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.

Dead. _cackles_

Number 1: my barbarian idea was just "funny Russian man with pet bear", who dual weilds a hammer and sickle. I chose totem barbarian with a bear totem, and little did I realize that would make me practically invincible

One of the reasons I despair D&D is the most popular RPG. It's almost all combat, and not even great combat at that.

That's actually an intentional mechanic in Monster of the Week. The Mundane gets bonus XP by wandering off on their own and pushing the plot forward by needing to be rescued a la Xander.

>Definitely not my fursona Does D&D even have any official furry races outside turning a monster into a PC or the two bird-type people? I know Pathfinder has Kitsune. But it's only "definitely not my fursona" because, afaik, there is no dog people race

Can I interest you in hearing the [gospel of the Shoony](https://2e.aonprd.com/Ancestries.aspx?ID=16)?

I think there's also a pair: - Takes the setting and theme very seriously. Reads the lore. Knows the details. Can tell you why the Lancea Sanctum and Invictus are traditionally allies - Absolutely does not take the setting and theme seriously. Wants to play Barney the Dinosaur in your game of Vampire, and Punisher in your game about running a bakery. I'm old and tired and generally am super tired of "wacky" ideas like the second one there. I feel like I've come full circle. As a youth, I thought like "let's play vampires and struggle with humanity was cool!" . Then there was a bit where i wanted to flip it- "let's play vampires but like go to theme parks and don't do anything sad or deep!". Now I'm back around to wanting to just play the theme as intended. This is especially true if it comes up after session 0. Like, if you want to do a D&D game about running a BBQ shop, fine. Let's do it. Let's kill, cook, and sell some weird monster parts. But please don't derail the whole game on session 3 when you insist on going back to town to cook the monster meat when it was clearly a random encounter and everyone else wants to continue the dungeon dive pitched in session 0.

Have you ever thought about taking him on a trip to El Dorado?

Not counting Tabaxi, Leonins, Shifters, Minotaurs, Satyrs, Harengons, Loxodons, Giffs, and potentially Bugbears? No, I don't think so. Because Yuan-ti, Lizardfolks, Dragonborns, Tortles, Kobolds, Locathahs and Grungs count as scalies. And I think Aarakocras, Kenkus and Owlins count as feathery. Wait, how are we handling druids? Cause they can be any race...

Separated at birth. Completely oblivious to their similarity.