(besides bard) what's one class you can never take too serious? Mine is wizard
specifically necromancers.
All i can ever see is them raising the dead just to do the thriller dance
Hmm that's a hard one. Since I usually host games I end up playing practically every class at one point.
I kinda can't take sorcerers seriously. Magical nepo babies the lot of them. Grandad was special friends with an eldritch abomination or talking tree spirit and boom you've got powers.
They front as masters of raw arcane energy but all it takes is a single forehead flick to knock them the heck out
I love ridiculous 'Evil' things DnD characters would do. Example: A necromancer who raises the dead to attend the piano recital to their nephew for morale support! lots of cheers and clapping
Or even a necromancer who just raises the dead to throw the best spooky halloween party ever
Do you ever do silly/dumb stuff just cause why not?
Haha I love that. One of my d&d players loves necromancers, so these are right up their alley. One time in a dark campaign I was hosting the group faced a razor boar that had taken over an abandoned apple orchard. They defeated it and left it for about a week in-game. During that time their elf necromancer leveled up and decided they could skeletonize the razor boar carcass. Tuskzor was a wonderful skeletal beast used not only for carrying stuff, but also intimidating every npc it encountered.
I personally don't like to play evil characters, let alone ridiculous ones. I've only ever been in one evil campaign one-shot and I just couldn't connect with the character I made. I also haven't hosted any settings that have more freedom to do ridiculous happenings like that. I leave the shenanigans to my players usually.
However, I have been hosting a new game and one of my npcs has been digging themselves a hole of ridiculousness. A town guard who pined after a girl he never actually talked to, and made it everyone's problem when she got engaged. The guard got tricked into stealing a relic thinking it could make the girl love him, and never apologized for the theft (or knocking out the cleric guarding it). When brought in for their crimes, he decides to go off in the opposite direction--he's become super "emo" and is now torturing the players with his bad poetry and lamentations while they're escorting him to prison in the next town over. I get to really go all out with how ridiculously aggravating this guy is.
Interesting! I’ll try and sift through my experiences to find some funny moments. These encounters are written as I recall them. Thanks for the ask!
1. The Time I One-Shot a Drider
I was playing my first character–a changeling urban ranger (d&d 3.5)–and our party was exploring a musty old dungeon. We came across an abandoned alchemist’s lab, covered in spiderwebs. As I was the cautious one, I declared I would stand in the doorway and eye the room’s curtained extra room with my bow drawn.
As soon as the rest of the party began exploring the lab, a Drider pops up from the dark hallway! Since I had declared my caution earlier, my DM let me make a Manyshot bow and arrow attack as a surprise round! As the drider swings out with its daggers, I get a critical hit on the attack roll and instantly kill the drider single-handed!
Everyone was surprised at how quickly it ended, including the DM. It was supposed to be an encounter for the whole party and I snuffed it in the bud on a one-out-of-twenty chance. We left the drider pinned to the wall and looted the lab before going on our way.
2. I Made a Minion Soil Themselves
In a one-shot in my friend’s campaign, I played Bogbean the Dungeon Sea Hag. In the dungeon sewers of some ancient castle the group fell into my home and I led them out. We came across a room with arrow slits, and many kobolds on the other side were aiming their arrows at us.
Now as a sea hag, I am insane and use my evil eye sparingly. After dodging arrows, I creep up to an arrow slit and use my creepy fish eye to glare into the room. I effectively cursed a kobold to freeze up in terror and pitifully flee with soiled trousers! It didn’t help that the entire castle believed I was a bogey-woman of the dungeon, and the lord of the castle was scared of me (due to some incidental childhood trauma I inflicted while skulking around the castle at night)
That was a fun game, I wish I had had the chance to play Bogbean more!
More below the cut! Thanks so much for the ask, my friend!!
3. Betrayal in the Kobold Colony
This was an interesting encounter we had while I still played my changeling ranger. The group was welcomed into what we had heard was a nasty colony of kobolds. But the kobolds were nothing but nice to us, even if they were a bit gruesome and cruel. The group (seemingly as a whole) decided to destroy the colony during their daily rituals the next morning.
I refused at first, as the Chaotic Neutral character I had no reason to dislike the kobolds–and it led to a very heated debate about the nature of “evil” races being born as such, with almost every one in the party trying desperately to convince me to join in. I relented in the end, demanding that afterwards every member of the party owed me one “favor”.
We got into position the next morning, sprung the attack! And instantly figured out that the crowds of kobolds in the main hall of colony were an illusion cast by several kobold clerics. Apparently during the heated discussion our tattletale monk went off and warned the kobolds the night before.
So, we have to fight the kobold clerics casting spells at us. And eventually the roof just full on caves in. We barely escape with our lives, and then gave our monk a talking too. In retrospect I find the whole absurd deception (and our DM’s improv skills) hilarious! But I learned to keep my eye on the quiet ones from then on. Haha!
4. Baby Lich Multiclassing!
Our group (changeling ranger again), came across a town of people in the middle of the woods. They looked human but were in fact liches–brought to life as an experiment by our Big Bag lich enemy. However, as they were pretty much harmless (effectively just sentient corpses that don’t have any abilities beyond mortals), we let them be.
But the funniest part of this was that we adopted a lich! Her name was Kaylee, and she was a ten year old girl (in appearance). Our adventuring team decided to raise her and train her in Every One of our classes. Kaylee was fun, and her grasp on morality was hilarious.
The funniest moment with her (before we bought a house together and began training her) was when we were shopping in a town. We just gave her the best armor and a brand new enchanted spear to protect herself with. Suddenly, a cry from the crowds of a thief come; and Kaylee instantly throws her spear at the thief. She gets a critical hit and eviscerates the thief! We have to calm the local police (who are very confused) and then take Kaylee aside to chastise her. We eventually teach her the difference between moral actions and violence with an excuse!
As the chaotic neutral changeling of the party I wasn’t as harsh with her, but tried to give her direction away from any extreme alignment thinking. But we loved our little lich baby!
5. I Rule the Wolves
In a friend’s survival campaign, I played a killoren druid. Killoren (for those who don’t know) are basically just fey made of plant matter who embody one aspect of nature (Hunter, Destruction or Wisdom). I had a companion cheetah and for some reason I decided to help out a shipwrecked colony of halflings and their protectors (the rest of the adventuring party). They had gotten beached on a voyage to the “new world”, aka my homeland, from some enigmatic spreading evil. (Tbh the DM of that campaign was never the best with worldbuilding and made a LOT of mistakes with that game–like punishing some players).
In any case, one night I declare I will keep watch over the colony. But as the night wears on, it becomes very obvious that there are a bunch of wolves scoping out the helpless halfling mooks.
So I cast Speak with Animals on myself, trying to give the colony some chance at survival by scaring off the wolves. I make a dramatic speech in Wolf, and get a critical hit on my Intimidate check!
The wolves immediately back the heck on up and leave! And everyone was impressed at how quickly that encounter changed on a dime! A lot of great moments I find are when the DM has to improv against that incredibly slim chance of Nat 20s screwing with their plans! And it felt good to stake my claim against the wild (and the vindictive DM).
(cause I'm annoying and won't stop talking my crap xD) i love the idea that a lich becomes one, not for ultimate knowledge, not for ultimate magic, but simply for a stupid grudge. "I'm going to make sure ALL of history knows how big of a di*k you are SAM!" so the lich just goes around making sure generation after generation learns to hate the one person for all of time
Never apologize for sharing your ideas! I love getting ideas and asks all the time!
First off, YES! This is freaking hilarious to me. I could definitely see a Petty Lich spreading the drama of some jerk throughout the land.
If the jerk was also a self-righteous paladin (lawful jerk), it’d be doubly hilarious! “Hate the undead? Boom! I’m now a magic AF skeleton and I’ll be around to tell your grandchildren what a prick you were, Steven!” (Paladin Steve... lol)
i always found fantasy classes throughout their levels funny. in a very general sense of melee fighters: i can swing this stick" spellcasters: "i can make this spark of fire! but, like once a day" then by end game, spellcasters: "I CAN SUMMON THE POWER OF THE HEAVENS TO RAIN DOWN AND SMITE MY ENEMIES!" melee fighters: "i can swing this stick, but like, really good now"
Haha, I also think its pretty funny. Magic is super overpowered when you’ve got stick-swinging level twenty fighters alongside world-rending merlin clones. Thankfully, those fighters spend all their money on super-mega-death-enchanted “sticks” that kill a creature so hard their grandparents never met.
And put a man with a sword right next to a spellcaster... There’s a reason spellcasting classes are considered “squishy”--its the sound they make upon contact with melee weapons. Haha! The mage won’t have time to mumble an incantation before they’re beaned in the head, and they’ve got no armor to help block damage because it goes against the “mage aesthetic”. Plus, they’re pretty much sitting ducks once they’ve burnt their highest spells--especially if their aim sucks and they waste magic.
Class-based rpgs have always had the problem of balancing classes against one another.
