No respect. I tell ya!

My sister always picked those lol just troublemaking groblins

I always do “every non-combat skill, useless in combat”, which is absolutely infuriating with beginner DMs because all they prepared is combat encounters and I have nothing to do Look, if I wanted to fight, I’d go play a video game. I’m here for the part video games *cannot* give me, and that’s talking to a real person and coming up with rube-goldberg solutions to solve problems without shedding blood

haha that's cool [and I'm not a furry](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday)

Sure but what's your TTRPG character?

I actually like point-buy systems where you get better at what you actually use (like in Morrowind). I start at average values in everything and see where the story takes my character.

"What do they look like?" "Middle sliders on the character creator." "Any motivations?" "Do quests to earn money." "How about a backstory?" "Did quests and earned money."

I feel like there should be a “6.1: ***Definitely*** my fursona”

Every party needs one, just to keep the party moving. When the entire party is busy hemming and hawing about how to best approach an encounter, they often need a Leroy Jenkins to just axe-chop the door apart and start taking heads. The real issue is that oftentimes, the heads belonged to the hostages that the party was there to rescue. If the awful little creature had actually paid attention at all, they would have known that. But they were grabbing their fifth beer when that part was explained, (and they wouldn’t have listened to it anyways), so they had no idea who was inside the room.

I've taken more damage from party members trying to get me under control than from the enemy. Now they keep me on a leash.

I can't play with my friend because we play the same guy. Both rogue. Both street tough types rather than the shadowy assassin type. Both used to end up taking a couple of levels of either Bard or fighter and ended up with a swashbuckler. No strength, all dex and cha. We did play together a few times and would swap out which one of us got to play that guy. The other always played a very angry wizard. Just grumpy as shit. Good at a lot of things, but preferred to either fireball or magic missile his way out of situations. Talking to NPCs? I think I've got potions brewing. Must be off! Before we played together we played the same MUD separately. Yep, same character. We ran into each other from time to time. In high school we played at the same place but a couple of years apart. I started going when he left for the Navy. The guy who DM'ed there said my character reminded me of that guy a lot. I want to play BG3 with him remotely and both play swashbucklers.

Being useless in combat is a personal choice that can absolutely be avoided without hampering your ability to be a skillmonkey. You won’t be obliterating the enemy en masse, but that’s what the casters are for. Play a Thief rogue and have a blast with fast hands when initiative is rolled, or be almost any bard and hand out bardic inspiration while you stand as a mild speedbump of meat between the wizard and the enemy. Or maybe chat with your DM about game expectations prior to playing? I know it’s an impossible ask for the internet at large.

> 8. Whatever lets me create the biggest explosions 

Play identical twins.

Chat with the whole party. Some of them might not be happy with you avoiding all the combat.

My personal favorite aspect with respect to combat is, "I look around, what objects and furniture are in the room?" Then proceed to use that stuff in combat. Long rug? I'll attempt to trip the opponent by pulling it up. Chandelier? Yeah I'll throw a hand axe and try to break that chain. Some DMs thrive off of it, some are put off.

Absolutely, there should be some level of “okay who stands in front of the skeletons, who fireballs the skeletons, who puts the fighter back together after they get fireball’d too, and who stops the whole party from getting killed by a trap before they even reach the battle”. If you’re *gasp* optimizing, you might even tailor your skillmonkey around the gaps in your party’s abilities - you probably don’t need the world’s best arcana checks with a wizard in the party, but it would be nice to grab face skills if you don’t have any other charismatic fellows around.

One of my favorite characters I've ever had fits *perfectly* into #15. She was a tiny goblin that was on a quest to collect as many skulls as possible and had a sheep that she won in a contest as her steed. (She was about 2.5 feet tall and the rest of the party was human-sized or larger, so I had to roll endurance checks to keep up with them sometimes if we were traveling a long distance.)

Ooh, or my other trope: be a cleric with heavy armor and a shield. On your first turn in combat, walk out in front of everyone, cast Shield of Faith, and take the Dodge action. As a free action, yell "come at me, fucknuts!" If you can pick up the Shield spell, you're mostly invulnerable, and it's pretty much viable at level 1.

Funny enough, come to think of it, I don't think *any* of my PCs have fit into this.