Author Topic: Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)  (Read 3180 times)

Offline Amechra

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Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)
« on: March 23, 2014, 05:11:33 AM »
I have a couple of NPCs in some of my games that were never intended to be at all important, but ended up being some of my favorites.

#7: OK, 7 takes some explaining; a friend and I were playing an Evil one-shot using some of Wizard's pre-existing modules (we got together and did that sometimes. Ah, good times.) At one point, we run into a group of 10 or so Orcs, who we convince to work with us. And then... we get into a fight with a pair of Ogres.

The Orcs, of course, help out. And we had numbered them all for ease of use. Some of them survived better than others, and my friend and I watched, amazed, as one of them, #7, not only survived but had the killing blow on at least one Ogre. He was the last one standing when the battle ended, none too worse for wear.

We promptly decided to promote this badass to full party member status, keeping him as #7.

Mac: OK, Mac literally came out of nowhere; I was running a horror one-shot set in New York, and my players had to get a ride to a specific subway station to investigate it. So one of the PCs whipped out a cell phone and started dialling.

"Who are you calling?"
"My friend Mac; he's a cabbie."

And lo, Mac shows up, and gives them all a ride to the subway station. Turns out his wife and kid were on the train that crashed, with his kid being the sole survivor (along with creepy supernatural stuff.) The game ended with them all at Mac's house, helping him make a stir-fry.

Who were some of your dark-horse favorites?
"There is happiness for those who accept their fate, there is glory for those that defy it."

"Now that everyone's so happy, this is probably a good time to tell you I ate your parents."

Offline Mortadelas

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Re: Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2014, 07:05:02 AM »
Bill the kind of bard.

Party steps into a tavern in a village near an entrance to the underdark. A bard is playing, I rolled a 20 so they were greatly impressed. They approached the obviously high level bard (I hadn't even thought if he was a bard or a commoner with perform ranks) to ask for tips. I'm thinking ok this will be a lying bard and kind of a troll too.
When I started RPing the Bard there was much laughter and I improvised a fake background.

-Yes I am a bard, a Ninja/Bard. Well I wanted to be a Ninja but my parents wanted me to become a bard. I didn't know we were werewolves or I wouldn't have trained my Ki. On my first turn I shadow-walked though the door and murdered my parents, so I run from my vilage and lived in the wilds while my fury for the lies that I'd been told grew.
-Are you also a Barbarian.
-Yes, I am a werewolf-elf Ninja/Bard/Barbarian/monk.
-How are you a monk?
-You have to focus to controll the inner beast silly.
After the PCs told him that they came from a city full of necromancers he desided that he needs to make his own band and left to be a Necromancer to animate his "band in a bag". At this time I desided it'd be more fun if he wasn't lying.
A year of playing later he was Ninja/Bard/Barbarian/monk/NecroWiz/NecroCleric (he found he had been lied to and that the divine way is the best to animate a band)/ Dread Pirate/Soulblade/Psion/warlock Dragonic-elf/werewolf.
When he died he became a vestige (party had a binder). On a failed check you had an uncontrollable urge to multiclass to a random class (roll d20 from alphabetical list of classes).
He who smiles when things gone wrong,
Has found someone to blame it on!

Offline Kr1o5

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Re: Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2014, 04:15:46 PM »
Castor the Kingmaker (self given name)

the PC's all suddenly manifest the mark of death, and they are approached by a member of the breland Citadels Special Operations Magic Unit, the Magicians 8.
Castor can only cast one spell, wish. he's a pure reality warper, and loves to fuck with people. one of the PC's talked back when he was giving them orders, so castor reached across the room, and and took his leg, replaced it with a peg, and turned the leg into a puma that attacked it's owner.
he operates strictly however the fuck he wants, pure chaotic. his reasons for wanting to help the PC's are shadowy, but it might be to fuck with someone else.
it's to fuck with someone else.

this guy is from a campaign i dm, and his parts are always fun for me.

next up

XELL, the soulblade master.

a supremely badass recurring villian my PC and some friends accidentally broke out a prison. there was a magic field up, so we just saw a badass breaking out of chains frozen in time. at complete random, our paladin decides to use his newest ability (we're like level 2-3), detect evil, revealing that this guy is EVIL AS FUCK. so, we lay down a ton of traps. just, so fucking many. sparkstones and stuff. we tell him not to keep walking. he keeps walking. he steps on the stones, and they go off, almost killing him.
now he's pissed, manifests his soul-katana. so our cleric casts sanctuary, a touch attack. our cleric rolls a 20, and so our sobbing DM rules that xell falls backwards into a floor full of caltrops, dying. he was level 14. we were not.

Offline BeldakSerpenthelm

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Re: Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)
« Reply #3 on: September 07, 2014, 05:14:49 PM »
In one game, I had originally conceived of an Unholy Trinity of Liches (a LE Sorcerer, a NE Cleric, and a CE Wizard) to serve as the "Final Bosses" once the campaign reached Epic Level, and Luciana was originally supposed to be some mid-level minion that would bring the Cleric's cult to the PCs' attention, and the cult would eventually lead them to the High Priest, and finally to his arcane allies.

However, Luciana became such a compelling villain in her own right - largely because her evil was based more on grief than on greed - that my players insisted that she stay in the story as the up-front Darth Vader to the High Priest's behind-the-scenes Emperor, and they spent months sending me ideas out-of-game for how I could have her survive the PC's attempts to kill her in-game.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2014, 02:30:19 PM »
I once made a halfling bard that was basically just supposed to act as a guide for the PCs as they first arrived in a city. Somehow, one of the barbarian PCs (I think it was a PC... but heck it might have even been an NPC...) wound up ruffing him up a bit, and the other PCs defended him against this treatment. Then they insisted on him basically joining their "team"... I didn't even have a full stat block made up for him yet (but that was soon rectified). He never really did anything distinguishing that I recall, except get bullied (which lured the other PCs into being sympathetic towards him).  :lmao But for some reason, he became their "mascot" basically, and I do remember the personality that I came up with for him being pretty distinct and funny (he talked really fast, like a used-car salesman, and was a complete coward  :P ).
« Last Edit: September 14, 2014, 02:32:23 PM by phaedrusxy »
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Offline wotmaniac

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Re: Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2014, 12:45:31 AM »
#7 above reminds me of a party NPC we had once ....
3rd-level party; one of the players decided to snag a hireling (human warrior 3) as a bodyguard -- his name happened to be 'Jarl'.  I decided that he would only get 1/2 the xp of the rest of the party (it didn't make any sense that he wouldn't gain any xp, but also didn't seem fair that he would advance just as quick as the party) and I figured that he would be gone within a few levels -- either dying or being dismissed after he fell behind enough levels.

And somehow, this guy ended up coming out of most combats virtually unscathed.  No matter what I threw at the party, Jarl just kept trucking along.  Eventually, Jarl renegotiated his contract so that he would get a 1/2-share of party treasure ... and that's where I shot myself in the foot (I figured the party would just balk at the new terms, and he would just go home ... I was wrong).  By level 12 (he was only ~7th) I was so sick of him being there that I started to go out of my way to target him for certain death; but to no avail.  It was like the harder I targeted him, the more he thrived.  FINALLY, I got him -- the party was level 17 (he was 12) -- it was a giant encounter involving a Hellfire Wyrm and a bunch of other crap, I finally got him with a critical hit from a axe-wielding, leveled-up Fire Giant ... as he was dragging a downed party member to safety (IOW, a lucky AoO).  They defeated the encounter, but only 1 party member survived, and had to get everyone else rez'ed. 
Incidentally, Jarl was the only one who didn't have his own True Rez scroll, so they were like "yeah, fuck that guy - he should have prepped like the rest of us".  Though, they did bring his body and gear back to his family; they even wrote a song for him "The Epic of Jarl".  So that was cool.

And all that just because of a 3rd-level warrior hireling.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2014, 12:48:23 AM by wotmaniac »

Offline SolEiji

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Re: Your favorite important NPCs (that were never meant to be.)
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2014, 01:02:31 AM »
It happens so often to me that it's become a meme.  Mostly, it usually happens when I go into a game specifically saying how I'm not running a DMPC.  Of course it doesn't happen.

The main case was when I started my Witch U games.  The intended DMPC was Min, a barbarian type.  While describing other NPCs I mentioned Cia, the quiet rogue-like who really was there mostly for a minor subplot later.  They ended up getting into a long conversation with her and started pulling her around everywhere.  Thus began Cia the DMPC, while Min ended up becoming an antagonist thanks to the party's actions later anyway.

What a weird game.
Mudada.