Your most unique character personality?

[Prometheus]

We've all had characters who were considerably more complex and defined than their class and race would indicate. For a long time, I was a hack-n-slasher, but I recently started roleplaying more, and I came up with what I think is a fairly unique character concept for a 4th edition Eberron campaign: a ranger conspiracy theorist, who lives away from society so he can keep an eye on nature, which he does not trust. That being said, he doesn't trust much of anything. He believes that all the warforged were made by the Quori, that the Day of Mourning was Daelkyr plot, that the Sovereign Host is an illusion perpetuated by the Dark Six, that silverware will come to life and stab out your eye while you're not looking, and that it's his job to warn everyone he meets about these dangers.

So, what was YOUR most unique and interesting D&D character (any edition)?

EDIT: I realized that I was unintentionally excluding characters from other tabletop RPGs... Feel free to talk about characters from anything (Star Wars, Warhammer 40k, etc).

[Mal]

I've never had an opportunity to try 4.0. In 3.5 I had a Half fey human with the Dragonfire adept class. I focused on my charisma aspects and whatnot. He was slowly building up what was needed for his own kingdom, buying land here and there, buying castles, ....building an organized crime syndicate so he could control other country's internally and produce revolts when he wanted to take one over.... He was a nice guy! I swear!

Moral ambiguity aside, what made him really fun was his "mysterious" personality. He always wore large robes and whatnot, effectively shocking the party (never let them see my character sheet) when I had giant butterfly wings. Then combat came and they were really confused by this butterfly man who could breathe fire. Took them at least 8 sessions to finally figure out my race and class. They never learned his name till the 6th episode when the DM stuck a character in who knew him....

Yes, I am proud of my character, Raiga Ashknife

[Bobby Archer]

Probably my favorite character quirk was Grac the Dismemberer, an Orc Barbarian I played in an Evil characters campaign a friend of mine ran a few years back. Basically, Grac insisted on cutting off one leg of every enemy he personally killed so that he could wear their thigh bones ("strong bones" he called them) on his armor in order to gain the strength of his enemies. This initially irritated the other characters who had made a habit of selling the bodies of their fallen foes to a local necromancer (also, one of the other characters eventually gained the ability to create undead herself). Eventually, they reached a compromise: the value of any corpses Grac ruined by taking their strong bones came out of his share of the treasure.

[Vann]

My friends and I started a 4th edition campaign a little while back and my current character, Connor, is probably one of my favorites.

He's a cocky, over-zealous braggart who considers himself to be quite the ladies man. He always has to be in the front of the party and usually rushes straight into battle, specializing in fighting with claws. So it surprised everyone during one of our tougher encounters when Connor shot a beam of light at the enemy, revealing himself to in fact be a Sorcerer.

Their reactions were priceless.

[Prometheus]

Basically, Grac insisted on cutting off one leg of every enemy he personally killed so that he could wear their thigh bones ("strong bones" he called them) on his armor in order to gain the strength of his enemies.

If this was in third edition (or 3.5), carrying around an extra leg was actually a sound tactical move. After all, according to the Player's Handbook, you get a +4 bonus on balance checks to resist trip attempts if you have more than two legs.

Of course, my rules-lawyering brother insisted that wouldn't work, since legs are use-activated items.

[Bobby Archer]

Basically, Grac insisted on cutting off one leg of every enemy he personally killed so that he could wear their thigh bones ("strong bones" he called them) on his armor in order to gain the strength of his enemies.

If this was in third edition (or 3.5), carrying around an extra leg was actually a sound tactical move. After all, according to the Player's Handbook, you get a +4 bonus on balance checks to resist trip attempts if you have more than two legs.

*rimshot*

[Kingrames]

Created a tiefling warlock for 4th edition named "It". A genderless, identityless person who lost its name, past, and just about everything in its warlock pact with a being from the far realms, named "It the Greater."

Playing 4th edition has been lots more fun than I expected. I recommend it to anyone still being a hardcore grognard.

[Rhyme-o-mancer]

I had a chaotic evil paranoid schizophrenic wild elven arcane archer. He made a habit of eating the tongues of his enemies to hear their secrets and gain their power. He basically just wanted to see the whole system fall. He was pretty fun to play in a neutral party. They would always hold him back and would only give him his ancestral bow when they were fighting enemies, though he killed quite a few people bare handed.

[Bobby Archer]

chaotic evil paranoid schizophrenic wild elven arcane archer.

That's a mouthful, in and of itself.

[psilontech]

Ah, one of my favorite characters was from an epic length campaign from a few years ago where we played the same party from level 1 to level 18.

Candid, the Changeling Rogue/Chameleon. From the start, ridiculous disguise (Would often change appearance and even gender and introduce it's self as a different character to the group after the previous character decided for whatever reason to "leave" the group, often pretending to be a different class, and once the DM suggested the chameleon class, pretty much WAS the class!), Bluff, Diplomacy, and the such.

I remember once we were guarding a transport ship going upstream a large river to sell off it's goods when the party is attacked by a vampire the captain had pissed off at some point in the past. (The river ran near his lair, the captain knew this, which is why he hired US, but failed to inform us that a vampire attack may occur... Bastard.) He tried a dominate person while I was alone in the ship's hold and failed by a single point, but I used my ridiculous bluff into him believing it had succeeded. He ended up with a sleight of hand induced 'fireball' after a large sum of alchemists fire found it's way into his backpack while he was distracted by his lechery. Lulz where had.

[Cmdr I. Heartly Noah]

I built a rogue who was a fence by trade, and also a scribe/gemcutter and ran a pawn shop as a front, and whose skills lay in disguise, appraisal, and such - zero pick locks, zero disarm traps, low sneakiness

[Crovius]

His name was Squee. He was a goblin sorcerer who loved to use sonic energy... a bit too much. At one point in the campaign we were chasing a bunch of bandits into a cave. After cornering them, Squee decided to release a sonic burst... inside the very small cave. As luck would have it he rolled max damage, taking down the bandits, and the ceiling. The whole party was killed by the collapse... except for the dwarf mage who had readied quickened dimension door, and a gnome rogue that happened to be picking the wizards pocket. (It wasn't discovered this was why until the wizard questioned the rogue. After which, there was a nice pile of dust left behind.)

[TheLurker]

In a friends homebrew 3.5 D&D game I played a Psion known as Cade. He suffered complete amnesia due to head trauma as well numerous injuries that left him basically crippled. Found by monks and taken in at their monastery to be nursed back to health, he slowly learned how to do even the most simple things over again as he healed mentally and physically. Spending long hours trapped in his own body his iron will and forced meditation eventually manifested as psionic abilities. He quickly learned to move things with his mind even before his body was able to heal. As Cade was a blank slate, he also found he could read a book or other material such as a map and remember it completely enough that he could re-produce it when required. This lead to him memorizing any book he could get his hands on.

As a side effect of the head trauma and his amnesia he was often lost in thought as he delved into the damaged parts of his brain in a attempt to find bits of his past. The other party members would have to specifically call out my characters name several times before I'd allow Cade to respond. When he did respond it would often contain quite a bit of stuttering as one of the few things he had difficulty learning to do in a monastery devoted to introspection was speaking. However, they always wanted Cade's impute because of his high Intelligence and his knowledge of a wide range of subjects and would humor his quirks.

Considering the large amounts of boulders we seemed to find in the campaign, his ability to pick up and throw large objects with a thought didn't hurt his popularity with the party either.

[Pentegarn]

Our DM had an interesting idea once that you could start out at a random level between 1 and 6 (roll for it obviously) so if we rolled higher then a 2 we had to come up with a backstory explaining ourselves up to that point. I rolled a 6

I had a halfling fighter/paladin/monk named Melvin Badsilbok that was a member of a locally known retired adventuring team. His retired party members were a human monk named Gilax, a dwarf priest named Struuf, a human mage named Eras, and a human rogue named Analyn. Together they had rid the city of a wererat group that had been in the city for years, and after that had retired as local heroes. Melvin was a scribe (he had been working as Eras assistant). One day though Melvin learned his party members had been murdered one by one until he was all that was left, and he knew he was next unless he discovered who the killer was. It was fun playing him because he really was weary of adventuring and preferreed city life but was forced out of that so he was somewhat whiny and bitter about being forced out of comfortable retirement ("I worked hard on this large belly after all" was his catch phrase as it were)

[Cmdr I. Heartly Noah]

Heh, cool character. I've thought about doing that before - having a party of different levels. How did it work out?

[copperhamster]

It's not my most unique character personality, but I feel it's one of my crowning moments as a role player:

I spent time in a Star Wars campaign years ago. I played this slightly greying officer in a regional 'space navy' that was affiliated with (read, we took orders from, and they allowed us to not suck vacuum) the Empire, but not actually Imperial ships/gear. But my character worked more the rebel side of the law, as it were.

Game had run for about 6-9 months, and I did the things my character could, working to the extent of my abilities with the other members. I turn out to be the go to guy for negotiating, fast talking, and deal making. I was an excellent judge of character, and usually when I didn't trust someone, it came out that we shouldn't. I also got us and myself out of a few sticky situations... more than once they showed up to rescue me and I was already out. I occasionally got involved in fighting but being good rebels we pretty much only got into that situation when we were able to take people out hard and fast and get the hell out otherwise, though after I left the navy and started travelling with the rebels in their cargo modified troop transport, the found I was a damn good shot with the repeating blasters, and that became my battle post in the more common 'we're even/slightly overmatched and can't run away atm' battles.

So anyway about 6-9 months in, we get in WAY over our head on the ground (actually, we had snuck into an Imperial Interdictor) and gotten, well, not caught, but discovered and had our nemesis of the last 2 months after us. We were trapped, ready to make a stand vs. a 5:1 ratio of Imperial Troopers (not ST's but the non-elites), and the Bounty hunter was doing the 'old man, keep your head down I don't want to see it get shot off before mine when the blasters bolts start flying' thing.

I confidently pulled out my little navy issue blaster pistol that was an antique when the seperatist movement started, which was about good on the pistol range. Well maybe not there, it had a tohit penalty ( and seriously, it did less damage than the holdout blasters most of the party had hidden on their person), got in the front rank and waited. Here came our 'got all the stormtrooper training but got drummed out because he was too independant' nemesis in his custom armor, his navy troopers, and 4 Stormtroopers assigned to him.

Fighting starts after the usual threat/counterthreat. Nemesis ends up leading the move into position with his custom (force field equipped) armor, and the storm troopers using him as shelter. They get under cover where our cover is pretty much useless, and start pounding us, things look grim.
So I charge, jump over some obstatcles in the way, pulled my lightsaber out, took out two stormtroopers and knocked 'nemesis' and the others over with a wave of my hand. The proceed to block a 2-3 blaster shots from the troopers who start firing at the obvious target, the crazy old man waving a lightstick...

"You're a JEDI?" sums up the reaction from our Bounty Hunter, which due to being completely speechless loses his next turn of action because the GM asked him like 4 times what he was doing. Most of the party reacted similarly. Most of the NPC's too.. basically the GM gave me a surprise round in the middle of the combat.

I had been using the force the entire time, never really hiding it, just never advertising it. The GM went along. There was no note passing, just well understood things like 'I try to persuade him to look at things from our point of view', 'roll dice', rolls force persuasion check. I never used the word 'the force' except for other things (force points). I had even done some more overt force tricks both in view of the characters, and the players when I was out of sight, and they just didn't really pay attention because I was very low key about everything. (I thought the jig was up months ago... we got locked up in separate cells on a very lowtech planet.. physical bars and keys.. and as the jailer was walking away from my cell, last person in thanks to a suggestion about 'getting the dangerous looking ones locked up first, leave a harmless looking old man until the rest are taken care of' I did, in front of all the players, 'I try to get the keys off his belt without him noticing and the GM basically described me levitating them off the hook on his belt...) But I always had concealed, and never had used visably, my lightsaber. Though I had 'sliced' a few doors and locks. Well and some other things too...

In my quiet competance everyone assumed I was just some sort of slicer/con man type (think Lando) without the flashy moves. No-one knew I was a Jedi Knight late of the Old Replublic, on independant assignment headed to the outer rim when the orders came down to kill all of the Jedi (This was pre-ep 2, though enough spoilers were known at that point that the clones were the 'good guys'. But Order 66, even if the actual order wasn't know, was obvious to us from a Story standpoint).

Most unique would be difficult to pin down...
The vampire:masquerade character who was convinced he was really just plugged into some slick VR system (the base setting was V:TM in a future/semi-cyberpunk setting) was interesting, if a short lived game.

My 'kids get off my damn lawn' traveller bearucrat character who started his adventuring career at the spry age of 92... (You have a career, then when you get out you have skills and abilities and start 'adventuring'. you had to roll to be able to stay in your job and get more skills, otherwise you're fired, or you can not roll and just quit after a term. 'crats had a special rule that you have to roll every term, and if you succeed, have to stay in, even past retirement age. The target to stay in? 3+ on 2d6. Most 'crat characters die of old age before they get out.). He didn't cut through red tape, he phased through it like Kitty Pride, bypassing it all without disturbing it.

The conspiracy character (Imagine taking all the major 'conspiracy theories', tangling them up, mixing them into a coherant 'truth' (Aliens are here, some are in contact with governments, some just do horrific or not so horrific experments, others are preping the way for an invasion. The illuminati at least tries to be the secret government; they have several key government officials in each country, for example the majority of the US supreme court are members. There are chemicals in the water disguesed as purification and well being for mind controlish reasons, psychic and magic phenomena, etc.) and you've got this game) I had that was the uberScully. He didn't believe in any of that fantastic crap, and had never seen any rigerously tested evidence or believable testimony. Drove the other players nuts especially as I love reading that crap, and at the time listed to Art Bell while I was working nights (I know it's garbage, I just find it entertaining) so he could talk very knowlegably about the subject but had rational explanations for all of it. Mind you in his world, his rationallity was wrong.

In the vein of sceptics, I had a character in a Ghostbusters game that was an undercover agent for the EPA who got themselves hired by a Ghostbuster franchise to try to figure out what kind of chemicals they were exposing people to to inspire the so called 'ghosts' to appear.

There was that one... oh wait I don't talk about that one. nm.

An NPC I had in an 'anime themed' game I ran was a Magical Girl. Costume, wand, magic zappies, short speech length attack phrases, the works. Boring. Oh... she didn't know how to change back to normal, so she had to attend school in the costume... (And when she did get changed back, she did know how to transform into the costume again and something would come up...). Add the fact she was originally, and unwillingly, a Dark Magical Girl (bad guy) and that side of her could still be brought to the surface under the right conditions, and she helped the players live in 'interesting times'.

Somewhat cybered up merc in a cyberpunk game, his contract required he submit to cyber augmentation deemed neccessary to do the job, and accept cybernetic life saving measures to protect their investment if he was injured, and his religion (and he was quite religious) taught strongly that a) replacement of part of your body with artifical parts is a sin, even if it's for survival (artificial 'normal' heart), and b) breaking your word (and thus, contracts) was also a strong sin. They were kind of... more modern mennenites. Very conflicted character. Difficult to play well as I myself am not strongly religious.

[kin]

I think my most unique character is my current character, Hans Güzenblud aka "The Preacher." He's a human ranger/cleric. He spent most of his life as a simple ranger hunter, feeding his family and taking rich idiots out on what was essentially safari. One day, his family was murdered and defiled by demons. He sat in the ruins of his home until a voice told him to go and preach the word of this unknown God. He wrote down everything this God told him to write down in a book, which he often quotes from but no one has seen inside. He's currently starting a church in Sigil.

As you can tell by his name, he's a pretty hellfire-and-brimstone kind of guy, though he treats his adherents quite well.

I've left it up to my DM whether or not he's the real deal, or just batshit insane. I'm sure I'll find out eventually.

[Rhyme-o-mancer]

If Star Wars characters are acceptable, then I had a Jedi that I really liked. He was a red haired human that was raised by the Togruta, so he never wore shoes anywhere he went and was, by our standards, a raging communist. He was at best an average Padawan and barely made it to Jedi Knight, but it was also at that time that the Massacre of the Jedi took place. Instead of making a heroic stand, he fled to the seedy underbelly of the galaxy. While in hiding, he got addicted to spice (why Star Wars stole spice from Dune, I'll never know) and became a low time smuggler. Eventually though, using his Jedi skills, he rose through the ranks of the smugglers and was en par with Han Solo circa A New Hope. Then, when the Jedi Order was re-established, he kind of joined, doing the occasional odd job but mostly keeping to himself. Really, it was just fun to have a drug addicted Jedi.

[Housellama]

My favorite character was easily my ex-Shiba ronin from my Legend of the Five Rings game.

He started as a rising star in the Shiba family. He was born of the lineage one of the Phoenix's clan's greatest heroes, and his honored ancestor's spirit took a personal interest in him. He showed great skill in school, standing out above all others in his class. He was chosen to participate in a research project by the Master of Void as an honor guard. During the ritual, something went wrong and the Isawa shugenja (priest) he was assigned to protect died. He was completely without fault in the incident, but someone had to be blamed. Since the shugenja died on his watch, he was the one who took it. He pulled in all the favors he could not to be made ronin immediately. Instead, he was sent on a Musha Shugyo (warrior's pilgrimage). It worked out to the same thing, since pilgrims have no clan or family while on their journey. He cast aside his old name, and took the name Jin, one of the tenants of Bushido (Compassion).

He made his way for a few years before chronicle start as a yojimbo (bodyguard). During that time, he developed an appreciation for the teachings of Shinsei (religion mirroring buddhism/taoism). He started to become more and more philosophical as time went on. He only fought in self defense or defense of others, and then would always try to talk his opponents out of fighting, even during the combat itself. He hated to kill, and did so only with the most extreme reluctance (He actually had a disadvantage that forced him to pass a test to kill and gave him penalties for the rest of the day if he DID make the test). He acted with honor at all times, remained polite and respectful to everyone, even those who hated or treated him badly for being a ronin. During the course of the chronicle, he had a run-in with a kenku (legendary swordsmen raven men shapeshifters, modeled after the Tengu of Japanese folklore) and was mentored in their sword techniques. Only the greatest heroes of Rokugan have ever been mentored by the Kenku. He also spent several years escorting monks from the Brotherhood of Shinsei across the land, learning from them.

He died defending Toshi Ranbo from a Lion clan attack. The Crane clan had taken the city from the Lion, and were defending it. After leading a collection of ronin in a series of ambushes and delaying actions against the Lion during the Crane's attack, he agreed to remain outside the walls with his ronin to sabotage the Lion's siege equipment. The attack was successful and all of the siege equipment was destroyed. Without that, the Lion could not breach the walls. The ronin assault was considered one of the major factors in the Crane victory. Jin was grievously wounded during the attack, but survived. He would have recovered, but the Lion poisoned the food supplies on the way out. With his health already poor, his body was unable to fight off the poison and he died. The Crane raised a statue in his honor, and the ronin he lead founded the Tessen, a group dedicated to the protection of Toshi Ranbo (in L5R canon, the Tessen were not founded for about a decade or so after where we were in the timeline, but the GM was so impressed with Jin's actions and sacrifice that he had them found the group early in our continuity).

I had a great time with the character. I spent many game sessions and many downtime scenes debating philosophy, discussing the meaning of Bushido, exploring the self through kenjutsu with the kenku (sword fighting). In the L5R setting, ronin are scum of the earth. They are samurai without a master, who have no place in the Celestial Order. They are an abomination. Most turn to banditry, and even those that don't are treated like garbage. When Jin died, he was at Honor 4.5 (scale of 0-5.9, 2 being average) and Glory 6 (scale of 0-10, 3 being average). The Crane clan, notorious for their extreme dislike of ronin (to the point of arresting or killing them at any excuse) built a statue in his honor.

He took his limitations and made them strengths, and forced people to reexamine their views about a lot of things. He was an amazingly fun character to play. He had some ridiculously cheesy combat abilities (Jin held off a Kakita duelist PC for 3 rounds, and only lost the sparring match because Tug didn't turn on all his cheese for a practice match, won a duel against a different Kakita NPC, and survived a 5v2 (himself and the monk he was guarding) skirmish with a Lion patrol, killing or disabling all 5 opponents, among other exploits), but rarely if ever used them because he fought only in the defense of himself or others. He spent more time debating philosophy and religion than he did fighting. It was an awesome character, and one I miss even to this day.

-Tug

[Sethram]

I had a character in Shadowrun 4e named Carlos who happened to be a Dwarf mage, though unfortunately, none of my friends got the reference and the humour in the name was lost in translation. At first there was nothing much to the character and he was basically a walking medical kit. The DM had a homebrew campaign based on Bladerunner featuring replicants. Since they were inorganic, the rules were stacked against me doing any real damage to the replicants due to the way the magic system works. So for a while the character was very bland, couldn't really do much in battle and I didn't have much interest in him. After a few sessions though, I started rolling very poorly. Carlos lost limbs left and right and ended up having to do a lot of back alley surgery to give him crappy cybernetics. At first it started to piss me off, but I instead took the chance to give the character depth. Like I mentioned before, inorganics boop with magic in Shadowrun, and cyberware imposes penalties on the spellcaster they're installed on. So I got to explore just what happens to a mage who is slowly losing his ability to cast spells effectively and how he had to deal with that. Eventually I convinced the DM to let him start studying hacking, bought and installed a cyberdeck to him and let him transition into the world of hacking to make up for it. It worked perfectly for the campaign, though Carlos ended up becoming an alcoholic in time because of his loss of attunement to the Aether.