Gimmicky/weird party members in RPGS
I’ve been playing Beyond the Beyond recently. It was designed by Camelot, the same studio that worked on Shining Force and was responsible for the Golden Sun games. It’s the first turn based RPG for the PS1 and it’s basically been totally forgotten about over the years. Most people don’t have much positive to say about it for a variety of reasons, one of which is Samson.
He joins the party early on in the game and is positioned as the big strongman character. He hits hard and tanks damage. However; not one battle after you get him, he’s cursed by one of the villains. This curse affects him during combat too, sending his level back to 1 and nuking his stats. Now during battle, there’s a 1/4 chance he’ll either take damage whenever he hits or lose a turn altogether. You’re saddled with him for a good *15 hours* before he finally breaks the curse and starts pulling his weight in the party. On one hand, this adds some extra strategy to the combat as you now have to work around his flaws and utilize the (poorly explained/documented and RNG based) APA gimmick that the game features, which usually involves mashing buttons in hopes you’ll get a critical hit in. On the other, you’re basically carrying around deadweight for almost half the game.
This got me thinking, what are some other weird/gimmicky characters in classic RPGS? Ones who either have some unique drawback or odd quirk to them. To give another Camelot-related example, there’s Jogurt in Shining Force 1 who is perma stuck at Lvl 1 and is more or less a joke character.