and this is also important to this particular story. So eventually, we end up having to get into a castle where an invitation-only party was being held by the evil master of said castle. The evil dwarf barbarian came up with the idea of getting the warlock drunk on magical ale that would cause him to rage completely out of control and point him at the castle with the object of smashing the doors in and rampaging to distract the people inside from us slipping in. Naturally, lawful good cleric girl was really not happy with this plan, but I went along with the party because that's just what you do to get along with the other players, but I had a great plan (or so I thought). As probably most people here know, the cleric channel positive energy power serves to mostly make undead run away and only destroys very, very low CR undead when the cleric is very high-level, so the plan was to grab all of the random innocent civilians in a circle around lawful girl cleric girl and channel positive energy around her to make sure that rampaging undead warlock would sort of turn the other way and rampage everywhere except where the civilians were gathered around the cleric. This seemed like an eminently "it's what my character would do" thing that wouldn't disrupt the plan, or hurt anyone, or cause any problems. Except the DM decided that lawful goddess' personal weapon randomly does lawful goddess' personal will and used the spear to nuke the warlock. Cue lawful evil dwarf barbarian "it's what my character would do" declaring that she was going to murder my cleric. DM said no, and resurrected the warlock back to actual life, whereas he did a "it's what my character would do" and tried to murder my cleric. DM said no. Game came apart when we finished that leg of the quest because the two players never entirely forgave me for the DM hijacking my character and using her weapon to kill another PC. So basically, this is a two-for-one special: asshole DM + "it's what my character would do." Suffice to say, I've avoided actually playing to my character unless I absolutely 100% *_know_* that the DM isn't going to dick me or _anyone_ over for it.
I left my friend "to die". Lol two towers full of archers and we were in the kill zone. A trap. He was a sorceror and i was a ranger. We hid behind a boulder exchanging arrows, the sorceror was almost usless at that point because he was out of spell slots. I told him to stay there and cast some cantrips. "Why?" I wink at him then charge one of the towers. I go in and fight as he scream and cast a cantrip every now and agan. That night the dm was rolling a lot of bad rolls for most of the session so i felt confident i had a chance surviving this stupid act, plus i was rolling alright up to this point. A half an hour and several healing potions later i clear one of the towers. 1 more to go. I yell at the sorceror to run to the tower i cleared. "I took them all out". As i said this they start coming in from the first tower. A trap from my end lol. I layed cantrips and trip ropes giving me a chance. They come in towrads me, some trip, others fall from my arrows from above. Long story short... I cleared every creature from these 2 towers instead of retreating like the dm most likely expected us to do. The sorceror goes "what would of happened if i came when you called" "oops" i replied lol
I was playing a 3rd edition game I was a level one paladin my friend was a level one rogue, and we had a cleric who ditched us we went down the stairs in our first dungeon and were told by the DM to turn back then we encounter an Arachnae that immedietly casts hast and some armor spell so even a 23 cant hit it we get a couple of nat 20s but 8 rounds later we die
I had an experience similar to this. I was the brains of the team, tactics and battle plan wise. Long story short half of the party split before I could give them the plan in character and left me and one other guy to fend of 30 combined forces of goblins, lizard folk and wargs. I ended up living but my friend’s character died. So long story short listen to the tactician.
There was a grave cleric fighter combo in a game I was part of for a while, who was very much an "it's what my character would do" kind of person, but in very different ways than you might expect. There was a trap with a citizen as the bait; he was sitting on a switch that, if he moved off it, would send a bunch of basically saw blades flying at him. Calla, the character, decides to just straight-up tackle him off the switch and use her body as a shield because "I'm wearing heavy armor and I know I can take this hit, and saving this guy is more important anyway" so she did it. Absolute legend
So I was playing a human life cleric (a pre-made character that I was given whom I grown very attached to) in an Adventures league game and the campaign we were running was descent into Avernus. We made it to the part of the game where we were placed in an illusionary siege of a town. If I can recall correctly the party was made up of a barbarian, wizard, warlock, paladin, bard, and cleric (me) [Im not entirely sure since it happened years ago but I know the barbarian was definitely one of the party members, anyways] when we appeared we all had to roll initiative against the first of many creatures: gnolls. The DM described a woman and her kid surrounded by gnolls and how she hid her child underneath an upside down wheel-barrow. We attempted to close the gap as fast as we could but they were around 3-4 turns away even when dashing. Gnolls slew the woman before turning their attention on the girl. I sent a guardian of faith their way since I wouldn’t have made it that turn. The guardian did well and soften them up as me and the barbarian finally arrived. Both spell and sword met gnoll flesh as we were furious over their most recent victim. As a life cleric, I could not let this atrocity remain as it was, even if it was just a dream/illusion, but before my hand could find its way to my material pouch the barbarian grabbed his necklace and tossed to me. He said it was a 300 gp diamond. Once my turn came around I used the diamond and cast revivify on the lady. She awoke, dazed and bloody but she was alive. As my party dealt with other monsters in the area, my turns comprised of healing the lady and getting the kid out from underneath the wheel-barrow. I began to lead them to the temple down the road when a merrolith ( I believe they were called. A half snake demon who wielded six swords) began to make their way to us from a nearby alley. The barbarian who was raging rushed forward to meet the creature in combat. The other two or three members (whom were pretty squishy) was fighting a large demon nearby the temple preventing it from completing its goal (which was trying to barge its way into the temple when we first arrived). Now I had two clear cut options to make, run after the barbarian and help him against this new menacing foe or to escort this family to what may be the last bastion of this town. Now if you were to take the stand point of either meta gaming or all reason then the option which would be apparent would be to rejoin the fray. I however thought differently, if I was a war cleric then I probably would have but I am a life cleric so I acted accordingly . Here is where the “It’s what my character would do” comes in. While the barbarian rushed to duel this CR17 (at least) foe, I grabbed this woman’s and began rushing her to the temple. I knew it was a long ways away especially in combat but I was determined. The barbarian was raging so even going against 6 attacks in a turn, he could hold his own for a while. I was roughly halfway to 3/4s way to the temple when another player voiced their feelings of me doing what I was seeking of to do with a “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Get back to the barbarian, he needs you!!!” I retort with a stern “Let me play my character.” By the time I got to the temple, had them open the doors for the lady and girl, the barbarian was very low on life points. I began sprinting my way back and once I was in ranged, I used my channel divinity: preserve life and healed him as much as the rules would allow me. We defeated the foe eventually although the rest of the party had to help and faced off with the gnoll lord himself after a short rest which ended up with our bacon being saved by zariel. I think I got a few mumbled complaints about my action but in character I felt justified. I am aware how that may be the case for a lot of these other stories but being a life cleric of chauntea and seeing a woman die in front of me, I felt it was the course of action I had to take. I don’t think I made the wrong call but I could just be biased. What do you guys think?
Okay, so I MIGHT be a bit guilty of the 'it's what my character would do' but it's not what you might think! My character, a Chaotic good Tiefling ranger, pretty much tries to do good wherever he can. So when the party was in a village that was having a very hard time getting food, he snuck out in the middle of the night, past the construct guards, hunted 2 full sized elks, and brought them back. Leaving them with the de-facto leader of the village with a note saying 'be sure to share.' the party was VERY nervous about what might happen if he was caught and I was as well, but I had to think 'what would my character do? the party is being really cautious, but he knows how to hunt. we're at the edge of a forest, my home turf. these people need help, and I can do it.'
See, there's the rub: You didn't use it as an excuse for a questionable decision or antagonist action. Btw, why would it have been bad if you'd have gotten caught hunting and giving to the village?
Actually, there is be a precedence for Imperial force users, there are Inquisitors (Dark Jedi who were often Order 66 survivors that hunt force users), Imperial Shadow Guards (Imperial Guards given basic dark side training and lightsaber pikes), Saber Guards (Imperial Guards who use lightsabers) Imperial Sovereign Protectors (the highest echelon of Imperial Guards given dark side training guard the Emperor at all times), Sith Acolytes (created after Palpatine was attacked by Galen Marek during the first Force Unleashed game and so would be present around the time of this campaign), Byss Mages (though they exclusively operate on Palpatine's throneworld where they do experiments), Imperial Sentinels (mindless cloned abominations who worked for Palpatine's high-level Dark Side Adepts and guarded his Citadel on Byss), Terror Giants (massive cyborgs part of an experiment conducted on Kamino), Imperial Force Adepts, The Order of Shasa (founded after the events of a sidequest in KOTOR to provide force training to an isolationist species, they were duped into serving Palpatine), Prophets of the Dark Side (Predicted the future for Palpatine), and the Emperor's Hand (Palpatine's handpicked assassins and so highly secretive each one was unaware there were other Hands). The problem is something you might have noticed if you read through this comment and saw the pattern, most of the Imperial force users were high-ranking individuals often on par with Vader, not lowly prison guards the ones that would be doing guard duty worked specifically for the Emperor at installations that would be too high level for a level one party. Most Imperial Prison Guards were clones.
I was the "it's what my character would do" We were playing 5e and I made a high elf archer who used to be a god emperor. The real bad type. 90% of the bad things that happen was because of him. Elf raids on the party? Him. Wizards going into the flying city? Him. Caine being killed? Him. He caused everything bad to happen. He even did it during the campain. The murder of the druids, death of the wizards flying city, murder of Gods. But he wasn't happy. He physically hated every second of what he did but he couldn't control himself. He had a daughter during the campaign who, by accident, he trained to him. Why? Because he knew that, in a group of heroes, he was evil. For almost the entire campaign he has dont everything to protect the party, kill pirates on his own to ensure the party wouldn't be hunted, killed the mafia and its enemies, killed like 3 more gods, and sat in the dark throne to shield the party from vampire hunters who wanted the blood of the party. He did everything, much of it ruined him as the character u wanted him to grow in but one that made sense. After a fight with a friend, he had an insane idea, destroy the timeline, let his Ex-Femboy (now woman) wife save the party. And sacrifice himself to make it happen. When asked why, I told them that it's what he would do. He knew of the party having several curses stating that they would die. Some as a destiny, others by design. My character wanted them to stay alive as a family. So he made sure the curses and destiny would never be met by keeping them in a loop. The campaign is still going and they have broken out of the loop but it felt more of a defeat since everyone knew that it would be their last month together in game.
warhammer 40k black crusade game: my character- a human who wielded chain hammers, and twin axes that was from a feudal world and had a staggeringly low inteligence score of around 10 (i think it started at 15 but a mutation lowered it... the average for a human is 30). he frequently picked fights with things bigger and scarier than him. in his heart he was a chaos space marine. but in reality he was a mortal man with severe brain damage. first session we had just cleared an area and where boarding ships to go back to base. OOC i knew that the smaller one was for the humans and the big one was for the astartes but that didnt stop my character from attempting to enter the wrong ship... and then promptly getting kicked across the room like a rubber ball. he survived some how and was dragged to the correct ship and after that there wern't very many incidents outside of being overzealous in a loosing combat situation from time to time... that is until the moment that everyone brings up when they talk about the mortality of my characters. we are raiding a ship full of khorne worshipers and demons when we come to a hallway with 2 world eaters at the other end. the rest of the party is formulating a plan but my character shouts his battle cry (which i thing was something along the lines of "FUCKING KILL!!!" but my memory is super hazy) and charges down the hall toward them... the GM described what happened next as my character being turned into paste on their chain axes and being splattered all over the walls and down the hallway. there wasn't a chunk left of him. he was just dead. no roll... no check... no save... and i found it hilarious and a fitting end to my crazy mad lad!
Our DM makes us do character bonds so our characters know each other before adventuring. He also sets up in character questions before sessions designed to help us act more "in character" for different scenarios comming up during the quest. It cuts out 90% of the random solipsism that happens.
The Stanford Prison experiment analogy only works if the GM was using his authority to force the problem player to do horrible things but that isn't the case. It is the problem having the smallest amount of power go to his head.
my absolute favorite, "it's what my character would do" that pissed off other players was actually my character. we were playing pathfinder (1st). i have a couple of number crunching min/maxer friends that i used to play with a lot. i like to play fun character concepts. this particular one was a gunslinger (was only going to use a couple of levels to water down the class potency) who took proficiency with string instruments. since we were playing one of the later adventure paths, the gunslinger fit in the setting. anyway, we start of all being at a fair of sorts. everyone wants to start figuring out hooks and other mission related info, and i declare that i start busking. i got an, "ok..." look from the gm. showed that i had proficiency in guitars, to the gm's delight that i had done something that was more rp focused with my character. toward the end of the gathering, i ask how much money i made, the gm rolled and gave a fairly generous sum. as i saw the greed began to light my future party mates eyes, i declare the money goes to the local orphanage. i got a few stunned looks, and the gm began to tear up. the session ended up soon after (was just that time, not due to my actions), and unfortunately was the first and last session of that particular game.
The thing to remember is that it’s okay in the correct circumstance to pull a “it’s what my character would do.” For example I had a bard who was an arrogant noble and would belittle people. Often he would get heavily punished for it like being forced to survive in the wilderness alone. Was I mad that the punishment happened? Of course not. So after surviving he learned to treat people with a little more respect for his own survival. Don’t be afraid to play a character that is rude or mean, just try to keep the party and DM in mind.
I think playing your character is absolutely fine, and I think he couldve made a guard work at the start. But choosing to play an abusive guard was doomed to fail. He could've been a compassionate guard who was starting to question the empire and maybe even be the one to free the other PCs to start the campaign.
Didn't actually say "it's what my character would do" but in a campaign I was in, I believe it was curse of strahd, I was playing my tiefling paladin who was a deserter from the armies of avernus. As such he was a very, VERY light sleeper. When my party or anyone failed stealth checks within stabbing distance of my character at night they would be swiftly impaled... Long story short we had 2 party members half dead and the quest giver severely wounded because they were sneaking around at night with poor stealth rolls. By session 2 I was the perma night guard until further notice. At the very least we didn't have to worry too much about midnight attacks by werewolf and various creatures of the night.
I don’t get people who insist on role playing to the detriment of the group and get offended when their actions have consequences. Did he expect bunch of prisoners he abused to be happy that their abuser wants to join with them when it’s convenient for him?
I have a pc in my group that is slowly looking to be like the second story. Killed a random npc. Then saw a rich nobel man that was really pale skin... he goes to attack the guy and gets insta killed by the guy. Turned out it was Strahd.
I always play my characters the way they would play. You just need to make sure everyone has fun in the process. I've had evil characters that were working behind the scenes to impede the party but never going as far as killing them. I've had the stereotypical warlock who tries screwing over the party for power but I've also played supports like Clerics who would lift up and support the party. Or scouts who would assist the party with traversal and survival. It's all about making sure everyone is having a good time, it's not about winning and losing.
I really only have only one "it's what my character would do" moment and it was from my last campaign where I was GM. The final boss was a Babau Assassin with a few levels of Gunslinger. He wasn’t the BBEG. He managed to usurp the final boss position from the BBEG, who was already dead, his soul destroyed after the PCs raided Hell itself to put an end to the original party nemesis. I had the party confront the Babau Assassin in the Darklands, trying to reclaim the campaign's MacGuffin from him and his small army of drow and demons. It was an intense confrontation that lasted two whole sessions. The PCs entered the Darklands at lvl.17, and left at lvl.19 because they fought so many enemies. Thing is, I was a rookie GM, and there was so much going on at my end that I forgot about some of the options I had given myself. As such, I got too into character as the Babau, and when the PCs managed to kill all of his drow and all of his demons so that only the Babau was left standing, I had him flee the fight. It was a real jerk move, I admit. I actually had a strategy for this exact situation, but I forgot about it during the whole event. I was able to spin it as a victory for the PCs. They reclaimed the MacGuffin and forced the Babau to retreat, the only time in the campaign where that happened. Every other time he had appeared before this final confrontation, he managed to kill at least one PC each time and prompted the PCs to run away EVERY time. Which, according to our house rules, meant he kept leveling up each time he managed to defeat the party. Long story short, I got too into character and should have launched one final attack so the PCs could kill their most hated foe. I didn’t. Now I'm writing an epic sequel questline so that my players can FINALLY slay their one true nemesis.
I've left pc's behind to die before. Sometimes i use the excuse "it's what my character would do" but most of the time i just tell them out of character that they were being stupid and i wasn't going to die with them. This has gotten me kicked out of a few groups online, but if we're playing something we were told is a challenging game or system they should know better than to stand and fight when we have no chance of winning. I have several stories of this, the most recent being in a greyhawk game. Both myself and the gm told the rest of the group that greyhawk isn't like normal D&D. It's more like dark souls using D&D mechanics. I rolled up a rogue who never died once during the three sessions i was in and what the rolled doesn't matter because they tpked twice...in the first three sessions. They demanded i be kicked out of the group, despite the in character and out of character warnings i had given to each of the two parties before abandoning them to play their way. I was, but was later informed by the gm that the game fell apart shortly after because of a third and fourth tpk. Well, you can't free a fish from water.
If he was willing to TPK a party 4 times rather than change the style of game to be more in line with his players ability and level of experience, he doesn't sound like a very good GM. They clearly weren't ready for what he was throwing at them. And I'm not surprised you get kicked a lot. Your attitude is completely awful. Players make mistakes, especially inexperienced ones. Telling them they're stupid because of them is not being a good player. This isn't Dark Souls, even Greyhawk. It's collaborative storytelling. If you abandon your party in the middle of the story you're supposed to be COLLABORATIVELY telling because it's "what your character would do", then you need a different character.
@@fuzziestlumpkin I actually just abandoned them because i didn't want to roll up a new character. It wasn't even remotely what my character would have done. I'm just saying, i shouldn't be penalized because they didn't know what they were doing and wouldn't listen to me.
@@josephmatthews7698 1st, i never said "multiple" games. I said "a few games" meaning around 3, and i've played hundreds online over the years. So i actually have a pretty good track record. 2nd, i never called any of them assholes. I called some of the players stupid because they wouldn't listen to me and kept dying, but i never thought any of them were assholes.
@@clericofchaos1 also I've played for 22 years and I've never been kicked out of a single game. Something to think about. Don't get defensive. I personally don't care, just trying to offer you an alternative perspective.
The second story was a complete pain in the butt. Oh I know I did this before when I was very young because of role-play syndrome on JRPGs. Took me a while to learn that in DND everyone must work together to succeed
I pulled the "It's what my character would do" line a few weeks ago, but nobody but the DM minded. The DM had us in an intentionally unbalanced fight with a death knight who turned out to be the warden of an arch devil. As soon as we found out, my kobold wanted to stay and fight the devil along with the death knight he just decided was his friend as he felt bad for trying to shoot him before. The party wanted to run and so my kolb went with them as being alone is scary but the devil cast wall of fire in the narrow hallway to trap us. My kobold shot the devil but his con say was +11 so it could not brake the spell. The DM then wanted to give an "epic" description of the NPCs fighting while I demanded to know how long the fight took as my little kobold still saw the death knight as a friend and didn't think sitting still and letting all this go down was a good idea. The DM finally relented and told me 3 minutes so I fired 18 more shots and only missed 3 times. Though the DM was kind of rail roady, he did have to admit that deciding a death knight was your friend and firing 19 shots at an arch devil was kind of gutsy and so gave us all an extra 5,000EXP.
Usually my character Annan would scout a different path than the group, mostly due to his distrust of others and his overall fear of buildings... He has the backgrounds of outlander and a hermit who recently decided to be a bit more social. Once he ended up befriending a group for the first time in the most ridiculous situation all because...thats what my character would do. It was in the woods and he split from the party to go trap a squirrel for game/rations. He climbs the tree, sets the trap, misses. Shoots some arrows, misses some more. He then gives up and decides to destroy the hut below him that the players are in and have investigated. He decides having some open sky would be nice and would make him comfortable enough to hang out with the group. What the party sees: A crazy man falling through the roof. And then the floor. And below the hut is a rat pit. The archer goes, "Oh! I was wondering where he went!". The barbarian tosses him a rope, which he catches. The dwarven cleric helps pull my character up. The wizard fireballs the pit. We all get out of there ASAP. As Annan watches the hut burn , he hugs the wizard with new found respect. He then turns to thank the dwarf in broken dwarvish as he bows to him. The dwarvish cleric hears him let out a string of cuss words and interprets the bow as a slight to his stature. The cleric (a peaceful soul who wouldn't slap anybody) walks off mad as heck. The rest of the party follows the cleric into the forest for the rest of the adventure. At downtime, the archer translates for my character and mends the relationship- the dwarf forgives the misunderstanding and becomes friends with Annan and tutors him in dwarvish.
hmmm well it was quite some time ago so my recall is vague, but I'll try to be concise. The setting was a Star Wars game with a pretty large group, maybe up 6-8 players. We were on Naboo during the Galatic Empire era and the task for the session was for the party to try and escape into space. I was playing something like a human scoundrel, I think. There was a variety of other characters and classes including one PC playing a Wookie. For one reason or another, I got into an argument with another player, a human bounty hunter, who ended up threatening to kill my PC at the next opportunity. In fact, most of the group was a clique with this player so what happened next was sweet justice as far as I was concerned. Cut to the escape attempt and the group steals a spaceship and attempts to slip past an Imperial blockade. We fail miserably and are forced down in the wilderness. The DM informs us that there is an Imperial shuttle en route to arrest us all. I tell the group the most logical thing to do is to try and lose the stormtroopers in the bush and my PC starts to flee the ship. I can't recall what the rest of the party was going to do but the Bounty Hunter pipes up and tells the DM he is going to shoot my PC in the back he does this just as the Imperial shuttle looms over the clearing and though the shot didn't kill me I take a fall and as the stormtroopers start arresting the party I inform the DM I am playing dead. My ruse is successful and the bounty hunter is left speechless as the party is arrested and my "corpse" left to rot. After everyone leaves, I get up and start hiking back to the city. On the way back to the city I come across an Imperial patrol and so I flag them down and convince them that I am a poor citizen that has been ambushed by rebel scum lead by a fearsome Wookie, effectively blaming the absent party for my injuries. The patrol helps me back to the city and even treats my injuries. I was free and the rest of the party was in jail trying to figure out what to do and then the session ended not long after.
I have never played D&D but I understand the idea. what would any character I create do in the situations? Dragon: Point to sword and ask "Can I have that? Your claws are way too big for it and probably a lot more powerful, its just going to sit there." Traps: start throwing random junk on the ground down the hall to see if anything happens. Gnomes: randomly point to one and declare "your zipper is down and that there children around, have he no shame?" I like to make people laugh ^_^
Made a Tortle Barb who was a kind supportive dummy, got put in a 6 on 6 fight situation with a VIP to protect and save. Fight is going ok, we had it in the bag but our Cleric thinks we should speed things up, and uses a magic item to summon a celestial creature to teleport us to safety. The last thing my Tortle heard from the celestial being was "I can only teleport six of you to safety" and "Ok, leave him behind." From the Cleric. Was promptly paralyzed from a failed Wisdom Save and held at ransom but the party never came back for me.
To be fair I’d assume a lot of folks probably don’t know who Kyle Katarn is, he’s not exactly a main stream character outside of a few games and possibly some comics!
I myself have been the “Thats what my character would do” but I only use this on things my character would ACTUALLY do, good or bad for himself or for others. I am still in this campaign, no one hates me as a player, but they sure don’t have a strong connection to my Teifling Barbarian fighter warlock. I try to be helpful and friendly towards them all, but rarely do my endeavors succeed. Right now, I am in a bit of a jam. Me and two other PC’s are being threatened by an Orc that we and the town we are in are going to be “taxed” or we pay with our blood. I appreciate my blood staying inside me so I’m trying to decide between logical thinking, or “what my character would do” which is to challenge the orc to a combat and if I win he has to leave or pay with his own blood.
Okay, I was gonna' talk about my Gnome Thief (when I usually play a Halfling in that role) was abandoned and left to die because of a party of d^cks and I lived thanks to the DM doing split-mission note-passing... but this was horses of different colors. The player was the disconnected d^ck... had it coming.
I played a RIFTS game once (I know, I know) where my PC was one of the bad guys who wanted to defect… but the other PCs didn’t trust him, so he spent basically the whole game manacled in the back of the truck. :)
i once played an orc who was afraid of undead, like terrified of them lol, if one showed up he runs away hides for 2 turns then come back after composing himself, 2 on average, more dead = more time cause haha, it started off as a minor fear and i used the "its what my toon would do" and it evolved to a mechanic the dm made for me lol
My girlfriend and I play D&D at a local game store near my house. The DM said it was a mini adventure from Curse of Strahd called Dead House. We've been busy after the session when this takes place, so we only got to do the first session. I was an Aarakocra Cleric, she was a Human Fighter, the player in question was a Gnome Rogue, and his friend was a Dwarven Artificer. Throughout the session, our Gnome Rogue kept acting dumb and just jumped into situations reckless and ask us if we were going to stop him constantly because he knew what he was doing was wrong, but he wanted to play out his character. Long story short, he starts a fight with a Banshee, gets himself killed, and almost caused us to get TPK in the first session after I was knocked unconscious, followed by my girlfriend, our artificer brought me back up, I brought back up my girlfriend, then our artificer got knocked, I brought him back up, and then he killed the banshee. Since then, the trouble player switched to a Dwarven Paladin, and was not a problem for the rest of the session. Still pretty weird experience though
I hosted a one shot this past Sunday and my six players we're fighting a couple of homebrew creatures until they encountered a beholder. At that point they were getting killed off left and right and with their paladin being charmed they decided to book it as best they could. Six of them went in and only two of them came out 😆
The best "it's what my character would do" is that my character acting as a pirate captain with split personalities led the party into what we hope was their future base and hide out. But it was full of Shadows and even before we got 20 feet into the dungeon an party member read the evil writing on the wall which then a voice spoke to us saying words of doom and cursing us. Quickly learning that it's a forgotten God of slaughter and my personality that day was CE and in the market for a God of violence. So I "sacrifice" myself to save them. They wanted to save my character instead of saving themselves. After a crazy ritual that was the craziest godly vision I've been at a table for I became the new champion of Blood and slaughter while my players wonder what deal I maybe. As I told them it's what a good captain would do
I was/am running a 5e campaign for some newbies. I mean NEWbies. One of the players had made an elf with tiefling blood, who was a thief and chaotic-neutral. They had just finished their hike to the first mission. They were camped outside for no more than one night when they were introduced to their newest member. The character then ran up to the new comer and got into her face. Then backed off and declared "I win!". "Win what?" asked the new comer(a wizard). "The staring contest" says the rogue. Fighter puts his face into his palm and shakes his head wondering "what the hell have I gotten myself into?" Rogue gets a great idea. I mean G.R.E.A.T. Rogue is going to find the tallest tree(120 feet). Rogue is going to climb the tree. Rogue makes it to the top. Where rogue is asked to make an intelligence check to see if this still a good idea. Rogue rolls a four. With bonuses. It's the bestest idea E.V.E.R! Rogue is asked if they want do do a performance/entertainment check to make it look good. Rogue rolls a two. With bonuses. So, instead of doing a swan dive off a 120 foot tall tree, the rogue tumbled end over end until SPLAT!
My only "it's what my character would do" is when my brother killed a guy we rescued from some evil guys, because he couldn't pay us, so my paladin punched him in the face. No PvP, no players killing each other, just a paladin punching the mystic for murdering some rando
I've only had a few 'It's what my character would do' moments I think... First one I can recall was when the DM tried to show off their very powerful abberation NPC to the party via it approaching my' already weakened from a fight' Watchers Paladin spider (flavored dhampir) on her own. Cue DM warning me 'now's the time to flee' while I sort of in a panic reply "You know my spider's kind of a berserker when it comes to abberation based threats and places no value on her own life right?" Cue next few minutes me and the DM frantically trying to figure out a way for my spider not to commit 'weakened Lv6 attacking CR 20 kamikaze' which ended with said spider rolling a history check for getting a flash of memory regarding her goddess ordering her not to die and her mentor telling her about how retreating to relay info is better than dying pointlessly, and then a wis save to see if she'd run and she passed both so that was a massive relief.
so we accidently did this one time in a campaign, but it wasn't on purpose neither did we know what was gonna happen. We were exploring a delve trying to find a lost kingdoms of sorts. But in the process one of our PC got really wounded so we decided to leave him there because we figured we could go back and find some potions or something to help him. But when we came back he was gone and all the mess we made in the room after the fight we had encounter everything was gone. ( no sign of blood or anything ) We get to the next room and we find him but, he appears to be older and he has a companion with him. Turns out we got stuck in a time dimension BS and we were gone for like 8 years. so his character was pissed.
3 player 1 dm match. 2 of us totally left our buddy in some haunted cellar, he ended up dragging us down into it. Lol. The ghost ended up being the dead owner of the tavern he was in. We won him over and he serves us drinks now.
I always try to make characters that are like me. I've had my Paladin crouch just inside a door with my shield raised so the enemy couldn't come in but my team could fire out. Had my ranger almost fall to his dead trying to get a direwolf puppy. My fire gensai get drunk and light a bar on fire. My fight almost drowned pulling people out of the river.
"It's what my character would do!" Yeah, and what your character would do is abuse, verbal lashings, and straight up murder. What *their* characters would do is to either leave you for dead or kill you themselves. Try again.
Well, at least the first guy seems to have learned from his mistake, unlike the second guy. Three deaths *in a row* you think he would learn to think before acting at least after the first two, especially with a helpful DM actually *Telling him his character could see they were bad ideas*
I'm kind of in a unique situation with my character. He's a Warlock and trying to figure out about himself. I have what I think is kind of an indepth backstory where his mother sold her first born to a demon/devil. He was the first born. He doesn't know where his powers or his anger comes from. He's still trying to figure it out. When given the opportunity to go with the big bad evil guy he accepted and split from the party. The DM has been running a separate session with me as i deal with the consequences. It turns out the BBEG is trying to summon my character's patron to the material world. So my character is now a bit torn. He wants to learn more about himself and his dark feelings but he also misses his companions. This is my first run as an 'evil' character and the RP aspect is great and a lot of it is actually, "It's what my character would do" but even I don't know what that is. He's going to walk the line between good and evil for a bit, and we'll see which way he falls. I do miss the socialization of the group since the DM keeps me away now for the time being as we go our separate ways. There's a lot more to his backstory and I feel it's pretty rounded out, I'm excited to see where things go. If my character goes down the dark path and gets killed for it, then that's how it happens. I leave it in the GM's hands. He's an amazing GM and we'll see where it goes. So, I think "It's what my character would do" is fine as long as the player is able to accept the consequences and really thinks it through with the GM.
Well, the "that's what my character would do" could work. Like, my current character is a brat, stuck up, and a bit abrasive to the other characters. He gives them grudging respect after their first combat and he's the face of the group. (Sorcerer). I guess it depends on OOC actions as well
That's true. I had a "that's what my character would do" guy. But the thing was the DM specifically asked everyone if they wanted to really dig in to the D&D lore. I ended up playing racist half-orc cleric of Gruumsh with an elf in the party. It divided the party and eventually caused a TPK. Still it was fun because everyone was in on the "that's what my character would do" trope.
My character was a berserker mountain dwarf with a chip on his shoulder. He would throw tantrums and destroy things, and do his best to murder anyone between him and his target (party included) I saw it as seeing red , he didn’t even know he hurt his companions until after. Normally the party would have to tie me up and put me in a cart during tantrums. I think the worst one was when I was out of rations on a death march through open country. We found a small village and I saw a little girl walking around with a basket of food. I was grumpy because I was hungry and made her give me the basket. The party’s rouge gave it back to her. Next thing you know I’m slaughtering villagers. He died after getting charmed and killing the party’s favourite npc by lightning bolt. His body was left face down in the muck. Everyone said they loved my character and I agreed he was hurting the story so I chose a lighthearted simple monk.
I’m surprised Todd’s guard character didn’t return as a BBEG. Partly Member: how did he survive? DM: he fell a great distance in the Star Wars universe. Of course he survived.
We were traveling through the desert looking for a pyramid that was the epicenter of a curse. We got camels and a wagon with barrels of water and enough food for about twice the expected journey time. There was a tornado incoming, and we could either try and outrun it, or hunker down. With our nature expert saying they believed we couldn't outrun it. So almost everyone decided to hunker down. ...except the Rogue, who was driving the wagon. He decided to book it, and hope for the best. We weathered the storm but he was tossed in the air and the wagon and all the barrels were destroyed. This isn't the best part. When the Rogue regained consciousness, he saw an oasis, and in the oasis was a stream of water. Before he could drink a woman rose out of the water and said he could ask her any three questions. To his credit he didn't metagame. The conversation went like this. Rogue: "is my party alive?" Woman: "yes" Rogue:"are they looking for me?" *DM turns to us and our suddenly blank faces* Woman:"No" Rogue:"Really?" Woman:"Really" And with that the oasis and stream vanished without a trace leaving all players stranded with two days water when the group who hunkered down were eight days from either the pyramid or village, and he didn't even know where he was. It didn't end well, we got to the pyramid without healing surges and half dead, and the fights that were assuming a full group at full strength... were slightly problematic. The Rogue never got out of the desert. TLDR: Rogue left us to die, then died when we left him to die.
“It’s what my character would do“ can’t be the only part of your excuse. From everything I’ve seen so far the only way this would work is if you followed up or start with an explanation for why your character would do this. And even though I will admit I haven’t played any TTRPG yet but I have played a lot of RPG‘s that focus on player choices. So I’m pretty sure that any character you make unless it’s part of their personality needs to have some sense of self-preservation or survival instinct.
I have only said "Its what my character would do" once. We were playing Shadowrun, my character (made originally as an npc) is psychotic. I haven't had much to do all game and we get to the final boss of the scenario, boss starts to monolouge, about 30 seconds in I declare "I'm going to charge her" everyone freaks out but jumps in. After we kill her and flee they ask "Why did you do that?" I explained my character had done nothing all game and was thus bored. It is now a table legend because it turned out pretty ok.
My Changeling Bard who was escaping the mafia by riding a ship to a different continent left the campaign on session one when the DM had his DMNPC acknowledge who and what I was mid voyage.
There was a campaign where we left a party member to die because they over-extended and though could fight off all of the encounters and got captured while we were taking our rest for the night. On the morning we hear the news from rumors from the townsfolk that someone was taken in the caves at the nearby swamps. We asked around for info about the cave, and it's apparently the hideout of a cult that worships a Lamia. We tried rescuing our friend, and the townsfolk are spooked so we, the remaining party members go in alone. I was a Pugilist Vampire Half-Orc (really good DPS and literally punch things to death) and the other party member was a necromancer. We got ambushed immediately, and took care of the encounter but we were chunked badly. We continue to explore the cave and come into a huge chasm, and out into the distance is a bonfire with settlements surrounding it. My sharp eyes see our friend being offered as sacrifice to their deity and there A LOT of cultists armed the same way as the previous ones we encountered. The Necromancer informs me that the last encounter ate up his spell slots and even then, there's not enough bodies to take down a towns-worth of cultists and the fact they're going to execute our friend in a few minutes. Now, in-character, my character wishes to die in the glory of battle to end his cursed existence as a Half-Orc Vampire. But in the interest of continuing the plot, I let the necromancer device the next move(and the fact we're like Lv3). We peaced out.
I've had characters that do things that are not ideal (character was reckless and aggressive, with anger issues), but I openly stated "this isn't the smartest thing to do, but it is what she wants to do." Note that she was never stupid, just reckless, and didn't do anything that would unduly harm the party or had consequences that she couldn't live with (mostly kicking in doors, breaking chests that happened to be a mimic, and being aggressive with spells sometimes not ideal in a tactical sense but did a lot of damage)
My one and only “it’s what my character would do” is when my party entered a demon infested floor of a mega dungeon. We were playing it stealthy, but we entered a room where many MANY humanoids were turned into a writhing flesh wall that wrapped around the entire room. So, my only course of action was to light it ablaze to put them out of their misery. The party at this point yelled at me because I gave away our position, believing I was an evil alignment due to the fact that my character disguises himself as a Wendigo and has no tolerance for most Monstrous races despite the campaign being filled with them as if they were a common citizen, and they got even more pissed at me when I could only say it’s what my character would do due to the nature of secrecy surrounding my character
I remember my "it's what my character would do" which only came as a shock to the DM, and not to anyone else in the group. My character killed 30 innocent people, because they were annoying her. The story behind why she killed the 30 innocent people, is a long one, and requires going further back than when the murder session (what we as a group decided to call it at the end of said session) took place. The highlight of the whole ordeal, is that I didn't have to defend my character's action, because everyone else did it for me.
That first story i think could have worked if the DM had done some things different. The empire is notoriously cruel and especially critical of force sensitive people. I would have had the warden immediately arrest the force sensitive guard when he reported the incident due to this as well as a fear that the guard might have been plotting against the empire. Being so callously and casually betrayed by the empire he held so dear would have been a good reason for him to side with the other players and help them escape.
@@emberfist8347 Semantics. The point is that the empire needed to betray that player that was working for them to make him switching sides believable. Doesn't ultimately matter how.
I was playing a circle of the moon druid, we also had a human wizard and a human conquest paladin. We were losing very badly to a large group of enemies each were more powerful then we were. The bbeg who sent them wanted an npc we were trying to protect. He wanted her to force her to marry him. She was unconscious on the field, I yelled for my party to come to me so I could open a portal for us to escape. The wizard did immediately, while the conquest paladin said he wasn't going to leave the npc behind because it's what his character would do. I simply said "okay" and opened the portal and me and the wizard escaped. I knew we could effect a rescue of the npc because the bbeg didn't want to hurt her AND that conquest paladins would NOT stay behind in a hopeless situation to....I don't know what he thought he was going to do...but he was taken prisoner as well. We had to save them both just me and the wizard.
Yeah I've heard that excuse before. One of my players decided to make an elven sorcerer while trying out the alignment chaotic neutral. The subtype of chaotic neutral she went with however was the ever-popular loon subtype, more focus on the chaotic than on the neutral. Maybe chaotic random would be a more apt terminology. Yes, this character would waste spell slots to magic missile other party members merely because she was chaotic neutral.
My player's ship was boarded by an obvious big bad. One of the players decided to attack him anyway despite him saying he would search their ship in search of something and if they did not have it (they didn't) he would leave and no one would need to be harmed. He was knocked out instantly and another player sacrificed himself to save the party, he gave himself to the evil pirate's crew without a fight on the condition he wouldn't kill everyone. The player who attacked woke up long after the pirates had left, he immediately boarded their dinghy and left to sail after the pirate captain...alone...because that's what he said his character would do.
This sounds more like a player who may have been wanting an RP redemption arc but was shut down by everyone who, I suppose, had locked-in ideas about the game and weren't open to going with the potential flow. I would have let him get a ship, and then I would have taken him aside after session 1 and talked to him and asked if he was hoping RP might change his character: for better or worse. I mean, this is a Star Wars setting. The bad guys always come back or hound the good guys. And who knows? There could have been a tense point in the story where the ex-guard is torn between the runaway slaves, and his own abandoned duties/loyalties. Also, again I must point out that this is a Star Wars setting. His cruel guard would have been in DEEP doodoo with the Empire for fleeing, regardless of his intentions. Revealing that in RP could have been a pivotal moment for that character and the others. Killing him in session 1 just sounds like a waste really.
I agree however I also think the player himself fucked up. He could've came up with something about force sensitive people disappearing and the holocron basically gave him a death sentence if he reported it. Instead he reported it to his superiors and lost the trust of his fellow party members. He could've been that edgy, albeit realistic anti-hero with a redemption arc but he fucked that himself. The fact that it would need DM intervention from his roleplaying is a pretty bad sign to begin with.
@@Squall598 The thing is, if the Dm was in on it, he could've been captured (either when they were leaving or after he chased them down) and had a shaky relationship that could've evolved into trust or even companionship. I agree that he could've done better, but it still could have been on the table if he had talked about it with the Dm prior.
aaah yes when I played the Underdark campaign the entire party was either neutral or evil..all save my bard..who is chaotic good. At the point where 3 NPCs go missing Francis headed out with the rogue and cleric to search...upon hearing monstrous growling even the cleric ran back to the boat not wanting to risk it. It was just Francis who canonically was an entertainer..just a musician trying to make a name for himself caught up in nonsense cause he tried to seduce the draw queen...who risked his life going further in. One REALLY good cast of calm emotions and help from two were rats he managed to make it back having saved all 3 of the Npc's signal handled making friends with the deep gnomes topsy and turvey and never telling the PC party they were secretly were rats. This was only the firs time no one saved my bard..as he kept risking his life to save others. Being the whole truly heroic member of the party was exhausting time and time again Francis would save people npc and pc alike..even being forced to became party healer cause the cleric was a war cleric..It did eventually evolve Francis the tieflings bards character of being WAY too good of a person despite his race and class and having a no one left behind attitude.
![ROSÉ (로제) - number one girl [더 시즌즈-이영지의 레인보우] | KBS 241129 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/A9oByH9Ci24/mqdefault.jpg)
I’ve had this happen once. Abandoned in the Underdark to fend for myself. Talked with the DM and we agreed my Goliath would survive only to come back as the BBEG for that same party the next game.
Sounds awesome how did that end?
@@simplicityisoftenthebest7856 Really fun actually, they had the same characters as when they abandoned him. I had a new one obviously. The moment they first came face to face with this massive Goliath barbarian/fighter, equipped with gear specific to the underdark and scarred beyond belief, was priceless. They thought they could take my old character no problem. I was now a bard so I said “Nope” and stayed back to buff the party. Meanwhile two got downed and the third was well on his way, so the DM pulled a narrative yank and got us out of there by means of a Dwarven Steam engine that came to our rescue. I couldn’t help but smile the entire encounter as the rest of them were panicking. It eventually ended in a win, but they were very very cautious in the final encounter which was, in the underdark again.
@@AspieMemoires I bet the looks on their faces were priceless 😂
@@simplicityisoftenthebest7856 it was a *Chefs kiss* moment. For sure.
@@AspieMemoires That sounds awesome, and epic as hell
"I'm just playing my character."
"So are we."
Best answer to that stupid sentence.
Pro Tip: Don't play someone whose character makes it unlikly to be accepted bei the other members of the party.
Also since your roleplaying a character people can change their minds and change. Roles aren’t static.
@@nealbarrett4500 Sure! But changes need time.
I prefer people not doing something, their Character wouldn't do right now instead of giving them a 180° Change on the spot. And for that reason... Choose a character, that wouldn't betray the party/one specific party member to begin with.
Why do players need to stay friends???? Real world friends play for the story. Missed a huge opportunity in this campaign to tell a very unique story to the game
Im new to D&D but in my few short months here i have helped create a game thats truly open
Its also extremly fun
See the problem is everyone expects to work together. People are people. They are gonna do them. A good story will play off of that
The more people planning their own story and playing off of eachother . thats the spirit of the game.
Team mates or enemies. The players can create a story they enjoy. The DM is there to lend his point of view but the dice determine the outcome. It should not be win or.lose. it's a story
See we used D&D to world build a whole new game. I decided that we would all pick a god
Together we all decided we would kill out god and take their place. That opened the game up to player plans verse other players amd the GM amd made for a true story
@@richlight A good story don't need betrayal. Or more like... As a long time goal, betrayal is fine. Still, if you want your character to be a part of the group, he should at least give them a reason to keep him around. Being a useless dick to them isn't. Making it clear from the beginning, that he will betray the party contradicts most reasons to keep him around. That's what I meant. Should have made that one more clear, sorry.
Indeed, though admittably... in games where I DM I usually give the players a few NPCs, as side characters, to offer advice, support, fullfill roles not covered by the players (though usually less competent) and sometimes 'nudge' them in the right direction. In that case... one might have suggested that they could use that player's character as a hostage or such.
That way the player's character could tag along, but basicly have the roles reversed... giving the players and their characters a chance to define themselves and put them in each other's shoes, potentially learning more about each other and themselves... then sprinkle in a nice dilemma which forces them to work together in order to survive and presto! :) (could be anything from the ship crashing, to them encountering an imperial Patrol who might just have 'we dont negotiate with terrorists' approach, showing the Guard that in the Grand Scheme of things he's utterly worthless to the Empire and that he might have to change his views on a few things.)
But that's just my approach. :)
He played his character as he made it. The issue to me was his surprise when they wouldn’t let him on the ship.
I think it could've been a interesting angle; but just needed to provide a reason to even be hanging with the prisoners. Being basically their executioner isn't a particularly good reason.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 agreed, you can make a serial rapist, but if you dont hide the damn thing, then you cant get mad that the party turns you in/kills you.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 I think it would be cooler if he was there to conscript the prisoners. Offer them freedom in return for military service. Basically Suicide Squad.
@@brotherhoodz97
Pretty much. That and most people aren't solely determined by their particular occupation. At the end of the day, the character has to be more useful than it is inconvenient to keep around. Firefly Jayne is a massive arsehole for example, but he's a great marksman and generally is obedient enough if his balls are kept in a tight enough vice.
@Funnyblog100 Interesting concept, though I would rather make that character an NPC. I wouldn't want to necessarily have one player outright controlling all others, though I could see that working with little buy-in. I mean, if Amanda Walker ever lost influence over her squad, you could bet that she would be the first person they would all enjoy killing.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 Prehaps he has the passwords for the orbital defense system, fuel depo and so on,.
It would actually be great if the guard and prisoner swapped roles with the guard being the prisoner, and prisoners being the guards. Rich chance for character development.
Story 1: the guard who thought he was PC
Story 2: the many deaths of BiL
I’ve only pulled the old “it’s what my character would do” twice. The first was down to inexperience, selfishly pocketing some gold instead of sharing with the party because my first ever character was a CN a-hole.
The second time came around the middle of a long-running Ravenloft campaign. The party were in some underground caves and started hearing the sounds of creatures all around us. Trying to confirm if we were surrounded, my fighter split off from the group a little to check around a corner. The wizard’s player (not the wizard) started hissing at me to stay with the group, but my fighter’s flaw was that he was stubborn to a fault, so I went through with the action knowing the potential consequences. Turns out we were surrounded by ghouls, but we still won the ensuing fight.
He could have totally played a cruel prison guard without directly immediately betraying the party by character motivation. Because he could have been motivated to further investigate them himself to try to earn a promotion. Further playing the asshole without sending them session 1 to an execution.
He also could have been allowed to hunt them down. I mean, it's Star Wars for crying out loud. How many times does the jerk you think the good guys got rid of comes back to hunt them down? I'm... split on this story. For all the DM and other players could have known, this Todd guy might have been planning to let RP lead his cruel guard to a redemption arc, but was shut down by everyone who, I suppose, had locked-in ideas about the game and weren't open to going with the flow.
@@hexxidelux6224 I get that, yes. You'd also think that the character wouldn't want to be in the same escape ship as the rebellious prisoners after his execution plan failed. It should have been that the guard told a higher officer they would pursue the traitorous rebels, got their own ship to follow (perhaps with some disposable troops), and session 2 could start with PC going after the rest of the party and maybe end with the guard PC getting captured and interrogated which will eventually lead down the road of the party working together and such. That may have been aligned with the player's plan. But, maybe once the player rolled a new character the DM saved the guards character for a later DMPC battle with them nearer the end of the campaign.
I probably would have just gone with playing a normal guard instead of an asshole, wonder over to the other players to oversee their work because of reports I had gotten that their progress was slow so I could see what they were up to, when they found the holocron had the character retire to the barracks to think on it for the night for what I should do since standard procedure would be to report it but curiosity and a nagging feeling in the back of my head would tell me perhaps I should look more into the situation instead of just reporting it, and either help when they got to the landing pad because I wanted to get out of this frozen place anyway, or tried to set things up so i could "transport" the "prisoners" via the craft on "official business"
@@Nyghtking That would be unlikely as most guards would be Clones.
@@emberfist8347 Depends on the time frame, if we're talking a couple years after the clone wars then clones were being phased out and humans were being put in to replace them.
There’s a girl in my party like 90% of the campaigns, and she is the most lawful good un-metagame person, and all the other players weren’t problem players and wouldn’t leave someone behind, but this girl gave 110% for being the nicest person, she would just hit bandit’s pressure points to knock them out, she was a pacifist, I guess.
That’s so sweet.
I'm playing Humblewood right now, playing a pacifist. It's been the hardest, but most fun, I've had with a character since I first played. Has to fit the right group and campaign but yeah, it's been a blast. Your friend is creative using "pressure points". Pretty nice.
Thats cool, I've never played a pacifist character. It would definitely be interesting though. Maybe I'll try it one time.
@@nightfall89z62 I'm playing a cleric, so early levels was pretty support-focused. As we leveled up, I had to figure out a way to "help" (i.e. fight). The DM and I talked about merging my familiar with Spiritual Weapon. So while Friar Berry continues to be a pacifist, his ladybug, Queen Bea, is a cold-blooded killer.....nature's a bitch sometimes..... :)
@@TigerlilyWarrior hey, whatever works. I like it.
"I wanna be a guard!"
This just screams Stanford Prison Experiment...
*Kills NPC to assert power*
Yup...
That is the kind of thing a GM would do to introduce a villain in their campaign so the party will hate him and it will thus be more satisfying to finally kill them. And it worked. I hated that dude right away.
Naw, in the Stanford experiment, the guards didn't set out to be aholes, the situation made them that way. I'd have played a correctional officer having doubts on the treatment of the prisoners.
I once had a character who was quite cowardly. When we came into a cave inhabited by an ogre, a bear, and a hill giant, she wanted nothing to do with running about foolishly. She was fairly sneaky and got a bit separated from the group when they happened upon the bear. Being further away, she wasn't certain things were off until the first round completed. At that point she concluded the party would likely die, and didn't want to reveal herself. Instead she went and released the hill giants goats while he was distracted by the sounds of fighting. Once I spooked them with a little thaumaturgy, they bolted from the cave bleating loudly. The giant gave chase and I decided to go help my party since I had gotten rid of the giant already and felt a bit more confident. I love playing characters I have already created fun backstorues for, because I have a much greater attachment that makes me more cautious.
The distraction goats were a nice touch.
I kind of want to make a fighter character that was a town guard and got fired for sleeping on the job. He'd see the money adventurers bring in and decide that was a good way to get rich quick.
He'd be by traits and skill the tank, but he'd also be a bit lazy and cowardly. He would be the sword and board guy, but when the party says, "Let's go into the cavern" he'd sorta hold back and be like "I don't know, it looks kind of dangerous."
I had a druid once that was just kind of air headed and conflict avoidant. He didn't want to fight things head on, instead opting to distract enemies and go around them.
Accidentally wiped about half the party though. He snuck through a hole in the wall to a mechanical cart (Essentially an armored truck like they use for transporting large sums of cash) by wild shaping into a rat. This skipped the entire fight to the cart, but the rest of the party was ready to go in guns blazing and started doing so. I snuck onto the cart and started driving it out as they fought a giant security golem that was meant to be a boss fight. In my flight I ended up driving down the hall they were in (leaving many of the guards as road kill) and accelerated to the top speed in the final hallway aimed right at the golem. Our DM made them roll perception to determine if they saw the giant cart barreling towards them. 2 of them did, with one diving out of the way completely, and one basically trying to vault off the golem to gain enough height to avoid my cart of doom. End result was that one of our players became a macabre throw rug, another got thrown into the ceiling (but survived) and another was ejected from the building out the wall that the cart created as an impromptu exit as my druid wild shaped again into a crow after jumping from the cart.
They laughed for like 10 minutes and one of them rolled a new character. Other guy tended to just play for 1 session randomly here and there and was almost always just playing throwaway characters with the expectation he wouldn't make the next session. His character was unintentionally revived as a malicious spirit though through a weird plot device thing one of our surviving characters had. Rolled a d100 to determine if he brought him back, and like 1-70 meant nothing happened, 71-90 meant he was successfully revived, and above that was a list of 10 possible outcomes that were all negative. He managed to roll the malicious spirit thing. So he seemed to have been revived normally but was really inhabited by some cunning evil creature that played along like he was fine so that he can backstab us later. Never did finish that campaign sadly.
Bard: are any of the barmaids hot?
Dm: yes all of them and they're identical triplets
*bard rips away his pants*
Bard: from this point forward I cannot be held accountable for my actions
And that is how Nicky Stardust the drow bard contracted every STD in existence
I once had a bard ask that question
Is the barmaid hot?
DM:Yes?
I flirt with her.
DM: Okay, after about a minute of talking. Roll a perception check with disadvantage because you’re distracted.
Why?
DM: Because you failed to notice her husband who is about to punch you in the face.
@@johncollie4544 Nicky: hey baby wanna go to bed with me
Barmaid:I'm with my husband
Nicky: lose the zero, get with the hero
Husband:*punch*
Nicky: a little violent don't you think
Husband: *punch*
Nicky: ... I'll be over there
See I did the opposite in a recent game in wooing the bard with my swashbuckler rogue. She turned out to be an infamous thief that would flirt and "mingle" with nobility to gauge their wealth before robbing them blind but given my characters proclivities for a shady enterprise back home not too bad a character flaw, an interesting quirk as it were.
When i paly a bard my first goal is becoming best friends with the cleric or druid for a reason
A quest for the Cure..s..
Finn was force sensitive, fine enough justification. Moment comes to act like Finn and turn against the empire and instead, he just steered harder into the imperial side. If you want to be like Finn, then be like Finn. Turn against the empire when the moment comes.
He actually could've pulled off that type of character and still ended up with the party and maybe have a redemption Arc, which is what I think he was going for. However, that's something you need to let the DM know prior to the session. From the sounds of it, they very much didn't know. So once again, the lack of communication ruins another potentially cool rp.
That isn't really justification seeing as it never comes up in the films and that wasn't the Empire. He could have cited the two dozen odd force-using groups that worked for Palpatine but they would too high level to be pulling guard duty at a prison unless they were all captured at Palpatine's Citadel at which point the guards were too indoctrinated and too well trained to be level one PC's. At a lower security prison, the guards were mostly clones.
@@emberfist8347 They wouldn't even be clones. Hiring or conscripting locals is cheaper - history proves that it's easy to recruit thugs willing to along with an evil regime.
Aye, the First Order largely seemed to be made up of children who were abducted during the Empire's dying days and were raised from childhood to be blindly loyal. In principle it was a pretty cool idea, but by the end of that run time it was pretty much ruined as a "lul Da EMPEOROR AREN'T REALLEH DEAD." XD
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 And the fact it makes no sense where did they did all their wonderful toys.
Character deaths usually aren't fun, but there was one I will always remember. I was playing a warforged barbarian in 3.5 Eberron and the party was up against three fire elementals that had been used as power sources for a Cannith warmachine. The DM was playing smart and using the elementals long movement to back them out of our range and charge us every other round. I had finally had enough, so on my turn I held action and waited for the last elemental to charge, charging at it myself. One mutual destruction later, and the party wins. Best character death ever!
My Warforged Fighter (used to help round out the party, as I was DMing) was confronted with a worse situation, a Rust Dragon…but luckily survived even when he finally decided to risk it by charging in when the others (Artificer, Sorcerer, and Rogue) were definitely in danger of dying.
Story 1 How to not star wars
Story 2. Greed, foolishness, and gnomes
Story 1: if you keep kicking the dog, why are you surprised when it bites you in the ass
But gnomes are so much fun, when they have a laser.
@@thedeaforc gnomes r gnomes enough said on them
I loved the "Your Title Here" title haahahahah -> great video btw
1) Why make a group character that is opposed to the rest of the party?
2) How can you not understand your own builds? I mean character two and three even had GM rattle. 'Are you sure?' A GM asks you that you say NO!
I made a home-brew and sent it to the DM before I was actually told exactly what everyone was.
Imagine a lawful good suit of living armor surrounded by a bunch of Tieflings, an Imp, and a elephant man paladin of helm.
The paladin and I were basically brothers by the end of the first session.
That seemed more like a problem with the brother and his parenting than anything related to the game itself.
Even if you're a new player, if you die so foolishly, without trying to ask and listen if you should do it and die very quickly, I think you should not be able to Just create new character. Waiting for a new game should be enough punishment, so that you don't try to do something as stupid the next time.
someone probably made his builds for him 😒
I have to play "its what my character would do" because my character is a jerk in a party of jerks. We play as bad guys and my guy is a necromancer. So I don't really want to waste a spell slot, but after chasing this guy for 3 months and finally killing him, my character would definitely resurrect him as just a head so we can taunt him and kick him around like a football.
The term "its what my character would do" can be depicted in many ways. As long as everyone is having fun it shouldn't be an issue at all.
Yea, any time you do something you know is stupid out of character, but their is no reason your character would know it. I mean how bad is it to tell the fey your name?
I was playing the Tyranny of Dragons adventure path in D&D5e. I was a lawful good clerc, in a party with a octopus-girl sorceress, a tortle ranger, human warlock, and dwarf barbarian, none of whom were good (although I didn't know this until far into the game). Due to backstory, the human warlock was undead and sustained by the pact with his patron and this is important to this particular story. As a result of various shenanigans, the DM gave my cleric a spear that was the personal weapon of her lawful good goddess which had the (ostensible) function of supercharging my various cleric powers, and this is also important to this particular story.
So eventually, we end up having to get into a castle where an invitation-only party was being held by the evil master of said castle. The evil dwarf barbarian came up with the idea of getting the warlock drunk on magical ale that would cause him to rage completely out of control and point him at the castle with the object of smashing the doors in and rampaging to distract the people inside from us slipping in. Naturally, lawful good cleric girl was really not happy with this plan, but I went along with the party because that's just what you do to get along with the other players, but I had a great plan (or so I thought). As probably most people here know, the cleric channel positive energy power serves to mostly make undead run away and only destroys very, very low CR undead when the cleric is very high-level, so the plan was to grab all of the random innocent civilians in a circle around lawful girl cleric girl and channel positive energy around her to make sure that rampaging undead warlock would sort of turn the other way and rampage everywhere except where the civilians were gathered around the cleric.
This seemed like an eminently "it's what my character would do" thing that wouldn't disrupt the plan, or hurt anyone, or cause any problems. Except the DM decided that lawful goddess' personal weapon randomly does lawful goddess' personal will and used the spear to nuke the warlock.
Cue lawful evil dwarf barbarian "it's what my character would do" declaring that she was going to murder my cleric. DM said no, and resurrected the warlock back to actual life, whereas he did a "it's what my character would do" and tried to murder my cleric. DM said no.
Game came apart when we finished that leg of the quest because the two players never entirely forgave me for the DM hijacking my character and using her weapon to kill another PC.
So basically, this is a two-for-one special: asshole DM + "it's what my character would do." Suffice to say, I've avoided actually playing to my character unless I absolutely 100% *_know_* that the DM isn't going to dick me or _anyone_ over for it.
Stanford Prison Experiment: "It's what my character would do."
Everyone Else:
Gotta respect the player for learning from his actions and rejoing the game.
Story 1, he was stupid by the siding by going with the enemy. Story 2 he went the stupid direction.
I left my friend "to die". Lol two towers full of archers and we were in the kill zone. A trap. He was a sorceror and i was a ranger. We hid behind a boulder exchanging arrows, the sorceror was almost usless at that point because he was out of spell slots. I told him to stay there and cast some cantrips. "Why?" I wink at him then charge one of the towers. I go in and fight as he scream and cast a cantrip every now and agan. That night the dm was rolling a lot of bad rolls for most of the session so i felt confident i had a chance surviving this stupid act, plus i was rolling alright up to this point. A half an hour and several healing potions later i clear one of the towers. 1 more to go. I yell at the sorceror to run to the tower i cleared. "I took them all out". As i said this they start coming in from the first tower. A trap from my end lol. I layed cantrips and trip ropes giving me a chance. They come in towrads me, some trip, others fall from my arrows from above. Long story short... I cleared every creature from these 2 towers instead of retreating like the dm most likely expected us to do. The sorceror goes "what would of happened if i came when you called" "oops" i replied lol
Another phrase that always gets a reaction I cast Magic Missile at the Darkness.
But not what's in the dark.
That's just blind fire.
Darkness: "what did I do to you for you to do that?" *starts crying like a 4 yo
Player: “Hello darkness, my old friend.”
Darkness: “What the….? What sort of friend casts magic missile at them?”
I was playing a 3rd edition game I was a level one paladin my friend was a level one rogue, and we had a cleric who ditched us we went down the stairs in our first dungeon and were told by the DM to turn back then we encounter an Arachnae that immedietly casts hast and some armor spell so even a 23 cant hit it we get a couple of nat 20s but 8 rounds later we die
Everyone making stories of how to acomodate Todd in the first story.
He played his card badly. He got left behind. Dead character, make a new one.
I had an experience similar to this. I was the brains of the team, tactics and battle plan wise. Long story short half of the party split before I could give them the plan in character and left me and one other guy to fend of 30 combined forces of goblins, lizard folk and wargs. I ended up living but my friend’s character died. So long story short listen to the tactician.
I have this idea. So, one of the players gets involuntarily left behind by the party? As DM, if they survive, we will plot our revenge.
There was a grave cleric fighter combo in a game I was part of for a while, who was very much an "it's what my character would do" kind of person, but in very different ways than you might expect. There was a trap with a citizen as the bait; he was sitting on a switch that, if he moved off it, would send a bunch of basically saw blades flying at him. Calla, the character, decides to just straight-up tackle him off the switch and use her body as a shield because "I'm wearing heavy armor and I know I can take this hit, and saving this guy is more important anyway" so she did it. Absolute legend
When the DM is giving you hints as too a bad idea, Follow their advice.
So I was playing a human life cleric (a pre-made character that I was given whom I grown very attached to) in an Adventures league game and the campaign we were running was descent into Avernus. We made it to the part of the game where we were placed in an illusionary siege of a town. If I can recall correctly the party was made up of a barbarian, wizard, warlock, paladin, bard, and cleric (me) [Im not entirely sure since it happened years ago but I know the barbarian was definitely one of the party members, anyways] when we appeared we all had to roll initiative against the first of many creatures: gnolls. The DM described a woman and her kid surrounded by gnolls and how she hid her child underneath an upside down wheel-barrow. We attempted to close the gap as fast as we could but they were around 3-4 turns away even when dashing. Gnolls slew the woman before turning their attention on the girl. I sent a guardian of faith their way since I wouldn’t have made it that turn. The guardian did well and soften them up as me and the barbarian finally arrived. Both spell and sword met gnoll flesh as we were furious over their most recent victim. As a life cleric, I could not let this atrocity remain as it was, even if it was just a dream/illusion, but before my hand could find its way to my material pouch the barbarian grabbed his necklace and tossed to me. He said it was a 300 gp diamond. Once my turn came around I used the diamond and cast revivify on the lady. She awoke, dazed and bloody but she was alive. As my party dealt with other monsters in the area, my turns comprised of healing the lady and getting the kid out from underneath the wheel-barrow. I began to lead them to the temple down the road when a merrolith ( I believe they were called. A half snake demon who wielded six swords) began to make their way to us from a nearby alley. The barbarian who was raging rushed forward to meet the creature in combat. The other two or three members (whom were pretty squishy) was fighting a large demon nearby the temple preventing it from completing its goal (which was trying to barge its way into the temple when we first arrived). Now I had two clear cut options to make, run after the barbarian and help him against this new menacing foe or to escort this family to what may be the last bastion of this town. Now if you were to take the stand point of either meta gaming or all reason then the option which would be apparent would be to rejoin the fray. I however thought differently, if I was a war cleric then I probably would have but I am a life cleric so I acted accordingly . Here is where the “It’s what my character would do” comes in. While the barbarian rushed to duel this CR17 (at least) foe, I grabbed this woman’s and began rushing her to the temple. I knew it was a long ways away especially in combat but I was determined. The barbarian was raging so even going against 6 attacks in a turn, he could hold his own for a while. I was roughly halfway to 3/4s way to the temple when another player voiced their feelings of me doing what I was seeking of to do with a “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Get back to the barbarian, he needs you!!!” I retort with a stern “Let me play my character.” By the time I got to the temple, had them open the doors for the lady and girl, the barbarian was very low on life points. I began sprinting my way back and once I was in ranged, I used my channel divinity: preserve life and healed him as much as the rules would allow me. We defeated the foe eventually although the rest of the party had to help and faced off with the gnoll lord himself after a short rest which ended up with our bacon being saved by zariel.
I think I got a few mumbled complaints about my action but in character I felt justified. I am aware how that may be the case for a lot of these other stories but being a life cleric of chauntea and seeing a woman die in front of me, I felt it was the course of action I had to take. I don’t think I made the wrong call but I could just be biased. What do you guys think?
One of the few instances I could say "it's what my character would do be justified."
Okay, so I MIGHT be a bit guilty of the 'it's what my character would do' but it's not what you might think! My character, a Chaotic good Tiefling ranger, pretty much tries to do good wherever he can. So when the party was in a village that was having a very hard time getting food, he snuck out in the middle of the night, past the construct guards, hunted 2 full sized elks, and brought them back. Leaving them with the de-facto leader of the village with a note saying 'be sure to share.' the party was VERY nervous about what might happen if he was caught and I was as well, but I had to think 'what would my character do? the party is being really cautious, but he knows how to hunt. we're at the edge of a forest, my home turf. these people need help, and I can do it.'
How did it turn out?
@@ethanorourke2631 No issue at all. Helped the people eat for a bit. Then the party saved the day!
See, there's the rub: You didn't use it as an excuse for a questionable decision or antagonist action. Btw, why would it have been bad if you'd have gotten caught hunting and giving to the village?
@@JoshtheOverlander We were in a town patrolled by mechanical beings that would have captured/killed me because I was 'out past curfew'
Actually, there is be a precedence for Imperial force users, there are Inquisitors (Dark Jedi who were often Order 66 survivors that hunt force users), Imperial Shadow Guards (Imperial Guards given basic dark side training and lightsaber pikes), Saber Guards (Imperial Guards who use lightsabers) Imperial Sovereign Protectors (the highest echelon of Imperial Guards given dark side training guard the Emperor at all times), Sith Acolytes (created after Palpatine was attacked by Galen Marek during the first Force Unleashed game and so would be present around the time of this campaign), Byss Mages (though they exclusively operate on Palpatine's throneworld where they do experiments), Imperial Sentinels (mindless cloned abominations who worked for Palpatine's high-level Dark Side Adepts and guarded his Citadel on Byss), Terror Giants (massive cyborgs part of an experiment conducted on Kamino), Imperial Force Adepts, The Order of Shasa (founded after the events of a sidequest in KOTOR to provide force training to an isolationist species, they were duped into serving Palpatine), Prophets of the Dark Side (Predicted the future for Palpatine), and the Emperor's Hand (Palpatine's handpicked assassins and so highly secretive each one was unaware there were other Hands). The problem is something you might have noticed if you read through this comment and saw the pattern, most of the Imperial force users were high-ranking individuals often on par with Vader, not lowly prison guards the ones that would be doing guard duty worked specifically for the Emperor at installations that would be too high level for a level one party. Most Imperial Prison Guards were clones.
Also kyle katarn was force sensitive and was a storm trooper
he... he was an enemy guard who acted as an enemy guard... yeah he played it right
I was the "it's what my character would do"
We were playing 5e and I made a high elf archer who used to be a god emperor. The real bad type. 90% of the bad things that happen was because of him. Elf raids on the party? Him. Wizards going into the flying city? Him. Caine being killed? Him. He caused everything bad to happen. He even did it during the campain. The murder of the druids, death of the wizards flying city, murder of Gods. But he wasn't happy. He physically hated every second of what he did but he couldn't control himself. He had a daughter during the campaign who, by accident, he trained to him. Why? Because he knew that, in a group of heroes, he was evil. For almost the entire campaign he has dont everything to protect the party, kill pirates on his own to ensure the party wouldn't be hunted, killed the mafia and its enemies, killed like 3 more gods, and sat in the dark throne to shield the party from vampire hunters who wanted the blood of the party. He did everything, much of it ruined him as the character u wanted him to grow in but one that made sense. After a fight with a friend, he had an insane idea, destroy the timeline, let his Ex-Femboy (now woman) wife save the party. And sacrifice himself to make it happen.
When asked why, I told them that it's what he would do. He knew of the party having several curses stating that they would die. Some as a destiny, others by design. My character wanted them to stay alive as a family. So he made sure the curses and destiny would never be met by keeping them in a loop.
The campaign is still going and they have broken out of the loop but it felt more of a defeat since everyone knew that it would be their last month together in game.
Wat?
warhammer 40k black crusade game:
my character- a human who wielded chain hammers, and twin axes that was from a feudal world and had a staggeringly low inteligence score of around 10 (i think it started at 15 but a mutation lowered it... the average for a human is 30). he frequently picked fights with things bigger and scarier than him. in his heart he was a chaos space marine. but in reality he was a mortal man with severe brain damage.
first session we had just cleared an area and where boarding ships to go back to base. OOC i knew that the smaller one was for the humans and the big one was for the astartes but that didnt stop my character from attempting to enter the wrong ship... and then promptly getting kicked across the room like a rubber ball. he survived some how and was dragged to the correct ship and after that there wern't very many incidents outside of being overzealous in a loosing combat situation from time to time...
that is until the moment that everyone brings up when they talk about the mortality of my characters.
we are raiding a ship full of khorne worshipers and demons when we come to a hallway with 2 world eaters at the other end. the rest of the party is formulating a plan but my character shouts his battle cry (which i thing was something along the lines of "FUCKING KILL!!!" but my memory is super hazy) and charges down the hall toward them... the GM described what happened next as my character being turned into paste on their chain axes and being splattered all over the walls and down the hallway. there wasn't a chunk left of him. he was just dead. no roll... no check... no save... and i found it hilarious and a fitting end to my crazy mad lad!
Our DM makes us do character bonds so our characters know each other before adventuring. He also sets up in character questions before sessions designed to help us act more "in character" for different scenarios comming up during the quest. It cuts out 90% of the random solipsism that happens.
Apparently you've never heard of the Stanford prison experiment, or you would never have done this. It is entirely on you.
The Stanford Prison experiment analogy only works if the GM was using his authority to force the problem player to do horrible things but that isn't the case. It is the problem having the smallest amount of power go to his head.
@@emberfist8347 I think you are confusing it with the Milgram experiment.
my absolute favorite, "it's what my character would do" that pissed off other players was actually my character. we were playing pathfinder (1st). i have a couple of number crunching min/maxer friends that i used to play with a lot. i like to play fun character concepts. this particular one was a gunslinger (was only going to use a couple of levels to water down the class potency) who took proficiency with string instruments. since we were playing one of the later adventure paths, the gunslinger fit in the setting. anyway, we start of all being at a fair of sorts. everyone wants to start figuring out hooks and other mission related info, and i declare that i start busking. i got an, "ok..." look from the gm. showed that i had proficiency in guitars, to the gm's delight that i had done something that was more rp focused with my character. toward the end of the gathering, i ask how much money i made, the gm rolled and gave a fairly generous sum. as i saw the greed began to light my future party mates eyes, i declare the money goes to the local orphanage. i got a few stunned looks, and the gm began to tear up. the session ended up soon after (was just that time, not due to my actions), and unfortunately was the first and last session of that particular game.
Well, at least the brother-in-law made good builds.
The thing to remember is that it’s okay in the correct circumstance to pull a “it’s what my character would do.” For example I had a bard who was an arrogant noble and would belittle people. Often he would get heavily punished for it like being forced to survive in the wilderness alone. Was I mad that the punishment happened? Of course not. So after surviving he learned to treat people with a little more respect for his own survival. Don’t be afraid to play a character that is rude or mean, just try to keep the party and DM in mind.
I think playing your character is absolutely fine, and I think he couldve made a guard work at the start. But choosing to play an abusive guard was doomed to fail. He could've been a compassionate guard who was starting to question the empire and maybe even be the one to free the other PCs to start the campaign.
Didn't actually say "it's what my character would do" but in a campaign I was in, I believe it was curse of strahd, I was playing my tiefling paladin who was a deserter from the armies of avernus. As such he was a very, VERY light sleeper. When my party or anyone failed stealth checks within stabbing distance of my character at night they would be swiftly impaled... Long story short we had 2 party members half dead and the quest giver severely wounded because they were sneaking around at night with poor stealth rolls. By session 2 I was the perma night guard until further notice. At the very least we didn't have to worry too much about midnight attacks by werewolf and various creatures of the night.
I don’t get people who insist on role playing to the detriment of the group and get offended when their actions have consequences. Did he expect bunch of prisoners he abused to be happy that their abuser wants to join with them when it’s convenient for him?
I have a pc in my group that is slowly looking to be like the second story. Killed a random npc. Then saw a rich nobel man that was really pale skin... he goes to attack the guy and gets insta killed by the guy. Turned out it was Strahd.
I always play my characters the way they would play. You just need to make sure everyone has fun in the process. I've had evil characters that were working behind the scenes to impede the party but never going as far as killing them. I've had the stereotypical warlock who tries screwing over the party for power but I've also played supports like Clerics who would lift up and support the party. Or scouts who would assist the party with traversal and survival. It's all about making sure everyone is having a good time, it's not about winning and losing.
Yeah none of my evil characters would betray the party because good help is hard to come by.
I really only have only one "it's what my character would do" moment and it was from my last campaign where I was GM. The final boss was a Babau Assassin with a few levels of Gunslinger. He wasn’t the BBEG. He managed to usurp the final boss position from the BBEG, who was already dead, his soul destroyed after the PCs raided Hell itself to put an end to the original party nemesis. I had the party confront the Babau Assassin in the Darklands, trying to reclaim the campaign's MacGuffin from him and his small army of drow and demons.
It was an intense confrontation that lasted two whole sessions. The PCs entered the Darklands at lvl.17, and left at lvl.19 because they fought so many enemies. Thing is, I was a rookie GM, and there was so much going on at my end that I forgot about some of the options I had given myself. As such, I got too into character as the Babau, and when the PCs managed to kill all of his drow and all of his demons so that only the Babau was left standing, I had him flee the fight.
It was a real jerk move, I admit. I actually had a strategy for this exact situation, but I forgot about it during the whole event. I was able to spin it as a victory for the PCs. They reclaimed the MacGuffin and forced the Babau to retreat, the only time in the campaign where that happened. Every other time he had appeared before this final confrontation, he managed to kill at least one PC each time and prompted the PCs to run away EVERY time. Which, according to our house rules, meant he kept leveling up each time he managed to defeat the party.
Long story short, I got too into character and should have launched one final attack so the PCs could kill their most hated foe. I didn’t. Now I'm writing an epic sequel questline so that my players can FINALLY slay their one true nemesis.
I like the title. It's kind of a fake out as you start thinking the pc left behind is a victim but really got his just deserts.
I've left pc's behind to die before. Sometimes i use the excuse "it's what my character would do" but most of the time i just tell them out of character that they were being stupid and i wasn't going to die with them. This has gotten me kicked out of a few groups online, but if we're playing something we were told is a challenging game or system they should know better than to stand and fight when we have no chance of winning. I have several stories of this, the most recent being in a greyhawk game. Both myself and the gm told the rest of the group that greyhawk isn't like normal D&D. It's more like dark souls using D&D mechanics. I rolled up a rogue who never died once during the three sessions i was in and what the rolled doesn't matter because they tpked twice...in the first three sessions. They demanded i be kicked out of the group, despite the in character and out of character warnings i had given to each of the two parties before abandoning them to play their way. I was, but was later informed by the gm that the game fell apart shortly after because of a third and fourth tpk. Well, you can't free a fish from water.
If he was willing to TPK a party 4 times rather than change the style of game to be more in line with his players ability and level of experience, he doesn't sound like a very good GM. They clearly weren't ready for what he was throwing at them.
And I'm not surprised you get kicked a lot. Your attitude is completely awful. Players make mistakes, especially inexperienced ones. Telling them they're stupid because of them is not being a good player. This isn't Dark Souls, even Greyhawk. It's collaborative storytelling. If you abandon your party in the middle of the story you're supposed to be COLLABORATIVELY telling because it's "what your character would do", then you need a different character.
@@fuzziestlumpkin I actually just abandoned them because i didn't want to roll up a new character. It wasn't even remotely what my character would have done. I'm just saying, i shouldn't be penalized because they didn't know what they were doing and wouldn't listen to me.
Maybe relevant or not:
If everyone you know is an asshole and keeps kicking you from multiple games: it might be that you're the real asshole.
@@josephmatthews7698 1st, i never said "multiple" games. I said "a few games" meaning around 3, and i've played hundreds online over the years. So i actually have a pretty good track record. 2nd, i never called any of them assholes. I called some of the players stupid because they wouldn't listen to me and kept dying, but i never thought any of them were assholes.
@@clericofchaos1 also I've played for 22 years and I've never been kicked out of a single game. Something to think about. Don't get defensive. I personally don't care, just trying to offer you an alternative perspective.
He got what he wanted, never had to play a slave and got to be part of the party with a new char. Nice play mate they still never saw it coming
The second story was a complete pain in the butt. Oh I know I did this before when I was very young because of role-play syndrome on JRPGs. Took me a while to learn that in DND everyone must work together to succeed
I pulled the "It's what my character would do" line a few weeks ago, but nobody but the DM minded.
The DM had us in an intentionally unbalanced fight with a death knight who turned out to be the warden of an arch devil. As soon as we found out, my kobold wanted to stay and fight the devil along with the death knight he just decided was his friend as he felt bad for trying to shoot him before. The party wanted to run and so my kolb went with them as being alone is scary but the devil cast wall of fire in the narrow hallway to trap us. My kobold shot the devil but his con say was +11 so it could not brake the spell.
The DM then wanted to give an "epic" description of the NPCs fighting while I demanded to know how long the fight took as my little kobold still saw the death knight as a friend and didn't think sitting still and letting all this go down was a good idea.
The DM finally relented and told me 3 minutes so I fired 18 more shots and only missed 3 times.
Though the DM was kind of rail roady, he did have to admit that deciding a death knight was your friend and firing 19 shots at an arch devil was kind of gutsy and so gave us all an extra 5,000EXP.
Usually my character Annan would scout a different path than the group, mostly due to his distrust of others and his overall fear of buildings... He has the backgrounds of outlander and a hermit who recently decided to be a bit more social.
Once he ended up befriending a group for the first time in the most ridiculous situation all because...thats what my character would do.
It was in the woods and he split from the party to go trap a squirrel for game/rations. He climbs the tree, sets the trap, misses. Shoots some arrows, misses some more. He then gives up and decides to destroy the hut below him that the players are in and have investigated. He decides having some open sky would be nice and would make him comfortable enough to hang out with the group.
What the party sees: A crazy man falling through the roof. And then the floor. And below the hut is a rat pit. The archer goes, "Oh! I was wondering where he went!". The barbarian tosses him a rope, which he catches. The dwarven cleric helps pull my character up. The wizard fireballs the pit. We all get out of there ASAP. As Annan watches the hut burn , he hugs the wizard with new found respect. He then turns to thank the dwarf in broken dwarvish as he bows to him.
The dwarvish cleric hears him let out a string of cuss words and interprets the bow as a slight to his stature. The cleric (a peaceful soul who wouldn't slap anybody) walks off mad as heck. The rest of the party follows the cleric into the forest for the rest of the adventure.
At downtime, the archer translates for my character and mends the relationship- the dwarf forgives the misunderstanding and becomes friends with Annan and tutors him in dwarvish.
hmmm well it was quite some time ago so my recall is vague, but I'll try to be concise.
The setting was a Star Wars game with a pretty large group, maybe up 6-8 players. We were on Naboo during the Galatic Empire era and the task for the session was for the party to try and escape into space.
I was playing something like a human scoundrel, I think. There was a variety of other characters and classes including one PC playing a Wookie. For one reason or another, I got into an argument with another player, a human bounty hunter, who ended up threatening to kill my PC at the next opportunity. In fact, most of the group was a clique with this player so what happened next was sweet justice as far as I was concerned.
Cut to the escape attempt and the group steals a spaceship and attempts to slip past an Imperial blockade. We fail miserably and are forced down in the wilderness. The DM informs us that there is an Imperial shuttle en route to arrest us all. I tell the group the most logical thing to do is to try and lose the stormtroopers in the bush and my PC starts to flee the ship. I can't recall what the rest of the party was going to do but the Bounty Hunter pipes up and tells the DM he is going to shoot my PC in the back he does this just as the Imperial shuttle looms over the clearing and though the shot didn't kill me I take a fall and as the stormtroopers start arresting the party I inform the DM I am playing dead. My ruse is successful and the bounty hunter is left speechless as the party is arrested and my "corpse" left to rot.
After everyone leaves, I get up and start hiking back to the city. On the way back to the city I come across an Imperial patrol and so I flag them down and convince them that I am a poor citizen that has been ambushed by rebel scum lead by a fearsome Wookie, effectively blaming the absent party for my injuries. The patrol helps me back to the city and even treats my injuries. I was free and the rest of the party was in jail trying to figure out what to do and then the session ended not long after.
I have never played D&D but I understand the idea.
what would any character I create do in the situations?
Dragon: Point to sword and ask "Can I have that? Your claws are way too big for it and probably a lot more powerful, its just going to sit there."
Traps: start throwing random junk on the ground down the hall to see if anything happens.
Gnomes: randomly point to one and declare "your zipper is down and that there children around, have he no shame?"
I like to make people laugh ^_^
Ok, that is a pretty crazy story. Thank you for sharing.
Made a Tortle Barb who was a kind supportive dummy, got put in a 6 on 6 fight situation with a VIP to protect and save. Fight is going ok, we had it in the bag but our Cleric thinks we should speed things up, and uses a magic item to summon a celestial creature to teleport us to safety.
The last thing my Tortle heard from the celestial being was "I can only teleport six of you to safety" and "Ok, leave him behind." From the Cleric.
Was promptly paralyzed from a failed Wisdom Save and held at ransom but the party never came back for me.
I hoped that the guy would mention Katarn as exuse for force sensitive imperial, not the new trilogy
To be fair I’d assume a lot of folks probably don’t know who Kyle Katarn is, he’s not exactly a main stream character outside of a few games and possibly some comics!
I myself have been the “Thats what my character would do” but I only use this on things my character would ACTUALLY do, good or bad for himself or for others. I am still in this campaign, no one hates me as a player, but they sure don’t have a strong connection to my Teifling Barbarian fighter warlock. I try to be helpful and friendly towards them all, but rarely do my endeavors succeed. Right now, I am in a bit of a jam. Me and two other PC’s are being threatened by an Orc that we and the town we are in are going to be “taxed” or we pay with our blood. I appreciate my blood staying inside me so I’m trying to decide between logical thinking, or “what my character would do” which is to challenge the orc to a combat and if I win he has to leave or pay with his own blood.
Okay, I was gonna' talk about my Gnome Thief (when I usually play a Halfling in that role) was abandoned and left to die because of a party of d^cks and I lived thanks to the DM doing split-mission note-passing... but this was horses of different colors. The player was the disconnected d^ck... had it coming.
I played a RIFTS game once (I know, I know) where my PC was one of the bad guys who wanted to defect… but the other PCs didn’t trust him, so he spent basically the whole game manacled in the back of the truck. :)
i once played an orc who was afraid of undead, like terrified of them lol, if one showed up he runs away hides for 2 turns then come back after composing himself, 2 on average, more dead = more time cause haha, it started off as a minor fear and i used the "its what my toon would do" and it evolved to a mechanic the dm made for me lol
My girlfriend and I play D&D at a local game store near my house. The DM said it was a mini adventure from Curse of Strahd called Dead House. We've been busy after the session when this takes place, so we only got to do the first session. I was an Aarakocra Cleric, she was a Human Fighter, the player in question was a Gnome Rogue, and his friend was a Dwarven Artificer. Throughout the session, our Gnome Rogue kept acting dumb and just jumped into situations reckless and ask us if we were going to stop him constantly because he knew what he was doing was wrong, but he wanted to play out his character. Long story short, he starts a fight with a Banshee, gets himself killed, and almost caused us to get TPK in the first session after I was knocked unconscious, followed by my girlfriend, our artificer brought me back up, I brought back up my girlfriend, then our artificer got knocked, I brought him back up, and then he killed the banshee. Since then, the trouble player switched to a Dwarven Paladin, and was not a problem for the rest of the session. Still pretty weird experience though
I hosted a one shot this past Sunday and my six players we're fighting a couple of homebrew creatures until they encountered a beholder. At that point they were getting killed off left and right and with their paladin being charmed they decided to book it as best they could. Six of them went in and only two of them came out 😆
I like how she added his age but didn't want to insult children by calling him a child.
The best "it's what my character would do" is that my character acting as a pirate captain with split personalities led the party into what we hope was their future base and hide out. But it was full of Shadows and even before we got 20 feet into the dungeon an party member read the evil writing on the wall which then a voice spoke to us saying words of doom and cursing us. Quickly learning that it's a forgotten God of slaughter and my personality that day was CE and in the market for a God of violence. So I "sacrifice" myself to save them. They wanted to save my character instead of saving themselves. After a crazy ritual that was the craziest godly vision I've been at a table for I became the new champion of Blood and slaughter while my players wonder what deal I maybe. As I told them it's what a good captain would do
I was/am running a 5e campaign for some newbies. I mean NEWbies. One of the players had made an elf with tiefling blood, who was a thief and chaotic-neutral. They had just finished their hike to the first mission. They were camped outside for no more than one night when they were introduced to their newest member. The character then ran up to the new comer and got into her face. Then backed off and declared "I win!". "Win what?" asked the new comer(a wizard). "The staring contest" says the rogue. Fighter puts his face into his palm and shakes his head wondering "what the hell have I gotten myself into?"
Rogue gets a great idea. I mean G.R.E.A.T.
Rogue is going to find the tallest tree(120 feet).
Rogue is going to climb the tree.
Rogue makes it to the top. Where rogue is asked to make an intelligence check to see if this still a good idea.
Rogue rolls a four. With bonuses.
It's the bestest idea E.V.E.R!
Rogue is asked if they want do do a performance/entertainment check to make it look good.
Rogue rolls a two. With bonuses.
So, instead of doing a swan dive off a 120 foot tall tree, the rogue tumbled end over end until SPLAT!
My only "it's what my character would do" is when my brother killed a guy we rescued from some evil guys, because he couldn't pay us, so my paladin punched him in the face. No PvP, no players killing each other, just a paladin punching the mystic for murdering some rando
I've only had a few 'It's what my character would do' moments I think...
First one I can recall was when the DM tried to show off their very powerful abberation NPC to the party via it approaching my' already weakened from a fight' Watchers Paladin spider (flavored dhampir) on her own.
Cue DM warning me 'now's the time to flee' while I sort of in a panic reply "You know my spider's kind of a berserker when it comes to abberation based threats and places no value on her own life right?"
Cue next few minutes me and the DM frantically trying to figure out a way for my spider not to commit 'weakened Lv6 attacking CR 20 kamikaze' which ended with said spider rolling a history check for getting a flash of memory regarding her goddess ordering her not to die and her mentor telling her about how retreating to relay info is better than dying pointlessly, and then a wis save to see if she'd run and she passed both so that was a massive relief.
so we accidently did this one time in a campaign, but it wasn't on purpose neither did we know what was gonna happen. We were exploring a delve trying to find a lost kingdoms of sorts. But in the process one of our PC got really wounded so we decided to leave him there because we figured we could go back and find some potions or something to help him. But when we came back he was gone and all the mess we made in the room after the fight we had encounter everything was gone. ( no sign of blood or anything ) We get to the next room and we find him but, he appears to be older and he has a companion with him. Turns out we got stuck in a time dimension BS and we were gone for like 8 years. so his character was pissed.
3 player 1 dm match. 2 of us totally left our buddy in some haunted cellar, he ended up dragging us down into it. Lol.
The ghost ended up being the dead owner of the tavern he was in. We won him over and he serves us drinks now.
I always try to make characters that are like me. I've had my Paladin crouch just inside a door with my shield raised so the enemy couldn't come in but my team could fire out. Had my ranger almost fall to his dead trying to get a direwolf puppy. My fire gensai get drunk and light a bar on fire. My fight almost drowned pulling people out of the river.
"It's what my character would do!"
Yeah, and what your character would do is abuse, verbal lashings, and straight up murder. What *their* characters would do is to either leave you for dead or kill you themselves. Try again.
(kills tod, takes his uniform) "it's what my character would do"
To be fair, it sounds like Todd made the start of the campaign a lot more interesting and action packed than it otherwise would have been.
Well, at least the first guy seems to have learned from his mistake, unlike the second guy. Three deaths *in a row* you think he would learn to think before acting at least after the first two, especially with a helpful DM actually *Telling him his character could see they were bad ideas*
I'm kind of in a unique situation with my character. He's a Warlock and trying to figure out about himself. I have what I think is kind of an indepth backstory where his mother sold her first born to a demon/devil. He was the first born. He doesn't know where his powers or his anger comes from. He's still trying to figure it out.
When given the opportunity to go with the big bad evil guy he accepted and split from the party. The DM has been running a separate session with me as i deal with the consequences. It turns out the BBEG is trying to summon my character's patron to the material world. So my character is now a bit torn. He wants to learn more about himself and his dark feelings but he also misses his companions.
This is my first run as an 'evil' character and the RP aspect is great and a lot of it is actually, "It's what my character would do" but even I don't know what that is. He's going to walk the line between good and evil for a bit, and we'll see which way he falls.
I do miss the socialization of the group since the DM keeps me away now for the time being as we go our separate ways. There's a lot more to his backstory and I feel it's pretty rounded out, I'm excited to see where things go. If my character goes down the dark path and gets killed for it, then that's how it happens. I leave it in the GM's hands. He's an amazing GM and we'll see where it goes.
So, I think "It's what my character would do" is fine as long as the player is able to accept the consequences and really thinks it through with the GM.
Well, the "that's what my character would do" could work. Like, my current character is a brat, stuck up, and a bit abrasive to the other characters. He gives them grudging respect after their first combat and he's the face of the group. (Sorcerer). I guess it depends on OOC actions as well
That's true. I had a "that's what my character would do" guy. But the thing was the DM specifically asked everyone if they wanted to really dig in to the D&D lore. I ended up playing racist half-orc cleric of Gruumsh with an elf in the party. It divided the party and eventually caused a TPK. Still it was fun because everyone was in on the "that's what my character would do" trope.
i was not expecting the voice of Slash Start... my brain broke for a second
My character was a berserker mountain dwarf with a chip on his shoulder. He would throw tantrums and destroy things, and do his best to murder anyone between him and his target (party included) I saw it as seeing red , he didn’t even know he hurt his companions until after. Normally the party would have to tie me up and put me in a cart during tantrums.
I think the worst one was when I was out of rations on a death march through open country. We found a small village and I saw a little girl walking around with a basket of food. I was grumpy because I was hungry and made her give me the basket. The party’s rouge gave it back to her. Next thing you know I’m slaughtering villagers.
He died after getting charmed and killing the party’s favourite npc by lightning bolt. His body was left face down in the muck. Everyone said they loved my character and I agreed he was hurting the story so I chose a lighthearted simple monk.
I’m surprised Todd’s guard character didn’t return as a BBEG.
Partly Member: how did he survive?
DM: he fell a great distance in the Star Wars universe. Of course he survived.
We were traveling through the desert looking for a pyramid that was the epicenter of a curse.
We got camels and a wagon with barrels of water and enough food for about twice the expected journey time.
There was a tornado incoming, and we could either try and outrun it, or hunker down. With our nature expert saying they believed we couldn't outrun it. So almost everyone decided to hunker down.
...except the Rogue, who was driving the wagon. He decided to book it, and hope for the best. We weathered the storm but he was tossed in the air and the wagon and all the barrels were destroyed.
This isn't the best part. When the Rogue regained consciousness, he saw an oasis, and in the oasis was a stream of water. Before he could drink a woman rose out of the water and said he could ask her any three questions. To his credit he didn't metagame. The conversation went like this.
Rogue: "is my party alive?"
Woman: "yes"
Rogue:"are they looking for me?"
*DM turns to us and our suddenly blank faces*
Woman:"No"
Rogue:"Really?"
Woman:"Really"
And with that the oasis and stream vanished without a trace leaving all players stranded with two days water when the group who hunkered down were eight days from either the pyramid or village, and he didn't even know where he was.
It didn't end well, we got to the pyramid without healing surges and half dead, and the fights that were assuming a full group at full strength... were slightly problematic.
The Rogue never got out of the desert.
TLDR: Rogue left us to die, then died when we left him to die.
“It’s what my character would do“ can’t be the only part of your excuse. From everything I’ve seen so far the only way this would work is if you followed up or start with an explanation for why your character would do this.
And even though I will admit I haven’t played any TTRPG yet but I have played a lot of RPG‘s that focus on player choices.
So I’m pretty sure that any character you make unless it’s part of their personality needs to have some sense of self-preservation or survival instinct.
I have only said "Its what my character would do" once. We were playing Shadowrun, my character (made originally as an npc) is psychotic. I haven't had much to do all game and we get to the final boss of the scenario, boss starts to monolouge, about 30 seconds in I declare "I'm going to charge her" everyone freaks out but jumps in. After we kill her and flee they ask "Why did you do that?" I explained my character had done nothing all game and was thus bored. It is now a table legend because it turned out pretty ok.
My Changeling Bard who was escaping the mafia by riding a ship to a different continent left the campaign on session one when the DM had his DMNPC acknowledge who and what I was mid voyage.
There was a campaign where we left a party member to die because they over-extended and though could fight off all of the encounters and got captured while we were taking our rest for the night.
On the morning we hear the news from rumors from the townsfolk that someone was taken in the caves at the nearby swamps. We asked around for info about the cave, and it's apparently the hideout of a cult that worships a Lamia.
We tried rescuing our friend, and the townsfolk are spooked so we, the remaining party members go in alone. I was a Pugilist Vampire Half-Orc (really good DPS and literally punch things to death) and the other party member was a necromancer. We got ambushed immediately, and took care of the encounter but we were chunked badly.
We continue to explore the cave and come into a huge chasm, and out into the distance is a bonfire with settlements surrounding it. My sharp eyes see our friend being offered as sacrifice to their deity and there A LOT of cultists armed the same way as the previous ones we encountered.
The Necromancer informs me that the last encounter ate up his spell slots and even then, there's not enough bodies to take down a towns-worth of cultists and the fact they're going to execute our friend in a few minutes.
Now, in-character, my character wishes to die in the glory of battle to end his cursed existence as a Half-Orc Vampire. But in the interest of continuing the plot, I let the necromancer device the next move(and the fact we're like Lv3). We peaced out.
This can only end in two ways - becoming the BBEG or (in case of being lawful of good) goes off with a bang.
Todd: _Pays a cruel prison guard and is a total douche to his fellow players_
The Team: _Abandons him to die_
Todd: *Surprised Pikachu face*
This is what I needed today
BiL was all kinds of rude and stupid. I can't believe he's 27 yrs old
You should equalize them.
I've had characters that do things that are not ideal (character was reckless and aggressive, with anger issues), but I openly stated "this isn't the smartest thing to do, but it is what she wants to do." Note that she was never stupid, just reckless, and didn't do anything that would unduly harm the party or had consequences that she couldn't live with (mostly kicking in doors, breaking chests that happened to be a mimic, and being aggressive with spells sometimes not ideal in a tactical sense but did a lot of damage)
My one and only “it’s what my character would do” is when my party entered a demon infested floor of a mega dungeon. We were playing it stealthy, but we entered a room where many MANY humanoids were turned into a writhing flesh wall that wrapped around the entire room. So, my only course of action was to light it ablaze to put them out of their misery. The party at this point yelled at me because I gave away our position, believing I was an evil alignment due to the fact that my character disguises himself as a Wendigo and has no tolerance for most Monstrous races despite the campaign being filled with them as if they were a common citizen, and they got even more pissed at me when I could only say it’s what my character would do due to the nature of secrecy surrounding my character
I remember my "it's what my character would do" which only came as a shock to the DM, and not to anyone else in the group. My character killed 30 innocent people, because they were annoying her. The story behind why she killed the 30 innocent people, is a long one, and requires going further back than when the murder session (what we as a group decided to call it at the end of said session) took place. The highlight of the whole ordeal, is that I didn't have to defend my character's action, because everyone else did it for me.
My most commonly said phrase has been. "I want to, but my character wouldn't do it"
That first story i think could have worked if the DM had done some things different. The empire is notoriously cruel and especially critical of force sensitive people. I would have had the warden immediately arrest the force sensitive guard when he reported the incident due to this as well as a fear that the guard might have been plotting against the empire. Being so callously and casually betrayed by the empire he held so dear would have been a good reason for him to side with the other players and help them escape.
That wouldn't work because almost all Imperial Dungeoneers were clones. Also Palpatine has two dozen force using organizations at his employ.
@@emberfist8347 Semantics. The point is that the empire needed to betray that player that was working for them to make him switching sides believable. Doesn't ultimately matter how.
I was playing a circle of the moon druid, we also had a human wizard and a human conquest paladin. We were losing very badly to a large group of enemies each were more powerful then we were. The bbeg who sent them wanted an npc we were trying to protect. He wanted her to force her to marry him. She was unconscious on the field, I yelled for my party to come to me so I could open a portal for us to escape. The wizard did immediately, while the conquest paladin said he wasn't going to leave the npc behind because it's what his character would do. I simply said "okay" and opened the portal and me and the wizard escaped. I knew we could effect a rescue of the npc because the bbeg didn't want to hurt her AND that conquest paladins would NOT stay behind in a hopeless situation to....I don't know what he thought he was going to do...but he was taken prisoner as well. We had to save them both just me and the wizard.
Yeah I've heard that excuse before. One of my players decided to make an elven sorcerer while trying out the alignment chaotic neutral. The subtype of chaotic neutral she went with however was the ever-popular loon subtype, more focus on the chaotic than on the neutral. Maybe chaotic random would be a more apt terminology. Yes, this character would waste spell slots to magic missile other party members merely because she was chaotic neutral.
My player's ship was boarded by an obvious big bad. One of the players decided to attack him anyway despite him saying he would search their ship in search of something and if they did not have it (they didn't) he would leave and no one would need to be harmed. He was knocked out instantly and another player sacrificed himself to save the party, he gave himself to the evil pirate's crew without a fight on the condition he wouldn't kill everyone. The player who attacked woke up long after the pirates had left, he immediately boarded their dinghy and left to sail after the pirate captain...alone...because that's what he said his character would do.
This sounds more like a player who may have been wanting an RP redemption arc but was shut down by everyone who, I suppose, had locked-in ideas about the game and weren't open to going with the potential flow.
I would have let him get a ship, and then I would have taken him aside after session 1 and talked to him and asked if he was hoping RP might change his character: for better or worse. I mean, this is a Star Wars setting. The bad guys always come back or hound the good guys. And who knows? There could have been a tense point in the story where the ex-guard is torn between the runaway slaves, and his own abandoned duties/loyalties.
Also, again I must point out that this is a Star Wars setting. His cruel guard would have been in DEEP doodoo with the Empire for fleeing, regardless of his intentions. Revealing that in RP could have been a pivotal moment for that character and the others. Killing him in session 1 just sounds like a waste really.
I completely agree, but I also think something like this needs to be told to the Dm prior to the session.
I really think that, that's something they should have established in session zero.
I agree however I also think the player himself fucked up. He could've came up with something about force sensitive people disappearing and the holocron basically gave him a death sentence if he reported it. Instead he reported it to his superiors and lost the trust of his fellow party members. He could've been that edgy, albeit realistic anti-hero with a redemption arc but he fucked that himself. The fact that it would need DM intervention from his roleplaying is a pretty bad sign to begin with.
If so it was up to the player to either tell the other players and GM, or convince them in character that his character was redeemable.
@@Squall598 The thing is, if the Dm was in on it, he could've been captured (either when they were leaving or after he chased them down) and had a shaky relationship that could've evolved into trust or even companionship. I agree that he could've done better, but it still could have been on the table if he had talked about it with the Dm prior.
Why do I get the feeling he doesnt know what character hes playing? Each character he made afterwards tried tactics the previous one should of used 😂
aaah yes when I played the Underdark campaign the entire party was either neutral or evil..all save my bard..who is chaotic good. At the point where 3 NPCs go missing Francis headed out with the rogue and cleric to search...upon hearing monstrous growling even the cleric ran back to the boat not wanting to risk it. It was just Francis who canonically was an entertainer..just a musician trying to make a name for himself caught up in nonsense cause he tried to seduce the draw queen...who risked his life going further in. One REALLY good cast of calm emotions and help from two were rats he managed to make it back having saved all 3 of the Npc's signal handled making friends with the deep gnomes topsy and turvey and never telling the PC party they were secretly were rats. This was only the firs time no one saved my bard..as he kept risking his life to save others. Being the whole truly heroic member of the party was exhausting time and time again Francis would save people npc and pc alike..even being forced to became party healer cause the cleric was a war cleric..It did eventually evolve Francis the tieflings bards character of being WAY too good of a person despite his race and class and having a no one left behind attitude.