Deities and Demigods, Volume 2

I showed Scrabblette the D&D books last night because she loves beautiful books as much as I do. We talked a bit about this formerly hidden sordid geek phase of my life and this morning I delved under the house to find my old character book. We played several times a week for about 4 years with rotating DMs and varying numbers of players, so I had a lot of characters. My character book carries the optimistic title "Deities and Demigods Volume 2".

I know there's nothing more boring than a role-player telling you about his characters, so you should stop reading this post now. I preferred to play thieves - characters with a wide variety of tricks up their sleeves, the occasional chance to do some exploring by themselves, and the occasional chance to rip the other guys off. I also had success with clerics and fighters, but never achieved much with magic users. Here are some of my more successful characters.

Hemo - elven thief - died in the Demonweb Pits. It was a right royal pain keeping an elf alive - they had to be resurrected rather than raised, which was expensive. Hemo was the perpetrator of the biggest rip-off I managed in my time. Together with Erica the Cleric he killed a frogemoth and stole the treasure which was over 100K gp if I remember correctly. Started a cafe called Hemo's Eat House which lasted longer than he did.

Charlemagne - human bard - not sure where he died. Spent some time in the service of Lolth in the Demonweb pits. Bards were hard to make, and not very much use, so Charlemagne mostly filled in as a crappy fighter. I do like the more obscure character classes though. I had a number of druids as well.

High Lord Paragon - human fighter 18 - retired. Paragon was originally a paladin but our campaign didn't really support the paladin class so eventually he fell. He was typically the leader of any party he was part of, and always fought in the front row without fear. In particular, he stood like a rock while wussy magic users such as Bon and Lysipius fell like flies. In one of his most famous battles he severed both legs of a nycadaemon in one round.

Saint Bernard - human fighter 16 / cleric 19 - retired. Bernard completely lacked any personality. With his intelligence of 7, dexterity of 7 and charisma of 6 (after Lolth deformed him), Bernard was often mistaken for a victim rather than a hero. Nevertheless he was always in the thick of the fighting and able to patch up the party afterwards. Eventually Bernard became the person to whom low-level characters sold excess magic weapons, and his armory now includes dozens of +1 and +2 weapons, Defenders, Unholy Avengers, Dragon Slayers, Giant Slayers, etc etc, and six intelligent swords all of which are smarter than he is.

Yuri (thief 8, deceased), Sophia (magic-user 1 / thief 2, deceased), Ivan (thief 16, retired), Vladimir (thief 18, retired) - half elven siblings. This family of thieves had varying degrees of success. They weren't quite as greedy or as much fun as Hemo.

Gryma Lars - human fighter 20 - retired. Gryma Lars was the brother of Grym Lars who died young. From the cold northern wastes, Gryma Lars was a taciturn killing machine. He was never as famous as Paragon, but he didn't have the sort of personality which attracted fame.

Kurin, KILLER OF GARILLARZ - dwarven fighter 10 - retired. Kurin makes this list due to his strong personality. He was known for his bravery, but in actual fact he was too stupid to know fear. ("He knows no danger, he knows no fear, he knows nothing.") If someone was needed to taste a suspicious substance, or open a suspicious door, or leap into a vat of boiling oil, Kurin was always the one to do it. Strangely, he always survived. He became known as killer of garillarz after fighting a gorilla known as "the ripper-aparter". He still has the head.

Hmm, that's enough. You should be asleep by now.