Related in some ways to the other NPC thread, here is where you tell us about NPCs (powerful or not) that you had originally intended to only appear in a single session/adventure, or maybe even totally throwaway characters for a single scene/locale, that for some weird reason (twist of fate, appeal, PC insistence, whatever) ended up becoming significant recurring characters in your campaign even though they'd never been planned as such.
What happened?
There was a lich. The players didn't want to face it but thwarted its plans by attacking its allies. And then they did that again. After that it just made intermittent appearances for no real reason. I am fairly sure they could have beaten it without too much trouble, so I don't know why they were reluctant to face it. Finally it was still around when they ended up traveling into the future, when the world was dying.
This sort of thing has happened quite a bit.
but one of the more interesting one's was an NPC Half Orc Barbarian in Pathfinder a few years back.
I was originally running Pathfinder for my kids.
A bit later I started up a campaign with some friends.
Instead of starting up from scratch, I used the same area in Golarion and storyline where I left off with my kids.
The Half Orc was the party NPC.
When I got the new players to join in, I had done some background of the Half Orc already and one of the players liked it and took on the NPC as a character. He then expanded the background more.
The background was His mother an Orc, father a Human slave with Orcs.
The Half Orc character was the result.
He was not appreciated in the tribe and the tribal chieften took a particular dislike to him.
So he runs away to Human lands, taking the clothes on his back and a chain which he stole.
He ended up getting taken in in a village where I started the new characters.
He ended up lasting right through the entire life of the campaign (a couple of years) and still kept a chain as his main weapon.
So from originally intended as a meat shield/tank NPC for a few sessions for my kids to get used to Pathfinder to a full blown character in a campaign.
I think he got to about 12th level before the campaign ended.
Arveth was a mook who should have been randomly killed when the PCs attacked a chaos cult.
Instead she was captured by the PCs, questioned by Tithenmamiwen, and then cut loose. When Elestra, another PC, tried to sneak back and slit Arveth's throat to stop her from warning the other cultists, Tithenmamiwen stopped her.
But then the cultists caught up with Arveth: Believing that she had betrayed them to the PCs, they tortured her and even cut out her eye. Eventually concluding that Arveth was still loyal to their cause, the cult gave her a team of assassins and sent her to kill Tithenmamiwen.
Arveth nearly succeeded in her assassination attempt before the rest of the party showed up. While the rest of her team held the party at bay, Arveth managed to escape (barely evading Tithenmamiwen's angry pursuit).
At this point, Arveth started using a magical artifact to send horrible nightmares to Tithenmamiwen (often featuring Arveth cutting out Tithenmamiwen's eye). She issued threats to Tithenmamiwen's friends. She placed a bounty on her head.
The PCs would fight her again. This time Arveth was teamed up with a medusa who turned two of the party members to stone. Arveth carved an eye out of each of the statues before making her escape once again.
By this point, of course, the PCs were absolutely furious. Tithenmamiwen, in particular, had a rage which burned so white hot that her alignment shifted: She had shown this bitch mercy and she was repaid with endless torment. I don't think I've ever seen such intense hatred focused towards an NPC before. It reshaped the entire course of the campaign.
Arveth was a mook no more.
When she finally died, the cheers of the players rocked the house. They literally took her miniature as a trophy so that it could never be used in a game again.
there is one who i plan on having much more prominence then initially intended
there was an npc who i initaly introduced so that after about a year of game time she could be used as a hook to bring the party to tarrth moorda. the initial plan was for the party to travel with her there and she would start her studies but then she got angry with the cleric because his emotions almost got him killed and left without him. anyway this prompted me to think a bit more about the character and i think it will be a recurring npc i think she feels somehow like its her duty to try and fix the characters mental health
of course what auctualy happens will depend on how things go down when the priests church comes crashing down in a mass of lies deception and secrets fronts for either demonic or devilish powers (i have yet to decide)
I'm sure there have been others, but the main case I remember is Amethyst, from my college Shadowrun campaign.
The PCs were off on a job to deal with... well... I don't remember what they thought they were getting into, but what it actually was was a cult led by a vampire sorceress and her trio of wizardly lieutenants, each of whom wore a certain type of stone. As is the way of things, the PCs busted in on the vamp and her sidekicks as they were performing some major ritual, so all the baddies unload on the PCs.
One of the sidekicks, wearing amethyst stones, fired off a Toxic Wave spell - a big acid AoE - which chewed up the PCs a little, but he seriously blew his roll to resist Drain and passed out from the stress of throwing the spell.
PCs finally finished the vamp off and shot the other two sidekicks, burned the vamp's body and flushed the ashes down the drain, never to mingle again, and then bugged out before anyone else showed up. They didn't take the time to check any of the non-vamp bodies...
So, a couple hours later, amethyst-guy (who never even got a proper name...) wakes up and swears revenge. A few weeks later, elementals start showing up and harassing the PCs at inopportune times, then hostile runner teams, and so it goes... They finally did manage to track Amethyst down and finish him, but he was harassing them from behind the scenes for a good 4-5 months. Definitely the best (and most hated) recurring foe I've ever run and it was completely unplanned.
I was running FASERIP MSH. I was trying to come up with a one shot baddie for the team brick to fight. I was rolling on the random power charts and got multiple arms, light generation, high Strength, and body armor. I decided this was enough, so I named him Vishnu.
Vishnu's back story is that his mutation appeared in adulthood. He was already a bit unbalanced, but sprouting another set of arms made him completely unhinged. His new powers (and a documentary about India he saw on TV) convinced him he was a god, and he set out to rid evil from the world. Once he made this decision, the very next thing he saw on TV was a news story about "evil terrorist mutants" and he set his goal on locating one or all of the members of X-Force (this was actually before the comic of the same name), and killing them.
Well, the team brick, named Tank, was the lucky person who met this guy. I figured Tank would squash this guy like a bug and leave him tied up in a girder or something to be taken into custody. That's not how it went. Tank's dice did not like him. He couldn't make the save against Vishnu's blinding attack (light powers, remember?) and it all went downhill from there.
Vishnu couldn't do any real considerable harm to Tank, just peck at him. Meanwhile, Tank couldn't hit Vishnu because he was just flailing around blindly with a -6 CS to hit. What resulted was one of the most destructive fights in X-Force history as the area was getting absolutely decimated by these two bricks being spastic.
Early on I decided to play up Vishnu's insanity. I played him kind of like Dudley Do Right. Periodically, he would yell his battle cry which was, "I am VISHNUUUUU!" That was to become his signature. Tank hated this guy from the very first moment.
Eventually Tank got a solid hit on Vishnu. The fight had gone on quite a while at this point. I figured now that Vishnu had a taste of the damage Tank could dish out, that he'd flee to try again another day. Tank fled the area. Several city blocks had been destroyed by the battle, and X-Force got blamed for it.
I decided then that Vishnu was Tank's recurring nemesis. Tank hated the guy, but his dice simply refused any kind of decisive battle when the goofball would pop up. I'd use Vishnu most times when Tank was alone, and every single fight resulted in excessive property damage.
Vishnu hasn't been seen in ages. I figure what Vishnu decided he needed more protection against Tank, so he needed to harden his skin/body armor even further. Vishnu thought about it and decided concrete was pretty hard, so if he could infuse his skin with concrete, he could reinforce himself. So he entombed himself in a concrete block, but he forgot he needed some way to get out. So somewhere there's a concrete block with Vishnu inside of it. One day the block will be cracked open and Vishnu will re-emerge to face the horrible mutant evildoer known as Tank.
Vishnu is really kind of sad. Most of his backstory has never appeared. He lives in isolation because he was always weird but now he's just flat out a freak. He has no friends or family. His only companions are the voices in his head and his television set. I figure he had an abusive and belittling family growing up, thus his desperate need to declare himself a god and give himself a grand purpose. Probably deep down, Vishnu is just trying to get himself killed, and failing even at that.
Right now we have a guy named Dancing Hawk who came after the party when they killed someone he loved. I expected him to be dispatched and never dealt with again, but they tied him to a tree and let him live. So he keeps coming back after the party. It is still pretty early in the campaign so they could just get sick of him and kill him soon enough but he is turning into a recurring foe. In their last encounter they put him in the care of someone quite nefarious without realizing it. This means next time he comes after them, he'll be something of a changed man both physically and mentally.
Running the 2e Slavers adventure, Markessa the Red has become a significant character. She defeated the party and sold the survivors into slavery. They vowed revenge and spent a few sessions working toward it. Finally defeating the Cove stronghold, they capture her. Markessa's wit and wile kept her alive, and the party just set her free last session thinking she has changed for the good. Clearly, she now must plot her own revenge.
We were running an OD&D campaign a couple of years ago. I had this table for Morale reactions I had worked out, most of the reactions were flight however there was a rare chance for attempted surrender.
Well the players ambushed a band of brigands that had been causing trouble, it was a massacre. The last surviving brigand failed a morale check so the table I had made was consulted and wouldn't you know it he surrendered. I shrugged it off at first because my group at the time was a bloodthirsty bunch and were only actually doing the job to clear out potential rivals for a criminal enterprise they had cooked up.
Anyway to my surprise they accepted his surrender. I bullshitted up a name and a brief back story. They took him in as a gear carrier and to be used as bait in dangerous situations. Over the course of the campaign they became quite attached to him and treated him as a full member of the party.
The groups shenanigans put them on the wrong side of a local noble and ended up with an armed confrontation with his retinue. The adopted brigand was killed in the ensuing skirmish, along with a good few hirelings and nearly a player. The group left the hireling corpses to rot but damned if they didn't see to it that their adopted pal got a proper burial, they didn't even loot his corpse the bastard was buried in full arms and armor.
Wish I could remember more of the details of that game but sadly I lost the binder those notes were in during my last move.
Currently a dragonborn villainess who started out as a one-off opponent who was likely to get taken out once the party caught up to her. But through their own stalling they allowed her time to pull out with just about everything. That allowed her other plans to fall into place and so far she has been one step ahead of the heroes. The only thing working to their advantage is that she does not know who they are as the PCs have been passing themselves off as members of her organization and seeming to be helpful at every encounter.
Which bemusingly may help to set her up as the prominent villain in the organization at the rate the heroes are going.
what the hell sort of dragonborn are you talking about only dragonborn i know lose there powers if they go evil
Quote from: tuypo1;820934what the hell sort of dragonborn are you talking about only dragonborn i know lose there powers if they go evil
5e Dragonborn are a stable race and can be any type and any alignment.
I think it was 3e that had the Sorcerers that could turn into a Dragonborn at some point? Dragonblooded?
i just read through the entirety of races of the dragon yesterday dragonblooded refered to anything with dragon blood from kobolds to half dragons and all sorts of other things
oh all the changes 5e has made the ones related to race are some of the strangest
well auctualy thats not entirely true i skiped over the feats and prestige classes i will have a look at those
ok theres the dragonheart mage which is for those with any draconic heritage to get full caster progression a breath weapon and free feats. thats probably what your thinking off
so what did they do for the 5e dragonborn did they just remove the dragonborn inability to bread or completely change the fluff
I've had quite a few, since my players have often been completely unpredictable. For example, in The Village of Homlett one of the NPCs is a 0-level human tailor who for some strange reason, wields the heavy crossbow and dagger as a 7th level fighter -with an additional +2 to hit and damage. One of the PCs decided he had to have padded armor of a certain color (red, IIRC) and while bargaining for the tailor's services, convinced him to join the expedition to the Moathouse and later, the Temple of Elemental Evil. In spite of having only two hit points, the tailor survived without a scratch. Once the party completed the two adventures, I made the tailor a 7th level fighter -a fitting "battlefield promotion"- and he hung around for the duration of the campaign.
Another was an ogre in the Moathouse who was charmed by the party's magic-user and became his bodyguard for several adventures.
The third was Turuko the monk, who joined and tried to betray the party in the Moathouse. For reasons I can't remember, the party spared his life and he changed his tune and became a valued henchman/party member for a long time.
So that's three in one module and all three took me by surprise when I was the DM.
My group has Excited Guy. That's his name now, his real one being lost to the ages.
Excited Guy was first encountered in a Mage game. The PCs needed some info and we were directed to this guy who could help. What we found was an NPC who, for the first time in the campaign, was genuinely happy and excited to help us. He didn't want anything in return, or try hide anything, or all those things you expect to run into when you need to get help. He just wanted to help.
The group took such a liking to him that we often included him in on things past the original situation. He continued to be excited and loved hanging around with the PCs and being whatever help he could.
Since then Excited Guy has shown up in a few different campaigns spanning a few different games (Mage, CthulhuTech, DeadLands, Pathfinder, Anima). Every time he is ready to help the PCs out and do the best job he can because he is just so darn excited and happy to help us out.
I had a simple minor villain NPC for Villains & Vigilantes named "Puzzler (http://savageafterworld.blogspot.com/2014/03/my-favorite-npc-meet-puzzler.html)". He was a "joke villain" who was meant only for a one-off appearance. However, that one appearance was so much over-the-top fun, he became my go-to nuisance bad guy. My PCs both loved him and loathed him. Loved him because he was fun to go toe-to-toe with. Loathed him because their public reputation always took a hit as Puzzler managed to always come out on top and humiliate the PCs. Eventually, to save his own hide, Puzzler had to team up with the PCs for a campaign-altering scenario. And when he reformed and needed to be trained as a hero, who do you think he turned to? Yup, for a Riddler/Ambush Bug hybrid one-off joke bad guy, "Puzz" became (and still is) one of my longest-running NPCs.
That would be the Klaxon family.
Steve Klaxon and his ancestors and descendants have followed us across five game systems.
Steve was one of the guys on our Rogue Trader cruiser whose job it was to wear a flashing red hat and scream 'WAH WAH WAH' when the ship ran into trouble. (Hey it is 40k, everything is done manually,including calls to battlestations... I also wanted to rip-off Kentucky Fried Movie...)
This became irksome to the captain who had him jettisoned, and ever since then any minor yet unexpectedly irksome NPC in a new game usually ends up as a Klaxon. (His most recent appearance was as a revenant in our brief 5e game that had come back to hunt down the PC that had brutally killed it earlier... It turned out he was reasonable for a vengeance maddened undead abomination and joined the party for a bit with the promise that he could kill the PC on the last day of his year back.)
In my DCC game, I had a guy who owned a "curiosity shop", that claimed to have "just about everything". The whole place was a cluttered mess, and if the PCs ever asked "Do you have x", he'd ALWAYS answer "we do not! But we have this.." and lead them to some completely unrelated object that may or may not be of any use or interest to them (I'd pick the object, usually, by rolling completely randomly for it).
He was meant to be a one-time joke, but the players were so amused by it that they constantly came back, every session, for as long as they were based in that city.