Your Interesting D&D Characters

For those that have played (or are lucky enough to still play) PnP D&D, care to share some of the particulars of your more interesting D&D characters (or Pathfinder, since that seems to be pretty much the offspring of D&D 3.0/3.5)?

I'll start with a few of my most memorable ones. For me, the names don't always stay in memory, but the character concepts do.

Phoenix: A human wizard (with 1 fighter level for some hitpoints and weapon proficiencies), developed in a campaign where two of my players took turns DMing (switching every week or two). Both DMs had very different styles. One was very strict with the money/treasure, and would do his best to make sure any excess had a way of being used up or stripped from the PCs (he also ran the game as kind of antagonistic to the PCs, pitting them against challenges that were often fatal..."oh, look, let's spend our reserve gold on resurrection spells"). The other was more lenient with the loot (mostly to make up for the other guy's tendencies). My inventive wizard took to researching new spells that were designed for combat...mostly ray spells that didn't allow saving throws. He also was very discreet with his money, and took to doing all his research under the canopy of non-detection spells (so that his enemies couldn't scry on him to learn what he had access too...yeah, just so the first DM couldn't have enemies with foreknowledge for preparing for his unique spells).

"death from above": In an evil, city-based campaign, where the PCs were a team of criminals in Waterdeep. One of the rare times I planned out a character to at least 10th level. The goal: an assassin that drops unnoticed behind someone on the street in broad daylight, kills them, then vanishes (even in full view of witnesses). Rogue/Assassin/Shadowdancer, with a few wise investments over the course of the game: a ring of feather falling (for dropping off buildings safely), hat of disguise (for looking different every time, sometimes looking like his competitors in the assassination business), cloak of elvenkind and boots of elvenkind (for extra stealth), and two permanent magical tattoos, one that cast knock at will (because he couldn't pick a lock to save his life) and another that cast reveal the hidden (so he wouldn't have to take much time looting during robberies). He ended up very effective at what he did, even if he couldn't do much in a straight up battle. Made another player mad (my character was more effective than his shade-templated character with several other weird additions from mutliple sourcebooks).

"speedy strikes": Pure monk + lots of tumble ranks + boots of striding and springing. He would charge into battle to take out spellcasters, and chase down enemies fleeing (even on horseback). It also helped one time when the rest of the party was killed...he grabbed their best stuff and ran off (even outpacing a couple of flying enemies), then sold off some of the party's gear to get them resurrected.

The last PnP game I played I had a Ray, he was a straight CG fighter instead of a LG Paladin and dumb as a brick but strong as a ox, he was the one in our group to charge headlong into whatever they encountered no matter what it was, be it a enemy or a strange door. More than a couple times did he go run and gun through a door way and hit a magical trap only to get him dumb ol' self "poofed" into a room without a apparent way out inside the dungeon/tower/whatever we were exploring. I ended up stopping playing him when he and a DM controlled gnomish wiz managed to blow up a entire lake while "fishing with explosives" and destroyed said wizzy's entire village in the process. He thought it was a great idea, saved time

After that debacle I rolled up a LG Elven Blade Dancer who dual wielded katanas, ooh he was cool, whipped butt while running across walls and ceilings, with the proper gear of course. One of my fav adventures with this pc was a trip to the hells to retrieve the soul of a fallen companion who was taken by a God he held no belief in, it took some doing but the party convinced said God to release the characters soul back to the mortal plane and resurrected him.

All of our adventures had the same protagonist that followed our party's progress from another realm, Ray used to see his Raven but none other in the party could see him until said protagonist made himself known to the party whether by materializing in their presence or teleporting them to his fortress to send them on the next leg of their adventure. He seemed to enjoy toying with them thoroughly. The last we saw them they had a run in with a witch who turned them into flesh golems for her own amusement and required them to complete some rather nasty tasks to be returned to their former forms. Good times

Well, I dont think anybody will be surprised.... but Crideas Bane was one for me. He was a human wizard (Wizard 6/Spell Addict 5/Archmage 5)

NOTE: Spell Addict was from a 3rd party sourcebook, its main thing was to allow a PC to forego many benefits of their normal casting class such as base attack, saves, bonus feats, familliar, and even hps because they only get 1d2 per level in exchange for gaining +2 caster levels and spells per day on 3rd and 5th level and the usual +1 on 1st, 2nd and 4th, so for 5 levels invested you ended up with 7 levels of casting ability, but only +1 base attack at 4th level)

Upon reaching 16th character level and hence 5th Archmage level because you cant start Archmage until you can cast 7th level spells meaning you need at least 13 levels of casting ability, (with +3 to caster level for the 'Spell Power' arcana from Archmage which he picked several times) and gaining access to the Archmage's "Spell-like ability" feature, as well as the Wish spell, he dumped a great deal of his time and money into:

1. Taking the "Shapechange" spell as a spell-like ability 2/day with his Archmage class feature.

2. He also dumped time and the rest of his funds into locating items with Wishes to allow him to pull off the "cast 5 wishes in a row to gain a +5 inherent bonus to one stat" so he got +5 INT.

3. The last thing I had him do was use his last wish to permanently change himself into a Pixie. Flight, Spell Resistance, Dex Int and Cha boost, spell-like abilities, small size, etc. it was awesome, and I was willing to deal with all the jokes both in and out-of-character

So now, with his jacked up INT, and special pixie abilities, he was a force on the battle field, and his Shapechange spell-like ability offered incredible versatility (mainly because he had almost all of the knowledge skills at very high ranks, so there werent may creatures he didnt know about. Automatically succeeded on the knowledge checks for most of them.)

The worst thing I ever did to the DM was when we assaulted a lair of Drow. They had a "dome" on their fortress. I used one of my shapechange uses to become a 40HD red dragon (remember he had 17 caster levels normally, and the 'spell power' arcana from archmage which he picked 3 times gave him another +3 caster levels for 20, and Shapechanges allows a max of 2xcaster level in HD) I melted the dome with a breath, then flew the party inside. Then we saw about 40+ drow in entrenched positions all with magical bows and now drawing arrows of dragon-slaying (I happened to have greater arcane sight active so I automatically identified the bows, the arrows, and the buffs they had up which saved our butts in all honesty). So on my next turn, I waited for the party to get clear, then flew into the middle of the drow (I did have to make a few fort saves because the drow won intiative and 40 attacks means at least a few are going to roll 20s... but still, I was a 40HD dragon, and I had 2 luckblades on me, I wasnt failing the saves lol) where I cast a Modenkainen's Disjunction. Needless to say with my jacked up INT, very few saves were successful... so pretty much all the buffs, bows, and arrows went "POOF!".

As I was letting my party mop up the now severely diminished drow soldiers, I spotted a bright magical aura emanating from a side passage. Used a free action to shift back to shift into drow form, cast invisibility, and went to investigate. Just as i was about to reach the corner, a bestial-looking Drow (found out later he was a half-dragon) stepped out, and the layers of powerful magical auras was very, very bright.

I won initiative and managed to nail him with a quickened (greater rod of quickening) disjunction and a dimensional anchor. Now he was unbuffed and most of his items were gone, and he couldnt escape via dimensional travel. Unfortuntaely for me, he wasnt planning to escape and he popped me with an energy drain. I burned a luckblade re-roll, but made the save on the 2nd try. Now it was my turn again, and I hit him square with a quickened (from the rod again) disintegrate.... but he saved (I was amazed that a drow had such a high Fort bonus, especially an arcane caster with 9th level spells). Seeing as attack spells werent getting it done, I decided that because he had 9th level spells but was now unbuffed and vulnerable, I needed to stop him from casting more spells. I burned a free action to change into a Beholder (my Shapechange spell was still active) and blanketed him with my anti-magic eye, and readied my standard action to follow him if he tried to move out of the area.

Sure enough he did try to move, and would have gotten out of the cone simply due to the fact that my base speed was now only 20 (yeah, beholders move rate kinda stinks), however, I had more buffs active than just greater arcane sight. Extended haste, Moment of Prescience, and Stoneskin among them. The haste allowed my readied action to keep him in the cone, preventing him from doing something terrible to my party. He called to some of the drow, about 7 of them, who peeled off and keyed in on my rear flank. Unfortuntaely for them... thats probably the *worst* place to be against a beholder. Two rounds of readied actions to keep the drow caster locked down and free actions of peppering his minions with eyebeams later (which was a pain due to their SR and the caster level of the eyebeams not being very high) I had managed to petrify 2 and outright disintegrate 1 of the drow.... and my party was done mowing down the rest of the drow and were now headed in my direction to seal the deal on this fool.

My party made short work of the drow bodyguards, and were closing in on the caster. Then he did the unthinkable. He flat-out *ran*. For all his incredible Arcane power, he was screwed, and he knew it. He provoked multiple attacks of opportunity from my party as he ran through multiple threatened areas. A few AoOs missed and he stoically ate the damage from the others. Still alive, he was now well beyond the reach of my antimagic, even with my readied action to attempt to keep pace. He had run 120 feet, and I could only mitigate 40 of that. He was 80 feet away which was a full 20 feet outside of my 60 foot cone. We have chase, and some of my party caught up but had no actions to use. I double-moved and got him in the antimagic cone again. Then he repeated his desperate gambit. Took a few hits, but now he was outside the antimagic and very close to an escape tunnel. A third round in a row, and he was now able to use only a move action to escape the antimagic cone, and did not suffer any attacked of opportunity. Then he got off his Time Stop.

Like a reasonably intelligent being, he didnt like his chances in a fight against a magic-nerfing beholder backed up by 5 powerful melee combatants. So again, he smartly took the time to run, but not before hasting himself and putting up a couple defenses. The last thing myself and the party saw was him in the act of casting the time stop. When time resumed, he was just gone. I cast True Seeing and there was no sign of him. I knew we were going to lose him if we didnt give chase, and I was fairly certain he went into the tunnel because it was too small for my beholder form to fit into. I shifted into the form of a Quickling and raced into the tunnel after him with my true seeing active, my party right behind me.

I was counting on the timestop having so short a duration that other than one or two spells he didnt have time to prepare ambushes or traps, and probably wouldn't risk stopping to try and dispel my dimensional anchor (if he failed the dispel check then he would have wasted the round and let us gain too much ground). Two rounds in, we came to a fork in the stone tunnel. The stone was unworked, and there was no obvious sign of his passage. I had to take the round to search for a clue.... and when the Dm called for the search check, I knew I had to succeed or we would lose the bugger.... only to have him ambush us at some later time while we were unprepared and vulnerable. Not a chance I was willing to accept while I had a choice, so I burned my active Moment of Prescience buff to gain a +20 on the search check. Sure enough, that did it, and I spotted the very faint scuff marks from him running into the left corridor. Another round in, with my movement rate of 110 feet (80 base speed for quickling plus 30 for my soon to be expired extended haste spell), I was able to catch up enough to get line of sight. He was still trucking at full tilt to escape from his impending demise.

He kept moving, and on my next turn, I knew I needed to hammer the final nail in the tactical coffin. I needed to, with a single stroke, trap him between my antimagic on one side, and my charging comrades on the other, with nowhere to run, and nothing to help him.

Naturally, I used my final use of my Rod of Quickening for a Quickened Dimension door spell to appear about 5 feet ahead of him, facing him, in the passage. The passage was too small for me to take the shape of a beholder without the walls crushing me and doing damage.... but I looked it up, and the damage from assuming a form too large for a space was only something like 1d8 per size category above what was safe for the space...

I had a stoneskin spell up *evil grin*.

The walls of the tunnel did not count as magical, so as I used a free action to change form to beholder, the sides and edges of my form were cramped and smooshed, and I would have taken damage, but my stoneskin made my body hard enough that the stone of the walls itself also crushed and cracked a bit (the walls couldnt penetrate my damage reduction lol). I was stuck, to be sure, and was probably holding that area of the passage from collapsing from the structural damage I had just done, but I was in front of the bastard Drow, with my central anti-magic eye "all-up-in-his-grill".

He was all done. And again, he knew it.

He turned to face my party, drew a shortsword, and charged to his death at the hands of my ex-fiance's PC, the Paladin with the adamantine broadsword.

The feeling of triumph when the DM described the look of resignation crossing his dark elven features was something I will carry with me for as long as I live. It was one of those rare sessions where all the struggles and adventures up to that point to acquire all the tricks, and tools, and abilities you were working towards all finally pays off... and you manage to use those tools in the right way, at the right time.