I want to emphasize that so I don't get weird personal messages or the like from someone feeling called out. The things that annoy me, or annoy you, may not be bad for every tabletop group or campaign story, and may even be fun for some groups or there may be exceptions that make them bearable and so on and so on. :zizek-ok:
With that disclaimer aside, I'll list some of my pet peeves, both when I'm running a campaign and when I'm playing in one.
The exile that doesn't actually experience any stigma or negative social consequences for being exiled, but the player insists that the character is exiled somehow because it sounded cool and badass. This gets extra annoying if the exile thing nearly becomes a plot point but that plot point is thwarted because the person playing the exile starts to complain about it.
"The last" whatever they are. Some wonderful stories are about someone being the last of their kind, but when it's used as a cheap and lazy gimmick to try to make a character seem special in a paradoxically basic and commonly-used way, it annoys me.
The walking talking powergaming template. Yes, I can tell that the player knows the rulebook and supplemental materials well, but when asked who the character is, this is the person that talks about the template's superiority and often can't come up with even basic character motivations besides "win and dominate in a game that is supposed to be about cooperation and interactive storytelling."
Direct lifts from any existing well known IP. They aren't just uncreative; I have yet to see a player play such a character convincingly or even design the character well enough to match the intended material. I might actually be impressed if someone pulled it off for a one-off or casual campaign.
Characters that are just the player in real life, but transplanted into the setting with better stats and cool powers. I think it's nearly impossible (and probably not worth the effort) to try to play a character that has absolutely nothing in common with the player's personality, interests, quirks, or the like, but with that said, a direct player-is-the-character player is almost always going to be trouble. In my experience, setbacks, injuries, and especially death can and often will make such players take it very personally, get vindictive, and sometimes have an Epic G*mer moment that can get profane, even violent. Not fun.
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You remind me of just about the entire companion NPC cast of the first modern Neverwinter Nights game, where you have an eloquent and polite Half-Orc Barbarian with a double-ended double-headed axe (not a typo, it was a very stupid weapon), a clumsy Elf Cleric (admittedly she was charming enough to get a pass), a bloodthirsty cockney Halfling Rogue with a kukri because exotic weapons are more epic and should be used as much as possible, a vaguely defined but superficially hot Bard with a Darth Maul-style double sword because 3rd edition was obsessed with double weapons, and the worst one of all: a Chaotic Evil Dwarf Monk, bald with no beard, named "Grimgnaw."
The expansions gave us Deekin so they made up for that.
I appreciate the offer, though I already have my own modeled after the "Ships and the Sea" supplement from 2nd Edition. Weird but had some useful bits.
To be fair, all of those exotic weapons you listed are in the core handbook of 3.5, even the Orc Double Axe, so I think players can be somewhat forgiven for using them, since they had cool pictures and shit with them.
My personal fav exotic weapon is the Sugliin. Just look at that fucking thing. My (somewhat old) homebrew for my dnd 5e game added a whole fighter subclass just focused on the silly exotic weapons of 3.5, here if you care to look. Should start on page 10.
Oh I know they were always there in 3rd Edition. That's actually why they were pushed so hard in Neverwinter Nights as official canon novelty.
They were mostly ridiculous to me, especially the "Orc Double Axe" (it would take a lot more strength to swing than it would be worth compared to just having a really big axe) and the "Dire Flail."
I think Darth Maul's debut really influenced that edition.
Shame that their 'rule of cool' didn't apply to balance. Man, martials were bad in 3.5, and those double weapons were pretty much all traps that were not even close to being worth the investment to wield them. Pretty much all the mechanically good exotic weapons were just dumb shit like Kaoti resin kukri.
There was some Orientalist colonial ideology :zizek: to the whole idea of what is "exotic" and what is not, too.
Weeaboo hype aside, a katana is a sword. A daikyu is a bow. For someone that lives in cultures that make and use such things, that should require roughly as much training as using a "normal" longsword or longbow.
There are real-world weapons that look like the Sugliin except they're throwing knives.
Well, and the Sugliin is just a pike with Carabou antlers tied to it, there's no metal in that thing.
Ooh I would be interested in the naval stuff
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this is tight. downloaded.
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Thanks so much, this is really impressive! I've got that saved now. I've always wanted to do a naval campaign, something about it has so much more charm than a generic fantasy setting
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