- I always play a Dilettante ($$$ + pick 4 skills + No responsibilities + Excuse to act like a cad)

- I try to put 89% (so I'm on the cusp of the +1d10 sanity) into Martial Arts AND Kick. Yep, my PCs kicks are more dangerous than getting stabbed.

- I also try to put 89% into Dodge, Pistols and Rifle (I prefer the Elephant Rifle to the Shotgun, 3d6+1d4 at all ranges vs. 4d6 at short range)

- I try to use every skill I can hustle in order to get more skill %. "Even though I only have 1% Arabic I try to talk to the Arab... Falafel?"

- My (deceased) PC once hired prostituted to do things like keep the car running and to distract professors and librarians by flashing their beaver in order to pull off hijinks.

- Somehow I also manage to make such munchkin powergamer PCs works as 1920s investigators, "I'm rich from the oil on my ranch! All I do is hunt!"

Yeah I love the old 1% skill.
 
Personaly I got the most laughs outa Helicopter pilot 1%, but almost anything with a 1% is funny.

LOL, your characters wouldn't last a session in my call of Cthulhu games. you'd sit around bored while the other players got to discover all the cool clues, and then when the shit hits the fan and you try to (heh) "kick it"....it would fucking eat out your brains and lay eggs in your neck hole.

My players don't get combat rolls against god-like beings.

My experience has been that most adversaries in CoC are human...

While looking for clues I tend to:
A) Rely on my brain instead of my character sheet
&
B) Ruthlessly try to use as many skills as possible to build them up; Spot Hidden doesn't stay at the starting value very long in CoC

Dynamite is a very Lovecraftian weapon against Mythos horrors. Just reread the end of "The Shadow Over Insmouth"

"The Horror at Red Hook" and "The Call of Cthulhu" can also prove instructive in the application of peace through superior firepower.

If I need to roll dice to figure out what's going on, I have already failed as a player.

Your character sounds remarkably similar to one of the most memorable CoC PCs of any of the campaigns I've ever run.  He was the "king's distant cousin", had an officer's rank in the army on account of it, was a master sharpshooter, had no investigation skills, and lasted longer than a great deal of the standard "this is CoC so I feel obliged to have shit fighting skills" PCs.  He even became a kind of by-word in our group for taking a rash decision in an awesome way, based on a number of times that he just shot a suspicious seeming guy in the fucking face shouting "I'm the king's cousin"!

Without a doubt, the stuff of legends.

You'd fit right into one of my CoC games. Or you know, most CoC games that aren't utter shit.

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If you play CoC straight, then you play a set of PCs with some kind of investigative skills and go on a whodunnit, following a series of mundane and occult clues and then die or go insane. Even if you happen to survive, you end up going insane anyway by researching those occult skills that you need to survive the game.

Far better to play a counter-character who you can actually enjoy playing.

Quote from: Planet Algol;491824- I always play a Dilettante ($$$ + pick 4 skills + No responsibilities + Excuse to act like a cad)

- I try to put 89% (so I'm on the cusp of the +1d10 sanity) into Martial Arts AND Kick. Yep, my PCs kicks are more dangerous than getting stabbed.

- I also try to put 89% into Dodge, Pistols and Rifle (I prefer the Elephant Rifle to the Shotgun, 3d6+1d4 at all ranges vs. 4d6 at short range)

- I try to use every skill I can hustle in order to get more skill %. "Even though I only have 1% Arabic I try to talk to the Arab... Falafel?"

- My (deceased) PC once hired prostituted to do things like keep the car running and to distract professors and librarians by flashing their beaver in order to pull off hijinks.

- Somehow I also manage to make such munchkin powergamer PCs works as 1920s investigators, "I'm rich from the oil on my ranch! All I do is hunt!"

Sigh...  Thankfully, I do not have players like you in my CoC game...

Quote from: soltakss;491937If you play CoC straight, then you play a set of PCs with some kind of investigative skills and go on a whodunnit, following a series of mundane and occult clues and then die or go insane. Even if you happen to survive, you end up going insane anyway by researching those occult skills that you need to survive the game.

That is "straight" only inasmuch as its how the CoC Swine decided you must play CoC.

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Quote from: soltakss;491937If you play CoC straight, then you play a set of PCs with some kind of investigative skills and go on a whodunnit, following a series of mundane and occult clues and then die or go insane. Even if you happen to survive, you end up going insane anyway by researching those occult skills that you need to survive the game.

Far better to play a counter-character who you can actually enjoy playing.

Have you ever played CoC?

Quote from: RPGPundit;492025That is "straight" only inasmuch as its how the CoC Swine decided you must play CoC.

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they must have decided that before it was published and then wrote it into the game itself.

tricksy swine

Quote from: DavetheLost;491902Dynamite is a very Lovecraftian weapon against Mythos horrors. Just reread the end of "The Shadow Over Insmouth"

"The Horror at Red Hook" and "The Call of Cthulhu" can also prove instructive in the application of peace through superior firepower.

If I need to roll dice to figure out what's going on, I have already failed as a player.

Yeah. I think it's fine for people to prefer to play CoC without physical violence, demotions, or gun-play, but they aren't being very faithful to the source material.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Machinegun Blue;492048Have you ever played CoC?

About ten times, with the same results each time.

I've never had a character survive a single scenario intact. The one character who survived was hit by a cultist's spell and withered his arm and leg and he ended up in an asylum.

I have enjoyed some of the games, but the result is always the same, in my experience.

Quote from: soltakss;492063About ten times, with the same results each time.

I've never had a character survive a single scenario intact. The one character who survived was hit by a cultist's spell and withered his arm and leg and he ended up in an asylum.

I have enjoyed some of the games, but the result is always the same, in my experience.

Hmm, I've had ongoing campaigns that last years. Yes, character fatality is high, but moreso at the beginning when players are adjusting their playstyle from the D&d "I run up and hit it to my axe" to..."burn down the building without getting too close and run very far away".

Surviving CoC is never meant to be impossible, it's meant to be a challenge.

And if a GM wants an ongoing game, they shouldn't be having the players facing Old Ones their first time out. It's entirely possible to build to that point via slow exposure...in fact that's more in keeping with the Lovecraftian fiction that inspired the game.

It is true, that according to the original rules of Call of Cthulhu, it was inevitable that any character that survived would go insane (despite what Pundit claims about "swine").

There's more options than that in later editions.

Madness isn't even necessarily the end though. Just an excuse to break out Insylum.

Quote from: TristramEvans;492049they must have decided that before it was published and then wrote it into the game itself.

tricksy swine

No, they wrote the game with the type of character the OP posted being a completely valid and supported choice. Lots of rules on combat, huge lists of guns, and no special implications in the text of the game saying "you have to play an effeminate university professor who investigates the occult and then curls up like a fucking pussy to die because the player thinks actual combat is somehow forbidden".

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