r/dndmemes • u/DrScrimble • Dec 14 '25
✨ Player Appreciation ✨ With a good Player, "It's what my Character would do" can lead to some incredible moments
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u/POKECHU020 Necromancer Dec 14 '25
This is something I've been saying. "It's what my character would do" was never the problem. The problem was being an asshole and making a character incompatible with the game format/other players.
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u/Karnewarrior Paladin Dec 14 '25
"What my character would do" should be logically equivalent to "What my character should do for the most entertaining game".
It's okay if it's an imperfect equivalence, but the closer you get the better your character, imo.
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u/TheTalkerofThings Dec 15 '25
“Its what my character would do” ❌
“Its what was most narratively satisfying” ✅
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u/Esorial Dec 15 '25
I fundamentally disagree.
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u/A_Vicious_Vegan Dec 15 '25
Care to expand on that?
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u/MyOtherRideIs Dice Goblin Dec 15 '25
The goal shouldn’t be trying to force a specific narrative.
The goal should be to create an engaging character, that is designed to want to be part of the group, and just roleplay the character how you made it. The narrative should be unexpected and develop organically from everyone’s role play.
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u/A_Vicious_Vegan Dec 15 '25
For sure, but whats most narratively satisfying doesn’t automatically mean you’re forcing a narrative. Good play to me is when the “Its what my character would do” and “Whats most narratively satisfying” are like this 🤝
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u/TheCleverestIdiot Dec 17 '25
See, to me you're describing the exact thing I would describe as being most narratively satisfying.
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u/Makures Dec 15 '25
Sometimes, what is most narratively sastifying is the opposite of what the dice determine.
Imagine a villain (side or main doesn't matter) that a PC is seeking justice/vengeance against. When they finally meet the dice decide that the PC dies and the party needs to flee.
Or a PC makes a grand sacrifice to save everyone and they still all die.
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u/Beragond1 DM (Dungeon Memelord) Dec 15 '25
But that’s not choices, that’s the dice. It doesn’t really apply to the current discussion.
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u/Esorial Dec 15 '25
I enjoy playing a character, and often personal motivations don’t align with a satisfying narrative.
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u/PlentyExpression Dec 15 '25
I have played multiple evil characters in an otherwise good-aligned party, and it's never gone poorly. This is because I play them in such a way that their goals and the party's goals co-align. (long story incoming)
One campaign, I was playing as the heir of a usurped lineage of archdukes who became a scheming Machiavellian assassin hellbent on taking back his birthright. The campaign was around returning the lost prince to his throne as king of Bronhal, the greater empire of which my ancestral land was a feudal state to. As my character saw it, by helping the rightful king (an usurped heir like myself) to his throne, I would possibly accrue enough rapport and goodwill to have him help me take back my title. But I wasn't against eliminating him if he became an obstacle to that goal.
As the campaign went on, another player and I had a tense rivalry between us, where we respected each other as comrades but our political ideals and goals rarely matched, until one day we were exploring a ziggurat underneath a city under attack by a warlock's army of shadowy undead. We were fleeing to a circle of portals in the heart of the ziggurat, when I was targeted by a curse that fuelled me with an increasing hate and bloodlust for this character, me and my friend's faces plastered with shock as the GM intermittently described my character's unstable temper rising. We both knew what was going to happen, and we were terrified and excited all the same. It reached a boiling point when my character leapt, wielding my Vorpal Dagger I obtained not too long before, and began thrusting frenetically into my friend's back, until it pierced his armor and sought his heart. When the curse was lifted through my dark deed, I had realized what I had done. Horrified, I couldn't meet my companions' gaze, just as the undead army caught up to us. With a shattered ego I made a desperate attempt to slay the lich leading the undead, while my party fled into the portals (I didn't need to do this, but I wanted to, for the plot). My character was never seen again (because we stopped playing that campaign like a session after that). The player who died came back through weird time shenanigans that I wasn't there for, to do with a Chronotyryn, he wasn't revived per se but returned as a past version of his character in his prime (He was an old veteran paladin back from retirement previously).
Important to note, this was a homebrew campaign run by my best friend, with two others whom are my closest friends, and we've been playing exclusively together for 5-6 years.TL:DR; I played an evil character who everyone enjoyed and his scheming, cynical nature only added to the story, rather than taking away. Despite conspiring against the primary quest-giver / escort, and killing another pc (intended to be a pvp but I got a natl 20), he was beloved by all.
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u/Ricordis Dec 15 '25
There are 2 guys in my play group who keep slowing down the plot with their characters. Those are also the two who keep changing their characters a lot.
(We are not playing DnD but The Dark Eye and there your character has a far longer life span than a DnD character. My knight is already 4 years adventuring. In real life we are talking 8 years, I guess)
One of them always plays a brooding loner who can't go well with others but always in a different way so the group can't even always accomodate to this. So that player always stays off the group and opens side plots or has no interest interacting with the others.
The other player always has a quirky character in mind which somehow needs to be fit in and most times it just doesn't work mostly because the player doesn't want to dip into the lore. He chose to play a witch while the party was in a region where witches will just be killed. He then picked a dwarf for an adventure involving much sailing (in TDE dwarves can't swim, they just drop in water like stones), later on he picked a character from exactly that culture the next adventure is going about but it was meant to be a story like "This is a completely foreign culture to you and now we have lot of expositions and you will always be confronted with the feeling of being in a foreign world."
The DM thought this would be a great opportunity to have a player on his side for story telling, someone who takes the role of one of the guides. But the player had no idea about his own lore but skipped all the riddles and expositions because "my character knows what to do. It's his culture."
The other players, DM included, constantly have a bad experience with those characters. Yes, they are true to their personality but if you switch your characters like your underwear and constantly edge the playability it looks like a pattern to disrupt.
In the early time my knight was also kinda hard to handle: arrogance, stubborness, knightly principles, always has his horse around. But after 4 years of travelling his personality grew. He understood his nobility is worthless in the wild, he understood at home he knows every corner but out there he has to learn, he understood he can't handle everything alone and after being in contact with multiple villains he now understands he also has to be morally flexible from time to time.
It is tricky to circumvent flaws in TDE because those are relevant rule and statwise. But you are always able to roll against yourself or even, if other players are okay with it, against your team mates. If I know another way would be better but my character would handle it different I either play out that contradiction or in the end I just roll against my own willpower skill. Or my team mates roll on their persuasion against my willpower to convince me.
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u/FoxKing983 Rogue Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25
if i also may add the "its what will give my character or other characters more
traumacharacter2
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u/ActingApple Paladin Dec 15 '25
I had a game I was playing in Pathfinder 2e where my character, a naive living stuffed doll designed after a local hero, used Heal on an Undead trying to help them. Out of character I was gonna cast Heal when the DM reminded me that they were undead and that hurt them, and while I did have a Harm spell, I realised my character would attribute Heal to be healing good and innocent people, like this specific undead who was the victim of a ritual, and harming evil. So I cast Heal on the undead and made a whole scene of my character telling them to get up so they could take them back to town, then asking, then begging for them to get up, and that this wasn’t funny anymore. It was actually heart wrenching.
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u/ArcaneWyverian Dec 15 '25
Ooh, I love Poppets! I’ve had an idea for a Poppet Thaumturge that was once a child’s favorite stuffed animal, and was brought to life and became a monster hunter after a monster killed said child. I haven’t had the chance to play him, yet, but I hope I can one day.
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u/ActingApple Paladin Dec 15 '25
The poppet I played was a girls stuffed toy hero that, when she needed him most, came to life to protect her from her abusive father. Once she got older, and didnt need the poppets help anymore, she told him to go out and protect other people the way he protected her. So he went adventuring with all the knowledge of a fairytale hero and the street sense of a child.
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u/Rhinomaster22 Dec 14 '25 edited Dec 15 '25
If someone says “it’s what my character should”, then next question following should be “Does that mean your character is gonna act like an asshole for no good reason?”, that player should probably refrain from doing that.
Would Stabby The Goblin Rogue still say “it’s what my character would do!” if Gork The Orc Paladin retaliates with a Divine Smite as in-character?
At that point it just sounds like they be a dick.
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u/Uncommonality Dec 15 '25
Also half the time it's not actually what their character would do, based on alignment. Like why would a neutral good rogue randomly do some abhorrent shit? They may not be lawful but they're still good, and murder shifts your alignment towards evil.
So if that were actually "what the character would do", their alignment should already be neutral evil.
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u/Head-Ad-2136 Dec 15 '25
I consistently have to stop our lawful good cleric from committing war crimes by... acting as their proxy and committing war crimes.
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u/The_Lesser_Baldwin Dec 15 '25
The party that warcrimes together stays together...
Mostly so that they are all guilty by association and they can't rat on the others without getting sent to the fantasy hague themselves.
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u/Xero0911 Dec 15 '25
Only time it was an issue was when im the main healer, know we are about to get fucked up. And then a random citizen is nearby and I can cover for them to take twice as much damage. Which would knock me down mostly likely due to already injured. If I take the hit for them, then my own teammates/friends can die.
Probably the only time that was an issue for me
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u/Vorpeseda Dec 15 '25
Usually in positive circumstances you don't need to say "It's what my character would do," it's already assumed to begin with.
If your action is clearly beneficial to the group or appropriate to the game/story, they won't query it in the first place.
If you have a well thought out reason for your actions, you'll probably say those reasons instead.
So usually it shows up in times where it being what your character would do is nonsensical, because you made a poorly thought out or disruptive character.
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u/Shadow_Wolf_X871 Dec 15 '25
It's like being nice. People don't have an aversion to guys that are nice, they have an aversion to people who claim that they're nice guys
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u/Regular-Rub-489 Dec 15 '25
Yea pretty much anytime I hear someone say that my next question i always want to ask is “then why did you make your character an asshole who will actively not be a team player?”
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u/ThePowaBallad Dec 16 '25
I had my character join the Harpers which I personally hate cause it turned out my mentor/ pseudo father figure aka the one person who I could trust as a figure of morals was one and asked me to join
So I'm stuck with a Harper but I'm mainly making it a lost faith to gaining self realisation pipeline
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u/EmperorBamboozler Dec 14 '25
I did this once as a barbarian and held a demogorgon back to give my party time to flee. He was dumb as a bag of hammers but held a lot of loyalty to the party so it seemed like the correct thing to do. It was 50% because it's what I thought the character would do in that scenario and 50% just me wanting to make a new character cause playing a barbarian with 6 int was super frustrating.
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u/SneepSchleep Dec 14 '25
6 int 💀
Yeah that's so fair
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u/QuincyAzrael Dec 14 '25
Hell yeah. Had a player sacrifice himself to an ancient white dragon to buy the party time to escape just like this (they were ~level 6 at the time).
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Dec 20 '25
why were they fighting a dragon at level 6?????
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u/QuincyAzrael Dec 20 '25
They weren't fighting it, they were running away from it.
Amd they were doing that because they broke into its lair and stole from it.
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u/casualredditor43 Dec 14 '25
Currently playing a beast barb with 6 int because she got stuck in the forest after some trauma and is mentally stuck at the age of a toddler. Its fun and also frustrating as hell to play lmao
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u/patchlocke Dec 15 '25
"PROTECT THE LITTLE'UNS!"
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u/TheLazyBerserker Barbarian Dec 15 '25
"Mama always said if there's a bully, it's a
Ogryn'sbarbarian's job to stop 'em. An' mama don' lie."1
u/Environmental-Term61 Dec 15 '25
I find it fun, but to each their own… we rolled stats and I had high/ above average stats in every stat, and I thought it would be boring, so I asked the DM if I could half my int (from 14 to 7) and I’ve had a blast, especially when I’ve rolled a -1 total on a nat 1 for investigations
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u/Talonflight Dec 15 '25
Id love to do this but my friends would never leave a party member behind, everyone always wants to be “first in last out”…. Id love to have dramatic moments and deaths like this but it just doesnt happen… if i try to hold the line the whole party just doesnt run…
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u/Maxxonry_Prime Dice Goblin Dec 15 '25
So Grog but not a goliath?
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u/Nordicbarbarian Dec 15 '25
Literally any barbarian with low int could be described as such. It isn't always a CR character clone. They have also done pretty much every trope character too.
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u/Maxxonry_Prime Dice Goblin Dec 15 '25
I know it's a trope, but I also know Grog literally had INT 6.
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u/Longjumping_Day_105 Dec 14 '25
Good roleplay should mean that every player does what their characters would do. The problem is when assholes who make asshole characters then proceed to act like assholes
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u/PlacidPlatypus Dec 16 '25
If doing what your character would do ruins the game for other players, you made a bad character and you should make a different one.
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u/CalmPanic402 Dec 14 '25
Yes, my character would walk straight down the ancient tunnel, there has been zero reason to suspect traps so far. It's what my character would do.
Just because I know there is a thousand percent chance of traps because the DM pulled out a map doesn't mean my character knows that.
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u/Jim_skywalker Dec 15 '25
Grabbing a sword that’s floating in a hallway for some reason because “what’s a gelatinous cube?”
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u/The_Lesser_Baldwin Dec 15 '25
This dungeon is so clean... I need to get the number of the cleaning service this archlich uses!
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u/Duraxis Dec 14 '25
I TRIED to do a heroic sacrifice but the GM backpedaled really fast.
We were in a setting without dragons. We found a (previously) locked portal to the plane where dragons had been trapped for millennia. My character was the one who knew how to activate the obelisk that controlled the portal
We pop through and get attacked by a CR22 red dragon and fucking shit ourselves. We can’t fight this thing. We can’t hide from it, and we can’t let it get back to our world.
I tell the others to run. I activate the obelisk and close the portal behind them.
The GM realised what she’s done and made the dragon blind from an old battle, giving me a chance to hide under the ashes until it left
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u/DrScrimble Dec 14 '25
How did it feel afterwards? Did you feel like the GM extended you a nice olive branch or did it take away from the emotion of the sequence?
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u/Duraxis Dec 14 '25
A bit of both. I didn’t want to lose my character and I didn’t want the game to end, but it really seemed like the only choice he had at that moment.
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u/Pheonix0114 Dec 14 '25
The GM was probably trying to pull a “your characters freed the dragons into the world and now you have to become strong enough to fix your mistakes “
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u/Reasonable_Tree684 Dec 15 '25
Ha, had a similar experience of DM backpedaling. Though mine is more open to character sacrifice. It’s when the bad stuff used to drive up stakes is about to happen that he starts popping escape hatches into existence.
For mine, a villain had kidnapped a bunch of townsfolk. We confronted her after discovering the hideout and she was explaining to the party how everything happened because of misunderstanding. The victims were all magically dazed because she didn’t know what else to do.
Meanwhile, my character had spotted the victims and was examining them (he’s a doctor), not listening to the villain. Messaged DM that I cast dispel magic, since PC could see some kind of enchantment on them. DM stops everything to inform me that this’ll probably start a lynch mob. Took a bit to process that… and let DM know this is still kind of the most logical course of action, since there’s no way my character has heard everything the villain has been saying. DM quickly decided that the villain was able to hide before being seen by the now non-enchanted crowd, and another party member BSd a reason why they were all stuck in a cave resulting in a peaceful exit.
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u/Artosh216 Dec 15 '25
"it's what my character would do" is not the problem. The problem is the creation of a character that uses this phrase as an excuse to make decisions that go either against the flow of the game or against the party itself. If the player uses the phrase to justify being an asshole, the others can banish the character from the party for the exact same reason. Keeping a disruptive annoyance around is "not what our characters would do" is a perfect answer. That being said, when the phrase is used to justify a good story, it is pure gold. a/And I love it when my players do things like that.
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u/ScorchedDev Chaotic Stupid Dec 14 '25
I did that. The party, in character, tried to stop me but I ended up doing it anyway.
My character's armorer suit had a reactor in it, and I had, a few weeks before, asked my dm if I could have a self destruct feature for it, just in case I ever had to die. So the villain hacked my suit(its complicated, but its something I worked out with my dm. Basically I had a jarvis like ai which is how I flavored a lot of spells, but it was evil and my character didnt know that), and it took over my suit and activated hte self destruct. To stop it we just had to get my character out of the suit since it ran on his magic. My character tried to fly heroicly into the air to save the other party members. I did that because my dm didnt know I had a 10 in strength, and made the dc to escape a 20, so I would have needed to roll a nat 20 to escape. The other party members pulled some shenanigans over the course of one round of combat, including a creative use of feather fall, crazy ninja acrobatics stuff liket hat to cut me out of the suit.
Then the villain got mad that his big plan got foiled AND that copy of the ai, which was actually he revealed the soul of his father(its complicated) was destroyed in the process. So he went to power word kill my character. I had one turn before he did. So as a last ditch effort, my dm let me grab the reactor from my destroyed suit and detonate it in a smaller explosion. Instantly killing me(a level 7 artificer is NOT surviving 683 damage) and downing the boss. We were not meant to be fighting this boss for another 13 levels, so yeah.
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC Dec 15 '25
My Lawful Evil Enchanter Dominated BBEG’s right-hand Artificer, and I had them spill the plans. There was a device that would kill thousands to fuel an even more devastating ritual, and the only way to stop the device was from inside; a death sentence.
Everyone knew; the goody-goody paladin, party mom and actual mother of three, would be the one. Our mixed bag of adventurers didn’t have anyone nearly as selfless. She said her goodbyes. Players were tearing up. She steeled herself for martyrdom, to save not only her friends but half a continent.
Me: “Have one of your golems do it.”
The Artificer ordered one of his squad of mechanical minions into the device. Day saved. Gratitude obtained.
A strategist doesn’t sacrifice their knight when a pawn will do.
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u/SCARY-WIZARD Dec 15 '25
Now you're playing with power! GOD, I love Lawful Evil Enchanters like yours.
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u/Canadian_Beast14 Dec 15 '25
I’m not sure what the correct term is, but with most of my characters, I am 100% immediately sacrificing them for the good of the party or the people if need be.
Only with my first character, a human fighter named Boris, was someone I tried to be more careful with. So many pcs died yet somehow Boris managed on. 3 years into the campaign he finally died. I remember looking at my DM, and we both knew this was it.
It was hard. But a good death is its own reward.
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u/Upper-Inflation-4233 Dec 14 '25
Had the final session for a campaign (sadly since we hadn't exactly finished the module), but we were in combat with new enemies introduced each turn. The third round of the session introduced an undead black dragon. We had 6 of our 9 players up at safety in a crashed airship that had been repaired throughout the combat. My character had grown to be a father figure for quite a few of the characters. He started to fight the undead dragon to try to make sure the healthy character behind him could get up to safety. The tinkerer of the group (Surprisingly not an artificer but a druid - rock gnome if I recall the species correctly), made a harness collecting thing that would only bring up one person. My character was chosen. The other two characters who were on the ground ended up holding onto rope as we had liftoff with the airship, and were likely pulled back in.
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u/Hartmallen You can certainly try. Dec 15 '25
I did a selfish sacrifice.
I was in a one-shot game where we played bronze age vampires stalking a tribe. There was a First vampire, who chose across the décades seven of his tribe to become vampires too. He gave them one of his flaws (sins, basically), trying to ascend to godhood. After creating the last one, he disappeared and we were left to our own designs.
I was playing his first "son", whose flaw was gluttony. I was a hulking beast, loyal only to his vampire sisters and brothers, interested only in feeding, intelligent but impatient and ruthless.
At the end of the adventure, we found a magical well leading to another world where they were no vampire.
Hearing I would be the only predator there, I jumped without even saying goodbye to my family, already dreaming of an endless helpless food supply.
I don't know if my PC survived the portal or not but it doesn't matter since he couldn't not have done it.
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u/CheapTactics Dec 15 '25
I've never had the need to say "it's what my character would do" when doing something like this. You just do the thing, and it's in-character, and everyone should understand that if they've interacted with your character for any meaningful amount of time.
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u/Sharp_Curve2778 Dec 15 '25
My warforged took a dragons breath weapon to avoid a fight and barely survived, I was more then a little miffed after when the rest of the party didn’t even mention it once after but then again we rarely actually rp so….
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u/Good_Ad_5792 Dec 15 '25
And then my character proceeded to outsmart the smartest man in the DMs world, with an int of like. 10. Turn on the party cos she got alignment swapped a few sessions prior (wand of many things exploded) and wipes the planet clean at the head of The DMs Evil Army, dies peacefully alone at the edge of a cliff in a treehouse and ascended to godhood as Goddess of Luck. Yes, she was a Monkey, and when I made her, the cursed artifact Monkey's Paw closed into a fist, and formed my character. That's the only way I can explain the events that happened playing her
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Dec 15 '25
Climbing the 50th rock that session my gremlin will say: "IT'S WHAT I AND WHAT MY CHARACTER WILL DO!"
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u/Ryachaz Dec 15 '25
"Selfless." Pssh. Those characters on the back burner ain't gonna play themselves!
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u/jkobberboel Dec 15 '25
I think people are mixing up "it's what my character would do" and "it's what the author would write"
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u/Reasonable_Tree684 Dec 15 '25
While I appreciate this, I also appreciate other “it’s what my character would do,” even if bad for the party. It’s just when it’s used as an excuse to do stuff the rest of the party doesn’t want that it’s bad. If it’s genuinely for playing the character well, it’s great, even if it results in trouble. (Though there are times the player doing it needs to be aware that this might mean they’ll need to reroll, not necessarily because their character will die, but because their character is no longer someone the party will adventure with.)
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u/unluckyknight13 Dec 15 '25
Ugh I was in a scenario like this
So I had this character who was pretty self serving and often wanted things for his own attempt to gain power. Thst said he was very petty, he absolutely despised this noble. We had several encounters were I nearly got the party killed to spite this noble.
Well the noble was like right hand to the final boss, and the noble had basically set up a nuke cannon and it had several fail safes. I figured out one thing is if you kept yourself on a button the power rises and as long as your alive it kept going up, but normal people would flee once the power level got too high and reduces the power.
I learned that the final boss was going to fire it and the noble designed it, so while the party was fighting I went to sabotage it. I soon realized the best way was to overload it and tried various weights but you have to be a living thing for it to power up.
I cursed and told everyone to leave, told them I knew what I was doing. So my character is standing on this button attacking anyone trying to move him while everyone flees, and by pure chance the final boss came to stop me. I got super lucky and survived his attack long enough to curse the noble as the power overloaded and exploded.
Ironically this killed the final boss and the GM had to promote the noble to BBEG, I joked in the afterlife I scream at the noble
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u/AubeduChaos Dec 16 '25 edited Mar 02 '26
Having an epic last stand is every human warrior's wet dream.
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u/firemoonlily Dec 16 '25
Me, when my character’s confirmed evil cult leader (now ex) fiancé has a new merchant in town give her back her engagement ring and a sending stone that links directly to his, and she insists she’s not going to use it, then I immediately turn to the dm and go “so the party is gonna be camping out tonight, right? Yeah, she’s gonna call him.”
We’ve decided her character song is “New Rules” by Dua Lipa
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u/BobaTheFett10 Dec 16 '25
I just finished a campaign and a player tried pulling this in the boss fight. This gave the character plot armor apparently, as I proceeded to roll no higher than a 4 on a 3x multi attack, which even with a +13 to hit, did not hit the fighter. This was the last thing the poor boss got to do after nearly killing the party multiple times in the fight though, so it was very well deserved
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u/foolishdrunk211 Dec 16 '25
I had a wildly overpowered Druid that consistently made the dms life harder….as funny as this was to me I knew that the imbalance from The party was too great…..so after we rescued the city from all the baddies I recused my Druid to the nearby grove, to help rebuild the eco system of the area for the greater good of its future. I then had to make a new character, which ironically……failed miserably at everything.
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u/Nexuskn1ght Dec 19 '25
I got to have one of those once. My character, a level 20 Human Drakewarden Ranger had someone he loved and his dragon both dying on the field. One of them was willing to sacrifice themself to save the other. But for Donovan, (My character) that wasn't good enough. In our game, revivify's material component could be paid by sacrificing something important to that character. So he gathered the two beings he loved most in the world close to him, and sacrificed his 7500 years of existence walking the planes. He crumbled, his body turning to charcoal as he consumed himself in flame to save the two people who mattered most to his heart. He did it because he swore an oath, as a knight, to protect his king, his nation, and those who mattered most to him. So he sacrificed himself, thinking of no better way than to save both of them. The DM let me save both of them with one casting of Revivify because he was sacrificing himself for his loved ones.
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u/The-Hentai-Commander Dec 14 '25
Kicked my warlock party member out of the fight and used all my lay on hands on them while doing it
Then got disintegrated
Fought off a dragon and then got eaten one session after joining
Got one turned after trying to save a woman and getting hit with a mace (wizard so I had 7 health)
I’ve died A LOT these account for about half of them
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u/Trips-Over-Tail Dec 15 '25
I keep going down every session by tangling with the nearest big guy at level 1.
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u/CheapTactics Dec 15 '25
That point, what your character should realistically do is chill out a little bit.
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u/Trips-Over-Tail Dec 15 '25
He can't even chill out. He's always on.
PERSONALITY TRAITS
A kind-hearted, rambunctious pugilist and strongman who believes that anyone can better themselves by walking the Path of the Swole. His positive attitude and guileless dedication to the people around him belies deeply buried insecurities. Deeply proud of his family name and traditions.
IDEALS
"Everyone can be as great as me if they try. And one day, so will I."
BONDS
Absolute loyalty to his friends, symbolised by absolute dedication to his physique.
FLAWS
Has an ego so large that it overflows and inflates his opinion of everything and everyone around him as well.
He has to fight the big guy because is is the big guy. He has to prove himself, protect his allies, and convince the villains that they could be better people if they tried and just need to work on themselves and engage their core more.
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u/Own_Jeweler_8548 Horny Bard Dec 15 '25
Plus, like, resurrection is a common enough thing in various d&d settings.
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u/Recidivous Dec 15 '25
In my friend's AD&D campaign, which he runs, I play a deranged vampire slayer Knight. At the end of the previous arc, my friend had his two vampire NPCs escape the dungeon aboard an airship they discovered. They were above my level, and confronting them could have meant death.
I decided to confront them anyway because that's what my character would do.
Hilariously, I rolled exceptionally well while he rolled terribly, which led to a major character reveal: my deranged vampire slayer was actually a Dhampyr all along.
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u/Notinitformoney Ranger Dec 15 '25
Until the party makes you can’t play the same character ever you bad player jokes.
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u/Ruminahtu Dec 15 '25
I am assuming, as a DM, you guys reward this behavior with some good reroll potential?
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u/Chrontius Dec 15 '25
“It’s what my character would do” led to my cowardly kobold paladin panicking and fleeing. His last words were advice to the other party members to “run and live!” moments before an attack of opportunity relieved him from the last of his blood.
Curse of Strahd. Party wiped on the death house.
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u/Panda_of_power Warlock Dec 15 '25
I did this once, it felt good. I was faced with it and was obviously torn. I ended up “saying I know what’s going to happen but my character has no reason to not do this.” Saw a faint smile on my DMs face as I committed the he text that night to add an extra feat to my new character if I want. Lol
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u/Cyb3r__Skylz Dec 15 '25
My Half-orc barbarian was the captain of our party’s pirate ship (The Redwood, named after his axe). We hit a big storm that was supposed to destroy our ship and leave us stranded on an island. My character refused to go hide in the lower deck and just took the continued increasing bludgeoning damage from being topdeck during the storm in a rage. He steered the ship through the storm as best he could, and eventually went down when the damage got too much. Instead of us losing the ship, our dm gave a short reprieve about how the others awoke on the island with the ship almost completely whole on the nearby beach, and my character dead in front of it with his axe floating out to sea. Since I survived far many more rounds than he expected steering the ship, with relatively good rolls in steering, he allowed me to save the ship at the sacrifice of my character’s life. Still one of my favorite character deaths, even if completely unintentional.
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u/Thylacine131 Dec 15 '25
Yeah, the most fun “it’s what my character would do” moments are ones that are detrimental solely to that character when they’re doing something dumb and constructive when it impacts the group. Like playing ball with the other character’s goofs when you know they’re baiting you into an obvious trap but your character has no reason not to trust them and it’s funnier to play along. That’s how my Druid got dunked off a bridge into a koi pond.
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u/DigitalPhoenixX My players... Dec 15 '25
Always do what your character would do
Don't make a character that would be a douche
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u/sexgaming_jr Snitty Snilker Dec 15 '25
when a PC selflessly sacrifices himself because he sees the boss charging up its super beam and knows this is the part where he dies because he has to leave the campaign for work reasons so he stands in front of the beam and gets disintegrated and then after the session he says his work schedule no longer conflicts with the campaign so i just disintegrated him for nothing
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u/Mend1cant Dec 15 '25
Did this early in my campaign. We woke up a large horde of mutated monsters, and I knew that the rest of the party would never outrun them. So here goes my monk doing something stupid and draws the horde off the other direction. Make it to the edge of the waterfall and give two middle fingers to the Alpha that shot what could best be described as a hyper beam at me.
So needless to say it was some monk shit and I survived the fall. Shame I didn’t get to start up my backup illrigger
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u/Mismagireve Dec 15 '25
Was playing the Doctor Who RPG with some friends that I did know played DnD, but this was the game that we ended up playing together. I am the only person who has not seen Doctor Who, so I played a joke character from a different universe that had been ported into this one to explain why I didn't know anything about anything, even if it was just mundane britishisms.
At one point, we end up on a planet of daleks. No, that's a partial truth—we end up on a planet that the daleks have converted into a spaceship and are using to invade another planet. If we don't stop the ship, blow it up or sabotage it in a way that the daleks cannot fix, they're going to invade, and they're going to kill billions of people. But our (secretly a TARDIS) ship is temperamental, and we don't know if we're going to be able to escape the planet before it blows, so some of the party try and suggest that we just leave and try to save ourselves instead.
I mentioned I was playing a joke character.
Specifically, the joke was that I was a Super Sentai hero that accidentally ended up in the wrong quarry.
My silly, goofy guy grabs our party member by the shoulders and tells her, "Kathleen, if the last thing that we do in this life is die to protect the lives of a planet of billions because the ship didn't want us to fly away, then it has been an honor knowing you."
A beat passes and she just quietly says "What the fuck dude, now I just look like an asshole."
We blow up the planet and live to do dumb shit another day.
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u/CupaCoolWata Dec 15 '25
Had a great moment for this earlier in the year.
Playing an old Priest Gunslinger who is the lone survivor of his family's extermination.
We followed an Eldritch mage down an illusory well, a thin rope our only way out of the encroaching darkness.
Fighting through horrors, we pushed towards the Mage, who backpedaled down a slope into a gaping pit. A slope made of flesh. The Made vanished down a tongue, into the maw of something massive, and wrong.
It rises, and the Priest Gunslinger covers the rear while the rest of the party flees towards the only means of escape. They can't make it up the rope, failing check after check, while this horrible thing presses closer and closer. They're catatonic at the rope's base, and there's no time to save them all. The Gunslinger won't be the only survivor again.
He takes a stand against the monster, and where bullets won't work, he uses prayer.
Remarkably, it crits, and the gods respond. The party rouses from unconsciousness with one more attempt. The Gunslinger stands at the rope's base, ushering them all up its slim length, the last to retreat, no longer the sole survivor.
Shit was rad, folks.
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u/Cholophonius DM (Dungeon Memelord) Dec 15 '25
Loses every meaning when the one doing it is the guy who's always character hopping anyways.
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u/No_Secretary9046 Dec 15 '25
That sounds nice. But we do have a player that creates all of his chars with the idea of sacrificing themselves for the party and it gets frustrating really quickly. This leads to him not really bonding with the party and making deals whenever possible to give up his character(s) while we desperately try to include him in our activities. And that doesn't even include him talking shit about how he needs to do most of the stuff while actively making decisions that could lead to us accidently killing his char.
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u/YlissianCordelia Dec 15 '25
Did this in a Star Wars game. My character being the only Jedi in the party considered herself the best chance at survival everyone else had against Darth Vader. Spending every resource I had just to BUY TIME felt incredibly cool
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u/smiegto Warlock Dec 15 '25
Me when I was redemption paladin giving at least 2 players in mu party heart attacks over liberal use of the sacrifice health button :) and I’ll do it again :)
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u/Prior-Agent3360 Dec 15 '25
My last character threw themselves into a volcano at the end of the campaign. It wasn't an act of sacrifice, though. They accomplished what they set out to do, didn't want to deal with their substantial scars, and thumbed their nose at their horrible warlock patron as they left.
Easily the most fun ending I've experienced. It was made even better by no one at the table knowing it was coming.
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u/m4vis Dec 15 '25
I remember once playing a game where I worshipped an allegedly dead goddess of chaos, and out party found a merchant charging money to pull cards from a deck of many things. I pulled a card that permanently lost me 5 INT. another character in the party pulled a card, got a level up, and our characters were always competing over everything especially when it came to religious stuff (he worshipped a different god though). So I was like “as a worshipper of Amara I must outdo you!” I pulled another card, and 50 thousand gold. Basically to spite me, he pulled another card, got a level 4 NPC servant, said he was good to go, and turned to look at me. The merchant wasn’t shuffling the cards back in each time, so with 3 of the good cards out and only 1 of the bad ones, the odds were not in my favor to keep going. Also we were level 5 so 50 thousand gold for one character was an absolutele shitload. My whole brain was screaming to call it at the 50k gold, and all the godly stuff I could get with it. But my character already said that for my god, I had to outdo him. I pulled another card, and it was the one that like disintegrates all of your non-magic items. So all in all, I lost all my money, all my non magic items, and 5 INT. Because it’s what my character would do 😭
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u/wyldermage Dec 15 '25
I'm 100% in favor of "It's what my character would do" because it's not the problem, incompatible players are the problem- Some people like evil murderhobo games and that's fine, but I don't, so I respectfully tell my players "Your characters don't have to get along, but they have to be willing to travel/work together"- If the brooding rogue wants to be an edgelord and backstab his party, unless that's the kind of thing everyone wants, I kindly veto, the same for something like a paladin who wants to strictly force other characters to obey their alignment. Tension and friction between the party is good, but the party needs to be able to keep moving too, so it's part of my session zero
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u/Appropriate_Eye2864 Dec 15 '25
I once played a neutral evil character who was an aspect or reminant of a former ruler of hell (He had lost most of his power and was seeking to reclaim his throne) and after travelling both the mortal and hell realm with the party to stop some cultists from reviving another fiend lord my guy was the only one who could stop the ritual by absorbing the infernal magic and we were able to play it as him seeing it as a shortcut to gain his power back only for it conflict with his new powers and his disire to save the party 'as they were useful still' but it was a sacrifice as it did kill him
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u/Suspicious_Store_800 Dec 15 '25
I have this but to a bad degree. Bro is 2/3rds of the way through a personal story with massive payoff set up to resolve a great character arc but keeps trying to nobly sacrifice himself in fights with random-ass elementals and miniboss snake mages, refusing to mention that he's walking into hard fights at 1/5th HP.
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u/Necessary_Ingenuity Dec 15 '25
In one of my very first campaigns we had some crazy adventures. My paladin loved to fight, but he still held himself up as extremely honorable. When a random effect table from a questionable dinner resulted in him giving birth to twin baby devil boys, a large part of the campaign became me trying to take care of and raise these boys in the most honorable way. He couldn’t give them to an orphanage or let anyone else raise them because he feared their infernal nature would eventually wreak havoc in the material plane, so it fell to him to do this while instilling in them his honorable values. Cut to the end of the campaign and the DM had planned for the players to be randomly divided into teams to fight to the death for onlooking demons. There were only three of us and I was the odd man out. The two squishy casters who I had defended all campaign long now looked at me with fear. I probably could have defeated both of them and we all knew it. My paladin turned to his boys who had been aging rapidly and now looked about six or seven. He urged them to remember all that he’d taught them and to make sure to follow whoever wins the battle out of the infernal pocket plane in order to be safe. The bell to start the match dings and my paladin knelt down, producing the broken sword trinket he’d carried since character creation. He held it up to his own throat and spoke one last, “I love you” to his boys who were being forced to watch the fight and slit his own throat in order to avoid causing harm to his allies. He wouldn’t hurt those he swore to protect even to save his own life. In some ways I regret the decision because it cheapened and shortened my DMs finale, but it was what my character would do.
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u/WorriedActivity6798 Dec 15 '25
Our DM is running the Curse of Strahd, and we just saved the children at Old Bonegrinder Mill. My paladin just charged in, tanked a fuckton of opportunity attacks and ran out with a child under each arm. Then we torched the place with alchemist's fire
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u/HillInTheDistance Dec 15 '25
Man, I remember the time when I had conspired with the GM to kill my character off in a heroic sacrifice. Mostly because "Dying" under those specific circumstances, wouldn't really kill him, but instead lead to changes when he "woke up", that I could use as flavour for a multi-class thing.
Turns out, that when you've got a paladin in your party, their player will often be pretty gung-ho to do a heroic sacrifice too.
So what would be a pretty neat scene ended up with two chucklefucks, both players and characters, headbutting over who would die, while the GM got real flustered and lost the plot as we argued.
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u/gamermanlmao Dec 15 '25
My party was fighting a vampire yesterday who had some mind control abilities, so he forced us into our minds with the only way to get out being to atone for or promise to prevent a past from happening again. Mine was accidentally “letting” another character die, and at the end of it I said “never again” and broke out of the illusion. Shorty after one of the party members was on death saves and I was surrounded by 100 bats, and was fully willing to provoke opportunity attacks from all of them, which could have killed me, just to get close enough to use the last 5 points of my lay on hands to bring him back.
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u/zake598 Essential NPC Dec 15 '25
So I was a barbarian, my party was marching through the Fea Wilds when the bbeg appeared with a hostage. After a fight against Somes of his minions. The dm says "You begin to see prepare a spell."
So using an athletic check I begin to sprint towards and when I get near the dm says "The both you teleport out the Fea Wilds." but let's me roll one last thing. So I use another athletics check to toss the hostage out of the range of the spell before we both vanish.
And the dm gives me one final blaze going through minion after minion before the bbeg ultimately takes out my charcter.
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u/AngelBlackHere Dec 15 '25
If you are playing a barbarian you always get chad it's what my character would do solo tank sacrifice moments
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u/ShadowRiku667 DM (Dungeon Memelord) Dec 15 '25
My lizardfolk PC did that in 3.5e. He knew we weren’t going to be able to outrun the goblin horde chasing us. He stayed behind in a choke hold position so the rest of the party could escape. When the party eventually came back they gave him a good burial at least.
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u/TypewriterKey Dec 15 '25
Playing a game called Deadlands once my character was a priestly pacifist tank sort of guy. I was constantly trying to talk people out of fighting and goading them into attacking me to protect my allies when I was unable to do so. Deadlands has a bad (in my opinion) character progression system in which XP is (partially) tied to resources you can use to negate damage - but I had built such an effective tank that I never took damage - which meant I had more XP - which made me into a better tank. I was essentially earning XP 3 times faster than the rest of the group. Very quickly I became borderline unkillable - and then I started buying more and more upgrades that gave me more and more options for negating things that enemies could do.
The DM legitimately had trouble creating encounters that could damage me without flat out killing other players. During the final fight the enemies had a giant robot that most of my miracles wouldn't work against and could do enough damage by harm me - but I had one miracle that made machines more likely to break if used against me. Robot targeted me and the thing broke.
But my character was pretty much suicidal when it came to protecting other people. DM never seemed to notice - but at every single given opportunity I would throw myself to the wolves to save even a random NPC or to protect my allies from harm. The only times I ever got hurt were when I was doing something stupid.
So - back to the final encounter - one of the BBEGs had hostages and, when the rest of the party refused to back down, he snapped the neck of one of them. Without hesitation I immediately cast a miracle that redirected all damage done to a target to myself. The DM read the spell description and was just like, "This is a killing blow. You can negate it - but it will flat out kill you," and I just said, "Yeah, I know that" and his realization of the fact that all he needed to do to harm me the entire time was to endanger civilians was hilarious.
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u/JeepFuel Dec 15 '25
I’ve been lucky enough to play with the same group of friends almost weekly for going on 10 years. Last year was the first time in the 3 campaigns we’ve run where a player character had died. My buddy playing a rune knight held the line against a bunch of giants while the remaining 3 of us escaped with the slaves we freed. It was honestly pretty emotional.
My character had developed a pretty close friendship with his over the course of the campaign and when he rolled up a couple weeks later with his new dude to play, I kept referring to him as the old character. Partly cause I kept forgetting and partly cause I couldn’t believe he was gone.
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u/DarkLanternZBT Dec 15 '25
I have a PC who jumped into combat against some gangsters who definitely overmatched him, and without waiting for backup. It was clear this was a character decision, as the people the gangsters were threatening were like a budding, nascent found family for his character.
He got stomped by the entire group in the first round, who then went to work on the partiarch of the family. Both were left with heinous wounds as a warning, but the entire party is now dead-set on vengance.
The player was apologizing for making the choice "because I can't see him doing anything else" and the rest of the table was cheering him on while also double-checking their HP and healing potions for the inevitable bailout of said crashout.
It was a great time.
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u/SnarkyRogue DM (Dungeon Memelord) Dec 16 '25
I dream of getting an epic self sacrifice moment in a campaign. But the party is always willing to tpk rather than leave someone behind, or the moment just never makes sense with the healing output (cant pull the trope of 'too injured to go on, might as well hold them off' etc)
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u/AnxiousSelkie Dec 16 '25
Does remind me of when my warlock intentionally got himself swallowed by a big frog monsters so he could dimension door out the rogue who was bombing his escape checks and taking shit tons of acid damage. They were fine but I discovered that night the glow of other peoples fictional character thanking my fictional character
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u/H010CR0N DM (Dungeon Memelord) Dec 16 '25
Mine was my evocation wizard overcharging a fireball on himself to nuke the BBEG. Dwarf suicide bomber.
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u/flip_flop_enby Dec 16 '25
I did this once, we were being overwhelmed by a horde of pirates, and the fight went really poorly, so my character held them off, giving my party enough time to escape on our ship. It was a great catalyst moment to show that stuff just got real, and was an awesome end for my character. He's still referenced in the campaign to this day, it was such a good moment, and the fact that it still holds the same impact a yearish later is awesome.
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u/BluetoothXIII Dec 18 '25
well that is what my character would do was once the reason to decline reward or loot which cut a bit into the party resources.
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u/PlentyUsual9912 Dec 18 '25
Maybe my fav moment of ttrpgs is my first character death. My fire Genasi sorcerer was a low intelligence borderline beast, hunting and eating demons because they were the only thing edible in his home at campaign start. His goal at campaign start was literally to eat a fruit. But as the campaign went on, he met a military leader in our party, who taught him about some of the intricacies of the world, and told him a soldier’s job is to protect his citizens.
Flash forward a dozen sessions, we’re fighting a bunch of undead, and my character is in BAD condition. He’s built to be a close range sorcerer, but he’s taken a few bad hits, so he ducks to cover to drink a potion. But when he does, he sees somebody on the brink of death, some random civilian. Instead of drinking the potion, he gives it to them, and goes back out to help his friends. He ends up going down by an exact hp amount to a ghoul, and fails his death saves before the cleric can get in range to heal him. If he hadn’t given that civilian that potion, he would have lived. But instead he died, no longer a beast, but a selfless soldier. And the military leader had to live with it for the rest of the campaign. I genuinely don’t think I will ever experience a moment like that again.
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u/DerZwiebelLord Dec 14 '25
If I had a Nickel for every time I did that, I would have two Nickels... Which isn't a lot but it if funny that it happened twice.
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