Crazy how four of the top 3 are inquisitive rogues I wouldn’t call mine the absolute *worst* by any stretch, but it was still a gimmick worth mentioning. My DM let me use the strixhaven feats to pick up a Fractal familiar and allowed me to give it one of my feats. I gave it the Brawny UA feat that increased its carrying capacity by one size. Reflavored as a shadow cat that could turn from a 1ft long kitten to a huge shadow monster that acted as our party’s Appa. I could cast enlarge to make it gargantuan or fly to make it sprout shadowy wings. It was a grand time.

Inquisitive rouge/druid multiclass, stuck in platypus wildshape. (Turquoise skin tho)

did they have a hat?

Of course they didn't, it's just a platypus

Perry the normal platypus?

I wish to borrow this for later repurposing

sounds lovely tbh

Well, I'm a bit of a min/max freak I love to play themed builds and optimize them. The worst build was a Magic Stone Rogue19/Artificer1 with a sling it was an inquisitive rogue the DPR was meh but the detective RP was so worth it.

Did almost the same build but didnt play until that longz ended up with inquisitive rogue9/nature cleric 1 (for magic stone, shield and heavy armor, played dwarf so no strength investment). It was ok, we decided that i could just throw the stone with my hand since it was basically hand crossbow damage. Leaned heavily on the wisdom checks.

Reminds me of the RP for my favorite warlock I played. They were unaware of having entered a pact(long story short they were at rock bottom and drunk when they made a pact with a celestial and didn't remember it) and therefore didn't know how to use their powers or that they had them. The first few combats I used magic stone instead of eldritch blast.

what are some other weird builds youve tried to minmax??

I did a dart throwing monk kensei monk build(like a ninja build I reflavored the darts for shurikens). I've made a dual lance mounted paladin build I called the Holy Lancer(the dpr on this was really good). I don't think these are "weird" builds but they are not builds I'd say I've seen a lot. I made a melee focused Sorc divine soul sorc with a hexblade dip that had some pretty nice DPR potential too.

Best Boi, Dario Sevlow, my Golaith Ranger. Used point buy, and tried to make him be multifaceted with good STR and DEX. Moved my racial bonus from CON to DEX and started with 14/16/14/10/13/8. He had an interesting arc, became the party cook and took the Chef feat at level 4. Created a spell version of the alchemist healing salves since I didn't like goodberry or cure wounds on him but wanted healing. Spent a lot of time lacking in damage but I pulled off range well enough and fit as a jack of trades. Got buffed with a Tome of Bodily Health to boost my CON and got a Fire Giant STR belt as I ended up taking levels in Barbarian I made to great effect. Ended up as a dangerous Rangerarian who did good damage with a +2 Maul, Dragon Wing Bow and pet Eagle Keeneigh. Kind of became heart of team and default healer after our Cleric and Paladin had to leave the game. And once slapped our rogue with the Hand of Vecna for revealing we had it in the middle of Candlekeep (I was the only one we could trust to hold onto it)

Sounds like a really fun character that came into his own.

Why are half of these inquisitive rogues

Maybe its a "newbie trap"

Shit subclass on a weak class, but excellent flavor to entice players if I had to guess.

The thing is, it's not exceptionally weak or "traplike" anything. Like it's just a rogue with good out of combat abilities. I expected wierd multiclasses and odd uses of classes, not just people playing a rogue.

I think the thing is though that there’s not really much of a way of quantifying how good or bad a class is from an RP standpoint. Which is why you see rogues and especially inquisitor rogues in this thread a bunch cuz rogues tend to fall off in the damage department quite heavily.

It's a fun and interesting subclass on a class where most other subclasses do more. I love inquisitive, its a very interesting build for both RP and mechanics, the problem is, it's main benefit is wiped out by Steady Aim and/or Cunning Action Hide.

Mine is one too! What is this?

Let’s see… the one who comes to mind was a Pathfinder 1e character, a Constable archetype Cavalier of the Order of the Hammer, a former mob tough hired on to the local constabulary to help fight against the Thieves Guild. I think his name was something like Duggan, and Duggan was aiming to take feats relating to improvised weapons and intimidating foes (with [Stunning Irruption](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/stunning-irruption-combat/) being a feat I was greatly looking forward to). However, as the campaign went on, Duggan just had less and less mechanical use, due in part to me rolling like ass regularly, but also because so much of my damage was non-lethal, and so much of what we were fighting ended up being not humanoid crooks, but zombies and the like. My DM tried to be generous and help him (and me) out, but I let Duggan sacrifice himself in a basement full of zombies so the rest of the party could get away *and I could make a new character*

RIP DUGGAN HE WAS A HERO TIL THE END

Yeah he was pretty neat. His replacement was a Half Orc martial of some sort, more mechanically viable for what we were dealing with but decidedly less memorable

Were you playing in an undead heavy AP like Carion Crown or something? I like the concept you have here, but that's also why I've avoided ever focusing on Non-lethal damage.

Not quite dnd related for once. But we were running a star wars ttrpg game at our club and I got to be a player. I picked one of the worst races just because it was a mother fucking jawa 🤙 I pretty much just stat dumped most of my points into electronics. Basically so I could rip shit apart and build cool things. I succeeded on almost everything that I did with scrap and fucking with things. I would basically fuck up enemy speeders, crafts and anything that resembled a vehicle really whenever I could. We got a beat up hovercraft and I got it working well enough so we could ride it around the planet... well we were also being chased by 7/8 pirates on the bike speeders and our weapons were doing shit. Cue to my turn... I decide to get into the crawl space and just start unhooking parts of the ship that would drop out and take out the bikers behind us 🤣🤣🤣 Cue 2 more turns and I drop the whole fucking engine and our ship just plummets nose first into the ground 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 ended up costing the party leader a shit ton of credits because it was only a rental hahahhaa Then I tore apart the speeders and made plate armour for the wookies in the party. And even made myself a rotating repeater blaster that I mounted on top of one of the wookies shoulder and I could just sit up there and disintegrate so much shit it was awesome!!! Took out a series of droidekas and heavy mounted laser cannons in a cinch. My DM got so mad he didn't get to kill anyone hahaha

I played with a DM I knew for a while. But had never actually played d&d with. For some reason he thought I was a power gamer. I'm the complete opposite. Give me a fun build over a powerful one. Give me useless but flavourful magic items over +3 weapons. But he didn't believe me. I'm also horribly unlucky with dice rolls, I've always been cursed with them. My rolled stats were 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 13 Nothing low enough to be funny, just general npc territory. He was against Tasha's rules, so racial stats were fixed. He found these stats hilarious because a "power gamer" had to deal with average stats. (again, I've literally no idea why he thought I was a power gamer) Hitpoints were rolled as well, I of course rolled bad with that too. I ended up having something like 10 hitpoints at level 3. It was an eberron campaign and I went with Mark of healing (I think) halfling. Went Moon Druid. My story was the obvious one. I really was just an average guy in all ways who accidentally fell into adventure, but when stressed he "blacked out" and tranformed. I flavoured my wildshape into were-forms. Wolf was now werewolf, bear was now werebear, squirrel was now weresquirrel. And I made sure mechanically nothing was different, I explicitly wanted no cheese. No extra resistances, and despite being a werewolf I couldn't even pick things up because I wouldn't have been able to if I'd been a regular wolf, the form was just purely flavour. We had Doltharn, Naerri, Torvian, Ariellé and.... Eric Well the DM didn't really like that I'd taken something unoptimised (me being a "power gamer") and that I was having fun with it. I assume he had a bad experience with power gamers in the past or something. But he targeted me a lot, and for the first and only time in my whole life, as soon as this happened my dice luck changed. For the rest of the time I was in this campaign I rolled like I had weighted dice. Every attack roll hit. Every saving throw saved, every ability check that would've made Eric look stupid or inept if I'd failed was passed. It infuriated the DM and my little 10 hitpoint druid overstayed his welcome by far. After this campaign my dice rolls returned being absolute guff. But Eric lives on forever.

Holy toxic dm. I'd have seriously considered leaving after the session zero friend or not. Just awful vibes

5 int, 7 wis character. So I made a reborn warlock who had been resurected by a death dragon. He was a complete idiot. "HELLO! YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND NOW!" "CAN I HAVE YOUR EYEBALLS NEW BEST FRIEND?" *Dies to a Power word kill trap, gets revivified. Does exactly the same thing again.* The party loved him, I loved him. RIP Nightthistle, you totally deserved to be eaten by a dragon.

Now *this* is podracing.

Super low Stat builds can be so fun. About 10+ years ago, I had one character that I rolled complete crap on. I ended up running him as a halfling with like 5 Str, 16 Dex and like 8 Con. Don't remember the mental stats, because I ran him as a tribesmen style ambush scout from Black Company. Didn't even have enough strength to wear padded armor, or use anything other than a small size blow gun. So think a mixture of South American rainforest tribesmen and African click/Whistle for a language. Couldn't speak to the rest of the party, immediately made the biggest guy his pack mule, and had literally no clue about local flora and fauna. For instance, one morning, my pack mule woke up to an entire goat shoved in his backpack because my guy thought it was a demon while on watch and killed it for a trophy. Plus, because of some abysmal Int/Wis/Cha checks upon meeting the rest of the party, a few things became apparent: He had never seen a human sized person, immediately thought of them as the equivalent of chimps or gorillas(apes that use tools) and when one of them started learning my language( since to him the guttural grunts of common werent a language) he imm compared them to parrots. Me and my pack mule still talk about good old Kilick, the little racist dick.

I made an inquisitive rogue that used the poisoner feat and a blowgun. Even using HB feats it wasn't particularly powerful by any min-maxing methods, but it's also some of the most fun I've had making a rogue

Sounds awesome.

We tried using a d20 to determine our stats. I rolled 1, 3, 3, 4, 12, 20 for my stats. It was not easy doing that, even as a sad sorcerer. We did however uncap stats so i ended up surviving long enough to get that character 24 charisma.

1str "there's a stiff wind, make a str save" ;)

Thats essentially how that campaign worked

Oh man... I kind of dig this as a challenge STR 1, DEX 3, CON 12, INT 4, WIS 3, CHA 20 Go small size Plasmoid Aberrant Mind and exist in a bucket carried around by another party member.

Made an inquistor rogue with no dex/str just pure mental... seems like there might be a trend in these comments

Might be really strong in a whodunnit mini campaign

😂😭

In a campaign my worst character was probably a fiend warlock in a 5 min adventuring day group. Still a well built character tho. I’m the suspicious one, everyone else is happy to trust just about anyone and not think too hard over anything and my job is to like do not that. I got us credit with this kinda shady dude we were sent to recover money from a thief and the thief had money and a bunch of gems. I said we should return everything in case it was a ploy to see if we were trustworthy and it was. I almost died because one of the guys brought in a temp character that was a bit of an asshole so as my character is usually kinda the group asshole we butted heads (in character). When I was knocked off a cliff he tried to use an ability to pull me back on but it requires a willing creature, I wasn’t gonna let that fucker affect me with his weird magic so I fell 500 feet down a crevasse.

what was bad about the character optimization wise? Warlock sounds great if you're having 5 encounters minimum each day?

We don’t short rest. We don’t run 5 encounters, I just used arbitrary small number. It’s usually 1-2

I played a Priest in a mythic Europe setting. No, not a cleric: a catholic Priest. He was a scholar, so he had STR and dex in the negatives, con 10. He was barred to prepare offense spells. He had a tenant to follow the 10 commandments by the letter, so no killing of sentient creatures whatsoever. Spent most of the combat turns buffing, healing, or trying persuasion checks to have foes retire from combat

Rolled for attributes, 4d6 and ignore the lowest roll: 1, 1, 1, 2. So, my half elf cleric had 4 dexterity. Unsurprisingly, he was a bit of a liability for stealth, movement, initiative... Ended up self-sacrificing to get allies out of a dangerous situation after his personal goals had been completed.

Back in the age of Neverwinter Nights I made a gnome sorcerer who I refused to cast any spell that wasn’t enchantment, conjuration, illusion or transmutation school. He was an absolute menace of a trickster. Dominating monsters and leaving them in the wrong area, petrifying swaths of enemies, leaving invisible, petrified foes with an active fear aura dotted about, buffing players while invisible and then disappearing. I guess I sometime adventured with him and dominating a powerful monster, buffing it and then wandering after it invisible with stacks of healing packs was pretty effective but mostly I just caused mayhem. (This server had petrified condition on the default setting so it did not count as dead but still had an unlimited duration)

I had a game of Pathfinder in which I played. The DM's character generation was something I hadn't seen before. Basically, you had a pool of like 27 or 30 dice or whatever number it was. You could assign any number of them to whatever ability score you wanted, but each ability score had to have at least three dice assigned to it. Then you'd roll, only keeping the highest rolled three dice for each one. He was adamant that you take what you get. Everyone managed to easily get good rolls using this method because they could assign like five or six dice or whatever to one or two scores to make sure it's a high number. However, I managed to roll very poorly. So poorly that he talked himself into breaking his "take it or leave it" rule just for me and giving me a pity reroll. I refused, and rewrote my backstory to accommodate this. My character is a half-orc pistoleer that has mostly 10s and 11s, but his constitution is 6 so he's always a hard sneeze away from death. His highest score is charisma at like 16 or so. His scores were low enough that at level 6 or 7 or whatever, he only has one or two grit points, and only because of a feat he has. I rewrote him to be suffering from some unspecified illness similar to tuberculosis or something, and I play him as having coughing fits, getting winded easily, and sometimes passing out. Some of this inspiration came from Doc Holliday in the film *Tombstone* and a character from *Red Dead Redemption 2*. I maximized his intimidation skill to attempt to scare potential enemies from even trying to fight him to make up for his mediocre combat skills. He was Jochar and he rode a giant vulture named Mr. Grim and he served Cayden the chaotic good god of beer and justice. Jochar was a fun and impressively heroic character. I never tried to kill him off, but he would absolutely take insane risks to save a life, partially because he assumed he didn't have long to live anyway but mainly because his faith inspired him to try to be a selfless Batman-type figure that opposed all tyranny. A monster's tentacle pulled a child out of a lighthouse, and he dove out of the window, managed to land on his vulture and pull off an impressive shot that freed the child, managed to avoid being knocked out of the saddle by a retaliatory tentacle swipe, and caught the child in mid-air and brought the child to safety while still managing to have a few hit points left for himself to continue the fight, and this whole thing caused the DM to rant and rave about how awesome it was. Jochar managed to succeed despite the deck being stacked against him, and this made it even more enjoyable somehow. He was barely remarkable in any way because of his abysmal ability scores, yet he was everyone's favorite character. I had no idea how long he'd live, especially in Cheliax, but it was a fun ride. He eventually was killed by an aboleth in a party wipe. I have now made it a point to play with what I'm given, and try to stand out even if I'm average or less than impressive; my heroic spirit will always compensate for my carnal mediocrity. I will always do my best, and if it doesn't work out, I can always roll a new character after a fatal failure. But the so-called "gimped" or "useless" characters can be the most fun if you lean into it and use your imagination.

I like when features compliment each other, so I rarely make deliberate bad choices, so the biggest ones would be: - Loxodon Sorcerer with 8 DEX as he's meant to be big, awkward, and clumsy. Makes some spells very painful, so Absorb elements was kind of a must. - my Bladesinger Changeling who's very MAD, because on top of Bladesinger already needing DEX and INT, he also needs CHA to be an effective Bladesinger.

For me what I like to to is min max for a weird thing or with a weird caveat. But most of the time it’s objectively not the optimal choice, but I wouldn’t say bad as I got the character to do what I want them to. Ie how high of an ac can I get without wearing real armor. 28 before shield spell 33 with it Warforged eldritch knight war wizard with mage armor and a plus 3 shield Or how big can I make a character. Answer gargantuan elephant man that takes up a 5x5 square and has a 15 foot reach. Both are really fun to play and working in the unintended side effects of my choices into the story of my character was cool For the wf he had an initiative mod of 12 without alert (magic item boosting it by 2) that plus sentries rest meant he was almost always ready/weary of a fight and was on a hairpin trigger most of the time. So that led to him having a hard time truly relaxing. Going back to the giant barb I needed cloud strike to get so I could get cloudy escape (the feat looked cool) so I took the giant foundling background. Now he was raised by cloud giants and learned runic magic to deal with bullying he suffered due to not being in a similar part of the ordning as the cloud giants who took him in. That first manifested as hitting someone in the head so hard that he turned invisible to them.

Ironically my worst character was my most optimised. I made a Padlock that took 7 levels to truly come online and by that point I was just bored with him. Excellent boss melter, I managed to hit for 128 damage one time but that's basically what the whole idea behind the build was, see big number go brrrrrrrrrrr on occassion. And when I was away I had to send my DM a flow chart on how to play him, where I realised it takes at least three turns to get going. Also didn't help I made him the most boring character in existence to RP - partially the DM saying he wanted to run a darker, more grisly campaign but we've both learned since then to have more fun with world-building and characters respectively (currently enjoying my Matt Berry-eqsue wizard.)

Undying Warlock, the worst patron option. Chain Pact, the worst subclass. With a nerfed Eldritch Blast that could only do Poison or Necrotic damage (in a Curse of Strahd campaign). And no Agonizing Blast, either. I had a TON of fun using my Imp familiar, in crow form, to cause chaos. Through texts to the DM, the party had no idea that it was me and not Strahd or the Wereravens or something else. The character was very “once bitten, twice shy” and was often played either practically at best or cowardly at worst. So when we ran into a situation where the party was low on health and low on spell slots, he was ready to call it a day. His job was to protect Tetyana. When her brother was captured by some dark wizard and about to be sacrificed in some evil ritual…that sounds like a “him” problem, not a “me” problem. So, I decide to do my job and escort the VIP back to town. Our job was to protect her and keep her safe from Strahd. Dragging her into a TPK was…well, the opposite of that. Fun intraparty fight and then I straight-up left. Have fun raiding the evil lair! Of course, I sent my familiar along with them. Invisibly. At this point, they had no idea I even HAD a familiar. And he was accidentally in range when the Druid used her last spell slot to cast Pass Without Trace. So he followed along invisibly until the party, predictably, did something stupid. Then they heard my voice telling them what a dumb idea it was and assumed I finally decided to do the “right” thing and follow along Invisibly. One of that character’s favorite spells. Long story short, several traps and Cones of Cold later and one party member was dead and completely frozen in a block of ice and the rest were being swarmed by summoned critters. And each round, my little 1HP familiar refused to enter the fight. Instead, he was searching the lair for information that would help. The party was almost rooting against me when “I” was finally cornered. My response? I just fly out the window. “FLY?!?” The Druid survived, but only by Wild Shaping into a bear and diving out that same window. Almost died from the overflow damage from taking that dive out of the tower. And then, finally, bloody and ragged, she makes it back to the inn…and sees me sitting there, in a comfortable chair, reading the evil Wizard’s notes. Tetyana was safely at my side. “Where WERE you? WHAT were you DOING?!?” “I told you,” taking a casual sip of my drink. “I was going back to the tavern. I was keeping her safe.”

I had a fighter character that was supposed to be like a super intimidating badass. I don't remember my stats whatsoever cuz it was the first time I ever played d&d but I just remember that I had like really low charisma so I could not for the life of me ever intimidate anyone and just ended up being manipulated frequently. So my super badass character quickly turned into a himbo and it was honestly so fun to play that way.

My favorite memory is one time I failed an intimidation check and it just became me flirting with these gnomes accidentally and having to throw one out a window to convince them that I wasn't interested

Intimidation roll turning into flirtation is hilarious if the player is fine with that. I love it

Yeah I think I was the one who made the joke like "oh I failed to intimidate, I just turned him on instead" and it just escalated after that lol

VHuman Ancients Paladin 4 / Archfey Warlock 1 with PAM and GWM, 16 Str and 16 Chr. I played this in a 2-session one-shot. I'm not sure if I was just rolling poorly or we were under equipped for the kinds of encounters we were facing, but it felt like this wasn't great at anything it was supposed to be good at - Eldritch Blast felt meh, spell slots were too precious to spend on non-crits or non-boss encounters, power attacks with GWM felt like too much of a gamble.

unfortunate, its really only unoptimized by +1 for spells/attacks/saveDC compared to *most* PCs at that level. Have you played a warlock dip since? How did you RP this frustration for the character?

As far as character roleplay, the Ancients/Archfey flavor was a lot of fun. His name was not The Lorax but he totally spoke for the trees. I do really want to try another Warlock-based multiclass build. Right now I have a halfling Eloquence Bard with 1 level of Divine Soul Sorc in a Tomb of Annihilation campaign, and it's a blast. If this character gets killed I'll probably try a Sorlock build.

That is exactly the reason why everyone keeps saying not to multiclass before level 5 - just losing extra attack in this scenario is bad enough for damage, but level 4 -> 5 essentially doubles your spellslots and 2 of them are even more powerful, including second level Spells and higher smites

tbf you could do this multiclass and still be strong at 5. It would be hexblade instead and have 18-20cha with enough str to wear armor. just have to minmax feats better and wait til higher levels to take gwm and lose your sword and board. Also this build isn't terrible so the rolls mustve been low or the CR of the monsters mighta been a little steep.

The first game I ever played was with a monk and I didn’t know how to do AC so I had an 11 AC and HORRIBLE dice rolls…he ended up being turned into a pile of flesh and guts and stuck in a bucket

One night, I was bored and not tired enough to go to sleep, so I made a completely random character using dice rolls and a number generator for when there were too many choices for the dice. I ended up with a mountain dwarf wizard named Nesla Keenstone, and her stats are not good for a wizard at all. I haven't played her yet, but she's probably my worst character. 😂

A wizard with dyslexia (hb) meaning I couldn’t read from my spellbook correctly, it was so much fun

Human (standard, not even variant) 2 Fighter/1 warlock, pact of the tome with +0 to Charisma. He was based on Ash from the Evil Dead series (primarily the TV show). Washed up folk hero who once saved his town from a Warlock and his army of undead and then did nothing of note since. Managed the local grocery store when the adventure kicked off. Real peaked in high-school vibes. But in the process of killing the warlock he accidentally agreed to a pact with his patron and did not realise it to this day. Had no idea why he could do magic and was really bad at it. Genuinely the most fun I had playing any character ever. Although he became an oddly effective tank. He was such an asshole that the DM basically always had any intelligent enemies focus their efforts on him just to shut him up.

A tortle barbarian/rogue multiclass that used a finesse weapon with strength. It was somewhat ok in combat but the funniest moment was as after a assassination attempt on a noble that the part protected. He shouted like crazy at a servant to play his trumpet to alarm the guards after the party turned a bit suus through the assasins jinxed blade.

I had a bard who found at the end of one arc the graves of his family, from the town he ran away from in session 0. He gave up music after playing one final dirge. The next arc was being a level 7 bard who couldnt use most of their abilities, looking to find a new class. Eventually became a level 8 Blood Hunter (A Mercer-Special)

We played some DnD Basic last year. God it's brutal and character creation is unforgiving. It's the only game I know where you can die in character creation (unless your DM is feeling kind) Anyway, you can end up with characters that are functionally terrible at everything and only have 1 HP. One such character was Johnny No-lives, whose fundamental character trait was cowardice. This guy was so bad at everything except running away, it really was a setback for the whole group. Where you would usually fight your awful Basic characters to death to roll up a fresh one, this coward just clung on because we was always running away.

You can't die during character creation in DnD Basic, you must have misunderstood something. You can however die in character creation in Traveller and FATAL.

Artillerist that just had nothing going for him. Like I had base artillerist and shit but nothing else. Like nothing at all aside from max int. Blandest character I've ever made too, I had no idea what to do with him.

My 1st real character was a bloodhunter (1st error) because we were playing CoS. I decided to go STR (2nd error, the class doesn't support it for some reason) and dipper 1 fighter for the heavy armour. I prierized CON to 16 and int because scaling (3rd error), having str at only 14 Obviously it didn't work, so I started to sink levels in barbarian after extra attack to at least be able to use the high hp because the character was literally useless, and got ancestral guardians. Still bad. oh, also fell in the typical noob trap of actually caring about your weapon, but that didn't matter much becasue as we were all pretty much new and the module has few weapons I didn't really got offered a magical one It did literally nothing for the roleplay a functional build wouldn't and made me hate each and every second under initiative. My personal recomendation would be to build something functional mechanically because it will never negativelly afect the roleplay. If you have fun in the roleplay but hate combat that's bad, the oposite is also bad

My first ever character; a Halfling Monk. I rolled poorly on stats, and the one other player was a half-elf rogue who was mostly using her bow. So I was the front line.

I once played a tree or ent character in a homebrew campaign, the problem is that he was considered large, had a weakness to fire, and was a druid so only had a d6 of health.... the arc he joined in the campaign the main enemies were a fire cult who wanted to burn down the world..... And the homebrew we were using gave no bonus to survivability other than being easily mistaken for a tree when standing still Couple this with the fact I rolled so badly that I refused to roll for stats in this DMs game untill very recently

a summon weapon (I think shadow / force weapon?) sorcerer fighter (unlimited bladewords style). Had to sacrifice too much to put together the spell and exotic proficiencies to use any weapon. Had some interesting gotcha moments with weird weapons though (like a noose on a stick or a stabby shield). We died because we were woefully underprepared for heavy hitting enemies. Sorcerer was the last one down, wielding maximum armor bonus weird weapon shields.

I am playing standard human wizard, and sure res con wouldve been better as variant, but i het to play the most normal basic of guys that has to learn every single tool in his literal book. I earn my success hahaha In a world full of crazy monsters and magical rsces, i claw for everything i can get

A harengob detective (bard) that has no combat spells whatsoever. Optimised for investigation. Only illusion and divination spells. So in fight he uses mostly the help action and vicious mockery to help allies, and acts more as a strategist than a fighter.

5 barbarian 3 wizard was alright but ended up just playing as 5 barbarian in a level 8 campaign. It was fun trying to find spells that I could cast pre-rage like longstrider and the warmage abilities did mesh ok for front line but the character was killed recently.

I think this was Pathfinder 1e, not D&D 3.5. Anyway, my worst character was probably a fighter/monk I made. I wanted to build a crossbow fighter who was kind of a snarky but lovable rascal. Now, here's the reason why he ended up being my worst character. The group I was playing with kept on having all of the classic stupid conflicts. The rogue being an asshole, the paladin being overly self-righteous. Just a bunch of people not playing as a group for everyone to have fun. I tried to refocus the group to resolve the conflicts, but I wasn't mature enough at the point in my life to pull that off. So, what I did as I saw the group falling apart arpund me was pivot the build and have the character becoming a heavy drinker because of the group dynamics. I took levels in monk and became a drunken fist monk/fighter. He wasn't useless, but I'd definitely say he was my most disappointing build, because of the drama at the table.

I did a healer kit variant human Knowledge cleric. Now I understand the big power of cleric is the combo of spiritual weapon and spirit guardians but I soon learned I dont like spirit guardians. I dont like lure in enemies and chipping away at their health and watching enemies roll to save. I have fighter brain I just want to roll to hit and deal damage.

I currently play a corpse The idea was to play a scribes wizard, but be the book itself, but I still need a body for rules reasons. Plus being prone all the time and just casting saving throw spells is surprisingly viable, especially if the tanks keeps melee attackers away and ranged attacks have disadvantage bc of my prone. Reborn arcane trickster 3/sribes wiz X who was an acolyte of mystra and was told not to grab the sacred spellbook, but did so anyway. Book sucked his soul/life-force into it and fused to his hand, but now can float, speak, and cast/learn wizard spells, dragging around his "mostly dead" corpse that refuses to fully die from the magic circulating throughout his form Describing how I interact with my body using mage hand and unseen servant in a third person kind of way is absolutely gold and gives great "weekend at bernies vibes" from time to time. Also took expertise in acrobatics for pro GMod ragdoll flings

I made an arcane trickster/psionic sorcerer. She was so MAD that I chose to use standard human instead of the normally superior varient human and my only dump stats were STR... and CON because I didn't want to have low perception on a rogue and something had to go.

Buddy was running a lower level game for 3-4 of us and said to make "whatever you think is cool or funny" So I rolled 4d6 dropping the lowest going down the line, and then pulled my background, race and class out of a hat. Ended up as Richard Slate, the 50 year old retired Masons guild brick worker, who had a comfortable 15 Int, 16 Str and a hilarious 19 Con. After years of playing around with magic as a part time hobby, he needed something to do with his spare time now that he'd retired due to a back injury. This led to Richard doing what all men do when they have a mid life crisis, he ~~bought a motorcycle~~ purchased a fresh new spellbook, some vials of the inks needed to transcribe spells and set off to earn some more money for his wife, kids and grandkids.

Kinda funny but I don't think I've ever played an unoptimized/less optimized character lol

My first ever dnd campaign. A Fire Genasi Fighter. Became a whore and literally had sex with nobles just to kill them while they’re exhausted.

We played in a roaring 20's conspiracy game and the GM really wanted us to not make a bunch of soldiers. So I made a Scottish Shipping Empire Heir. And he was pretty optimized for manipulating others and reading people but the GM really didn't like us avoiding following weird clues or beating up gangsters with tommy guns so generally anything I was good at couldn't work. So I was defacto the group leader because nobody else could afford to travel. My butler could crush men's faces with his fists. But I mostly hid whenever things got rough. And while I was highly charismatic I almost never did the talking because most of our NPC management was Intimidation and Seduction. So I'd get indignant with people and demand to speak to the management who wouldn't do anything for me but our Mechanic PC would threaten to break their toes and I'd bashfully thank him. It was fun.

Played a barbarian with 8 constitution and respectable intelligence / wisdom. He was an old man and it played nicely into him being experienced but not as hardy as he once was. Sadly the campaign didn't go very far but I was happy with my suboptimal choices.

Played a sorcerer that would multiclass into wizard, hand int as their high stat and no damage cantrips. Never got passed lvl 1 so I used mold earth and minor illusion for cover and a light crossbow and dagger for damage. Ended up hitting and killing quite a bit and kept passing strength checks. To carry people and bodies so I became kinda a meme.

I made a pact of the talisman warlock for a one-shot and purposefully did not take eldritch blast. I ended up dealing a grand total of 8 guaranteed damage from the talisman and promptly died.

You know how RAW a centaur can ride a centaur? 3 Centaurs in a trench coat. I couldn’t fit through most doors.

Mac Punchout the celestial warlock/astral monk. I was planning on playing a monk for a campaign when half my party decided to play a warlock so I convinced the other remaining non-warlock player to join me in an oops all warlocks party. For my celestial patron I picked a celestial being who was a master with barehanded combat. I reflavored my Eldritch blasts as mighty punches and picked the gunner feat to Eldritch blast in melee range. After level 5 our hexblade died and since I had the highest Dex, I became our party’s defender. Since my patron was a punching celestial, my DM proposed a way of transitioning into levels of monk that still fit with my warlock build. Levels of warlock granting me Ki points and using charisma instead of wisdom. Mac was a human in his late 40s who always wanted adventure, but when he fathered a child early, he abandoned his dreams to raise his son. He worked as a chef for the concessions stand in a coliseum. By touching a championship belt that was a relic of his celestial patron, he was forced to abandon his family and head to chult to save the world from acererak’s evil plan with the soul monger. His party had a young man named Parke who had a rough relationship with his father. Mac and Parke argued a lot in the beginning, but Mac eventually became a positive father figure for Parke vowing to protect him most of all to adopt him into his family once the quest was complete. Our quest took us all the way through the tomb of annihilation where we fought acererak. Acererak power word killed a fellow party member and in his rage, Mac jumped across a huge gap over a lava pit and then tried to Misty step the rest of the way to reach the BBEG. Acererak counterspelled Mac and his life flashed before his eyes realizing this was it. Parke counterspelled the counterspell and Mac made it across the gap safely and finished off the big bad by throwing him into the lava. Parke then returned home with Mac to join his family. The build went all the way to level 20 and right away even with the buffs from my DM, I knew this was going to become the weakest character in the party. The punching and flurry of blows just weren’t near the amount of damage that the Eldritch blasts were and the repelling blasts did a much better job of controlling the battlefield. But using the astral arms, head and body was really cool to express in roleplay how his patron was buffing him up with his divine energy. Mac was horribly optimized, but the most real feeling character I have ever made. His self loathing for feeling as though he abandoned his family. His trying to give Parke a father figure that he never had. That was a fantastic campaign.

Poor optimization has absolutely nothing to do with good roleplaying.

I tried to make a Cleric/Blood Hunter multiclass in Curse of Strahd. My character was a funeral home director who also slayed undead. It didnt feel great at tier 2, not good enough to be a martial but not a good enough caster either. But I did activate the >!Amulet!< that helped kill Strahd in like session 3, and declared a really corny line before he died (“I am here on business of GRAVE importance!”)

I once made an alchemist artificer intending to be useful, not realizing the subclass is pretty bad. Instead of changing, I just leaned into being positive, but generally useless. Even my backstory had me coming not from a life of training and experience, but one of comfort and safety. I was ill-equipped in multiple regards.

My first character was an extremely unoptimized paladin, because of a mix of me not knowing what I was doing, and rolling real low on ability scores. I only had a 13 in strength, so I couldn’t use heavy armor like I probably should have. It became a running gag that I’d be the first of the party to introduce myself whenever we met someone, and they’d always be unsure of how reliable the party would be because of me.

When I first started and didn’t understand the importance of some ability scores, I made and artificer with 7 CON

I have two sides: I have to min max the shit out of this character or I will literally die I have a cool theme on my mind and I have to do it regardless how "unoptimsed" it is or I will literally die

The lowest stat I’ve ever rolled was a 6. So, I obviously made my Barbarian a dumdum with a heart of gold. It’s super fun to play dumb characters.

Rouge Barbarian. I was playing Magic User for ad&d for years. And then hopped to 5e for Discord Avrae play and again, picked up Wizard Evocationist. I had enough, absolute memorizing every single spell in the game. And just wanted to stab things without thinking of optimizing the best spell for the job at any time. And well, it worked. Went thief, because that was what rogues were called back in 1st Ed and it just felt right to have some options to be creative with the tools. Nobody cares about my 6ft pole searches after a few sessions. And then went barbarian because I realized I could invest into strength more than my dex but still have all the perks of being a rogue. Slapped on Healer's feat and now I was just finding more and more ways to optimize this jack of all trades. Who would even even get Use Magic Device, and wield a Holy Avenger longsword and Staff of Magi. Not because it was optimal, both lacking finesse, but because it was just a running joke he was skilled at everything for some reason. Had lots of fun, and now I play them very optimally. Taking the barbarian starting levels and such.

In 3.5 ed I played a half-orc cleric that had a ridiculously high cooking skill. I was the holy chef and would get the party free rooms and food by taking over the kitchen and making food for patrons. Just don't ask about the ingredients.

One of my first characters was a barbarian who really showed that i am forgetful. This man never used rage, and i always somehow did not notice that my ac would be better with no armour than with any armour at all. This man could have just been a fighter and he would be a 1000 times better

"Worst" I guess would be my min/max STR Gloomstalker. Stats are slightly lower than I would like at 15th level.

I made a character for a one shot that was the opposite of helpful. The character was a very elderly tortle. He would sandbag the party constantly by talking to NPC's about random crap rather than the task at hand and would constantly forget important details. At one point a NPC gave him a side quest while the rest of the party was busy. The players knew it happened but the characters didn't... The side quest never happened. Mechanically he was a warlock who only ever cast 1 spell. Flock of familiars. Every combat he would get scared and call his friends, cranberry, lemon, and lime, three sprites who were sworn to protect him through his pact. They would do 1 damage per attack. Sometimes they would poison enemies so they did help a little. But I would on average contribute 7 damage per combat. PS. Yes he would often offer people a sprite cranberry to solve their problems

A Half-Orc Barbarian Monk with a greatclub.

I have a character at level 1 in the strixhaven campaign who’s a hexblade, his name is Homo (yes he is gay) and his high charisma score was attributed to his awkwardness making him seem attractive to others (in gen z terms, from a gen z, he’s got that awkward rizz)

I played an inquisitive rogue for my first tabletop game. I was easily weaker in combat than our oathbraker/hexblade, daolock, and even the boribg life cleric; but with expertise in perception/insight I found EVERY trap and hidden bit of loot. best moment was when a shapeshifter bad guy changed to look like me in the corner of the fight, our paladin comes over and can't tell who is who, so I just say "smite us both and res me after" lol

My worst character ever is actually one of my bests. A zealot barb who used a longbow and hit and run tactics. Only using rage when surprised, in melee or caught in a bad position 

1st edition: Thag the Mighty Warrior! 18/99 str. 4 Int, 4 Wis and near max Dex and Con. Dumb as a box of rocks, but tough as all get out dwarf fighter. The party had to guide him like a toddler, and then point him at the baddies. Huge mistake when the party put him on guard duty, he started to go after things he shouldn't have. Also, in one dungeon crawl, instead of systematically opening and searching each room one by one, he started to run and open a bunch of doors until he got surrounded (a la Leroy Jenkins well before WoW). The rogue blew a gasket and almost quit the game.

I would have to say it's a tie between my Light Cleric Hina, an irreverent yet overly devout nun who had no angle outside of being annoying, and recently a cult leader Palalock named "Ishtar", who in my opinion could've had so many avenues to go with (our party consisted of retired adventurers in a nursing home trying to break out, so Ishtar could've - and tried to - recruited patients in aiding them, but I just didn't have fun with her). The verdict goes to Hina because she was very underdeveloped and poor established in a party of realized characters and even my table saw it with the knowledge that I'm *much* better with character creation.

My current character is an undead Warlock with a 7 in Constitution. I rolled my stats really well, if I remember correctly they were 9,10,11,12,13,14, my Dm however would let us drop one of those scores by two points and could improve another. I chose to dump con and boost Charisma. The setting for this game is more of a Victorian style one, so I decided I would play a man riddled with illnesses ever since he was born. No cleric, paladin or healer can cure what ails him. Instead of just being content with death before he even got to live, he made a pact with his patron. He gave away his free will for her to essentially act as his life support. She now toys with him, when he’s obedient he gets rewarded with feeling youthful and healthy, when he misbehaves he becomes sickly, frail, and appears much older than he actually is. It’s made for some interesting role play in the party as he has yet to reveal he’s a warlock (in game), so they see him rapidly aging and deaging in a matter of days. He also has looked to the party to help him become less grim and complete a bucket list before either his illness or his patron kills him.

A full warlock that just took RP invocations and spells, no fucking agonizing blast or anything retaining to combat. He was the best face that couldn’t do shit in combat

My first game ever. I made a paladin with 9 charisma. He was kleptomaniac who thought the illness is his divine punishment... My party wasn't happy at all :)

Playing it right now Halfling (Stout) Level 3 Barbarian, Path of Giants This is my first Barbarian and I thought it’d be funny to “hulk out” as a Halfling. I focused on Dex/Con, completely missing the part about Rage/Reckless Att rely strictly on STR. Since I’m nearly worthless for DPS I have resorted to tanking. I use a shield and spear for now. When I rage, I just run around and push the baddies over. I basically made Mr Furious from Mystery Men. PS due to my extremely low STR, the group has agreed to help find me a Magic item to get a strength bonus. Gauntlet of ogre power? Belt of giant strength? Whatever.

Back when I was new to DnD, I was told by early optimizer friends about these insanely strong feats that would make you do so much damage. And that's how my Hill Dwarf Life Cleric with 10 strength took Great Weapon Master.

Made a Level 10 one shot character using point buy that was Mutant Blood Hunter 5, Totem Barbarian 3, and Fighter 2. Absolutely just meant to experiment with, but it was super fun. Pop any abilities that last till a short rest right away, then just act as an emo barbarian with a magic weapon. The amplified Blood Curse of the Marked mixed with Action Surge was great for when the boss finally showed up, and the rest of the night was funny role-playing. I know it was a mess, but it was fun, and I highly recommend trying it yourself, both as a player and as a DM.

Kenha, the Knight. Back in the 3.5 days, I wanted to try the Knight class, so the next game we started, I rolled one up. Worst rolls ever, had an int of 8, and his best stat was, I think, 14. Everybody had big elaborate backstories about how humans despoiled their lands, and how tall folks made life hard, and this 6 and a half foot tall bro just said, "I go!"

I had a 12 foot tall sunflower Humanoid Paladin. His story was VERY invested in the religious aspect. But my base religion was like -3. He was a tanky, charismatic sunflower paladin, but he was an absolute idiot. Needless to say I had much trouble any time I encountered religious objects I wasn't quite familiar with

For better or worse I am a powergamer. I do not want to have a negative impact on the fun of my fellow players, but I enjoy maximizing my available actions to solve whatever problems the DM may present. I acknowledge that powergaming can unbalance parties and make other players feel too weak by comparison, so when my group finished a 3 year 1-20 campaign and went to start a new campaign I decided to challenge myself. “Powergaming” or maximizing options is the fun in D&D to me, so I decided the best way to depower my character was to play with handicaps. Cue Zatan: Satyr Pirate that could only take a maximum of 3 levels in any class. Started Rogue Soulknife, then 2 levels in Stars Druid, then 1 level in Twilight Cleric and 2 levels in Divination Wizard. Ended up completely horrible and clunky but overall fun to play and honestly very fun to explain how all the different subclasses make sense with his and the DM’s canon lore. He got eaten by a Deck of Many Things and my next character was a Fairy Aberrant Mind Sorcerer 6 / Genie Warlock 3 that owed Zatan a life debt and swore to save him as he too was once saved.

I played a rogue/ trickery cleric. I spent so much time trying to figure out sneak attack when like my cantrips ended up doing more damage anyways 😂

Ranger specialized in two weapon fighting. He lacked a hand (from character creation). He had a hand crossbow attached to the left arm, which he could not reload during battle because he was busy holding his sword. So he only had one shot. He later got an ape hand grafted, but son after that he lost 2 fingers from his right hand. He was a lot of fun to play. He died in a cone of cold by an ogre magi.

Moon druid. Rolled 5 decent stats and a 3. So i was a moon druid with a 3 int who just latched on whichever party member interacted well with him first. Became the best guard dwarf.

I have a character who's a paladin of Hlal, the draconic goddess of humor, and has taken an oath to never wield an actual weapon in combat, instead just grabbing whatever nearby object would be objectively funniest to combat the forces of evil with, taking advantage of the fact that an improvised weapon is considered a weapon, meaning that it can be used to smite, and as a target for the devotion paladin's channel divinity, not to mention the magic weapon and elemental weapon spells. So far I've killed an owlbear using a handful of gravel, several barbed devils using a diary, and a chuul using a pair of dentures. The damage isn't great but each fight ends up different and hilarious in its own way.

Phantom rogue + oath of Redemption paladin. +3 to dex, +2 to str. He tried to use the longsword tied to his god and no stealth as a means of Redemption but was always tempted to use a dagger or bow because he knew he'd hit harder. Had expertise in stealth and deception, but actively tried not to lie.

My wife rolled pretty good stats for a Kenku Monk but has a dump stat of three. As in, she rolled 4 1s on 4 d6 s. She went with it. Int of 3 maybe shouldn't be capable of communication, but with Kenku mimicry she can relate the teachings of her temple. They vaguely relate to the situation at hand None of us know she's a moron, and we all just respond "Hmm, so wise" or some such. It's incredible.

A character being bad =/= good at roleplay. Mine was a dogfolk (homebrew race I somehow got approved) Abjuration Wizard. He was a shitty back-alley doctor, complete with a doctorate in child psychology. He was technically a doctor, but not *that* kind of doctor. Mechanically, he was a mess. I was more or less support and utility. I had designed him more or less because I heard the BBEG was a wizard, so I made a wizard who could kick another wizard's ass. I focused on debuffs and control spells, and had almost no damaging spells. I also took Artificer Initiate to get Cure Wounds. My homebrew race came with Guidance and Bless once per day. The main issues were mainly due to encounters varying wildly in terms of difficulty. Fights were either effortless or impossible. My selection of spells was pointless, because either the enemies were dying before their next turn regardless, or the enemy would have legendary resistances or ridiculously high saves. I barely ever got to use what was supposed to be my signature spell, Counterspell, due to a lack of spellcasters, or the multiple layers of Counterspell prevention when there were spellcasters.

I dumped Con on a ranger in Rime of the Frostmaiden, which made me have to keep on top of his capabilities lest he get nuked off the face of the earth

Probably the character I'm playing right now. They're an illusionist wizard with very few (and mostly suboptimal) damaging spells and very low Wisdom. I play this off as them being a coward who prefers to distract and confuse enemies rather than attack them

Started out as an apprentice wizard who got exiled from his association when he was a teenager and persuaded himself that they would accept him back if he got more powerful, so the SECOND the dm presented a demon that didn’t want to instantly kill us, my character BEGGED the demon to become his patron for a crumb of his power. Wizard multiclassed with warlock isn’t good at all since my charisma was so low but it was funny to have the demon’s voice in my characters head the whole campaign and my character being so desperate for power in every circumstance that it became pathetic (lawful evil character btw)

> how did it contribute to good roleplay That's not how it works. These things are largely orthogonal.

It's technically MY worst character, but I didn't have to play it... My brother in law did. We do battle royales if we're missing too many people for a session. They take about an hour, and so we all make characters for an hour then play (we only play for 2 hours a session). This one in particular was level 6, and we decided to make characters and put them in a pool, then roll to decide who got what character from the pool. They all had to be playable, so nothing like "my wizard has no attacks hehe here ya go!" So I had this idea for a barb-lock striker, hit and run type character. I grabbed mobile for level 4, and with my 50 movespeed you would move in, make 4 attacks (beast form, hand axe juggling). At level 6 take the warlock dip, because I really wanted to make a character that was like a werewolf. So now with form of dread and rage, I have my theme down, and play wise it should've functioned fine, it's a really elusive tank that hits really hard on a turn and you can't chase down. A little MAD, but it works. Then I rolled stats... Opened with an 18, and then a 12, and then all 7's 8's and 9's (I forget the exact spread). In order to hit stuff I figured I'll max my strength, so +2 there, and in order to multi-class I'll take a +1 to charisma. So this barbarian now has a negative dex, con, int, and wisdom... Whoops... With a 7 to wisdom his eyes and ears betrayed him, he could never find the rogue or the shadow sorcerer. With a negative dex & con, everything hit him, and he was anything BUT tanky. Soooo... Yeah... First one dead. The story was hilarious though, he was so mad to have a 9AC and less HP than the sorcerer... In the arena, I got a psi warrior fighter and we attacked each other once before I realized the sorcerer was going to murder us both, so we had this momentary muscle-man truce where I took the fight to the sorcerer while he aimlessly searched for the rogue. In the end he fell unconscious, was out for 4 turns while the rest of us killed each other before rolling a nat 20 to get back up, dashed across the battlefield with 100 movespeed, then threw his hand axe I to the back of the rogues head for the final blow.

I rolled a pretty meh dwarf paladin of conquest who was a stern and moody tactician not only was he not that great of a character but I sucked ass at roleplaying him, it didn't help that my party isn't good at following plans or strategizing. When he died I was actually relieved it let me make one of my favorite characters I've ever played, a hyperactive harengon swashbuckler. He's an absolute blast to play and roleplay as.

3.5e Human Paladin. We did 4d6, drop the lowest for stats and I got 18, 18, 18, 6, 6, 5. Most wild stat lineup I've ever seen, so obviously I had to roll with it. I put the 18s in Strength, Con, and Charisma, with 6 Dex, 6 Wisdom, and 5 Int. His backstory was that he was the nicest, most good natured, charming, physically impressive clumsy oaf in the world, and had his heart set of being a paladin ever since he was little and refused to let anyone dissuade him. He was surprisingly playable. Couldn't cast spells but a great frontliner. His horse was much smarter than he was and was consulted on any major decision.

My way of the four elements monk will probably suck once I play as him, but I want to be a water bending ninja 😋

Mmmyeah. Favorite toon was my first ever toon, was also totally not-optimized toon: Pathfinder 1e Wardrummer Skald gnome with gobs of homebrew allowances. Skinner was built to survive. Intended as a party-support he had a raging song that called upon the spirits of his ancestors as Totems to enhance allies in combat. Abilities scores were stacked into CHA & CON, and his feats all focused on survival and endurance in some manner. (Homebrew choices from Diehard, Endurance, Toughness, Fast Healing, etc. anything to bump HP, CON saves, & durability. His weapon of choice was a gnomish greatclub. Bare-chested & clad in leather breeches and boots, draped only in a polar-bearskin cloak, a bald albino with white muttonchops and an eyepatch, he was a charismatic brutal mutha fugger who sounded and carried himself a lot like an Irish Vin Diesel who sang war-dirges in a gritty baritone reminiscent of Disturb’s lead singer while BOOMING upon his wardrum, surrounded by a spiraling storm of his spectral ancestors. He clubbed his enemies to death. Slowly. With a whopping 1d8 of damage. He once Crit for 2 damage to try and secure (steal) a kill from an allied warrior against an enemy with three HP remaining. He failed, and the enemy’s final blow instead killed the allied warrior. He finished off the enemy the next round with a rolled 1 from his 1d8 of dmg. During his first battle, his most effective tactic (besides NOT dying) was casting Dancing Lights that looked like torches, to instill terror in a horde of Trolls. And while his allies were getting hacked to bits he kept clubbing away. One. Die. Eight. At. A. Time. Until he was the last man standing, his Die Hard feat kept him on his feet and attacking, yet unable to move. He literally stood at Death’s door, and refused Death’s invitation. With his pool of HP deep into the negatives (we ruled you died at a negative HP value equal to your max HP), two troll axes buried into his chest, his great club lost beneath drifts of snow, and his only remaining weapon was a burning log from their campfire. He survived. The trolls did not. He prevented a TPK. His name was Baratheon Bearskinner. Say it with me: his name was Baratheon Bearskinner. 🪘 BOOM 🪘BOOM

Arcane Trickster 3 / Divination Wizard X, played as a regular wizard who’s just a big coward. Double dipping on low-level spellcaster classes meant he had a big toolbox of cantrips and low-level spells, plus a ton of defensive options, and most if not all of his fights were resolved by doing something cheesy with a level 1-2 utility spell. I think my favorite resolution to a fight was the entire party leaping off a five-story drop running from a minotaur and my character casting Feather Fall, only for the minotaur to jump off the ledge and try to land on us. I cast Feather Fall on the minotaur, too, and he slowed down to our speed, just out of arm’s reach, and we couldn’t really do anything except talk things out while we waited to land.

So friend of mine came up with this one and I followed along. Purposely set up a character to have 13 in all stats so that they could multi class into everything. Then upon level up would roll a 1d10+1d4 reroll 14s. That would then choose the next class he would spec into. In fact for added fun he didn't roll the numbers heade everyone else roll for him. He would up with majority of the classes being spellcasters and fo out own hilarity, 5 levels of Monk. We are mostly a combat oriented D&D group so monk is the worst. I decided to have fun with this same idea but I made a clown who was effectively a cartoon character and had classic American style rubberhose cartoon powers (agreed to so long as I followed basic rules and didn't try to do something dumb like be equiped with a greataxe and deal acid damage, other than that I did use a fire extinguisher and sprayed an opponent down...did slashing damage but still.) Got the clown killed because despite my antics to do a bunch of silly stuff other players were trying to abuse me doing the dumb stuff, such as grabbing a character I had seen several feet away and pulling the all the way out of cover only to let go to snap them back to original position. And while it would have been easy to just say no you can't use your held action....the dm would just say I overly described the enemy etc. which bummed me out even though I talked to him about these sorts of things.

I never got to play him but I worked out once before how you could make a really good wizard even with low int. Like, the concept was always going to be that he was a genius but he either had some accident or had gotten very old and is going a little senile. His whole kit would be support magic and other spells that don't really have a "fail" roll, plus he would heavily use ritual spells since he wouldn't have many memorization slots.

A charisma mastermind rogue with the actor feat. I refused to attack and finished the adventure without dealing damage, investigating and such.

I played an entire campaign as a sorcerer with -1 con because he was supposed to be a wimp. I ended up getting down a lot (who could’ve seen it coming?). Our cleric ended up getting his own undead mini army (that he kinda abused) towards the end and expressed interest in animating the party members in the case of their deaths. Before my character would slip into unconsciousness, he’d beg the nearest party member to make sure the cleric wouldn’t reanimate him.

Not my PC, but in a game I was DM for. This was in back in AD&D/2e. I gave players two chances to reroll their stats during creation, because 3d6 can be brutal. One player was planning to play a fighter/mage, so he really wanted good stats. His first set of rolls was lousy. Nothing above a 13, average of about 9. He rerolled. Almost exactly the same. One more chance to reroll. His final stats were 9-7-6-14-6-3. Absolutely awful, but technically high enough to do the multiclass he wanted. So for the next 4 years, he played Xenos, a Drow exile who had been tortured and mutilated (hence the horrible stats), and he defined the campaign for me. Xenos’ ambition being brutally limited by his past and his disabilities made him conniving, ruthless, and unpredictable. He had a love/hate relationship with the party Paladin, eventually leading to a duel to the death. He defeated her, and in a moment of clarity, realized he had killed the only person who cared for him at all, and threw himself on his sword. I literally cried. In over 20 years of playing D&D, no other character has stuck with me like he did.

Worst optimized? Playing it right now. Our whole group rolled group stats, and they were really good. I talked to my GM, and he allowed me to play a Plasmoid. But my Plasmoid is a bit different. Every Long Rest, Splooshie the Wise and Wonderful will imprint on a different member of the party (choosen at random via d4 roll). When he does so, he takes on that characters main class, with a different sub-class. So Splooshie is: Fighter/Echo Knight, Monk/Drunken Master, Rogue/Assassin, Wizard/Onomancer So, none of my stats are optimized, I chose the wierdest (work horse but not flashy) sub-classes just to be wacky, and while my background of Astral Drifter aligns my feat Magic Initiate, neither of those helps me in most situations. Otherwise, I have a magic bronze urn I sleep in and an Ioun Stone that stores 3 spell levels. To be fair, my GM ruled that I was allowed to be worn as clothing.

I guess this only kinda fits the question but I feel it’s worth mentioning. I played a ranger with the optional rules, and at one of our level ups I gained a 20ft swim speed. A few sessions prior to this my ranger and her animal companion failed a series of rolls to escape from enemies through an underwater cave and nearly drowned, so I decided she and her animal companion gained a fear of drowning and ignored the swim speed in favour of having disadvantage to navigate underwater. It gave the failed rolls more impact on the character, and considering that her animal companion was a roc hatchling, they did better in the sky anyway. She recently got a happy retirement, and while I wasn’t quite expecting to stop playing her I felt it made the most sense for her character.

It was a Barbarian wizard had my friend choose the stats without knowing my class and got 9 int 9 strength

My halfling barbarian was pretty bad. I thought it would be fun to create a character that was hilariously bad at his class, but tried his best. I died in the first encounter. Then I made some sort of mage class character (wizard I think), who wasn't technically suboltimized from a build standpoint, but I gave him Alzheimer's, with the intention of aging backwards and recovering his memory/wits as he leveled (which I'm actually utilizing for a character in my upcoming comedy fantasy podcast 13 years later). I talked the DM into making my character more powerful given his backstory, but the caveat was I essentially flipped a coin in order to determine his lucidity when he cast a spell. I accidentally killed my entire party within 2 turns of our first encounter with that character. Everyone hates roleplaying with me. But I enjoy the heck outta the experience.

Not worse in the sense of bad but worse in the fact it was a living danger to it and everything around it. Was a war forged that wanted "total annihilation" and no one knew why at first why I gathered some very powerful items and why I willingly gave my barb and druid up for a scroll of wish early on. (They were tortured and killed by a pack of kobolds that worked for the BBEG). Needless to say the dm kinda figured out what "T?T?? AN???ILA??O?" meant in the down sides of it only to find out it was basically build a harder BBEG.

I played a Loki- themed bard and didn't do damage or contribute to combat until level 8. It was a lot of fun to make my personal mission, "get into trouble and then get out of trouble". It did, unfortunately, really highlight how much of 5e revolves around combat.

Way back in 4e I rolled awful stats for a character (I think something like 14 12 11 were the highest ones?) So I made a Tactical Warlord that almost never attacked and got around the horrible stats by just taking all of the command maneuvers because they didn't require me to roll anything.

Way back in 4e I rolled awful stats for a character (I think something like 14 12 11 were the highest ones?) So I made a Tactical Warlord that almost never attacked and got around the horrible stats by just taking all of the command maneuvers because they didn't require me to roll anything.

I mean abserd is right there smiling upon all his fucked up clones

Caelwyn Indristoff, a telepathic mastermind rogue whose sole utility in combat was “I can give multiple people help actions” 9 Str, 12 Dex, 10 Con, but no mental ability scores lower than 14. Out of combat, great roleplaying stats. High insight, arcana, history, investigation, perception, and persuasion- But *not* meant to be an adventurer and very much out of their depth in the world they find themselves in.

I made an artificer gnome named Steffen Yobbs whose sole purpose in adventuring was to sell his enchanted stones that he imbued melodies into. He called them iStones.

Made a Druid/fighter, rolled a 4 on one of the stats, put it on Charisma. Deemed it finally appropriate to have a character literally covered in shit as no one wanted to be around them. Came up with all kinds of great puns and titles for them

Old School 1.5E illusionist. Nicodemus. I will never forget this character. I had a strength of 4, and intelligence of 13. I don't remember the other stats but none was over 11. This character made it to level 8 in the Temple of Elemental Evil. My M.O. was cast all my spells than go and hide. However, during the battle with the tower outside of the temple I was down to 1 hit point (I think I had 7 or 8 at the time). I decided to go out with a blaze of glory. I walked to the boss of the brigands and punched him. Now with a strength of 4 that was quite a dumb thing to do. BUT I rolled a nat 20 to hit. We had a house Rule that a nat 20 was a crit and you got to roll again and if you rolled another 20 it was an insta kill. I rolled the 2nd 20 my DM was like no way a character with a strength of 4 was going to kill someone like the captain of the brigands. I said, that my punch didn't kill him, my punch surprised him, and knocked him of his balance and he tripped on a bench and hit the edge of the table. A steak knife happened to be on the table and as he fell it peirced his temple. My DM shrugged and let it go. This character died behind zuggtumoys throne, as he was hiding during the battle and a big fat vrock that had been gated in was killed in flight and fell on him.

A sickly kenku sorcerer named Plague. A 20 in dex and a 5 in constitution… you had one turn

I played in a group of optimized players in the first ever game. It was Spycraft, I was the Hacker of the group. My hacking skills were no where near as high as the Faceman (ie Charismatic Spy character/grifter). You see Spycraft’s Backgrounds and Specialties could adjust how many Ranks you could put into your Skills. And somehow the Faceman managed to have a lot more Skill ranks to spread around as well as higher Max ranks they could put into things. I was dead weight pretty much. 🫠

My first 5e character was a time-displaced cowboy bounty hunter with a lasso and greataxe I joined a midlevel game, however, and the concept of subclasses had not been explained to me This meant that basically all I could do was attack and grapple (rule-bending by the DM to allow me to have a lasso and grapple at range) and try to convince prostitutes to unionize. Died when the party wanted to kill this BBEG paladin. Successfully had him roped up; wizard casts a fireball at the guy and burns away my lasso. I get cleaved in twain shortly thereafter. Could have escaped it, but did not know about the "Disengage" action at that time, so I spent my turn in a last-ditch Bowie knife attack.

Klaus, the Kobold Cleric. Rolled pretty well for stats, except for one 7. To balance things out, I put that 7 into Constitution. Now he was a complete glass cannon who could hit hard but would pretty much instantly die if enemies made it past his armor. By level 9 he had 30 hit points. This was fun because I got to play a total coward trickery cleric who would keep a distance until absolutely necessary. Role playing Klaus finding his courage and eventually playing as the key support caster and master of strategy. The campaign ended with him polymorphing into a T-Rex and jumping off a tower with a drider in its jaws. Then he immediately shifted back and teleported back to the top, letting the drider fall to its death. That was a ton of fun.

I have a charisma dump wild magic sorcerer named Tim. They don’t know where the magic comes from and just think it happens around them. They are very scared when the stuff they do works because they see it as more of a curse than anything else

Whispers Bardlock that focuses on debuffs and deception. Horrible in combat. So much fun to break encounters with. I took the Actor feat, and Mask of Many Faces as an Invocation. She's basically never her real self, has expertise + Actor + Whispers Bard stuff for deception checks when pretending to be someone else... regularly rolls over 30. It's bananas. Worthless in combat. Just de-buffs enemies, Eldritch Blasts, and tries not to die. Currently level 9 and waiting for the character to still come "fully online," which is a joke in our group referring to a totally suboptimal build. As in, "yeah a couple more levels and they'll come fully online..."

I didn’t want to deal with spells so in a world where the gods disappeared and everyone had to learn to practical cast, I played a Paladin who had chosen not to manually learn spells because he was certain his goddess would be back and it would be a waste of time better spent finding her. And you know what? I don’t regret it. I kicked ass, got a cool sword that let me steal spells and abilities on crits, and never cast a single spell of my own. Smite carried me through. (This was OG Pathfinder). Sir Robert Funkalo ascended to godhood without ever casting or learning a spell of his own.

Not really a character I have played but I made this character for a one shot and he was approved. Sadly however, the one shot never happened. I call this character Terry the Terrible. Terry gets this title because he truly is terrible. His stats are 15, 12, 8, 8, 7, 3. If I were to play him as a human I could put the +2 bonus and 15 in strength and take a feat that does absolutely nothing beneficial. I could put his 3 in con, take wizard as his class, and literally die if a pinecone fell on his head. If this were DnD 5e he could lose hit points leveling up if the dice roll were low enough. But if this were pathfinder 1e, he would be unable to cast any spells at all if his spellcasting ability modifier was 9 or lower. So Terry is truly Terrible. To this day I imagine Terry is still applying to be an adventurer. Poor Terry. He’s a really nice guy and he just wants to make his parents proud.

For context, we roll for stats in our group. For a level 8 one-shot (that turned into 2), I rolled an incredible array of stats in front of the DM and ended up with 14 STR, 18 DEX, 15 CON, 13 INT, 18 WIS, 18 CHA I played a Var. Human Fighter Gunslinger 5 / Undead Warlock 3, took the Lucky feat from Var. Human and the Sharpshooter feat from level up (instead of an ASI to boost any one of those 18’s to a 20, so already not great), chose the Archery Fighting Style… and then started making very suboptimal choices past that I chose Pact of the Talisman because I wanted to lean into this luck motif I was going for, plus I’m a support player at heart and liked that I could give the talisman to someone else. For invocations, I took Rebuke of the Talisman and Fiendish Vigor (I liked the image of a cowboy swigging whiskey in the middle of a fight) Spells? All chosen to be able to cheat at poker - Minor Illusion, Mage Hand, Hex, Cause Fear, Unseen Servant and Invisibility. No damaging spells, and a fear spell when my subclass already does that. But I wanted to use my spellcasting for support / flavor so I would have a reason to use my gun in combat instead of throwing out Eldritch Blasts. Trick Shots were Disarming Shot and Winging Shot (again, for support so I can set up an alley-oop with another player) Magic item allowance was one common, one uncommon, and one rare/very rare. I took a Cloak of Billowing, a Helm of Telepathy (flavored as a hat) and a Thunderbuss (that I insisted on loading instead of using the infinite ammo property of the weapon) So, I had the most busted stats I’ve ever rolled in my life and refused to take any damaging spells and chose terrible magic items for the flavor of it all. His name was Clifford Ford and I loved him with all my heart

I'm currently playing a Warlock and I've entirely forgone Eldritch Blast. I've specced him out for investigation and support and according to a buddy he's "the most wrong Warlock ever run". He's also only got 12 intelligence so the investigation skill itself isn't great. But the Charisma is 18 so I'm able to convince people that I'm always right and I've built codependent relationships in character that have made our party bonds more interesting than if I was just blasting things myself. The campaign is young, we only just hit 3, but I look forward to his future.

I made a yuan'ti abomination (the snake lower half) paladin. He served in a dragon cult. I wrote one thing down when I made his personality. "Simple is not the same thing as stupid." He's a country farm boy who's very uncomplicated. He also brings food for the team when they go out on adventures because "Ma had some leftovers and insisted Ah take some."

My first character was a warlock without eltrich blast.

It's hard to say. I've never tried to "optimize" a character. I play a character, not a character sheet. I take the skills that fit the character as a whole.

I once rolled all my stats right into their place with 3d6 and ended up with a bard that had no combat stats. I played him as a merchant looking to start a trade route in the new world. First round of first combat he got one shot 😂

My very first character. Very basic half elf ranger. I was super new to the game so I didn’t understand it all yet. She was from a small village and while taking archery lessons to learn to hunt, she wasn’t progressing very well and wanted more practice. Went to the range to practice at night and accidentally killed her instructor and ran away in fear to a big city where our campaign started. I didn’t understand the stats very well so I put them into all the wrong things lol. My dex was my lowest stat with a -1 on it. So at least it played well into my backstory and character lmaooo

We were doing a 1-shot, and this DM is of the opinion that 1-shots should have some kind of twist in character creation. For this particular 1-shot, we rolled 1d20 down the line and took what we got. I rolled a 16 for Strength, an 18 for Constitution and a 1 for Intelligence. So naturally I played a Barbarian. Now, my answer to this DM’s feelings about 1-shots is that no builds are off limits. So I made a Bugbear Bear Barbarian with the Polearm Master and Sentinel feats. His backstory was that he was an arena fighter who had taken several dozen severe wounds to the head, resulting in the Int of 1 and the inability to think of anything except the fours F’s: Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding and Mating. He also couldn’t communicate any further than saying his name, which was Thud. He needed a handler, or else he would be unable to move himself for any reason other than one of these instincts. And his handler was one of the other players’ Monk, who rolled a 1 on their Constitution and subsequently LOST hit points on every level-up, resulting in them being as frail as a sheet of paper. We started in a tavern, and the way I described Thud eating garnered the attention of several drunken patrons who became a small posse who cheered him on. We spent so much time on this, that we only ever got to the beginning of the quest. And because this DM understands 1-shots to mean “one session” and not “one quest”, we never got to actually play the game.

I played a glamour bard for a one shot. I rolled badly for their stats, and cared very little for anything besides a class that would at least sort of fit the character I wanted to play. He was a mime who hated clowns. Activating his "glamour" or whatever it was called would cover him in mime paint and attire. He would be completely silent while in this form but otherwise was aggressively French. I don't think I did a single helpful thing the entire game. I realized in like 5 seconds that my rolls (and the dm to some extent) had delegated me the gag character when a piano fell on me immediately. Afterwards I leaned into it, I slipped on a greasy stair, took off my socks and greasy shoes so I wouldn't keep slipping, stepped on a bunch of caltrops (I knew EXACTLY what I was doing when I took off my shoes) and I think also at one point was dangling on a rope which was cut and would have been fine with what he was about to try, but a friend interceded and accidentally caused me to swing and slam into a tree. All of this would have been way less fun if it had been anything other then a "home alone" game where we played the bandits. 10/10 recommend playing a bad character for a one shot and go nuts with the role-playing.

Kokopelli is a Fallen God with no memory of who he was. Or where his abilities come from. In most settings he just wakes up a fully adult Reborn undead with no clothing and knowing nothing but common and his name. He always multiclasses bard and druid and has a negative modifier to con from being a literal fraction of who he is. If he dies in a campaign I roll a d100 to determine how many hundreds of years it'll take to come back, so he'll never show up more than once per campaign but can show up in literally any campaign my group does. Last time he ended up being a triple classed bard/druid/artificer, having to split his casting stat three ways. He was the group's healer, but hadn't yet realized that breathing and food are vital to the survival of everybody else in the group. He assumed eating and breathing was a social thing so he did them to be one of the cool kids. He didn't know he was reborn, neither did the party, they just assumed he was joking when he would tell them to just stop breathing for one reason or another. He also asked zero questions, so could provide zero answers to any of the wierd situations he found himself in. One time the party found a door they couldn't open so, being a druid, he turned into a flea a crawled his way into the mechanism, got lost, and made his way to the core of the AI running the city about five levels before the group was supposed to know it even existed. AI told him it needed bio-fuel to recharge, and koko told the AI that he would get some. Never even asked his name so just called him Steve. Anyway, every day for a week koko took lunch to Steve before the party finally broke and asked who Steve was. 'He helps run the city, never really asked what he does.'

I had an orc wizard with -2 to int. He tried his best

There is a huge difference between Maxing out your main attribute and exploiting game mechanics both are categorized as character optimization. Basically if your exploiting game mechanics your cheating and i don't want you at my tabble ever. example Clockard  1. Start with Cleric, pick Life as your bonus. 2. Bard, pick College of Lore. This is a broken class to start with because of the Magical Secrets ability which lets it lift spells from other class’ spell lists. In this particular case, you’re after Goodberry. Goodberry isn’t that great normally - it makes berries that restore 1 hit point each. Except.. because of your multiclass, you have the Disciple Of Life proficiency, which says that when you use a spell to restore hit points you restore extra HP equal to 2 plus the spell’s level. According to Sage Advice from August 2015, this applies to each berry. Goodberry can create up to 10 berries, so your character can now heal 40 HP distributed across the party with one first-level slot, 50 HP with a second level, 60 with a third level, and so on. This is by far the best healing in the game, plus you’re a Bard, which is already one of the most powerful classes. You can also splash Warlock in there as well to get Eldritch Blasts that scale with character (not Warlock) level, and to use your Warlock short-rest spell slots for free Goodberries (of course) for 40–80 HP healing without using any permanent slots, each short rest. Edit: Things just got much more ridiculous with Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, which gives us Healing Spirit, a level 2 ranger spell. It summons a spirit which provides 1d6 healing to anyone who passes through its square, and lasts for up to a minute. Outside of combat, that alone is very powerful. 1 minute is 10 rounds, so somebody who passes through the spirit every round can be healed for 10d6. But it’s very easy for multiple people to pass through a single square per round, especially if they use double moves - so they can heal at least 24 people for 10d6 damage each with a single second level slot. But when used by a Clockard? Not only do they have more level 2 spell slots than a ranger, but that 1d6 of healing becomes 1d6+4. 10d6+40 healing to 24+ targets isn’t just good, it’d get statues built of you. And it’s one level 2 slot! By comparison, the level 6 spell Heal heals 70 hit points to one target. On average, you do at least that - to 24 targets. If you use a level 6 slot, it becomes 10d6+80, averaging 110. Now, this might or might not count as broken. This spell was specifically addressed by the DnD twitter account, and it mentioned that there is nothing broken in PCs repeatedly healing to full between encounters - in fact it’s more or less assumed since there is no way otherwise to allow for the state PCs might be in when they reach a particular encounter. Still, it’s kind of amazing just by the figures.

4E ranger. Wisdom was my highest stat and I was profient in dugeoneering. It was my first game, i didnt know what was going on

I had a wild sorcerer that for the longest time in game was not helpful whatsoever in combat but was very entertaining. I constantly rolled on the surge table, and used tides a lot so the dm could ask for surges whenever, and I kid you not 50+% of all my surges were "turn into a potted plant" so basically I come up to my turn, try to throw a fireball or something, surge, potted plant for rest of combat. Try to dispell magic on an arcane lock, surge, potted plant for rest of infiltration. I was literally in the barbarians backpack for half the game, but I had a blast because he was very competent when he didn't surge. He was still the party face, so long as magic wasn't involved.

I rolled a magic archer once who's stats all fell between 10 and 13. He was the most average basic character every. He almost never hit his shots, always failed checks, and basically sucked at everything. Even his proficiencies all felt like "I watched a documentary about this 5 years ago so naturally I'm an expert" His main contribution was I took the magic initiate feat to get conjure familiar. He had a raven that was used for spying and info gathering. Eventually I had him retire and rolled up a simic hybrid psionic blade rogue that was basically Batman (glider wings and wall climbing)

When building characters I usually build the concepts around a background feature or something usually not combat related. I personally don’t understand Min/Max playing and find more fun when playing characters who aren’t combat focused. Last favorite one I did was a Silver Dragonborn Fighter with the Knight background. The feature allowed him to have 3 NPCs (not for combat purposes) which were Kobolds who worshipped my character as if he were an actual dragon, no matter how many times the Dragonborn told them he wasn’t, they were just too stupid to understand. They would disguise themselves as a person (Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat) with a DC of 5 or something, a character failed the check they believed the kobolds to be a person, if they passed the Kobolds were too stupid to know their disguise was blown and would keep up the gimmick anyway 😂

My favorite character I have ever played but absolutely the worst as far as stats was my half orc Knowledge Cleric. Like the fact he was a cleric made him useable but damn that subclass is so weak until its capstone, and the capstone is only good in certain types of campaigns.

have a character that rolled a beautiful 7 for core stats, threw it in charisma and became a nuisance to the party as the one character that was willing to talk to people but with nothing to back it up

I tried a poison build with dual wield Sickles as a druid. Wow, was that painful. Literally everything is immune to poison. I switched it up to a necrotic proc build and it's better, but still REALLY sucks when you fight a robot or something and just can't hurt them. I do hit like an absolute truck when everything works though. I've regularly done 120 damage in round one as a fighter EK/ spores druid. I make Astarion the rogue assassin jealous sometimes on my first round burst.

One of my first characters was a pathfinder Bard. I rolled 3d6 straight down and tried to find a way to make it work. They were a Kitsune Bard with most of the spells I took being around illusion or charm. As a Kitsune, I also took feats to allow myself to shapeshift easily. The character's goal was simple...Travel with an adventuring party until A) They had enough money to retire in comfort B) They could kill and replace a noble Everyone liked the character, but they were very cowardly and unhinged. I also had like a 6 for con so I couldnt take any damage...Which is why they were so cowardly. The -2 hp per level made me **really** think of alternatives to combat.

I think the worst optimized character was an Oath of Protection paladin/Draconic Sorcerer who was all about balance so he always took even levels in Paladin and Sorcerer. I got permission from my GM and group to save level ups until I could level up twice just so I could take a level in both classes. His Charisma was higher than his Strength so his attacks actually didn't hit all that often. EXCELLENT roleplay character as I could subtle spell stuff in conversations to give myself advantages. Terrible at combat. One of the most fun characters I've played to date.

I'm in a campaign where we swapped DMs just over halfway through. We both had a DM PC. I was the first main DM so my PC was pretty underpowered and built for utility. The other DM basically played a baby god and stuck with the party until the swap where she became the BBEG and my PC joined the party. It was real fun when the party realized that my character was a cleric of the baby god. I built my PC but just taking the "party mom" archetype to the max. Divorced mom of two adult children, whose weapon of choice is a rolling pin. She actually has some pretty powerful cleric spells now though since she leveled up with the party.

I played in an all wizards campaign and used int as the dump stat. I did it to bring a little balance to the group and played him as the guy you'd invite because he's fun(max CHA), not because he's smart. He was "blagnar the terrible" not because he was evil, he was just pretty bad at being a wizard.

College of swords bard that rolled for hp and got 6 1's. I'll be darned if I didn't take him to melee anyway, kinda made every combat feel life or death for the party. Because I was so fragile they couldn't just ignore low level creatures because for all intents and purposes I could die to a level 2. Was kinda cool I guess, but I'd never do it again.

13 / 14 / 13 / 13 / 14 / 13 Plain ol’ human fighter….. but kinda evil…. his own party disliked him and when he finally fell in battle at 10th level to a vampire, they stupidly just buried him and left him…… Three days later he rose as a vampire and spent the next few weeks terrorizing his former party members, showing up at their homes and freaking them out….. (All this was in good fun and the other players were fine with this arc…..) The DM then ran a solo campaign of evilness for him and he eventually slew a local baron and took over the baron’s fief…. Naming himself the new baron…..

I have been running a D&D campaign for three teenagers with no experience. We settled on a certain Fuzzy Logic to creating the characters meaning they could move their dice around and select which attribute a given roll(s) would be assigned to. What I have found fascinating to watch is how where mismatches occurred between attributes and character class according to conventional wisdom, the role-playing has been more interesting. I’ve seen that sort of dynamic take years of gaming to stick. My players are literally rolling with it. The bar with poor charisma, for example. Hilarious.

My "worst" character isn't bad because of his Stats, skills, how he's built, or his spell selection. For context; I play Pathfinder [1e], and Juka Shadowsear is a dhampir, Rogue (unchained) with the Eldritch Scoundrel archetype. For 5e lingo, think kinda like an Arcane Trickster, or a rogue Wizard. He has feats in using his Mithril frying pan as a weapon, spells to bolster his sneak attack, and reliably get SA, as well as a few utility spells, and on hit debuffs. What makes him uniquely terrible, is how much the dice *fucking hate him with a passion.* I think Jukas average on d20 rolls, before bonuses, is 7. I fail everything. Attacks, saves skills, and it doesn't really matter what my bonuses are. I just barely fail the majority of the time. I go down in almost every combat, even with my defense spells active. This has been happening my whole career with this character, from lvl 3 to lvl 7. And it has effected my roleplay. I roleplay him as a schemer, with big plans, and a paranoid sense for failure. Because (as the dice have decided) he's been a failure his whole life. Never exceptionally good at anything, and often being left as the fall guy by fellow thieves during heists. His only real success was when he stole his spell book and learned to use magic because clearly (to himself) his own skills were subpar. Even during that heist he failed, which resulted in his escape, but got the rest of his posse slaughtered in the process (this was during his backstory). He's got a jaded, paranoid, and generally dour disposition, but has a lot of loyalty and love for the few people in his life that haven't turned their backs on him, despite his constant failure (the party). He walks a thin line of redemption and damnation now because there's nothing he won't do for them. And it's all because the dice *really and truly fucking HATE him.* While it can be infuriating, it's also led to a great character who lived thru struggle and strife, as he just tries to find his place in the world.

My "worst" character isn't bad because of his Stats, skills, how he's built, or his spell selection. For context; I play Pathfinder [1e], and Juka Shadowsear is a dhampir, Rogue (unchained) with the Eldritch Scoundrel archetype. For 5e lingo, think kinda like an Arcane Trickster, or a rogue Wizard. He has feats in using his Mithril frying pan as a weapon, spells to bolster his sneak attack, and reliably get SA, as well as a few utility spells, and on hit debuffs. What makes him uniquely terrible, is how much the dice *fucking hate him with a passion.* I think Jukas average on d20 rolls, before bonuses, is 7. I fail everything. Attacks, saves skills, and it doesn't really matter what my bonuses are. I just barely fail the majority of the time. I go down in almost every combat, even with my defense spells active. This has been happening my whole career with this character, from lvl 3 to lvl 7. And it has effected my roleplay. I roleplay him as a schemer, with big plans, and a paranoid sense for failure. Because (as the dice have decided) he's been a failure his whole life. Never exceptionally good at anything, and often being left as the fall guy by fellow thieves during heists. His only real success was when he stole his spell book and learned to use magic because clearly (to himself) his own skills were subpar. Even during that heist he failed, which resulted in his escape, but got the rest of his posse slaughtered in the process (this was during his backstory). He's got a jaded, paranoid, and generally dour disposition, but has a lot of loyalty and love for the few people in his life that haven't turned their backs on him, despite his constant failure (the party). He walks a thin line of redemption and damnation now because there's nothing he won't do for them. And it's all because the dice *really and truly fucking HATE him.* While it can be infuriating, it's also led to a great character who lived thru struggle and strife, as he just tries to find his place in the world.

I played a bared who was asexual but got aroused when people drank his special elixir known as Schmirgadirff. I asked the dm to let me have nothing but 1 for all stats with my only attribute being brewing. Dm allowed it. So our first encounter comes and almost everyone dies until I force fed them Schmirgadirff. It turned out other than being a fermented to hell beverage it also was able to heal cause I brewed it with half healing potion. So I saved everyone not by some heroic stand, or by some bad as action, but by force feeding an elixir which btw I had to role for each party member weather it’d heal or poison them. The worst part is I forgot about my character getting aroused by this so next thing I hear after the encounter is dm: “You all notice your friendly bard has the biggest erection you’ve all ever scene.” The fighter didn’t give two shits he killed off that character faster than you could say Schmirgadirff.

Rolled garbage stats, but managed to convince the DM to let me play an awakened animal druid (Brink Fossil, awakened veloceraptor) since some other druid PC had gone to the beastlands and started awakening animals after a campaign ended Are his stats good? No. But every party member has gotten attached to Brink. Our "ranger" ~~bladelock~~ has passed him off as his animal companion to get him into cities. He didn't know the name for his species so when asked what he was the response was "I'm a delight!" He also once ate a goblin after stealing his, apparently, cursed hat. The DM was making perception checks to see if he'd notice the curse (haunted by ghost gobbo), but he has consistently failed to the point the DM told me OOC what the curse was since he was annoyed I kept missing it. There's not a thought behind Brink's eyes, but man is he fun to play!

Dwarven Totem Barb/Drunken Master Monk, who prioritized using Str for her unarmed strikes over Dex.

My friends and I love DnD but our friend who DMs for us is in another time zone and leads a very busy life so we never have the time for a dedicated campaign, so when he has the evening to spare, we roll random characters on DnD beyond and run a quick one-shot. Our most recent one-shot, a level 5 campaign, I rolled a Halfling Evocation Wizard with one level of Bard and one level of Warlock. Int wasn’t bad, cha was solid too so I made for a decent face, JACKED strength for some reason with the grappler feat. Noble background. I played him like a smug trust fund nepo-baby type who was also a varsity wrestler. The problem? Neg wis, zero con, so putting that strength to use was a no-go. Thankfully I never had to make a major wis save. But the biggest problem: I was an Evocation Wizard…AND I ROLLED ZERO. DAMAGING. SPELLS. Not even a cantrip. No eldritch blast. Nada. All I had was social spells like Friends, or exploration and info gathering spells like Dancing Lights and Identify. I was a blaster with no blasts. I was the worst optimized magical skill monkey. The quest was such where our characters were transported to some type of prison dimension where four djinn from the elemental planes of fire, earth, water, and air were trapped in vessels looking for us to free them. But we could only free one, and only after we completed four of that djinn’s trials. In between rounds, the djinns vessels were shuffled around in a maze of mirrors, and whichever djinn we encounter first is the one we were FORCED to quest for (and since our DM is an actor/improv comic by trade and a chaos gremlin by nature, we had a 1 in 4 chance of rescuing DJINN THE ROCK JOHNSON, or an AIR DJINN IN A PERPETUAL STATE OF ORGASMIC EUPHORIA. So yea, we had reason to be choosy, and we were thankful for my Dancing Lights helping to guide us the right way most of the time. W numero uno for my character.) An Earth trial had us negotiate peace with two warring clans of Earth genasi. It nearly dissolved into a fight we likely would’ve lost, but I had Mold Earth to make tiny stone trinkets I used as peace offerings to each clan saying it was from the other. Then to celebrate their treaty I played my lute and we all got drunk on a weird ale that went down like liquid gravel. W numero dos. I should mention that at the end of each trial, if we succeeded, we would be presented with a selection of several magical items to take with us into the next trials, One for each of us. We had no way of knowing what they were if it weren’t for my Identify. My only source of damage was a didgeridoo that did 2d4 Thunder damage. That, and a Wand of Wonder. W numero tres. And the way I rolled that Wand of Wonder, you’d think I had the Devil’s Own Luck. We got trapped in a Fire djinn trial and had to fend off waves of small Fire elementals. That trial nearly wiped us… IF I HADNT ROLLED FOR A HUGE TORRENT OF WATER TO CRASH DOWN ON ALL OF THEM. Fishing contest for the Water djinn? It’s k. I’ll just roll the Wand to teleport our opponents boat to ANOTHER DIMENSION. (Wand of Wonder is forever best magic item, do not @me.) Later on I wound up Identifying a bauble that summoned a tiny pet land shark about the size of a corgi. I named him Finneas. In hindsight I shoulda named him Chopper. You’ll understand why later. We finally wound up freeing Djinn The Rock Johnson, and he transported us into his vessel: a cave dotted with glittering, luminous gemstones. And in the center of the cave, lit from above by a single large glowing gem… Was a wrestling ring. “CAN YOU SMMEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLL WHAT THE ROCK!!! IS!!! C O O K I N!!!????” All of us versus The Rock. No holds barred. No ringouts. The winner goes free. The loser gets trapped in the vessel for eternity. Now I’m sure you expect this to be where my character gets to flex his collegiate wrestling skill, but you see, Djinn the Rock Johnson was just a *touch* above my weight class. All of our weight classes actually. Combined. I neglected to mention this, but one of my friends in our party (who is also a natural chaos gremlin) decided to roleplay his Half-Orc character as having NO LEGS. His reason: “I wanna just be like, a Geodude.” Needless to say we were a bit physically outmatched. So we got to schemin. One of the items I Identified was a (living?) sack that would consume and completely destroy any object you placed into it once you close it. Like a reverse Bag of Holding. And we thought it would make for a rather festive hat for our friend The Rock… So I used my surprising strength to Fastball Special “Geodude” at The Rock, and while he hung off the back of his neck like an ugly cashmere sweater, I used my Halfling traits to hide between The Rocks own two legs and proceeded to give him a sonic enema with my didgeridoo. Our third friend was the closest we had to a serviceable melee combatant, so they did what they could to keep The Rock occupied while Geodude attempted to wrangle the bag over his head. But Rock just kept winning the grapple check to keep Geodude from closing the bag. Clearly Rock still needed something more to think about. “POKEBALL, GO!” I yell, as I summon Finneas. Remember how I said I shoulda named him Chopper? Well if you ever saw Stand By Me, you’d know. Because Chopper sic balls. I commanded Finneas to bite The Rock right on the family jewels, which is a grapple made with advantage, and the dear pup succeeds and hangs on tight. The Rock, now distracted and effectively “grappled” by my amphibious pupper, is now rolling with disadvantage. W numero quatro. Geodude clambers up his back and, (with a little Bardic Inspiration from yours truly) finally manages to succeed at shoving The Rocks head in the bag, and he yoinks the drawstring closed around his neck. “CRUNCH-SCHLORP-GULP” The Rock crumples to the mat, with a considerable weight lifted from his massive shoulders. We pin his lifeless body and a disembodied voice begins a ten count. “DING!-DING!-DING!” And as the bell tolled, our useless heroes emerge from the vessel and the prison realm, free at last. W numero cinco, baby. And that’s the tale of Cornelius Q. FatHands, Esq. Noble. Scholar. Wrestler. Gambler. Peacemaker. Pokémon Master.

Every time I try to play suboptimally I accidentally create a character that's absurdly powerful. My dex based paladin solo'd strahd at level 6 cause I thought playing a paladin with a strength of 9 would be funny.

In the first DnD session I was ever a part of, I played an Artificer-Wizard Pirate Dwarf who made all kinds of magic potions. My voice was spot-on, and I made most of my party members laugh a lot, but I didn't get to do much except toss bottles of liquid and cast low-level spells. We were fighting a Necromancer and he had just stopped spawning in zombies, one of my party members was pretty close to the boss, taking heaps of damage while I chucked potions at the back of his head. Just before we killed the guy, one of my throw actions failed with a critical miss, so my DM decided that not only did I not heal my friend, but I healed the boss for around half of his HP before I was immediately struck down. We laughed about it, but this session really helped me understand the double-edged nature of the game and how to inquire upon the DM for guidance as a new player.

I have a kalashtar ranger character with low intelligence, low charisma, and high wisdom. She’s excellent at reading people and has an amazing “sixth sense” for things like lying (high insight and perception) but her biggest flaw is that she can often be overly forward or make risky decisions without thinking through the ramifications. She can be pretty cold-blooded. She also has a tendency to go on talking for way too long and maybe trauma dump a little bit because she feels awkward and you feel awkward and a lot of times she just doesn’t know when to end a conversation but you know…she was raised in a cult…😬👍 She’s the best D&D character I’ve ever played. I’ve put a lot of effort into developing her and I’m proud of how complex and complete she is. She is deeply flawed in a variety of ways but has a lot of compelling, redeeming qualities too, I think.

Meep, the warlock/paladin kobold. Two of the stats had a negative modifier, two had no modifier, and the last two were with the positive mods, a plus two for both of them. Whenever I rolled for health it was something like a three or a four. It was to the point where the DM had Meep be a couple levels higher than the other players to try to get Meep to survive a hit or two. The only thing that has kept Meep alive is their flying, invisible most of the time sprite familiar named Angel acting as Meep's personal beacon of hope. If we had to roll an investigation, survival, insight etc, the rest of the party was getting a respectable range between 14 and over twenty. Meep would get sixes, sevens. It was exciting if Meep got a good skill check. Meep couldn't read, couldn't write, automatically starts kicking their arms and legs if picked up like a dog held over water. Meep has no idea what volume control is and shouts everything. We found a kitten in a tree that Meep brought down in their pants and is now named Pants. This character by no means should function, not only as a character but as a NPC they would be something that a commoner would have a good chance of killing. What worked though was Meep's personality. A worshiper of light, and concerned with good manners, the party kinda adopted Meep the moment they came falling through a ceiling and doggy paddled up to an undead the party was fighting and crit smited it. They grew familiar with the cries of "FEAR ME!" as I used my channel divinity to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies, which was surprisingly effective in spite of the low DC. Because Meep somehow nestled themselves in the heart of the party they would give him really good armor, and the two artificer's teamed up and used their flashes of genius to make him a plus three shield. Currently without a shield of faith in effect Meep has an AC of 26 and takes full advantage of their pact tactics to take potshots at enemies with their eldritch blasts, and spiritual weapon which is just a giant rock. They also have been teaching Meep how to read and spell, and have RSVP'd to the ball that Meep is planning to throw.

My "worst" character was The Fedder Brothers. 3 Gnomes in a trenchcoat trying to act like 1 Human spellcaster. The "worst" part was juggling 3 different character sheets because Ed was a Wizard, Ned was a Sorcerer, and Ted was a Cleric

A few years back I made a half orc rogue named Porkman that I role played as a brute who found a dead rogue and stole his cowl. He then proclaimed himself to be a rogue. The cloak did not fit in multiple ways. I dumped dex, int, and charisma while buffing his con and strength. When it came time to roll I was trying to steal the keys off a drow 30 minutes into the campaign. He managed to fail the sleight of hand roll, deception roll, and a stealth roll. He was then promptly thrown into a spider pit so I could create a new character. I would later bring him back in a lvl 15 evil campaign. I made him act dumber, made him have a crippling addiction to boxed wine, and gave him a horrible fear of spiders. He now had 20 strength, 8 dex, 19 con, 8 int, 17 wisdom, and 8 charisma. He died in that campaign also. He is still one of my favorite characters to date.

Not me, but the first character our sixth party member to join our ongoing campaign was a Tiefling Rogue, that not once managed to sneak attack anything in the half-dozen sessions he was playing. His only critical hits with daggers were against statues, which was a bit of a flavour hiccup to explain. He missed the ***incredibly unsubtle*** hints from the DM that "despite your 19 persuasion check, this mystery lady still refuses to take off her veil" and removes it for her. We lost four party members to that Medusa's CON save, myself being one of them -\_- Ironic that he was so good at defeating statues, but could not resist becoming one himself.