Most of us here have played a lot of RPGs. That means a lot of player characters. And if you look back at all the PCs you've played over the years–both in campaigns and one-shots–you'll probably notice some archetypes you've played that you enjoyed less than others. Or maybe there's some archetype you've never played because you know you wouldn't like it.

What are your least favorite archetypes to play as?

My least favorite archetype to play is probably the big, dumb tank (Leonidas and Joseph Stone as examples). I've tried it a few times for a change, and it can get dull quickly. The focus on combat means that only combat is mechanically relevant, and the plots can be pretty focused on finding new things to hit. I know there are those who really like this sort of character, but it isn't my thing. Oddly enough, with a few odd additional skill points and stuff outside of combat to care about, this character can be made interesting (Yavu as an example).

The Muscle: Like Micah, someone who's only use is combat grows real old, real quick. Lilimandria was the worst perpetrator of this, but the team needed her to survive the few combats we had. Making her human might have helped, but her competency seemed to remove her from the plot itself. Alayne also had some trouble with this, but she was more easy to involve in the plot, as it wasn't strictly human politics.

The Brains: I don't like the book learning guy, who knows all the stuff and makes all the knowledge rolls. I find it unsatisfying as a party role. My minimal exposure to this is with ShadowCaster.

The only archetype that I really dislike playing is the Hacker. I like being able to pepper my roleplaying with accurate technical speak where possible, which I can usually get enough of with some Wikipedia time to make it sound legit at the gaming table.

Maybe it's just because of the overlap between gaming geekery and tech professionals, but I can't do this with computers. Not even a little bit. Every group I've been in has multiple people who know so much more about computers than I do that I can't BS it. I am fine just abstracting that I do “Hacker Things” up to a point, but it sort of curtails my enjoyment, personally.