What is the most outlandish character you have ever created and did your GM let you use them?

For example: I am currently toying with the idea of a Pixie Toxic Black Mage.

Christopher Mortisson, a Nosferatu Chaos Mage (posession), who's currently saving up 119 karma to summon an Ally Spirit to Inhabit himself, effectively duplicating this story.

It should be noted that Christopher has a stacked weapon/power focus in the form of a claymore. And he just got some pimped-out Heavy Military armor.

A Globally Famous Dryad Drake Shaman rockstar.

I made the player remove ONE of the outlandish things...he chose to ditch Globally Famous and just go with Dryad Drake Shaman.

In Shadowrun?

Heralding back to first edition, a troll street samurai called Khan with two cyberarms with a strength score of 89 and enough deltagrade (or was it beta then?) cyber to be called a cyberzombie before there was such a thing. He would routinely flip cars to provide cover in a firefight and loved the autocannon (much to everyone else in the party's detriment and all NPCs for that matter).

Other games:
In Warhammer Fantasy RP, I have a 'used camel merchant' by the name of Honest Yusef Khezman who always refers to himself in the third person (and always with the prefix of "Honest"). To this day he is considered a house favorite and his exploits border on the legendary within my group. He runs screaming and hides at the first sign of combat, is useless with a dagger (but loves threatening people with it when he thinks he can get away with it). His gift however is that he was born with a silver tongue and a brilliant liar.

- J.

My brain flocks to the more freakier character types and most of the time, i try to be reasonable and within the fluff. But for my GM they are all outlandish enough he wouldn't allow them if it wasn't me. *grin*

The character with the most suspension of disbelief would be my SR3 Wolf Shifter who had a dragged-around-the-floor-for-two-hours-and-shot-in-the-head idiotic backstory as to why he actually runs the Shadows. But i made up for it with some cool roleplaying moments which my whole group treasures.

A new concept which i hope will get approval got the concept of "Mister Gear". He doesn't use cyberware, he isn't a mage, he got no special talents or skills but makes up for it with lots of money and gear. I toyed with some of the restriced gear options and thought "Yeah, Milspec should do it." After the design process finished he looked quite familiar...

oooh shiney!

I had a character built with compelte ear and voice-ware. he used his cyber in a pretty much annoying way too.
his Voice/Words just did not match up with the movement of his lips.
i constantly did the talking motion with my hand when in-game-talk was done. and real steady movement open, close, open, close, open, close . . add in that his voice was jumping all over the metahuman hearable spectrum of sound and you get all people annoyed enough to start doing something stupid ^^

my other built was similar concept wise, but did the same to the eyes. complete dermal sheath with ruthenium polymer-coating, 12 image scanners and a ruthenium polymer coated suit and coat with 12 image scanners too . . and all linked up to his brain via DNI so he could control the shifting of his colour too . . he was pretty much just a blur if you tried to actively look at him and thus good for some headaches ^^

another concept was again with ear/voice stuff, but the idea behind him was to get the effect of the ares screech sonic weapon into his body . .

i do pretty entertaining stuff with cyber ^^

one character had completely modular arms and legs aside for one Arm that was NOT modular.
basically, i built in the flexible power of Adepts. if he did not fit through somewhere, he would just take off his one arm and both legs, drop them through wherever he wanted and hoist himself in behind with his other arm and re-assemble inside *grins*

still SR3 i built Scorpion from Mortal Combat with Cyber once too . . something like this mouth-slasher, but bigger with more reach inside his forearms, combination of cyberteeth, skull, internal airtank and mouth-pistol to allow him to spit fire too . .

magic is usefull for such stuff too, things like Iceman/Mr.Freeze . . with all the Coldhearted cool icy puns of Mr.Freeze from the one Batman movie ^^

in SR4, i could probably do some pretty bad stuff too, if i played and knew my way around the rules *snickers*

my concept of BINKY is one example i guess ^^

the characters i have arent to outlandish but some of the things i do as them might qualify.

i had an enchanter that would harvest and preserve bodyparts of any awakened that got killed with him around.used the titanium laced bones of a troll to make a claymore weapon focue. had my own heart surgically removed and replaced to make a power focus.

I got into a game using expanded CP2020 rules and character creation, set in the year 2070 (*snicker* this was in the late 90s mind) and the GM made the mistake of letting me take the "Invetro" Advantage. He was a retired Space Marine Colonel, built in the Fixer role, who ended up being the central role in the campaign. I purposely gave him some hook disadvantages and made use he didn't have the largest share of the company (he had 35%, the AI Psychologist had 45%) but he was just such a force of nature that everything revolved around him.

He had crazy contacts, social skill values in the 20s (think Pornomacer if you have never played CP2020), and the slickest biz man you ever ran into. Over the course of three years of play, he almost single-handedly build our little one ship trading group into something near a Shadowrun A Corp that specialized in Fast Courier, Convoy Security, X3, the best AIs and AI services in existence, and building extremely high quality custom items.

Oh yea, and I was stealing about $100M a year at the end of the campaign, while leaving our total profits to shareholders at ~$300M a year (looking at the sheets, our last year was $327,842,200 profits on $3,983,237,500 gross, we also paid off a several ships, opened a couple expansions and my character took $100m of that)



Considering we started out with only about $45M through the whole party, with a $40M dept, we did pretty good.

Hm, can any of these "character concepts" be played more than once? I mean with such an obvious style? Or should I see them more like "concept cars"? Proof of principle, displayed once, never heard of again?

it's pretty easy actually.
my characters mostly have the ability to shut this obvious stuff off.
simple as that. just switch all the ruthenium in your sheath off and wear usual clothes.
shut off the ear and voice-ware and nobody will be the wiser . . even the scorpion one was not that distinctive, as the air tank, skull, pistol and arm-slasher are all not obvious cyber-ware.
mr.freeze/iceman was a mage so he could simply NOT cast ice-armor or something like that . .
ok, binky is seriously over the top, but that one ain't completely RAW either *snickers*

and no, i did not play them more than once. the others were annoyed both in and out of game and i had my fun ^^

usually i play the troll combat monsters, and even those are not too distinctive . . .

Well, I've had some out-there concepts, but they never really fell totally flat and were still able to be worked in. Back in the SR2 days, I had a character that, when my friend saw him, he quoted ''You really did it, finally. With time, effort, and study, you have successfully created the Ultimate Combat Machine.'' He was a bio/cybermage, and back in those days, they could get REALLY out of hand. Sorcerer, resources A, fully jacked physical and mental attributes(legal, we never played with Availability at the start, and even if we did I could have built something close anyway), bone lacing for maximum unarmed damage, Firearms(remember SR2 firearms were like a skill group of SR4), and even some social and stealth skills. Oh yeah, and mad spellcasting, jacked higher with a power focus and his Expendable Fetish collection. I played him once and got bored(though his backstory I made up with the 20 questions was great fun, he was just so overpowered), but IMO, it was the ''making of the monster'' that was more fun than actually playing him. I forget exactly how I did this, but it involved all of the sourceboots, the SR2 companion and a lot of math.

Otherwise, I have things like a shapeshifter, and a Nordic troll shaman/viking-esque guy who follows Odin, who aren't too outlandish as much as a little offbeat. My current guy is the elf bodyguard(Semper Paratis code of conduct and everything), with the uber-raptor cyberlegs(16 strength, but we allow the extra boosts past normal maxes if you want them and it doesn't make the game out of hand, and since Strength is the most tame of the stats, I ran with it) who can pulverize about anything with them, but I actually play him rather calm, was careful with the Agility score so that he rolls about the same amount of dice attacking in melee as our gunbunny does shooting(16-17ish, kinda high but not Porno territory). He's got quite spread out skills(high Perception, some moderate guns, solid athletics, a couple social and a touch of stealth), some Martial Arts qualities, and despite hitting like a panzer shell, he is WAY less out of hand than the top guy I mentioned by about 2000%. He's a little outlandish due to the sheer twinkage I did to the legs(about anything cool I could fit in them, I did, like hydraulics, foot anchors, razors), but I'm surprised he turned out rather reasonable and not an overpowered snoozefest. He's just as likely to be found hanging out in a coffee shop drinking some of his favorite strong brews, surfing the AR for anyone playing Guilty Gear 2070 Plus Accent Core Judgement XYZ-power as he is preforming his guarding duties for whoever hires him, or occasionally splattering someone whom he was paid to do and he discovered they were a very, very, bad man.

Besides that, I haven't done anything REALLY strange. My one friend made up a paraplegic African prince and my friend played his old British butler, but that was about the only thing I can think of really weird character-wise at our table.

does strength still factor into jumping distance and height?
if so, he could probably jump buildings in a single leap ^^

Had a vampire with the self-loathing thing kicked up a notch. Part of a magical group of mystic adepts following the Egyptian tradition with Ra (Sun) as their mentor spirit. They fight crime!

Well, my current PC isn't so outlandish, but his Reneaku Manservant 3 drone gets a groan or two at the table. After I added some personality and profession autosofts, and Fuzzy Logic with Adaptability, and the AI in Residence (since he's my house drone) ... He has ended up being a mix of C3-PO, Alfred (from Batman) and HAL (from 2010: A Space Odessy).

He's really a blast and fun to be silly with, and only pops in about once a session for a short scene ... So everyone puts up with him (and me and my anics).

Wade
aka Icarus

Agility is jumping nowadays; it's part of the Gymnastics skill, the one Agility-linked skill of the Athletics Group. However, the Leg agility is 9 at least; not as much as I could have gone but plenty, and with the skill, Synthacardium and the raptor-legs, with the hydraulic jacks, he can certainly get some impressive jumps. RUNNING; now, that's Strength; the legs multiply running mods by half, so his walk/run rate is 15/37 as opposed to 10/25; and the Synthacardium also adds to that, so doing super-running is in the books. (actually, I think his upper body was an 8 after a couple levels of toner.)

Even Climbing is solid; upper body strength is a modified 8; could have gone higher, but again, didn't see it so much, but as long as his legs are involved, he gets the arm/leg average in there for a solid climb. I don't think it's as much as the Super Climbing Twink build that I saw, though.

Come to think about it, he's kinda offbeat in a way that I could have gone even further overboard with him, but I just wanted a character who can run super fast, jump really high, and kick things really hard. I suppose I've done the ''master of all things'' already, so let the other party members have their specialties. I'll just get those pesky doors off the hinges if a quiet lockpick isn't needed.

As for the drone above; that little guy sounds rather awesome. A part of me always wanted one of those Otacon-specials from Metal Gear Solid 4 following me around.

EDIT: You know, I have to say...none of these characters I mentioned were actually hated or even disliked. Even the SR2 monster above; my buddies were more impressed I could pull it off. Had I not gotten bored it likely would have turned to annoyance. I can't think of the last character I made that was actively disliked at the table, to be honest. Nor any of our buddies. We had some facepalming moments, but no one truly hated. Now, this is my main group...we have games with others that indeed had characters whom we wanted to throttle constantly.

We have one of those in my game.

Infact I also have a drake mystic adept/covert ops guy, an AI (as above, not that different), an amnesiac human spy/close quarter combat specialist, a troll arms dealer/merc, an eagle shapeshifter/shaman.

Infact the shapeshifter wanted to play that character back in SR3 days but I said no on the grounds it was too whacky. As of SR4 I figured, fuck it.

- J.

Wow, I guess I play rather sedate concepts. My Dad however has had some doozies. A were-piasma. A tribal wolf shaman/decker. An over-the-top villain who captured my character and threatened her with an injection of gargoyle blood. The gunfighter that, through terrible playing, was not only inneffectual but a complete moron. A gang of characters SURGE-d into animalistic forms called the Zoo Crew. A D&D character that fell through some magical rift. A Klingon street samurai. A great dragon. Yeah.

Incestuous Lesbian Albino SURGed Night One Cyber-Mermaid Catgirl.

Not bad.

I've never had anyone too ridiculous, but I have a freind that loves making outlandish characters.

once he made Piccolo from DBZ by making a magic adept with some photosynthesis bioware.

He also made this Orc called Gat Moneyfister who put all his money in a single cyberarm. it had a strength of something like 20+
The very first action that Gat did was to take Novacoke and he spiraled out of control thanks to the addiction in like 3 game session thanks to a low willpower and some bad rolls. His best scene is when he used his arm to punch through an engine block.

Good times.

You mean... THIS Incestuous Lesbian Albino SURGed Night One Cyber-Mermaid Catgirl?
Samantha

My god man, you're alive!

Long story. It involves drop bears.

I have some outlandish chars ,but none are so freaky as to be forbidden.(Maybe they cause Ticks for the GM,but they're not toooo over the Top)
one ist Jack-of-Hearts,a Hobbit Mage with some self invented Spells (how do you translate "Feuchter Flutschfinger " in English ?) I also created his Son Blackjack,a Technomancer that looks like Prince from Purple Rain ( but only 1 Meter tall)
another famous Hobbit of mine is Squirrel ,a Hacker who loves his Facehugger Drones and who uses a Rotodrone for a Helicopter.His two Cats where his employees (he had his own little Radio Station after playing him for Years in SR3.) I converted both,but had no opportunity to play them in SR4.
There is my Nartaki Elf (pretty Normal apart from his 4 Arms)
my lovely Elfin Maid (Ki-mage Pornomancer with Dragon Consort)
oh,I nearly forgot
In SR3 i played Ragnaroek a Troll Dragon Shaman with a little Psychosis"I'm not a Troll,I'm a Dragon,I'm just born in the wrong Body !"
now I recreated him for SR4 as a Drake just to be able to say"See,I told you so !"

You see ,nothing tooooo Freakish

HeyaHeyaheya
Medicineman

Our GM tends to step on your outlandishness with a view for termination through quirkiness, if he allows it at all, such as Halfling riding dogs which batter your head off of tables and shelves every 5 mins, but i do have an orc gunmonkey who rolls 31dice for damage resistance-whose terrified of being hurt.

My two most outlandish charakter concepts (which didn't make it into regular playing) were first, a totally eye- and earware equipped Pistolero with a tactical computer, giving him a near-infinite number of dice for attack. He couldn't do much, but just perceiving about everything and shooting on it.

The second one was an ork samurai with armored limbs and trunk (but we used to differentiate the armor by body part, thus it didn't sum up to 20+ armor in our group). He was wielding a double barreled SPAS, thus being able to shoot nearly anything between 1 and 12 bullets per round if I remember correclty. In addition he had several shotgun cartridges implated in primitive shooting devices all over the body, which turned him into a walking claymore.

ah, yes, perceptors, allways a fun way to make your GM sweat ^^
i actually had mastered one of them in such a way that i did not have to ask:"do i see/hear/smell anything?"
instead i asked:"WHAT do i see/hear/smell?" i think i had about 10 to 12 dice for every single one of those three modi operandi . . and that's SR3 mind you ^^

oh, another character just popped under:
My German Terrorist Dwarf Burrowing Animal Shaman with completely maxed out Shape Earth Spell at level 8 in Character Creation.
Mind you, the Dwarf was 1m tall, if he stood at his full height . . so he could basically do things like create an 8m long tunnel for himself just like that through most grounds ^^
further plans would have included to get that spell even better some time and get him a small little electrical powered bike with a rocket launcher mounted to it, so i could do
things like NOD from Command and Conquer. i still fondly remember the szene of two Nod-Mods whirring into a tunnel, firing their shit and then doing a u-turn and racing away
before retaliation can react ^^
factor in things like sustenance, create food spell, oxygenate spell and an infra-dead light and he could basically just walk into the earth and stay/live there for some time ^^

I was playing SR3 one time, and while my character had a kinda stupid background, prize for silliest character was a Troll PhysAd with the streetname Flash. He even wore red and gold FFBA under his lined coat. You can guess the stats and powers from the name.

The whackiest character ever never actually got played, as the potential player moved out of the country before actually taking part. He wanted to play a Renraku tech whizz that had his mind replaced by a nascent AI he was working with at the time of the crash. We hashed it out, and he ended up with a shit hot decker with no social skills, since the AI had no real experience of human interaction. He loathed his meaty prison, and the meatbags he was forced to associate with. Of course it was never determined either way whether the crash merely warped the human, or whether the AI actually was downloaded into his body.

With a name like Flash, I'm surprised he was wearing anything under his coat

craziest I'd ever had in a game were PC's I made for an epic earthdawn/shadowrun crossever explodapalooza.

we had an Otaku, The Mercury Messiah, who could bring his programs into the real world (just imagine, split and blackhammer and you get the idea of the craziness)

we had a dragon, nuff said

a Tir N' Nog cyber-zombie with enough anchored spells, deltaware, power foci, weapon foci and gear to break the bank of most nations

an Aztlan research mage that was possessing the body of a Lightbearer, whose two personalities were vying for control. (this character was my favorite, as on his character sheet I scrawled all these conflicting thoughts and word puzzels, every week they'd change, so the entire group would pour over the character to figure out what had changed and piece together the clues about his character)

and then a pretty mundane if highly initiated phys ad.

that game probably still has the record for me for biggest combat (the 5 of them vs. 40ish vampire go-gangers 3rd edition rules...YIKES)

As far as personal craziness, probably goes to my elven phys ad bodyguard for a prime runner game in 3rd. about 15 dice of swordsmanship dooling out 20D standard, with something like 17 bod of resistance and gimped out Increased Reflexes. We determined that this was the guy you hired if Teachdaire was hired to kill you.

the newly aquired medic of this board pieced together a troll whose preferred modus operandi would probably be best described with his name:"DEATH FROM ABOVE" not really maxed climbing OR jumping, but both good enough so he could scale something, then jump up and drop on whatever he wanted to hurt using the ramming or falling rules or something like that . .

That troll just needs a load of cushioned military armor and the ability to roll himself into a cannonball. Or just a big belly-flop from above.

Cyberlegs with Hydraulic Jacks should come in handy for that character. Or a MilSpec with the same...

i think the legs are in there, actually.
i don't really know, as i am right now at work and the character is stored safely at home.

Wow, even in my rocking-the-fabulous-pink-mohawk days, the weirdest thing I think I've played was my sr2-era combat shaman (Shark totem), named Lucifer Miles-Longfeather. Albino human. Half Hopi, half anglo. Wore a leather duster decorated with bones. Carried a power focus made from a hellhound thighbone and a machete weapon focus. He was pretty mellow until fighting happened, at which point he lost all common sense, even when he did resist Shark's frenzy.

Not really outrageous, but funny... In my brief SR3 game, one girl decided to play a Weapons Specialist. For some reason, she decided the character was French. Somehow the rest of the group decided she was from Quebec, not France. She spent the rest of the campaign trying to convince the group that she was, in fact, from Europe. In retrospect, it probably wasn't to bright of the team to be taunting the sniper...

-paws

Most of our groups insane PC's have been more offbeat flavor then anything. Super Troll who wore a armored T-shirt with the Superman S on it and was convinced he was invincible. ( He met a horrible end.) Garrison and Garrison twin street sammies who were constantly confusing the team. Red Hot Acid Drop a drug addict who went out with a bang, slapping on a whole bag of kamikaze patches. A gator shaman who insisted on using gibberish Cajun in game. Bozo a mentally unstable clown who lives out his psychosis both in and out of the matrix including unique encryptions involving candy land and agents who inhabit custom drone dolls with twisted personalities.

Maybe the oddest SR character I have had would be Shank the cyberpsychotic BTL using serial killer. That was his past.

During the game he was semi stable except for a bit of meglomania. He started up a pirate group in the Carribean named the Spinebenders which gave him an outlet for his meglomania and other violent pyschosis. He ended up dragon food when he pissed of the Welsh dragon (cant remember its name) on the way to Tir Na Nog.

In hindsight it was kind of a dumb character. But I wasnt very familiar with SR back then.

A year later I made a street sam named Bushi who was a former Shiawase security operative. Things went bad and he had to vamoose. Maybe the only odd thing about him was he had a signature style of wearing a mempo all the time.

2nd edition troll adept with maxed out bod. Then started stuffing bio ware and a bow and I think you can figure that one out.

Currently running a high karma bear shifter adept who has been pumping it all into initiation and magic. Dressed in traditional Taoist robes and carrying a couple rolls of copper coin he tends to waltz right through those pesky security scanners, problem being he can put one of those coins through a mans chest pretty easy once he is inside. Throwing 26 dice at regen is not to shabby either.

Isn't that actually taller than Prince is?

Only by 1mm or so.

Friend Stahlseele owns the Brother ,whose a Hunter/Ninja/Traceur (Troll & Bow & Str 14 = has about 15 to 18 Dice Jumping , 12 to 15 Dice Climbing as a starting Char with the potencial to get 25 to 30 Dice for both ) Raptor Legs included
I Made the Pitfighter for Myself.
with all Tricks included (MA Capoeira and Sángre Y Aceiro ,Charge,Jump Attack,Higher Ground,
Raptor Legs, Climbing Claws,Offensive Attack, Sweep Attack,Finishing Move)
He Jump-attacks from 10 Ft Height,,topples the Target and kills him: Base dam. 7K, 20 Dice to Attack,Target on the Ground,Finishing Move another 7K with 12 to 15 Dice.
Both Trollbrothers have a beautiful Backgroundstory ,the late awakening advantage and have yet to be played

HokaHey
Medicineman

Craziest character I ever allowed (in my naivete) was a vampire phoenix shape-shifter mage back in the SR2 days. There weren't any rules saying you *couldn't* allow something to be converted to a vampire, and he wanted to be something unusual from a shifter perspective. In hindsight, not the best idea to allow this.

As a player, my most outlandish Shadworun character and one of my most favorite to play was a split-personality radiation toxic shaman named Alexi Chekov. Alexi's other personalityh was an Aztechnology middle-manager named Chet Alex who believed Alexi was his own personal troubleshooter to help sheppard runners and give him a heads up on the running scene. Alexi wore a latex mask and full face gas mask when out and aboute, as he beleived himself a priest of the Holy Fire. The group loved to hate him and he was packing enough magical boogy to make him scary, plus nobody likes to get shot in the testicles by a radiation spirit .

As a GM the most outlandish character I ever allowed would probably be either an HMHVV infected Halloweener who was based off of the Dark Knight's joker (he didn't last too long) or a metasapient AI that was formally in charge of some part of Horizon Disney World and was now a runner trying to figure out how being alive worked exactly. He was definately a favorite of mine.

craziest character I ever came up with? a little child technomancer and her cyberzombie plaything. Both of whom were scarily good at what they did. Her, at raping everything remotely mechanical, and it, at killing everything that wasn't.

Bioshock?

- J.

And then the GM lets them awake with a pacifistic totem

I took Precautions.
Their Awakening is connected to a huge Tournement at the Crossroad of Dimensions to Protect the Earth from being conquered by an Evil Force

with Mortal Dance
Medicineman

Well, you can't... that's the deal with latent awakening.



Any deals set with the GM in advance are kinda cheating... why not then just taking the full BP costs and threat it as if it where latent awakening, just because it happens later during gameplay for a good story?

Oh, sorry. I forgot that I'm posting in a thread about outlandish characters

Some guy I knew once played a satanistic albino night one adept from pomorya (the frackin' German elf island) with dikoted cyberspurs, arsenic bioglands, a severe allergy to nicotine, and apparently several heavy cerebral hemorrhages.

Then I allowed a player to begin the game as Jane Frosty Foster from Harlequin's Back who mutated into a security armor wearing, two Savalette Guardian using, trauma damper and unerratad mnemonic enhancer using, double-digit initiate-freak. She also acquired that unique masking artifact from Blood in the Boardroom. Boy, that was a mistake.

I once created a third edition wolf shapeshifter who was brainwashed by the Japanese government to believe to be a loyal, heavily armored, and human supersoldier. All animal stats at 1 and partial amnesia. Think of Jin-Roh.