Making a unique character for any game

Conan, Drizzt, Raistlin, Belgarion, Richard Rahl, Boba Fett, Lestat

All of these characters inspire awe in their allies and invoke fear in their enemiesor prey. With bulging muscles that can bend steel, super-genius intellect that makes the air crackle with energy around them, or special abilities that give them lightning speed and death-dealing prowess in combat, these characters are indeed powerful forces to be reckoned with. By their own right, each is different, unique even, but they are also the same in that they always win, they always come out on top, immortal in one sense or another.

It's nice to step away from the norm once in a while.

After losing a dozen well-crafted defenders of justice in pathetic or embarrassing ways, I rolled the dice yet again and found myself with some horrible die rolls. I was appalled by what I saw: my highest ability score was 13, and only two others had double digits. Terrible! I expressed my disdain to my group where I was greeted with cheers and congratulations. "You'll make a great NPC," one of my friends told me.

Nodwick, named after the loveable character from the old Dragon Magazine, was born that day, the most inept and useless character created. Since none of my other characters ever seemed to last long anyways, I never bothered to give him a last name, nor did I carefully select feats and talents. Nodwick did, however, come to life in my mind. I thought of him basically as the village idiot' that never really applied himself to any adventuring-oriented trades like fletching, armor repair, wilderness survival No, Nodwick was a miner by trade, and a bachelor (not surprising with a charisma of 6) who enjoyed fishing on his days off, which he in turn learned to cook fairly well.

When it came to combat, Nodwick might as well have been blindfolded, and because of his most obvious lack of abilities he was often overlooked on the field of battle. Friends and foes alike gave him a wide berth just to avoid the random flailings of this party's mascot. However, he did earn his name in the songs of the bards when the group was running security for a caravan. The caravan was assaulted by a group of goblins while we were passing through a tunnel cut into a mountain. A well-placed fireball had eliminated the mob ahead of us, but a legion of the little fiends was hot on our tails. With a lucky roll Nodwick was able to make a quick appraisal of the nearby

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