I’ve always liked playing under-powered or useless or cursed characters. But you have to make sure the whole group is into it. Just because I want to play the germophobic sword-fighter who can’t be in melee range doesn’t mean anyone else wants to be part of that story…
Nobody in my group wanted to do any sidequests when I was playing as a faery dragon that specialized in support spells and we got wind of an undead outbreak. Faery Dragons are extremely against undead, so my character went to stop the zombies all by himself and lost an arm, an eye and nearly died because my party members were metagaming dumbasses trying to go straight for the BBEG at level fucking 2.
Even the DM was disappointed and then gave me some sick new powers to allow me to be better solo if it happened again.
This feels like Terry Pratchett already did this
[off topic]
Short science fiction story. Can’t recall author or title.
Post WW3 magic has returned and almost all tech is gone.
Wizard can control anything he knows the true name of, but humans never tell anyone else their true names and animals can’t speak.
Finds a book from the Before Times; the book lists all the Latin names of animals.
Now the most powerful mage alive.
Why is latin the magic language?
Because that’s what the author chose.
If you remove the WW3 detail, this is just the Shadowrun setting
Ooh, how about plants speaking whatever language is most common in their area? Ie, absolutely ANCIENT elf sings to their plants in a now dead dialect
Similar to what happens to druids when the environment gets corrupted, I imagine. Gotta start learning the language of the microplastics and PFAS. Possible Druid to Tinkerer pipeline.
