D&D Players, What is the coolest unique ability a DM gave your character? #1 

I played a goblin artificer who was cast out of goblin society for being ‘too smart’ so he decided to become an adventurer. Other adventurers didn’t take him seriously because he was a 2 and a half foot tall goblin so he built himself a Dragonborn mech suit that looked indistinguishable from a brass Dragonborn and multiclassed into fighter. I used alchemists fire to simulate a breath weapon and everything. The best part is, the rest of the party had no idea, it was only me and the DM. Everyone else thought that I had actually changed characters to a Dragonborn fighter. Then in the final battle I was reduced to 0 hit points so my mech broke. I had been the last one alive and all the others groaned as they thought we had lost. But then. My goblin climbed out of the wreckage as the BBEG turned away. I picked up the severed head of my Dragonborn and used it as a flamethrower on the unsuspecting BBEG, killing him instantly as he was weak from our fight. The rest of the table was amazed. My favourite character ever

My character was a cowboy necromancer in a ttrpg that we made up our own rules for. Before we started, the DM had recommended a curse I give my character to with the necromancy part of the backstory. That curse was that any living thing he touched with his bare skin would shrivel and disintegrate. I accepted this with open arms and throught the entire campaign, that curse did more damage to enemies than my revolvers did, even leading to some amazingly hilarious moments (ie. Saying "I roll to give it a high-five with the gloves off" and proceeding to kill it instantly.)

The coolest ability ever given to me by a DM was "The Knowledge of Everything" My human warlock knew everything about his universe but at the cost of having ennui and occasional bouts of insomnia. Like, imagine knowing that you exist solely for the entertainment of a higher power, and not being able to tell others because they will never understand.

My character had a special skill called "Sh*t at magic". I could learn spells, but nearly every offensive spell wouldn't work properly. The one i used the most was a low leveled force spell. Normally, the spell would throw whatever you cast it at away at high speed. However, I would also get thrown when casting. Used it to add serious force to attacks, as well as move around like Bakugo from MHA at times.

Aarakocra wild magic barbarian. Whenever he rages, one of two entities try and take control. This is apart of a curse where he is constantly freezing to death and has to break the ice daily. The ice entity, the hand, is responsible for the curse and is a bloodthirsty monster. The other, the son, is the conglomeration of a battalion of flaming souls who were comrades of my character, it sees any person as a threat. In his backstory, he fought in a genocidal war and lost, remaining as one of the last of his kind. I refer to the two entities as “fear” and “hatred” because the two emotions omnipresent in his life are *fear* and *hatred* . if one curse is removed, he’d die immediately, immolated or frozen solid by the remaining one.

I’m playing a changeling, which my DM rules as being fey. I rolled a nat 20 on an animal handling check to approach and begin taming a giant magical golden feathered flying squirrel creature called a glimmeroi (can you tell it’s homebrew? 😂). The DM wasn’t expecting this, but rolled with it and wrote it into lore that glimmeroi and fey in previous millenia had a special bond, which explains why I was able to tame and befriend this one. When we leveled up and could take a feat, I asked if I could take a form of the Beast Speech Eldritch Invocation that would allow me to communicate specifically with my glimmeroi. My DM got back to me with this: Sacred Bond (Fey Only) You gain the ability to telepathically communicate with your Glimmeroi. You can communicate in language, while the Glimmeroi can communicate in images, smells, feelings and emotions. This can be done while you are within 300ft of each other. However from up to a mile away you can sense where the other is and use your bonus-action to send out an urge for the other to come find you. Amongst other conversations with him, I’ve been able to find out that my glimmeroi waited his whole life for an adventure, and rather than resent me for taming him and taking him away from his home, he was over the moon to have found a fey to adventure with 🥹 My DM is awesome.

The only concept I had going in to making my first character was "an undead character who has lost the organ or limb that he needed to do what he does best" I played a paladin and in the process of my death my right arm got cut off so I self-imposed disadvantage on all my melee attack rolls. My DM runs his settings such that resurrection spells don't exist and when I pitched the idea he got apprehensive but got an idea when I said he had free reign on all the details outside of that specific character gimmick. So he gave me "his hand." My character ended up with a deathless nature due to being one foot in the grave when an otherworldy force kept me from dying so _half dead as he put it._ This force being the soul of a failed lich. When I took heavy damage a hand wreathed in dark shadows would emerge from my bloody stump and control my mind, using it I could cast Vampiric Touch and Witch Bolt and for a minute regained the use of my right hand. Being a lawful good paladin I was of course traumatized by the memory lapse and the bloodied hands, and I made sure the caster of the group kept my "passenger" in check.

I've mentioned it before but I had a changeling character that due to attempting to kill themselves via drinking a very suspect seemingly living liquid was imbued with some of the powers of a mind flayer. I had to roll 2 100 'dice' to see what would happen because of this in which I proceed to nat 1 and then nat 100. The success netted me the Mind Flayers powerful mind blast ability with limited uses whilst the negative effect which was having to live off brains every so often turned out to actually also be an incredibly powerful buff as I would gain the victims memories just like a flayer and combined with a changelings basic transformation ability could arguably pretend to be them. Its unfortunate that campaign went on hiatus before my character did anything that notable with it.

My party recently had the opportunity to gain controlled lycanthropy. My eagle totem barbarian took the wereraven flavored as an eagle. This not only gives him a 50 ft fly speed (100 with bonus action dash), but a 10hp per turn regeneration. My DM says he is prepared for him, can’t wait to see how.

As a DM, The most interesting power I think I have ever granted a player was for a transmutation wizard. The PC was especially fond of collecting and studying vital organs in an effort to understand how living things worked, a little bit of mad scientist type. I allowed the player to add none standard options to his polymorph spell. First he had collect a complete intact creature to study. It would normally take 2 clean kills (creature dies in surprise round) to have enough undamaged vital organs to make a complete specimen. After 2 weeks of down time studying the creature the PC was allowed to add that creature to his list of options for polymorph spell. All CR restrictions still applied. The PC had a great time hunting down new things to add and the other PCs were happy to help as it gave the a chance to play as displacer beasts or whatever they wanted to go and hunt down. I did also stipulate that this would not work with Undead, Constructs, oozes or anything else without 'vital organs'. When the party hit 16th level they killed their second adult red dragon, not in the surprise round but I was generous and let them have it. you can imagine the kind of fun these PCs are having. Yes I know it's OP, but it's fun.

The coolest ability a DM ever let me have was during a pathfinder game. We were all "little monsters", as the adventurers guild didnt discriminate against humans and demi-humans as long as your "karma" was positive (so if you were a jerk and Killed, Conned, or otherwise hurt someone youd be stopped at the gate). My character, a slime alchemist, would "eat" reagents to create potion and medicine bases i could store in my body for later use, eliminating most of the time needed to brew potions and make medicine. About halfway through the campaign my DM inflicted us with a homebrew ailment he called "the hunger" - every PC ate their profession kits and destroyed them... But i rolled a nat 20, so they let my slime "incorporate" the alchemy kit into itself, turning my tiny slime into a living alchemical production factory. I was able to, as long as i had the reagents stored, use ANY alchemical concoction i knew how to make at any time. The party needed an explosion? I was the bomb. Someone lose their weapon? I could become a living alchemical blade. Someone get hurt? I can heal them with healing slime goo! I wasnt even the most powerful in the party. The other three members all had their own fun unique things - we had a baby naga who was maybe 3ft tall and through her faith earned a "holy fur" that passively turned undead just by touching them. Another party member was a child-skeleton who could "grow up" ocarina of time style to become an 8ft tall giant skeleton until combat ended once per session.

Unironically giving your characters unique abilities is probably the coolest thing you can do as a Dungeon Master. It makes a character feel like they can't ever be replicated even if someone chose the exact same race, class, and subclass as you. No matter their background, no matter how specific their ability scores, no matter how exact their choice of feats, this character is different from them in some way and they are entirely yours. Letting an Eladrin Elf use their Fey Step as a reaction, letting the Storm Herald Barbarian channel their Aura directly into their weapon making it magical, giving a Bronze Dragonborn psychic powers from their breath weapon being contained inside their body and supercharging their neurons, letting a Druid wildshape into Plants, or allowing a Warlock to be an Intelligence Caster due to backstory details. 2 of these abilities are something I've actually been allowed as a player to do, the Psychic Bronze Dragonborn and the Int Based Warlock, both by the same DM. And while 1 of these characters is still being played, the other is retired and is absolutely my favorite character to date, with the other closing the gap with every session. Moral of the story is, let your players be unique, give them opportunities to excel and the means of becoming more than the sum of their parts. Maybe don't give them something busted like damage resistances or specific spells that they can cast, but just something cool, something interesting. Something that makes them look at a character and go "Yeah, this is mine." with a smile.

I was fighting a crystal copy of myself and when I finally destroyed it, the copy shattered into dust that my skin absorbed. The next day, I wake up and realize that I can glow at will and it kind of looks like how light on the bottom of a pool works and I can bend seeming infinite amounts of water from the glow. This makes me a very happy water bender!

I played an Artificer who was also a carpenter. Everyone in the campaign got to request at least one homebrew ability, but the ability I requested was to build a table as an action. I had a bag of holding stuffed with wood that I used as materials. I used tables as cover or would masquerade as a table salesman to infiltrate places. My favorite uses of tables was to use them as a makeshift boats or bridges.

As a First Time DM recently, doing a Homebrew Wild West One Shot. I gave my 2 gunslingers an ability called the Cincinnati Split (taken and modified from a semi popular tv show). If an enemy was wielding a blade, for a higher AC, they could shoot the blade and split their bullet. The 1 D6+1 revolver damage would turn into 2 D4+1 damage and the 1 D10+2 Rifle damage would turn into 2 D6+2 damage. Only one player pulled it off, but it was epic. We had a lot of fun. Also our Snake Oil Salesman could brew up to 3 concoctions of his choice per day(health, poison, smoke bomb, or explosive)

I was a gunslinger. My dm, (my brother) gave me two magical pistols, one cold damage, one fire damage. They are in the shape of dragons and have corresponding colors to their damage type. (Ice=blue, etc.) Now that alone was pretty good, but I could combine them together and take a neg 4 penalty to hit, but a plus 7 to damage. I could then roll normal damage PLUS 2d6 for the other damage types. It’s confusing at first, but an amazing addition for the party’s only core ranged character.

I had a character who, because of plot reasons and backstory stuff, was trapped between dimensions. Because of this, he could send a projection of himself to other dimensions. This projection would slowly fade in and out of existence, slowly becoming more solid and real. The coolest part was that my dm would say that, depending on how recently my character had projected himself to the dimension, he would be able to phase through enemy attacks and get big AC boosts. My dm even started letting me use my phasing to reach through walls to solve puzzles

I had a character who was a mute for the entire campaign. When they had magic used they couldn't be understood, since their speech was really odd. They met a warlock who was friends with their party, but the warlock struggled to make a plan with them since they couldn't understand them. Because of that, the Warlock created a literal talking cat to translate their odd speech.

One DM let me play an ex-familar fox. Familiar enhancers had been used on her and she was quite intelligent. She was the party's scout as she had serious stealth bonuses but was also a cleric. Her weapon was a Dart launcher that was hidden inside her rather fluffy tail. Really it was just a one shot emergency weapon, but it had sleep poison applied to it. It was a very unique character and was a lot of fun to play.

My human rogue that was rolled up shortly before the final arc got the ability to travel through and control shadows. I expanded on this abilities to create 4 litteral shadow clones of herself each with half of her hit points. I'd go on to make variations of this to turn these clones into extra hit points for her (up to tripling her base HP) and even making spare limbs out of the shadow clone armor, regardless of if they were human or not. I killed one of the final bosses solo with her before leaving that friend group due to internal conflicts

Im a dm, and while its nothing spectacular, i created an ability for my players to use during an evil campaign. Its called subdue, and basically if an humanoid enemy (can be used on non player race monsters) is within a 3rd of its health, or otherwise incapacitated, they can roll subdue, which if 10 or higher binds the opponent consuming either rope(+1), leather strips(+2) or chain (+3) the opponet then has to roll each turn till combat ends to escape, by beating the number that it was subdued by. If all enemies are defeated or subdued, combat ends and those still subdued are taken prisoner. Im rather proud of this ability... as its one of the first ive ever created

In a homebrew setting I started for my children, I wanted my son, who was playing a white dragonborn warlock of Tiamat (fiend pact), and my daughter, who was trying her hand at a human kaleido [ kah - lie - dough] (wizard class-changer), to have something decently OP additional for their lvl 3 subclass choices. So... Jewel (kaleido) received a spellbook ability that allowed her to absorb any and all equipment that was class-based, so that when this little librarian-looking witch shape-changed into a badass monk, they had the equipment already attuned and donned (kind of like how druidic beast-shape absorbs the equipment into the new form). And... Nedarr (warlock) received a boon from his "motherly patron" during a dream, in which, as a bonus action, he could physically change his scale color and elemental attribute ( white, black, red, blue, or green ) as many times as he wanted. Basically a dragonborn chameleon. However, the limitations I imposed (to relatively keep balance) were: she could only absorb, per class, 3 pieces of equipment; armor, weapon, and accessory (rings, etc.), and he could only use his breath weapon once per long rest, as per the RAW. Lead to some hilarious Scooby-Doo moments of a white-scaled dragonoid being chased into a building with a purple robed person in tow, just to have a green-scaled lizardman and a pink and blue court-jester outfit wearing individual (bard class change) come running out screaming "They went that-a-way!"

I’m playing a druid and my DM is running a variation of the piety system. My first level boon is “Natures Voice”. I can spend 2 hours of a long rest in meditation, focusing on the land and creatures around me. Mechanically, I get to ask the DM a question about a facet (environment, creatures, plants, etc) of the biome I’m in (plains, forest, swamp, etc). It’s come in handy a couple times, helping the party prep for possible random encounters based on our environment, or just knowing what’s around for hunting

I'm currently part of a 5e game that takes place in a modified Kaldheim setting. The character I'm playing is a corrupted nature spirit that has taken the form of a wendigo-esque creature. As a joke one day when I had to miss a couple of sessions, the DM made a passing comment that I had somehow slipped into the Shadowfell and was wondering around. Well the party liked that idea enough that we have run with it and it's now a decent plot mechanic that my character can slip into the Shadowfell in order to speak with the entity he is employed by. This has since been used for both stealth and reconnaissance missions.

I'm playing a wood elf ranger named Carric Liadon (I was EXTREMELY new to D&D at the time of the build, now I have a lot more info under my belt and build more fun characters) in my friend's homebrew campaign. Very early on, Carric encountered a Demi-goddess of the realm, who blessed him to act as her champion in defeating the evil forces that had risen up and were attempting to destroy everything in their path to resurrect the Five Dragon Gods. He gained an ethereal Familiar type character to aid him and its form changes depending on Carric's level. At level 4 up to level 8, it was determined what type of creature was summoned by a dice roll on a D4 (pseudo dragon, panther, hawk and eagle) and it is only able to provide the Help action. At level 8, the familiar gains the ability to attack, doing damage relative to the form of the monster found in the Monster Manual/DM guide. As Carric scales in level, he can eventually summon an additional familiar, AND control what form they take as long as its a creature up to a CR3. Its a super fun character and I can't wait to see what else happens to him. If you're interested, I play this character on a podcast from the Death Needs Dialogue Entertainment Network.

0:45 you know, I was about to enjoy watching this video but NOW IM MOTIVATED

Cat missile We were in a defective anti magic field that gave use a wild magic effect although the DM had told us I had forgotten. I cast magic missile on group of soldiers, the DM rolled chuckled and stated that each of my magic missiles turned into Cats when hitting. Each cat took attacks of opportunity when the guards tried to push past them even managing to take down one of the badly hurt members of the group. (DM had rolled on a wild magic table and it coincidentally had this spell on it.) After that event each of use were allowed down time and I researched the anti magic field and as I had summon monster and magic missile I convinced the DM to let me try and learn the spell a few good rolls later I had Cat missile as a second level spell and a small academic paper of the process of combining the two spells.

At our tables, we usually make sorcerers use spell points instead of slots. We also merge sorcery points into the pool of total points. The best feature a dm ever gave me was merging my hit points, spell points and sorcery points into a single pool. Basically, I became an Uber tank that used my hitpoints to fuel my spells. What's more, my character was transformed into a lich, so he had the hp draining, the innate spells and a phylactory

I cannot wait until the party learn what happens when my charater, a blood hunter barbarian multiclass of a DM homebrewed race - Scale folk, a race that the DM effectively made for a melee combatant, think classic dragonborn but with out the elemental breath, but with extra strength, dex and constition but less intelligence, wisdom and charisma - gets very, *very* stressed! This DM has homebrewed a few races, so 90% of the party is playing a homebrew race! Has for what my character, Widget dose when under extreme stress... *well*. Seeing how none of the other players have seen the video… If my fellow players *do* find this comment, please don’t read more of this comment, I want this reveal to be a surprise! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . Widget has got a more monstrous, feral side to her and no, *this is no metaphor!* who the DM and I have dubbed Feral Widget - she is an unaligned monstrosity who is *very* powerful physically - *22 Str, 14 Dex and 24 Con, but she has 2 points in her int, wis, and charisma*, her HP counts has temp HP and slowly ticks down or can be increased by someone trying to calm her down, but she has more of it then the Widget that the party is used too *1.5 times has much health, and yes, I’ve taken tough*. Feral Widget is very much an animal and will attack *anyone*, mostly whoever provoked Widget, and who attacked her last. she's sort of like the Hulk, mixed with a dragon (2d8 fire, ice or lightning breath weapon, her eyes change colour with the breath weapon too! Orange = fire, yellow = lightning and blue = ice). She has her own character sheet on the roll 20 game that we are using, but her sheet shows up has three question marks. Widget has to make a dc 15 saving throw, when she is stressed - no modifiers to stay in control, if she rolls less then 15 three times, Feral Widget *will* come out to play but if she meets or beats a 15 then the tally is reset! Feral Widget lasts has long has the “HP timer” does. Another thing, Widget *knows* her Feral side exists, but she remembers nothing that Feral Widget does, so it’s possible that Feral Widget, could trash a town, killing several people and when she is knocked unconscious, turns back into normal Widget, who after spending a long rest worth of time sleeping, wakes up with no memory of said attack. All of *this* came from the fact that in the DM’s world there is no such thing has Lycanthropes, and I wanted to play a order of the lycan blood hunter barbarian. So me and the DM brainstormed this monstrosity! There might be no Lycanthrope’s but, Widget might be the first! The party is yet to encounter Widget’s more Feral side, but when they do, I’ll tell you about it!

I've got one for ya! Our group just finished playing the Lost Mines of Phandelver. After agreeing our next campaign would take place in Eberron, our DM asked if we'd like to make new characters or continue on with our current ones. We all opted to continue progressing our original characters. This was particularly important for my Rock Gnome Artificer and our Dragonborn Paladin. Come the start of the new campaign, our characters were magically transported through a portal deep within the Lost Mines to the Mournland. As our characters traveled through the portal the DM described how each of our character were engraved with a tattoo, but that the Dragonborn's and mine were different than the other's; glowing and magical in nature. What the DM had done was given new magical gear for all our party members AND created two completely new subrace for the Paladin and myself; each aligned to best match our interests! The Paladin, having (both in and out of chatacter) dreamed of one day owning his own airship, was turned into a "Dragonmark of Storms" which gave him affiliation with the House Lyrandar: makers and keepers of the elemental airships across Eberron. My Artificer, having a deep infatuation with mechanical and arcane technology, was transformed into a "Spellmark of Making", which granted me access into the House Cannith; makers of the Warforged and similar mecha throughout Eberron. The icing on the cake was both subraces had added spells and abilities that our DM cherry-picked or homebrewed just to make our characters better match our play styles from the previous campaign. I can't praise him enough for how much thought and effort went into surprising us all! We're getting ready to start our second session this Sunday, and I can personally say I'm quite stoked to find out what else he has in store.

We play a Midgard setting campaign (Kobold press material). Our first Group was a Mercenary band who started out in Zobeck. My character was a Dark Knight (Paladin/Hexblade) Tiefling with a Prostethic/clockwork arm (lots of Clockworks/Warforged in Midgard). During our journey we stumbled across a hidden library/laboratory of an Ancient Magus that was believed to be dead since a good century or two, and we got hired to find his Journal with his research by 2 different clients. In the Library we encountered a Demon, who was the Scholar type, all the others refused to deal with him, while he stayed Invisible. I asked him stuff that was related to my character's Backstory and to see if he knew anything. Ended up making a secret Deal with him, that he would follow me while staying invisible, and that i could use the "librarium" (it was a Small construct/golem critter, that worked as a BoH but for books, scrolls and grimoires only), while i had to escort both of them someplace. In our campaign we have this Homerule of: anyone can use any scrolls, even if they are not from your class, but you need to pass an Arcana check. Wich meant that i could get my hands on a random number of scrolls per day from the librarium and have the Demon Scholar make new ones if i had the right components for it. Came quite in handy a few times, and since he was communicating telepathicly constantly with me i could use him if i got seperated from the party a few times. Had some close calls when the Party's Lawfull Paladin had some suspicions and was using his Divine Senses to know if anything Demonic was around, but i would use my +9 Persuasion (FUCK anyone that are still going on about Warlocks not needing to be CHA based casters, lying through your teeths is an essential skill for Warlocks) to persuade her that she was only picking me cause...i'm a Tiefling. We ended up taking a Mission from a Dwarf smith to go clean an ancient Dwarf fortress that had an Arcane Forge in it to upgrade our gear( we were lvl 11 at the time) Long Story short..., the place was NOT abbandoned, quite a LOT of Kobolds and Dragonborns where there and even...a Flame Dragon ( Kobold press Dragon, wich its Fire based attacks IGNORES fire resistances...) There was a ceremony going on where the Dragon was gonna imbue himself with a Fire elemental to bypass his "Puberty" to go straight from YOUNG Flame Dragon to ANCIENT Flame Dragon... We managed to kill all the Kobolds, the dragonborns the Priests etc that were helping with the ceremony. We NEARLY had the Dragon on its last 10hp, BUT... We were down to only 2 standing characters..., One was Dead for good ,he used Void magic, Cthulhu type bullshittery, where the more corruption you have, the more likely you have to get a random effect, like Cthulhuesque infused Wild Magic..., and he got the effect , after casting Reverse gravity spell, that ALL the dead bodies in the area...becomes possessed by Stranger Things like Demogorgon shit..., so we had to fight like 10 of them... 2 Got done it by the Demogorgon's type shit, one got done in by the Dragon's Lair Effects (constant Fire damage each turn) So its me and the Beer Domain Dwarf Cleric, wich his my Character Best bro... He falls unconcious and i try to carry him OUT of the room and out of the constant Fire Aura and the Gravity field AND the Undead Cthuluesque raising field( there was like at least 4-5 environmental effects going on...), cause, If the Cleric makes it out, we have a chance right? All for the DM to tell me "While you sprint for the Doors with your best bro on your shoulder and tryong to yet the body of the Paladin out of the doorway with your other arm( Prostehtic that worked like a SINGLE Gauntlet of Ogre Power), you hear something behind you sucking in air, before feeling the heat in your back..., you took the Dragon's Breat in the back" Wich kills the Paladin and the Cleric, frying their bodies for good, and leaving me unconcious... It was an effective TPK. Now the DM gave us a possibility, cause see there was still my Scholar Demon "companion" around that NO ONE knew off, AND the Dwarf blacksmith that accompanied us, wich turns out he was secretly a Follower of the Demon prince Mammon... The rest of the party din't want to own anything to a Demon Whoreshiper, so they said they'll just rather roll new characters... BUT. (i know its quite long story but bear with me) I really wanted to continue playing my character, cause i really did it my stride with him gameplay wise and narratively,and the DM agreed. So While everyone did new characters at started at lvl 12, i also made a new char to start with the new group, BUT the Story of Kain De Sternberg, the Dark Knight, was not over... The Demon Scholar and the Blacksmith of Mammon, teamed up to end the Dragon (who was on its last like 10HP's, DM told me that if i would have gone for him instead of trying to save my companions, i would have killed it...Oh well) Now the whole ceremony to Turn the Young Dragon into an Ancient one using the energies of the Fire Elemental( an Aesir ir something? can't recall) was still...active, since the Dragon was just unconcious. So the Demon Scholar and the Smith altered the Ceremony's magic circles and runes around the room to change the workings of the Spell and put MY Charred Body newt to the body of the Dragon and tried to rip his Heart out and forcefully put it Into Me. The Plan of both of these Motherfuckers was to turn me into an Demonic Slave to do their bidding... But something went wrong, cause before all fo this, Our Beer domain Cleric had casted Heroe's Feast for us and i was still under the effects "technically speaking", and the Blessing of the Brew-Father protected my Soul and made the ritual go haywire... destroying the Demon Scholar and sending the Mammon's Smith across the room. So the Ritual...kinda worked... The Flame Dragon ressurected into an ADULT Flame Dragon instead of an Ancient one, and i gained the ability to..., Use Tasha's Otherwordly Disguise twice a day, with no Concentration and some other modifications, i alled it...The Devil Trigger (yeah i know. but sounds cooler than just Devil form or transformation) The Caveat is that Both ME and the Dragon are now linked Psychicly, as we share the same Essence and "Heart", and to be complete, One as to Kill the other... So i got a cool unique ability AND a Nemesis... In the End Kain joined the new party through a Portal that the Dragon opened to the Elemental Plane of Fire, right in the middle of a party of Nobles and merchants-lords in the City of Brass( the new party works for the merchant Queen), And while he treid to escape, i was on his back holding on trying to finish him off. But thinks got ectic and i had to flee with the new crew on their Spelljammer ship while the Dragon was laying waste to the Party resort, while my character was screaming from the top of his Lungs to the Dragon " I'm gonna kill your scally ass!!!, i'm gonna take your stupid skull and turn it into a toilet and put it in the dinekiest and most dirty Tavern in ALL of Midgard and have people pay 1 silver coin to take a Piss in it!!!!" ... So now we're fighting off Illithids in the Astral Sea, while been chased by Hired Githyankies and Dragonborn's assassins/mercenaries that wants me dead cause the Darn Dragon's Followers has put a Bounty on my head...

I don't know if this idea has been done before, but One of my players follows Cthulhu (He's a paladin from a subclass called "The Slumbering One" that I made specifically for him.) Well, since he follows Cthulhu, he tends to want to pray and listen to his word. During his first prayer, he promptly passed out and talks to a priest (a mind flayer) of Cthulhu. At the end of the talk, he is told that praying to Cthulhu comes with both boons and consequences. Upon waking up, he realizes that his left eye is promptly gone, with an eye patch laying in front of him; however, with this loss of an eye, he was given a small radius of blind sight. I plan on giving him more boons and taking more from him the longer he plays.

I was playing Hank, a bugbear barbarian who got infected by a slaad shortly before the session ended. Since I was going to be absent for a few weeks to quarantine myself before the family gatherings of Thanksgiving/Christmas 2020, the DM and I agreed to have my character escorted to the "chaos plane" to get his wound treated. Fast forward several weeks. My DM had the idea that in order for the flesh sculptors to fix my character, they used the body of a Nothic that had been stuffed in Hank's enormous backpack as spare parts for making him whole again. The process of doing so turned the nothic into a tentacle-symbiote attached to his arm at the shoulder. We named it Ivan.

I was once playing a short campaign that was a mad max style trek through a barren wasteland filled with different factions of mostly human raiders. I decided to make a joke based how in all these disaster or post apocolypse movies, the actors still have perfectly groomed appearances and supermodel physiques. So i decided to build my character based on that as the most beautiful man in the wasteland. A man who is just inexplicably perfect looking no matter how dire the scenario. I was basically given automatic success whenever the character would perform some sort of action that would require getting an npcs attention, while also in combat having a high chance that the enemy would simply get too distracted or overwhelmed by his beauty that they wouldnt hit him.

Oh I've got one you guys will Love. It's a Great sword made from a giant gemstone. Wielded by a Reborn, Gem Dragonborn Drakewarden Ranger. So there are 6 distinct slots in the sword. One large one relating to backstory and 5 smaller slots. Each slot is for a specific gemstone related to the different gem dragons. Each gemstone slotted also correlates to a class of magic Emerald is Druid, Crystal is wizard, etc. Well when a gem is slotted, the player has access to every spell in the classes list of spells. They can cast those spells through the sword via a charge system. 3 charges at Lvl 1 weapon and that 3 is doubled to 6 daily charges at Lvl 4 weapon. A charge is expended when used per level of spell. 3rd level takes all 3 charges, later 6 charges for a lvl 6 spell. I always do custom weapons for players in campaigns bc I feel it adds another layer to their character. This is one of my favorites

This was for a very high power campaign. I could write a soul contact that, once signed, was impossible to break the terms of. You could still find and exploit loopholes in the wording though. Either way, playing a social character surrounded by those I couldn't trust and who attacking directly was a bad solution, I came to rely on this

During a low to mid level game, I played a Halfling Divination Wizard. He was a down to earth individual who only learned divination to keep track of his villages weather and generally act like a living Farmer's Almanac. So the DM allowed me to subtly play with weather conditions by making an arcana check dependant on our location and time of year, so that I could better prepare my spells for the day. Once me and the Tempest Cleric learned Call Lightning, there was a noticeable uptick in rain during the rest of the ingame year. Most importantly, during the BBEG final fight, the roof of the room we were fighting in blew off and a roll of thunder drifted over head... He was a charred skeleton by the end of it.

My DM ran a homebrewed game for about four years. We were all super invested in our characters, and toward the end our DM started giving us ascended forms. My Kenku, Tap-Tap, gained a form called the Scion of the sky. Once every ten days he could turn into a large Aracocra that stood about nine feet tall, breaking the curse on his soul for about 10 minutes. He could also as a reaction if an enemy hurt one of his friends, Tap-Tap could move 30 ft towards them and either make a melee attack or cast a spell at whatever enemy had attacked them.

I was a brand new DM and longtime D&D fan. Ran my first game with my partner and two friends. They were all brand new to the game running lvl 1 characters. One of my friends played an abyssal tiefling rogue with spikes in her back and tail. She didn’t give me much back story other than your standard dead father and grew up in the slums kinda thing, but I said no worries. We could discover her character as the campaign progressed. They got to their first battle and she was so ready to slice and dice some baddies, but each time she crept up on somebody or attacked, she would miss her attack. I could see her disappointment over landing no hits on her first session and was not having that. So I thought for a moment and asked after another miss from her, “hey, do you wanna make an attack with your tail as a bonus action?” I was totally BS’ing but had faith in the RPG Gods. Her face went from disappointed to excited & inquisitive, but of course she was like wait what?? ButI feigned confidence. I had her paint me a word picture and roll for it. Her first hit!! I asked for a d4 roll and labeled it poison damage, to which any enemy not immune would have to roll a save against or poisoned. So she got a new random attack and status condition to use for her character. Ever since she has been slicing, diving, and infecting any baddie that stood in their way. Now anytime she hits, sneak attacks, and poison tail whips one of my creatures in the throat I just smile inside at the bad-ass take no prisoners murderous rogue she has become.

One time, I was playing a drow wizard who specialized in fire spells who came from a House with a rather...unique tradition of the positions of House Wizard and Weapons Master being held by the same person. To go with this backstory, the DM worked with me to create a custom feat we called Battle-casting, which basically let Szordree (the wizard, pronounced S-zor-dray) merge the somatic elements of spellcasting with melee fighting. The downside was he got fewer spell slots, but was a very useful feat both in terms of flavor and practicality.

Some explaining will be needed for this: Its a dual class Pathfinder 2e game with a limited 2nd class pool. The campaign is strongly Persona coded and thus we had "Egos" who represent who we are. My character liked to hide his emotions and puppeteer others as a way to coup for a tramatic event, so his Ego was Gepetto. I got to summon Gepetto (who was a huge battle puppet) and three smaller puppets he made for me after my deceased family. It let me heal, defend, attack, and be a general pain in the ass for the enemy. All of them were also able to be upgraded, so things got more complex and powerful as it went on. Fun campaign!

I’ve got a boxer/wrestler character whose been taken on as the protégé of a guild-master known as the Lightning Lord. As such, the DM allowed me to spend downtime training to learn the Guild-master’s unique ability: Lightning Shroud. I take damage to use it currently, as my character’s body isn’t built for it like his master’s is, but it allows the following: double movement when I take the dash action, enhanced damage, better attacks of opportunity, access to the Lightning Lure and Shocking Grasp cantrips, and a few other tasty little bonuses, each at the cost of Hit Dice. If I go beyond my maximum Hit Dice, I start taking a painful mixture of damage and exhaustion points. I am absolutely loving it! I built my character as Hercules, and now he’s turning into Zeus!

With the story with Manteruck I was expecting a moment where he had picked up a small creature like Goblin or Kobold and "tried" to use them as a weapon causing them to burn.

I also have a similar thing to the first tale, but mechanically it’s a bit different. In his backstory, my wizard got his right arm from just above his elbow crushed and pulverized by a falling stone pillar (at least as far as the party knows). So he willingly amputated it himself, and built himself a very complex clockwork wood and brass kinda steampunk arm, which is about 50 years more advanced then the most common prosthetics of that world. I had to make tinkers checks to see just how good it would be and rolled really well. Now, the DM and I have worked out that he keeps certain spell components embedded and built into the arm, such as the Diamond for Chromatic orb being embedded and built into the palm all iron man style. It’s super funky and I’m absolutely having a blast with it!

I've never played dnd but I've got a character concept ready for if I ever do. a kobold named flint whose village/hive/whatever a kobold home is called was right on top of a trading route that ferried a lot of books. most of the kobold were only interested in their cool covers or value for fencing but flint was enamored by their descriptions of the greater world and eventually decided to become an adventurer. he would have the homebrewed ability (if approved by the dm) to occasionally recall reading about something relevant to the current situation. for example, if he is fighting a monster with a hidden trick up its sleeve, flint may recall reading about the monster and know to watch out.

I'm currently 5 years in on a campaign with a couple of people I used to work with, and other friends we brought in. My paladin who spent time in the Court of Lathander has recently gained the ability to fly for a minute, which is cool, but while my wings are active I'm now able to use my Lay On Hands on anyone within a 30ft Radius, and I can spread them out to anyone I want within that Radius as a single action. It's really clever, and I love it.

Our dragonborn barbarian loved baking cheesecakes, to the point where he took the Chef feat to make them actually do things. So our DM gave him the choice to either do combat and other XP related things, or make enough cheesecakes to advance a level(in this campaign, doing stuff related to your character's class, race, or feats gave you XP) and the barbarian did the cheesecakes option. Our DM gave the barbarian the ability to summon a cheesecake golem to destroy his enemies, or to get the party some quick heals midbattle. So now we have this giant cheesecake golem following us around, smashing bandits and thugs, allowing low party members to take a handful of it and get some HP or temp. HP back midbattle. It was amazing.

I played a Vivisectionist Alchemist with split personality disorder. My DM gave me a third "personality" that would only come out when I was close to death, but the main personality would have no memory of it. It was a plant creature that would take over my body. Found out halfway through the campaign that my character had a fey seed planted in him at some point and it started a symbiotic relationship with its host.

I've only been playing Dungeons & Dragons for over a year now so I'm not familiar with every single ability, but this is still pretty cool that I want to share I played a Silver Dragonborn Rune Knight Fighter, named Zilver. We helped free two powerful sibling archfey, and just barely survived killing the false mayor of a mining town that was originally owned by such fey hundreds of years ago. My character took a slight liking to the sister, and she noticed. When my character was bathing in the river on the outskirts of town, the archfey approached my character. Feeling thankful and generous, she wanted to give a gift to my character, so long as he agreed on something. She desired for my character to be her new protector. My character, who has zero experience in any kind of romance, agreed. Immediately after the deal was made, a "ritual" began. My DM did not discuss or describe the actions of the ritual, only that it was apparently both pleasurable and painful to my character. At the end of the ritual my character ended up with intricate scars on his back in a unknown language. After a teammate recovered his body, and a night's rest with intense dreams, my character spoke the words that he heard in his dream. The scars on his back gave a glow, and a small Aqua Dragon appeared. My character have the ability to summon a water dragon to assist him in battle, and once summoned, it lasted about a week, before it "needed to rest" and returned to my character's scars. The dragon's name was River, and she did have the ability to change shape, which she took the form of an elf. She would often call my character "Master" or "Dragon Lord" and was a bit scatterbrained but she was very handy. She had the ability to turn invisible, shapeshift, and had a healing breath that could be recovered on her turn if I rolled high enough.

I played a ranger with the scholar background and the concept was that I was a student of nature and wanted to explore new places and learn of new lifeforms. My DM gave me a lvl 1 spell called "capture image". It basically allowed me to make a blank sctoll float at my side, then I'd make a frame with my hands and utter the magic command and BAM. Whatever I was seeing through my frame was instantly printed on my scroll. A sort camera so I could take pics of the new beasts I encountered. But later in the game I met a sage that was impressed of my image collection and enchanted every pic I took. As an action I could put down on the floor one the enchanted pics and using another arcane command the image would spring out of the scroll at real size and obey me for a full minute, after which it would go back to the scroll to turn back into a photo for good.

I love these stories. This is what DnD was meant to be.

I've told this story on another video, but it definitely fits the theme. I was a Halfling Cavalier with a Dire Corgi Mount. We ended up in a battle with a wizard and he cast Death Cloud on us. All the players made their saves, but my Dire Corgi didn't make it. My character was so pissed they Charged the Wizard on foot and I rolled a crit. This is when we started saying that my Tanks "mists" the bad guys. I actually take the Wizard's mount, which was a war horse with a magical saddle and horseshoes. But my DM decides that my actions were so heroic that my Dire Corgi's soul was imbued into my lance. So I had a magical lance, with the sentience and loyalty of a dog. It came to my hand when I called it, like Mjolner, and could morph into any melee weapon I could think of.

I was a lowly level 1 Fighter named Gaston, with Magic Initiate: Warlock (because of a ghost possession) when my journey began. More specifically, one of the spells I took was Prestidigitation, and my character was gonna USE it, dammit. It had rained and Gaston was soaked, so he prestidigitation-cleaned himself but styled the effect as a hair dryer. My DM rolled with it. Gaston gained the ability to use prestidigitation to mess with hairstyles at the snap of a finger, and the power slowly grew over time as I used it. More complex hairstyles, then lengthening or shortening it, then dying it, then making as though they had used product like gel. Gaston has now gotten a ludicrous amount of good will (and information) by filling out aging dwarves' beards, or giving the vain owner of a magical scroll shop a dye job and style based off a picture he had from his youth. We got a HUGE discount with this guy because of it. Gaston is now (with the help of some healing magic) an honest-to-goodness ye olde barber, tooth-pulling and all, and there are rumors spreading around of a mysterious ally of the elderly and those with alopecia who will show up, snap his fingers, and disappear without a word, leaving perfectly styled hair and youthful looking men in his wake. A true hero.

I made a warlock with the fiend pact. We explored the idea of making deals with your patron to get stuff. Like I gave my fiend 1000 gold and in return I custom spell called unholy fire. It was epic.

One that I enjoyed the most was during a starwars 5e game. The DM gave every character a skill based on their personality and characteristics. The best was the smuggler who got "I know a guy." So when he needed anything from weapons to information. He could ask the DM and make a roll for it. Though I did like the skill my fighter got. "Do mandalorian things."

Not entirely DND, but me and some friends played a One piece campaign and my character was awarded the Chiyo Chiyo no mi, also known as the heal heal fruit. Up to that point I was already a medic, and most of my combat was Hand to Hand due to my character being a monk. Problem was that, over time and with most enemies being extremely powerful, my character was becoming more of a shield than an actual fighter, and since my ability was literally to heal and deal no extra damage (all other fruits allowed to hit harder) me and my DM ended up having to solve the problem one way or another. Our solution? Videogames. I made a technique called "Stack overflow" which was a 1 hit KO technique, to which I had to roll a Nat 20 to even use it (failing meant healing the enemy) but if done correctly, my character would give so much health to the objective, that it would overflow and turn its HP to the negatives; the same way it would happen inside a videogame. I only got to use it twice (as my roll luck was, more than bad, awful) but both times it saved the party from a TPK. I nowadays thinking about making a class 100% related to healing, and make that one one of its spells.

Was playing gambler got so many good roles the dm gave me a blessed deck holder for my cards that had a chance to take shrouding bad luck(bad roles by other players) and turn it into good luck for me end result almost 100% 15+ roles every turn since are paladin had klutz (subtract value from 4 sided die-1) passive that he has to roll for on every single action

DM here, homebrew campaign. We are still early, but still had two instances. One being our Paladin, who got the Ogre Butcher Greatsword as a quest reward. It cannot fail to hit Ogres in its attack range, but does no additional damage. The other instance is the first boss of the campaign, whom we just fought last session. An ogre who had kidnapped the daughter of the starting town's innkeeper. When the party found them, the daughter was trapped in a cage that was hanging from the ceiling by a chain. However, she was very much in control of the situation as she had put the ogre in a maid outfit and had him sweep the floor of the cave with a broom. The fight started, he ripped the brushes off the broom to reveal a javelin, which he threw at either the Paladin or the Monk, I don't remember which. After the party managed to get him from 29 health directly to 0 with a Crit, I had him enter the second phase. He got the cage down from the ceiling, tossed his Greatclub away and started swinging the cage around by the chain. With the hostage inside. To get close to him, the party now had to roll Dex saves to dodge the swinging cage.

I haven't played him yet, but we are gearing up to play a sequel campaign in a homebrew world and the DM has been working with me to make my character. Meet Stormy, a blind firbolg monk. He was set adrift on the tide as an infant and was found by an order of monks. Somehow the child's eyes had been plucked and the monks had no way of repairing the damage, so they raised him up and taught the child to "see" using other senses (a bit like Daredevil). Mechanically, my character has blindsight to a range of 30 ft, but he also has a few other related abilities. He has advantage on checks that use touch to investigate his surroundings and can use ki to "sense" intent, allowing a situational insight bonus. I'm really excited to see how he turns out and what kind of shenanigans he ends up in due to his inability to see.

I had a monk from a mechanized race (think warforged) whose progenitor had managed to attain godhood and dwelled in the veil between the mortal and divine planes. I had initially built him for damage but transitioned into the team's tank partway through. After being killed by the second-born of his race and meeting with his deity, he was returned to life as a guardian to protect the veil between the planes, which manifested as an ability called King's Side Castle. It allowed him to react to an ally being attacked by teleporting to their location and taking the hit for them. The most memorable for me was when I saved our bard by tanking a hit from a kraken that would have knocked him out of the crow's nest and likely killed him.

In The Dark Eye, my hunter helped the Wolf Queen, the first wolf to ever exist, and got a nice little thing as thanks: Wolves see him as ally, and he now has excellent hearing. Log Horizon is such a great isekai. The main character, Shiroe, is an Enchanter, with the subclass Scribe, meaning his direct combat potential is... practically non-existent. But he's smart. Crazy smart, in fact. He's a great tactician, can take in and process a ton of information in real time, and is overall just an awesome character, because his whole strength comes from supporting others. He finds himself in a world where there is no real necessity. If you die, you respawn. There's food, but you don't get hungry. It's literally an MMORPG, with all the ups and downs. It's fun to be there for a few hours a day, but if you're stuck there, it gets boring really fast, because there is no incentive to do anything. Plus, Shiro sometimes explains video game concepts like HP, MP, experience, and so on, in the form of monologues that sound more like he's keeping his head organized, making the anime extremely easy to get into, even if you don't know anything about video games, without breaking immersion. He's a quiet, thinking type, so it makes sense he'd go over stuff every once in a while. Also, he has a nickname: The Villain Behind Glasses. That's how devious his plans get. However, despite his occasionally repulsive strategies, he helps people, and he is always honest about his intentions.

PANR has tuned in.

I was playing a warforged paladin in ebberon and I got a Reinhardt style jetpack that gave me some limited flight, but more importantly, gave me the ability to do a 90 foot long charge so I could get into close range for my axe. after using it to burst through my AI maker's main screen to kill her, my DM gave it the ability to make separate attacks against each each enemy in that line, and deal an additional 6d6 damage to any I hit. (Both the PCs and enemies were super OP in this game so it was technically balanced)

Nothing bombastic but- My character is effectively the restored soul of an adventurer from 100 years prior to the campaign, this comes to play in 2 ways: He knows some vital, exclusive historical anecdotes since he was there to witness those events 1st hand And he's basically credited for war scythes- my guy uses a scythe as his weapon (think Burial Blade from Bloodborne) and it has been established that the "traditional" war scythes of the campaign setting were developed in his likeliness because no one could effectively replicate neither his weapon nor his fighting style

Dwarf fighter/barbarian, who’s made of crabs, I ate a logia candy that the Dm homebrewed for us based off of One Piece, everyone in the party also has unique powers as well.

"You dare try to kill me because I stole your phylactery? HOW DARE YOU?! THIS IS PERSONAL NOW!" Way to turn themselves into the victim there. 🤣

I played a necromancer wizard for the first time in my game and mixed up the spell lists a bit while picking them, so I accidentally ended up with revifify (a cleric spell) and the dm didn’t even notice for a long time. Fast forward to later in our campaign one of the party rushes into an area that’s booby trapped with explosives and is where npcs that were travelling with us were being kept. The place explodes killing two of them. The party then holds the line for me as I revive these two innocent people and save them from our warlock’s stupidity. From then on I realized one day that I had the wrong spell and my DM just said screw it you can have it. Now my party remembers the encounter we had and checks up to make sure I still have a spell slot for it in reserves in case they die. Has actually been a great thing to have in a party without a healer.

First real DnD campaign I was involved with, I played a Female Half-Orc 'Folk Hero' Barbarian named Jasper. Start out with her trying to sell her beer at a fair with no success.... even tried intimidating people into buying her beer, but no dice. Then, for some reason I decide to try to lure in business by 'Flirting'. Sold out with 2 successful rolls. After this slowly became a part of Jasper's character, a bit of a mindset similar to the Amazons of Futurama, my DM gave her the ability to make 'Flirt Checks'. While this was mostly for fun, this was used offensively against a pair of Paladins who came knocking at our Vampire employer's house searching for undead. Multiple successes and 'sultry' dialog had those knights of the order running from their doorstep.

I only recently realized it was a trend but, apparently my character is getting visions of the past and future involving the main questline. Very cryptic thus far but I love puzzles!

My dad was DMing for me, and allowed me to have a runt of an otyugh as a companion for my tortle ranger. Because of my characters time with it, he learned to speak otyugh and most of his abilities that focused on communication with animals and beasts also extended to aberrations. Being able to talk with an ettercap is more useful than you think. It didn’t extend to all my beast-based abilities, I couldn’t summon aberrations, and all the same restrictions, like needing the receiver to be lower int, still persisted.

Our DM started our party as science/magic experiments of the BBG. We got to choose a super ability that acted like a multi class with levels and everything. Most players asked for abilities that would just increase their main stat. I asked for shape-changing and the DM now allows my monk to turn into a Barlgura for d4 rounds among other things. This has allowed my monk to tank in emergency situations and even mix monk abilities into the monster stat block. Flavor wise my monk is a circus clown and the mini King Kong vibe of my Barlgura fits very well.

It was supposed to be a curse but it ended up being game breaking. My characters affliction was her experimentation in alchemy had rendered her with a pheromones that made her irresistible if she started to sweat and by extension all beings within 10 feet of her must succeed in wisdom check or be drawn to her in an amorous fashion. By explanation, her use of potions crafted with alchemy had imbued her with a permanent love potion that excreted from her skin on hot days, during physical battle or when she was really nervous. So, now she has around 600 + suitors ranging from nobles to monsters who are actively seeking her out to "woo" her. It made sunbathing impossible, elemental fire trips impossible, saunas a house of horrors, but battle and getting guards to turn a blind eye to her way too easy. 😂 My second favorite ability I was ever given is that if I killed something the Final Fantasy fan fare would play around them. This prompted my fighter to learn how to spin his Halbert in a flashy way around his body after each fight. Unfortunately this would also encompass anything that granted experience. Convince an angry mob to assault a shop selling body parts, fanfare. Step on a venomous bug, fanfare. Successfully seduce the innkeepers daughter and distract her long enough for the rogue to find the secret door in the cellar, fanfare. Both truly cursed and blessed. Later this "curse" would also make it so others hearing the fanfare would be inspired to do something flashy when it played, and the third condition was the fighters hair would become spiky during the fanfare. Thus the legend of the Thrice Cursed Warlord was born. 😂😂😂😂😂😂 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-m3wH9K9cDcI.html

I played in a Starfinder game where the BBEG was a fragment of a super-intelligent AI, and we were allied with several other fragments that sought to stop them. My character was a Vlaka Envoy, think spacefaring dog/husky people from an ice planet. Vlaka are always born either deaf or blind, and mine was blind. He was an overly smooth talker though, and could smell & hear super well. One of the AI fragments we allied with was something of an astral librarian, and saw potential in my character. They gave me a tiny taste of their power, which stayed dormant for a few sessions, only popping up with fleeting visions (unique for my character who has never *seen* in his life) of future events that may unfold. This eventually came to a head in combat, allowing me to foresee an outcome and either capitalize on it or foil enemy plans (allowing me something like once a day full party bless or full enemy bane equivalent effects). I could also use this power to see into the past in a local area over a certain time, having the option to look further and further back at the cost of potentially damaging myself. Basically, I got the power of the Monado from Xenoblade, and it was awesome.

In a westmarch pathfinder 1 e server I'm in we have a mechanic called ascension. When you hit level 20, if you don't want to go into mythic levels ,you can send your character back to level one loosing most of your items but getting to work with a gm to get a template of abilities unique to your character as they level up. Some of my fave include the ability to eat posions and add them to natural weapons, the ability to summon a seige weapon that you are attuned to and the ability to create demi plains in the dreams of others to mess with their minds

One of my players and I are brewing Garth, the divination wizard with memory problems. He was once a famous and powerful wizard who sustained head trauma after a duel gone wrong, and now his memory is failing. He has a book and can prepare spells equal to his wizard level like any other wizard, but instead of adding his intelligence modifier to the number of spells he can prepare from his book, he chooses spells from the wizard spell list completely at random (excluding Wish). It's fun and random, and produces some hilarious results. Sometimes it's broken, sometimes it gives him garbage. We love it

I have a few characters that come to mind, but this was my most fun. The dm was running a magic campaign. Every player no matter the class could use magic, some were unique types of magic. I was playing a Half Elf Wizard who used plenty of elemental evocation magic, and everyone was wondering why I almost never hit something, and when I did I didn't do as much damage as I should have. We all had to pick out which magic we would use, and have disadvantage on all other magics. We were fighting in a dungeon against a bunch of skeletons and other undead, when I was the most unharmed even though I was almost a Frontline fighter, in the final fight against 3 liches, I stepped forward and said Soul Destruction in my most menacing voice I could muster. And all 3 liches turned to ash, the Dm told the rest of the players I choose Soul Reaver (Necromancer type deal but more Soul magic, AKA unblockable damage unless you could protect your soul)

I had a DM in the Marine Corps gave me an enchanted mithril chainspear. I got really creative in my uses so my DM gave me the ability to "summon" it from about 30 feet away. This enabled me to launch an attack PAST an enemy, only to recall it , impaling the enemy with advantage THE FIRST TIME I do this. If I was undetected, it could do ridiculous amounts of damage and this weapon could also function as a non-combat option, as well. The ability to recall a weapon is so powerful and underutilized. Those games were some of the most fun [agitating to my friends] and exciting games I've played to date. ^_^

My brothers old dm used to hand out unique traits based on special events in their campaign or player traits. Examples include. Simple minded wisdom - can use negative intelligence as a positive boost to wisdom and make one wisdom saving throw into a coin flip per short rest. Rewarded to my brothers centaur barbarian after acing 3 wisdom checks In a row which required a Nat twenty each. Tempered mettle - instead of losing concentration the wizard can roll once a short rest a int check that if the roll is twice as much as the damage it doesn't break concentration. If fire damage then it is instead compared one to one. Rewarded to the dwarf wizard/artificer when he completed a monumental ceremonial task involving a red hot crown and unwrapped smithing hammers. "Uh no I have it" - given to the Rouge who's player was amazing at keeping inventory of not just himself but the other players. He would often point out magic objects or important/helpful items everyone was carrying that they forgot about. In game they play it off as the Rouge pickpocketed them of said item out of habit a while back and could give it to the party on demand. In function Essentially he was granted access to all other players inventories. Which has lead to a few hilarious moments.

I played a Tiefling Bard who had to go to some extreme measures to survive when she was young. Long story short, she was a cannibal, and each time she ate someone who had class levels, she got one of their feats. By the time the campaign was done, she had Level 2 Wildshape, Action Surge, Extra Attack, and so much more.

my tabaxi rogue was given a unique hand crossbow that's strapped to the wrist. the cool ability is that this crossbow also has a grappling hook similar to the one from the just cause series. on my turn, using a bonus action, i can shoot the grappling hook to latch onto a creature larger than me and draw myself towards it, or a smaller creature (or object) to pull towards me like scorpion. it also doesn't count towards my movement speed, so i can get an extra burst of distance and position myself in unique places for sniping. on top of that, it allows for amazing perception checks as i can zip to the top of a tree and scan the surroundings with a wider view than what i would see on the ground.

Ooh, this is something I LOVE to do for my games! Whenever we’re going through the starting process I like to talk to my players and figure out what kind of characters they’re making, and I’ll give them a unique feature (and sometimes background) based on that character’s backstory. Here’s one of my favorites that I’ve done: In my current campaign, one of my players is an Orc Barbarian with a couple levels of Wizard. He wanted to be undead and focus on necromancy, and his backstory involves him having died when his village was attacked by a hunting party a noble from a distant land had sent. A god from my world determined him to be important and decided to bring him back to life. As a feature, to help make his building less restrictive and less reliant on Int so he can still do Barbarian things, I gave him the ability to use his Str or Con as his spellcasting stat whenever he used a Necromancy spell. (Basically, if the spell was of the Necromancy school, the spell attack bonus would be Str+Prof, and/or the Save DC would be 8+Str+Prof). Additionally, he can still cast and maintain concentration on Necromancy spells while Raging, and even has small bonuses to them while doing so. In practice, this has led to him almost exclusively using Necromancy spells so he can maximize its usefulness - though he still used Detect Magic and Identify a lot. Really, he doesn’t use a lot of magic, but he only has two levels of Wizard so far, so I imagine he’ll be able to do more once he gets access to more Necro spells.

Not my character but definitely worth mentioning. Our Gnome Wizard struck a deal with our DM. Starting off a level one, no matter what, when our wizard rolled for damage dice with a spell that dealt fire damage, he rolled one extra dice... Now for the fun part. Any time we entered combat, before initiative was rolled, the wizard had to roll a wisdom saving throw. If he rolled a one, he had to use his most powerful available fire spell, didn't matter how devastating it was, on the nearest person or object, regardless of if they were teammates. There is a true horror story wrapped up in this too.

As a DM, One of my players had taken a Noble Background and got into some heavy details in their backstory. Even going as far as to make use of the usually ignored part of backgrounds, the Features. More so the Varient Feature known as "Retainers". Going as far as to work within the theme and confines of the world built for the game and designed a Butler character which was a Tiefling, the Tiefling Race having a unique role in the world's history and this was included in its making. At first I didn't think much of it, mainly thinking about how it would come into play with the campaign and such as they had put some effort into giving this npc of theirs some life in its own way. But when they mentioned that the Butler was "One Hell of a Butler" I took some time to laugh to myself as I had just recently came from watching some 'Black Butler' anime episodes. So in response. I presented them with a charactersheet. To make their butler into an DMPC which would be played as part of the party instead of a background character as the Feature normally presents. The Butler acted less as a PC and more as a extra turn for the PC themselves, never trying to take any spotlight and wouldn't involve themselves in any scene without the express request by the PC. Other players noticed this and clued in. The more you look into involving yourself within the world I built. The better chances of getting something special to form. The Fighter gained access to a Homebrewed archtype which we worked on together to rebalance for the campaign. Which in note, was normally a not possible thing as well...

I played a Kenku Warlock(Great Old One) who was an adventurer that worked for a local guild, her living outside the city/town's outskirts in a small tower that she owned and lived in. It was a solo campaign I was doing with my older brother who was the DM and unfortunately the campaign didn't go to far due to the fact doing a solo campaign is a hard thing to do. We custom made her patron to be a banished and sealed away god of the Kenku race who was the god of treasure and wealth. Over time as my character leveled up she would get a random set of permanent mutations to her body such as growing an extra ft, being capable of growing plant like roots from her body, and absorb sunlight.

I have a Warforged Artificer concept I'm kicking around that has alchemy supplies built in to her chassis, she still has to use her hands to cram spell components into her maw where it gets ground up and turned into a potion that she chucks to cast spells. It's great

Had a dm who's game sorta revolved around this sort of thing, elemental orbs could be found and merged with, the more of them you "consumed" the more powers you could get related to the element it was, i had a couple wind ones, giving me a free misty step per day and lightning resistance, was a pretty fun game

not character specific, but I made a pair of resource pools for my game. one enhanced weapon damage rolls and skill check rolls if you spend a point of it, then add the die roll to the result, but it could also lower cover penalties, gain temp hit points, add to a healing potion results, and to recharge certain armor/weapon abilities. the other recharged magic items, reduced spell attack cover, enabled the channeling of a spell through a weapon, and created temporary runes on your armor that could lower the damage of a certain type for one hit, by about 5 higher than their character level. (the last one was based on a thing in the Arcane Casebook series by Dan Willis. In Plain Sight is the first book.)

Starscream was a high-level Warforged general (Fighter Battlemaster), he had the ability to conjure chains that had three functions: immobilize an opponent with an Action, damage the immobilized opponent with a bonus action, or coil the chains against an attack by adding + 1 of AC. The currents emerged from midair and moved by themselves. Hunter was a reborn celestial who spent centuries in a temporal chamber training to murder a single man, upon leaving the chamber, he got a pair of black wings that in addition to making him fly, could release several sharp feathers for a long rest. Feathers had a usage limit, and the damage was 1d4+dex, but there were fourteen. The table was near the end, it was level twenty, even though all the feathers could be dropped in a single turn, the Hunter possessed many incomparably stronger powers, however, another divine power of his allowed him to replicate the limits of a technique. Arriving at the final boss, there were dozens of his minions that would be a lot of work, but with the replica technique and the opening of wings, along with buffs from spellcasters, most minions were detonated in a single turn.

I DM'd a short campaign where my players were heading into a labyrinth of the multiverse. before session 0 I went through a mini session with each player to help round out their characters, while doing this I gave them a homebrew magic item each to fit in with their backstory. I remember making a vodka bottle that refilled itself and made people fearless. a familiar spirit chimera and a tweeked version of the robe of stars. however there are 2 items that I will never forget. the first was for our warforge. in his backstory he had to replace his arm to rust. as a free upgrade due to the overflow of energy, he was able to shoot bolts of lightning out of his hand. later due to curiosity, this was upgraded into a chaos bolt. the second item actually came later into the campaign (and might be more attuned to an ability) involved the deck of many things. shocking I know. the ability came when the character would have gotten a second deck. instead of making a second deck, the original deck got upgraded. the character (and only that character) could redraw a card if they didn't like the result (be it unnecessary or dangerous) alternatively, they could keep a negative card and keep it to throw at a target to make them have the effects of said card. a good example would be if an ancient dragon were to be hit by the fool, the dragon would de-age into an adult or young dragon. I am a chaotic dm and don't regret it.

I played a Skald Deep-one hybrid pirate in a pathfinder 1st ed game and the BBEG owned several intelligent ships. We had discovered one of his ships that was locked away in a cave, and we decided to steal it and try to have it converted to our cause. The ship was extremely evil, and wanted nothing to do with us. We tortured it into submission by breaking its masts, but it kept mind controlling any creature that passed near our ship. In the end, we had to sink the damn ship because of how unruly it was. However, since I beat it into submission a few times, the DM gave me a unique bonus: I now had a +2 on my intimidation checks against boats hahaha.

I got an ability called "undying". Because my health was ridiculously low, i got the ability to help with that. It basically allowed me to not die once per battle

I gave the Warforged Barbarian that I DM for a robo-scorpion tail that shoots harpoons. He was carrying around a dead (broken?) Oaken Bolter and he wanted to attach it to himself. The harpoon has all the same properties as the one from the Oaken Bolter stat block, except it's a strength based weapon attack. For those out of the loop, an Oaken Bolter's harpoon auto-grapples on a hit. When a creature is grappled in this way, their speed isn't reduced but they can only move closer to the attacker. If a creature attempts to escape from the grapple, they take 1d10 piercing damage regardless of whether they succeed or not. Finally, as a bonus action, the target can be pulled 20 feet closer to the attacker.

Had one campaign where the players played two different characters... it was a Battle of Deities type thing, each character of each player served as a piece of the two gods. One was supposed to be evil, the other good(You know, ultimate Good vs Evil schtick.) Each character got an item, typically a weapon, that represented them in their life, as well as the piece they correlated to. My character for the 'evil' side of things was a tiefling College of Swords bard. His item, or in this case set of items, was one each of the martial weapons - and two daggers - with the 'thrown' property, all of which could be called at will, similar to the Keyblade. It was quite amusing to watch the puns fly... "Hello, it's KNIFE to meet you." "I have to AXE you a question." "Are these puns plain bad, or just SWORD of good?" "It'd be a shame to SPEAR past such an opportunity." ... the sword one was because, aside from throwing weapons, he specialized in dual-wielding scimitars. The weapons kind of acted like the soul knives from the Bracer of Infinite Blades, now that I think of it, minus just dissolving into nothingness.

Meet Meowth, the God of Friendship This is in a pure homebrew pokemon campaign. He has the ability: God of Friendship as you could have guessed. That ability allows Meowth to never get attacked by another being unless he attacks them and they know he did, or knew he could. Now that is scary in of itself. But wait, it gets worse. Meowth has the blessing of Arceus, allowing 8 move slots. We need only know 2 of them. Lock on, and Fissure. For those who know, lock on allows the next move to not miss at all. And Fissure is a guaranteed One Hit Kill, if it hits. Which is normally a 30% chance. See where it's going? Meowth can Walt's in an enemy's base, go to the leader, lock onto them, and they can't do anything about it. Fissure. An entire war can end right there.

I played a Goliath barbarian who really liked to take on ridiculous odds on her own. And being a bear totem barbarian, it typically went surprisingly well. So, she got this ability from the DM, Bright Candle, where she could roll a d12 and gain twice the amount rolled in temporary hitpoints (worth even more with rage), but she'd also permanently lose the amount rolled from her total maximum health. The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.

i'm going to start a campaign with some of my friends soon, and my character is deadset on being an incredible sword master. her mother died as they tried to escape the Underdark together (not evil drow), and my character only has her mother's sword to remember her by, and so my DM let me create an absolutely beastly homebrew sword which my character will use later on in the campaign when she feels like she's worthy of it. it does an extra d6 of fire and another d6 of cold in its regular form, and the sword is intelligent enough to know how good my character is at the sword, so once she gets good enough, the sword moves into an ascended form, 3d6 necrotic damage on each hit, and 1d4 necrotic for my character on each miss

I play Pathfinder 1E, but I homebrewed a Wild Magic Sorcerer. Part of the homebrew is an ability called "Riding the Surge." Once per day, I can cast a spell without expending the corresponding spell slot . . . at the cost of causing a Wild Magic surge.

Can confirm. Manteruk does have a Wrestling Persona. When he is outside of combat he is all loner, keeps to himself and just a bit of a jerk. However, in combat and for a short time afterwards he is all joyous and vocal, willing to talk and make friends and all that. I will share more stories about Manteruk as they come up. Promise. Incidentally, I do have a Bard that is extremely unique as well. Nodis Mai is a Coyouin (Co-You-In) Bard. Coyouins are essentially a Race of Shark People, with Nodis resembling more of a Great White Shark (Using custom lineage rules, I'll post a picture of the commission in the Reddit, feel free to show it cause I am proud of it). However, while Coyouins are normally associated with water, Nodis is more attuned to fire then anything, having a multiclass to allow him access to basic fire spells like Burning Hands, Firebolt and eventually Fireball. While Nodis is capable of playing instruments, that is not his main preformance. He is a fire eater, fire breathing, fire juggling, pretty much everything fire related. The end of his performance involves him casting Silent Image over himself to create the illusion of a Red Dragon, casting Thaulmaturgy to create the sound and roars, and Burning Hands to serve as the Red Dragons breath as he alights six torchs in a cone. Despite being three seperate spells, the DM allows Nodis to cast all three at the same time as everything else is nothing but Flavour for the character. However, that is not his main act. Nodis' eventually wants to run his own Kobachi Restaurant, a Culinary Theatre, performing cooking routines and performances with food and serving it. He has been working constantly on his routine, using his party to test recipes and get feedback. One of his class abilities allows him to store food and a whole kitchen (keeping it a little vague since my party doesn't know yet the specifics), so every day he suddenly disappears for three hours at a time, and then comes back with a feast of food. I also intend to take the Chef and Actor feats to go along towards his goals. Ultimately, he wants to be known as the greatest Culinary Chef in the world, and host his own Culinary Theatre. While Manteruck is the most Unique character I have played, Nodis is by far the most fun. The thing with Nodis' character build is that its not focused on strengthening himself or min-maxing his stats. His advancements in learning his performance, his "Fire Bending" and culinary arts are focused solely on his end goal, but can be easily applied to getting advantages on the battlefield and in social situations. In particular, Nodis excells at earning gold for the party by purchasing Ingrediants raw whenever he arrives in a new town, and performing Culinary Theatre right in the centre of town. Not only does people tip him for the performances, but people also purchase the food for a premium due to personally seeing the skill Nodis puts in. Its extremely fun to describe the displays and I will hopefully also share the exploits of Nodis as well.

In the campaigns I DM I have what I call "Special Boss Fights" and afterward depending on events that occurred in the battle, each party member who participated gets an ability related to that. Example: In one campaign the Druid (as a giant constrictor snake) managed to restrain the chimera they were fighting for 3 rounds so now when she's wildshaped she has a +1 to hit when a creature is larger than her.

Playing a Vedalken Wizard who practices anthropology and alchemy in his spare time, he eventually learned enough about creature's bodies combined with some alchemy and cloning magic, and gained an ability I named "Jekyll and Hyde" Where once a long rest, he could for one hour essentially true polymorph into a character half his level, with some prerequestites on their stat blocks. Every time he changes, I roll their max hp. He is allowed to have up to his intelligence modifer number of different "personas" that he can don, however it is still only once per day, not once per persona. I've so far used it to become a ranger rogue batman character, a half orc paladin warlock (Not a hexblade warlock, it's a conquest paladin and undead warlock), and a life cleric shepherd druid. He is only level 15 right now, and at level 20 will get an upgrade for this. All players in this game get an ability like this at level 10, and eventually upgrade it at 20.