My sister has, no joke, played as a sentient fucking sandwich.
Most of these are just gimmick characters that will have one fun interaction with the group and then become useless. They can be used for one-shots, but not full campaigns.
Like the dragonborn one, after the initial interaction where they explain the skin condition. Most players will just go “okay” and move on.
Except for the sentient hat one. That has a mystery attached and you can keep changing the mannequin throughout. Maybe it also works on a mop or barrel.
It really depends if the players are in it for the gaming or for the roleplay. Several of these are solid roleplay opportunities for people really into that aspect, and they would probably have a lot of fun.
Some of course are just silly thought experiments.
“If the moon is real how come I always black out when it is allegedly supposed to appear?”
Heard one on the weekend - a party of warlocks who are all each other’s patrons through the power of friendship.
Ok, this gives me a great idea - a warlock whose patron is his own mlm scheme, he has to sell his shitty “get magic quick” scheme to lots of people to power up. “Just dedicate and focus your energies to the collective and you too can gain godlike powers, share it with your friends and loved ones. Join now and you’ll be empowered in no time. Empower 4 others and you’ll get candle lighting privileges! Reach archeon tier like me and you’ll be throwing fireballs, just 7 short tiers to work through, what better use for your time?”
The peasant farmer I’ve played as a halfling artificer with halfling luck. He never improved much, aside from rolling with the punches a bit better. In fact, he hadn’t any clue what his equipment was or how it worked. Things just kept happening for him and the party refused to let him leave.
The running joke was that he’s lucky enough to stumble into unfathomable power, wealth, and fame, but not lucky enough to find the mundane life of peace he was looking for.
My friend played Farmer Bob at a larp. His village had a legend that the chosen one would come from the village to defeat the great evil. When things got bad enough they picked him because he was the only one who was literate at the time, so they figured that was heroic enough.
Anyone who’s had a player who’s “an [X] trying to convince the party they’re a [Y]” is probably having PTSD flashbacks now.
It sounds funny to read about but in my experience players who commit to constantly gaslighting fictional characters are not team players and always willing to spoil the fun of others.
Had a game where the DM and his bestie homebrewed Roy Mustang. The PC was insufferable and overpowered by level 3… shooting fireballs that consumed the entire room in a single attack.
The party, and the group, broke up because they were mad the rest of us didn’t want to live in their power fantasy world
Hear me out: I played with an orc fighter who was convinced he was a mage, and tried to convince the rest of the party of the same thing. He carried a cast iron pan as his weapon, and his spells were “pan toss” and “pan smack”. There were a lot of laughs when NPC’s would be like “you’re clearly a fighter, you’re wearing plate armor” and he’d say it was his spell casting focus.
