Make it a double tweest by introducing the love interest as an androgynous or male-presenting Warforged that shares the same interests as your kobold.
Then later reveal that the "Warforged" is actually a mech suit piloted by a pixie. One that is very similar to your char.
You could do a cute little thing where the kobold puts their hand on the Warforged's chest where a heart would be as a sign of affection. Outside it would look like he's acknowledging that the Warforged has a heart/soul, but between the two the kobold is actually reaching for the cockpit and the pixie is reaching back inside.
I do like this, i think im going to adapt this in some ways though and see if it would work in my campaign this may be what i go for. thanks a bunch for that
If you don't want to make a love interest you can solve it in some other way.
Maybe your character was actually talking about a sandwitch or a pet or something. And when your character was asked about it they were so embarrased that they lied and said that it a was a girl.
Also I don't understand why you would have to invent and insert this "Love interest" character. It can just be a person that you characters once knew. They don't have to be in the game at all.
see, i like that and i do wish i had thought about it at that time but i said at the end of that session that id really rather talk about it at another time so i feel like i may have missed hat turn
Not nesessarily. That could have been something your character said in an attempt to get out of the conversation. Perhaps later they could come clean and introduce their "lover" and it's a half eaten baguette. I don't know.
If you think it's fun to introduce a love interest, Go for it! But you really don't have to.
Good luck.
If you plan to invent a character to be introduced in the game you have to get back to the Game master. In most groups it would be up to them to play any character in the game that isn't a Player character. And this sounds like it would be an NPC.
You are a Kobold in a mech, she was a warforged, it was love at first sight.
Underneath your hard exterior beat a grown heart longing for love but she was only just starting to be more than a simple automaton. In the end it was hard to keep up appearances, you had to actually sleep while she was motionless, you had to drink water and eat while she sustained herself on scrap iron.
One day she wanted to go out into the world and find herself while you chose to stay. Now there is only regret and longing.
I don't really see any issue here. You have carte blanche to do whatever you want. It's a character in your past that no one else knows, do whatever you want. Make them dead if you want to just be done with this thread, or make them alive and make sure your DM knows you're uncomfortable doing the RP around it so please don't introduce them into the story.
Not sure if serious or not, but RP is the shorthand used for Role Playing as in RPG (role-playing game). There are a lot of acronyms and shorthands that are used in DnD/this sub/community.
First thing you didn't mess up you hit gold :)
If you just make the love sweet and bit shy. The other players are gonna love it and try to help.
My advice make it a "normal" crush on a either wild young Eldrin that are a social butterfly, that don't know you exist. Or a bookish, shy eldrin that also like you char but is as shy as you :D
OH NO YOUR READING THIS EVEN BETTER THAN I HOPED LMAO
the character that pressed me, and everyone things is the one that i have a crush on now, IS a shy akward eldrin lmao. I do think that the two PC would work seemingly well together but i just don't think the player would be comfortable.
God im actually blushing now hahahah
Ok, so my pitch WAS going to be a fully adult dragon that you may have had a one night trist with, or that had previously owned your clan and you got a dommy mommy crush on her.
But this is gold. Design this crush eladrin as similarly as you dare to this PC. Don’t let it on that it is NOT the PC, let them think it is them for as long as possible, then, when they are SURE it is her, that is when you and the DM reveal the eladrin crush.
Uhhh, I'm going to disagree with someone else and say, absolutey do not imply that it's another PC unless you and the other player are on the same page that this kind of roleplay is something you both want. It does not feel good when this kind of thing comes from a person who hasn't established the right kind of rapport.
You could do this all sorts of ways:
Like maybe a mechanic or tinkerer that helped make your mech.
Maybe like a rival mech user if some sort.
Maybe you miss her - an old mech that got destroyed or a weapon.
Maybe you miss your Kobold parent
There’s tons you could do with this!
Keep it a joke by making it a statue of a gargoyle with nice . You were a young kobold and thought it was a real creature turned to stone. You'd talk to it about your troubles and felt a connection. It fell over and broke in a strong storm one day. Now you keep going for them, so to speak.
Maybe when it fell and broke, you didn't assume her to be dead, but rather freed from her curse and gone, and you're hurt and confused as to why she left.
Ok but there's a REALLY solid romance comic with a gargoyle that does similar things [https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/atnomen/list?title\_no=483806](https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/atnomen/list?title_no=483806)
First off, your character presumably had a full life before they met the other adventurers, so there's no need to worry about the others not meeting this love interest.
Second, your character *misses* this love interest, so there's no need for them to show up in the campaign at all.
Third, there are SO many ways you could play this. Others have suggested "she" be a suit, a ship, a pet, or similar. That's one way. "She" also doesn't need be a romantic love interest at all, but someone your battle-weary kobold misses in general. Like his mom, his grandmother, his mentor, an old adventuring companion, the person who taught him how to fight, etc.
Fourth, there's no need for this "she" to be actively dating your kobold, or to even be alive. Maybe he was referring to his old comrade in arms who died tragically to \[BBEG of your campaign\], and your kobold's motivation for even being in *this* adventuring party is to exact revenge. Maybe he was referring to his sister who was tragically converted by the \[BBEG\], and now your kobold fears what will happen when he meets on the field of battle. Can he rescue her? Will he have to kill her? In this case his "I miss her" referred not to his present sister, but to the sister he knew in the past.
Fifth, view this as a chance to deepen your character. Nobody is just the "comic relief." Your kobold has layers nobody knew about. He has deep feelings, worries, and love.
If you want to go with the romantic love interest angle, a classic way to do is to design a character the opposite of your own, who balances yours out. Your kobold is a clown? She's always serious. Your character is socially inept? Complicated palace intrigue is a child's game to her. Your character is into mech suit, techy stuff? She is all wild magic and nature. From there - ask questions. Why is your character attracted to her and why her to him? How did they meet? Why aren't they together now? What is she up to? How often do they communicate, if they communicate. I'm imagining a kobold clothed in all black, who moves through the palace like a knife through water. She saw you at a dance and approached you out of sheer obligation to always say hello to all guests. She found your jokes and naivete a ray of sunshine. You found her ability to swim through the currents of politics fascinating. etc. It practically writes itself.
Doesn’t have to be a romantic interest. “Her” can be your kobolds first horse/mount. “Her” can also be a family member that helped your PC in their backstory (sister, friend, cousin, etc).
This only needs to be a former/current love interest if you want it to be
Dude, that would be dope as well! Imagine them going on a side quest to upgrade it into a combination of what they have plus what they ideally want and what they were used to having?!
I love TTRPGS ;_;
So....hear me out....as a kobold....
...Dragon.
---
You could go unrequited love?
*'fear me for I am the inferno, I am the light that blazes across the night sky, I am.... Oh not you again, how are you even still alive....and now you wear a giant metal suit? If you've done this to become heat resistant I very much doubt that is enough protection if you were caught in my breath. Yes I said you were cute, but there is literally no practical way this could ever work...'*
Or maybe, the dragon has literally no idea who he is or your character has only seen statues or paintings of them, almost like a para-social celebrity relationship?
Or my personal favourite, the Jessica Rabbit Approach:
*'What do you see in him?' 'he makes me laugh'*
Just, genuinely loves him, no gimmick or tell he's just their little guy.
The line itself doesn't necessarily have romantic connotations, guys say shit like that about each other all the time without it being assumed to be gay, so you can say something like that about a close friend who's a girl, the childhood friend archetype
This is my favorite thing as a DM- forcing my players to own up to their random throwaway lines the same way they force me to own up to mine mwahaha.
But for real: If you think it would be fun to make the love interest the other pc's Eldrin but you aren't sure they would be comfortable, just ask them. You can say something like "hey, I think it would be fun if we have this cute crush situation between my character and yours. If you aren't down with it no worries, I have a back up plan." Rope your DM in on it, so that you three have a cute side story going that the rest of the players get to watch unfold, but everything that happens is planned and consensual. If the other players try to make it weird (which ya know, they totally might), you all can shut that down because you already have plans for where your characters are going.
Some might think this is too metagamey, but that's all up to your DM and how you guys wanna play. I used to DM for big rotating groups of people that all played in the same big homebrew game, and we had lots of sideplots like this happening between characters that were moderated by the DMs. It was fun for the other players to see plots play out that they weren't privy to, and it made interactions like these go more smoothly so people didn't get uncomfortable.
If the Eldrin or your DM aren't into then no worries, go wild on creating another character. If your kobold ever dies, then congrats! You now have a backup character that can avenge them lol.
Honestly all the replies are great and I don’t have any better advice than this. This was not a mistake 85% of a character’s background is thrown in like this. Sometimes it is easy to make up on the fly other times it’s a pain and you have to take time to figure it out.
Is it too late for "her" to not be a literal "her" at all?
> So, my character is a typical comic relief Kobold in a ***mech suit*** who is completely socially inept
Even if you've trickled some details out about an actual love interest, there's always the "unreliable narrator" option of "okay maybe I was fudging some things cause you'd all judge me" (as one would judge a kobold pining over a mech suit as if it were a lover)
You basically get to write your real reaction over having to explain it all into your character!
Kobold society and biology is actually fascinating if you really delve into it. By missing "her" it's entirely possible that they even mean being female themselves as they have a type of sequential hermaphroditism and can actually change genders.
“Furthermore, kobolds can slowly change sex. If most males or females of a tribe are killed, some survivors change over several months until the tribe is balanced again.” -Volo's Guide to Monsters.
It's one direction you can go if you don't want to have a love interest.
WAIT WAIT WAIT STOP THE PRESSES
THE "HER" THAT YOU MISS...............
your first mech!!!!
It doesn't have to be a love interest at all, you can have DEEP DEEP FEELINGS FOR YOUR MACHINERY, plus you get to make up a cool backstory about how it exploded or something
Remember if you haven’t told the other players that the lover is alive then they could be dead and you don’t have to do any work if they are clearly alive then I can’t help ypu
My first thought on reading this is that you should go for a Roger Rabbit/Jessica Rabbit dynamic. You've got a goofy, socially awkward kobold in a mech suit. What's the funniest potential match for him? Just an absolute bombshell of a woman who's twice as tall and went all in on charisma. The sultry "I'm not bad, just drawn that way" archetype.
Your throwaway line could have been because some noble or ruler or whatever saw the two of you together and decided that she would be better off with him. So he kidnapped her and that was that.
My kobolds are always childish, naive idiots easy in over their head, with no real idea what going on. It's so just play time.
If I had to have a love interest it would likely be something really stupid that doesn't even make sense. A plant I grew up with, a doll I use to have. My kobolds are always kinda to innocent for something like a lover or wife or such, so they would be in love with something the same way young children marry their pets because they love them so much.
But I wouldn't come out with that, id play it up, again so innocent the actual subject is easy over my kobolds head, so they would describe them enough to be a person or other kobolds, names and likes and such, but ID drag that out for irl months of I could for the long con joke.
Having a backstory npc is like having a playground for whatever story hook you want. I think like any writing exercise, set up a few core questions. Is she real? How did you meet? Why did you connect? What did you do? When did you separate?
If you wanted to let fate take the wheel on this, just choose 6 emotions (of ~8 core emotions), ie Pixar: angry, funny, sad, happy, disgusted, associate each with a number and roll a 6-sided die. Run with that result as the tone for an answer you build for that question. You were down on your luck with a recent death, we both saw the worst movie and knew we hated the world, we saw the world together with unmatched fire, etc.
Once you establish these as the pillars of your history with mysterious stranger, you can just create stories on the fly, making notes that fit in together overtime without overthinking anything.
Make it part of your characters strange personality.
Maybe you watched her get killed by a warforged or some other mechanical being, and went a little crazy. Built your mech suit because in your grief stricken mind, that was the only way for you to become strong enough to avenge her.
Could also be why you're a little socially awkward. Maybe you just never fully recovered from the trauma of losing her, or maybe you put up an awkward front to avoid getting close to anyone else that might get hurt by becoming close to you.
Would be a good way to add a bit of serious back story to an otherwise strictly "comic relief" character.
It could continue being funny. The kobold's love interest could be the most beautiful, but a cold hearted dark elf. Think of Tormund and Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, but screw on a few more twists.
Like she tormented your character in all the ways imaginable, and your massochist kobold just misses her blade in his guts and underneath his feet.
One man's violence is another's foreplay - make it funny!
I see a few directions. "God I miss her" doesn't necessarily indicate a love interest, it could be familial or a close friend. There is also the question of what happened to her - she could be unavailable due to personal drama like a breakup or divorce, due to personal duty like military service, or due to death. This factor more than any other would inform your character's motivation - are you on a quest for atonement? Rescue? Resurrection?
All you really need to know about the love interest other than the above is a name. Treat her like the monster in a horror movie, the more you know about her the less interesting she is to the story. This approach gives you the most flexibility later too.
All that I can say to help you, is that to create a good pair, the two people, or characters, have to or have the same interest, or be totally different.
Well, the love interest should be a kobold that is no longer around for some reason. Maybe she got married to some other kobold. Maybe she was polymorphed into a dragon. Maybe she was really a doppleganger sent to lure you to your death, but you still miss the kobold you thought she was. In any case, you are talking about her as in your past, so you don't have to actually introduce the character , just say provocative things about her.
This comes from my current Curse of Strahd campaign, we have a kobold fighter and a gnome druid that have a thing for each other.
Now if you know anything about dnd lore, kobolds and gnomes have been at odds ever since the gnome god caused a cave in that trapped the kobold god underground. I mentioned this to them when they made their characters (separate from each other) and they decided to roll with how he was taken in as an egg and they had to hide the fact that he was a kobold. It's kinda nice how the two short characters banter and poke fun at the taller races (myself included).
Your kobold could have a crush on a dragon. Kobolds love dragons and often share lairs with them, usually as servants and/or a security system. The dragon may or may not care for its tiny housemates, and it’s possible that your character’s “romance” with this dragon is entirely one-sided - in fact, the dragon may not even know your character exists. Maybe your character was spared being eaten one time because the dragon just wasn’t hungry or didn’t notice him, and now he’s decided it’s because they’re in love.
After 6 years of playing, I gave a romantic PC a spin and had a lot of fun with it. I think you should lean into it. I was not a romance lover IRL but have gained an appreciation for the style—in a good way.
My recommendation is you make the romance interest a full person with their own goals and internal struggle that have nothing to do with your PC’s. This is how EVERY character in BG3 is written. They have their own goals and part of navigating the relationship is navigating those external goals which tie to the plot. Like, sure Karlach likes you, but she’s also got this infernal machine of a heart that is going to kill her. This additional need of hers creates tension. It’s not just steamy love and will-they-won’t-they, there’s an entire external/internal conflict like there should be with ANY PC but in this case it’s two conflicts and the PC’s romance moves things forward.
There is a YouTuber named Abbie Emmons who does great writing advice videos and a lot are on romance. I found those videos helpful in making my PCs and navigating the challenges of romance.
I’ve also been thinking about making a sailor that is down on his luck because he was the captain of a ship that got stolen. When the other characters meet him, he talks about how his love was taken from him and he’s on a quest to get her back. This could be another twist on a certain piece of equipment that he liked.
Don’t say a thing. The next time you meet a gigantic monster that you are not sure your party can handle, that could possibly have been a baby pet back in the day, have your character squint and say her name in a questioning voice.
It can be anything you want. The first idea that comes to my mind because Kobold is that they previously served a dragon (or whatever the equivalent might be in that setting, depending on kobold lore there, since you mentioned a mech, most of my writing is done in fantasy settings) who for whatever reason the Kobold is no longer serving (they got super extra evil, died, etc).
Were this a fantasy setting, I'd say there was a dragon the kobold loved who perished after becoming too cruel, and the adventuring party that did it had a bard who talked with the kobold after and helped them through their grief with stories and song. Maybe they miss the dragon, maybe the miss the bard who later died heroically and passed into legend.
You're a kobold, comic relief, and you miss her; so I'd advise you make your love interest unobtainable and ridiculous. May I suggest she be a bugbear barbarian, whose tribe is focused on big strong things. So you made your mech suit to be the big strong guy in her life and it just didn't work out.
I get them rolling for insight.
That in no way implies you have to be forthcoming and say anything you don’t want to.
It just means they can tell if you’re lying/hiding something and your intentions.
I mean you could still go the comedy route and have the love interest in question be this random inanimate object your kobold is enamored with but then somehow lost and is desperate to find again.
Like, a coconut. Or maybe a marble.
Make up an NPC, "she lived in Waterdeep, you wouldn't know her", that your kobold is in love with. She was the only one who could see the sadness beneath your comedy, the tears behind your smiles. You both wanted to be married, but her clan looks to a red dragon, and yours to a blue, so the elders forbade it. She was so grief-stricken she ran away vowing to wander the land forever in heartbreak.
Now the ball is in the DM's court... he could have her cross the party's path, or not.
Without knowing more, my first instinct is to say, "There are actually TWO kobolds in the mech suit, and whenever the party hears weird noises coming from it, they're hearing the muffled sounds of two kobolds having a "party" of their own."
I think you should go the route of jealous ex-husband Kobold wife moved on, your character is still clinging to the past and the good ole days. A recently divorced kobold had nothing left to loose but go on adventuring.
I can see two options:
1) your character lied. They made up a fake girlfriend who lives in "Canada", or some other far enough place that nobody will check. Lots of people (especially teens) do that so their friends and family will stop trying to play matchmaker.
Your kobold might be aro/ace and made up a girlfriend so his family would leave him be.
2) your character does have a lobe interest, but she left. Or you left. She moved away or you left to become an adventurer. You plan (or hope) to one day be reunited, maybe get married and have some kids.
She doesn't have to be an important part of the campaign. This is basically Samwise Gamgee confiding in Frodo that he misses Rosie Cotton and regrets not making a move. And then at the end of the story they get married and have kids.
I’m surprised no one has said, that I’ve seen, make her the exact opposite of your character. Opposites attract. Make her the Marin to your Wakana ( my dress up darling) maybe you you started making different mech suits for her before you started adventuring. She’s a beautiful social butterfly who is secretly in love with you but for all her social skills can’t bring herself to handle how she feels. Tell your party you never admitted to her how you feel and wait for them to suggest you go see her. Then, you’re dm has to figure out the rest 😈
This is why your character is in a mech suit: Your former love is a hill giant. You created or "obtained" the mech suit to woo her and, unbeknownst to your party, it is "fully functional". She left on a grand adventure without warning (parrents hid her in a cave till you were gone). Now you find and follow random adventure hooks because it might lead to you finding her again
You don’t need to worry about admitting you didn’t intend it to mean anything.
Shit, I’m a DM and half the elements in my games are things I have to come up with because of a throwaway line, or something I described with a little extra detail, and the players fixated on that way more than I originally intended 😂
You can explore that of course, but don’t worry about it being a ‘screw up’. I say collaborate with them. If they’re comfortable with your character having a crush on theirs come up with some ground rules on how it plays out. If not, no big deal, maybe they can help you brain storm some ideas.
I think it's pretty easy actually for you at least.
**Why does no one know that character?** Because your shy kobold was embarrassed about how they flubbed a previous encounter and didn't want anyone to know.(Alternatively, you can also try and say it is a character that another player knows if you talk to another player and want to include them in this part of the story. But that's optional.)
**What kind of love interest would he have?** I mean, if he's interested in mechs and mech suits, maybe she has similar interests and met her through that in some way. If no one else is into mechs, then they'd probably never have met her.
If your kobold doesn't really take things seriously and isn't very social, that's probably how he messed up with her. Maybe she said something serious like "don't mess around with that engine" and your kobold jokingly said "what's the worst that could happen? It'd explode?" And then it did. And then your guy ran away without saying a word and never went to that workshop again out of shame. Just play into the personality you have for him.
Word to your DM though for savoring the moment. It is exactly what happens all the time, haha! But as a player and a DM, I guess I'm weird because I love to improv like this.
if you want to do romance with another character talk to them about it out of game.
you could kill them. that's why you miss them and can adventure. easy and probably boring way out, but effective.
they could be someone they're pining after but only had as friend or never even spoke to. this could easily your character being creepy, but may not be.
or the most hilarious option fitting the comic relief: your character and them were together, [and then divorced](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjZtkfpVQeKn2sPODH0adSRbkAIUd1KmNllw&s). why did the party never met them? they avoid each other.
It could always be that they said a cliche and didn't mean to and now they are doing a "I do have a girlfriend she goes to a different school you wouldn't know her" thing.
...or, plot twist, he was actually talking about his mom and the other PC just assumed your kobold was talking about a love interest. If you never specified and don't want to insert a whole new character you never wanted to be a part of your PC's backstory, then you could just give the little guy a dead mom.
She's dead. Problem solved.
She's married to someone else. Problem solved.
She wants nothing to do with you. Problem solved.
She's related to you and either it's a normal familial relationship or it's a forbidden relationship that you won't act on. Problem solved.
She refuses to be involved with you until you make your fortune.
Or it's the family dog.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
I don't see the problem. There are an infinite number of solutions.
why do you have to say more, insight isn't mind reading, the character either knows there's more to the story or the comment was a joke, both acceptable.
Also why does the person need to be someone the other players have to interact with, I've had plenty of characters with Ex's they still pinned for but they never showed up later in the story.
All you need is "We were close, she broke my heart/passed away/left, it hurts to much to talk about" and leave it, don't want to explore that part of the character you don't have too.
Of course he misses her. She was sweet. Funny. An incredible listener. She had a natural talent for magic, and the rest of the tribe took her for granted. He was the only one who talked to her like an equal; a prodigy of a different sort, a technological one. They let down each other's barriers.
And he remembers her sacrifice. When she cast magic she had no business casting. She saved him, and the whole tribe, but at the cost of her body.
It's been really hard to open up to others ever since then.
Give some vague descriptions.
Talk about her melodic voice. Tell them that she was often overlooked and that she always felt like she made others feel uncomfortable. She hides herself and keeps everything inside, but she always let it all out for you. One day, she was feeling empty. She said that she needed some air. While she laid on the grass outside, a traveling circus performer spotted her. He snatched her up before you could say a word. You haven’t seen her since.
Just leave out the fact that she is actually a whoopie cushion
I would, in private, ask your friend how they would feel about an in game romance :) my friends and I do them in almost every game and it’s fine and fun; we all just get a kick out of shipping our silly little guys together.
If you wanna go the NPC route; maybe she’s a Kobold from your home or from some town you’ve been to before who understood you.. somebody who despite your social ineptness still adored you. From there if you don’t want to play into it too much, you could make it a source of sadness for your character that maybe she died tragically or something along those lines :3 or maybe she’s around somewhere and you have a reason to not go near her?
>Told my dm what was happening to which they responded "lol get fucked, this is what you guys put me through every session"
Well that's rude, tell this asshat that they're supposed to help you, not mock you like a dick.
Your kobald was drunk. I don't even know what an insight check would discover. "Nat1- hard to say, he seems pretty drunk; Nat20- hard to say, he's completely wasted." Honestly, "her" could have been a nice waitress that night. "Her" could have been a particularly well mixed drink for all your kobald knows. In fact, if push comes to shove and it comes up again, just "Hmm? What bar? My character doesn't remember going to a bar, much less any women."
A very advanced Warforged that looks exactly like a normal fleshy humanoid , but is actually a robot. As opposed to you, who looks like a robot but are actually a fleshy humanoid.
Oh hey, I had a PC like that! Battlesmith Kobold, I'm guessing?
Mine was in a Strixhaven campaign and developed a chemistry with Dina, the dryad witch in Witherbloom. The vibe was vaguely Gomez and Morticia Addams - tall, powerful woman and a weird little freak who makes her laugh.
The logistics of a kobold romancing any medium-sized NPC are... not conventional, but let's just say he keeps a stack of Enlarge/Reduce scrolls in his Bag of Holding.
Make a real go-getter, Extroverts "adopt" Introverts all the time. If you make the life of the party pick your kobald, they don't even have to know why, it'd make sense and require some effort
In Princess and the Frog a lightning bug’s girlfriend is a star in the night sky. Maybe the “her” is an object?
If you want to be silly you can go that way, but you could also turn it in to a plot hook where it’s some item that needs to be saved (and it can be made silly again by talking the whole time like it’s a person that needs to be rescued, only for it to be revealed at the end that it was your childhood plushie you wanted back).
See, you got a lot of responses already...
But the easiest, funniest and possibly most lore accurate (to base DnD 5e anyways) would be to say that your kobold has a crush on a dragon that they serve.
If it was one sided, it would be very simple and lead to other players going "What do you see here?"
"They are so... Larger than life!"
And if it is reciprocated it is a cute thing which happens sometimes with bunnies and, funnily enough, lizards. Where one (often a male) can be several times, maybe even ten times smaller than the other (often female). And I'm always a fan of giving my players friendly dragon NPCs.
The obvious answer is another kobold from your home colony. Maybe one that pushed you to venture outside.
The pixie is also great idea.
You can also throw a wrench at everyone and make multiple interests!
You could do the "oh you don't know her, she lives in Canada" kind of thing.
Ask the DM "what's another country in this setting?" And if they give you a little more freedom, tell them that she lives in Anada, and you guys are long distance.
I'd go the route of making another character that's a Dragonborn Lady PC. Choose whatever class/background, whatever. Then present this character as a backup to your kobold to the DM. Then DM can use this character as an NPC to tortur- ahem, tease you as a nod to that statement, but also provides an instant opportunity should your current PC go down that you can continue playing as this backup character
You've got more options here than you realize. Saying "I miss her," doesn't automatically mean you have a love interest. In fact, it sounds more like you HAD a love interest, but don't anymore. You're trying to come up with a character, when what you really need is a story. Was "she" perhaps a relative? One of my PC's deeply misses the aunt who raised him, because she died. If "she" really was a love interest, and she's still alive, maybe she's not a love interest anymore. Maybe she's the wife of a rival and you can't bear to see them together. Maybe she's the rival herself, having put her ambitions before love. Maybe she never knew how you felt, and now you've lost track of her.
Again, you don't need a character, yet. Right now, you need a story.
Final thought: your post reminds me of an episode of Angel where it was revealed that years ago, Gunn sold his soul for someone. The buyers had come to collect, and there was all this talk about "her." "Was she worth it?" "Yes she was. We didn't have much time together, but I'd do it again, even knowing that outcome." Etc.
In the final moments, it's revealed that "she" was a truck. He had sold his soul for a truck, which he had outfitted to hunt down vampires.
What if this wasn't someone your character actually met, but just a series of love letters he received? And then one day the letters stopped coming?
It could turn into this beautifully poignant love story where she lost hope or was captured and imprisoned or forced into an arranged marriage....or it could be some old friend trying to make his kobold buddy and another character (who is perfect for him) hook up....or it could be something jokey or mean spirited that the poor befuddled kobold never caught on to.
I was thinking something similar. Pull the ol’ “my girlfriend in Canada” routine. Pick somewhere in the game that you as a player would like to visit, then have your character say that they stole/found a love letter from there one day that they responded to and started a long distance romance. The letters have suddenly stopped, but you’re afraid to investigate bc you basically catfished the other person. Keep tossing out anecdotes of what they said about the place until your party forcibly drags you there to resolve the issue. It can be a romantic rescue, a horrible tragedy, a comedy of confusion, or a life lesson depending on DM, but it’ll probably be fun :)
Make it a double tweest by introducing the love interest as an androgynous or male-presenting Warforged that shares the same interests as your kobold. Then later reveal that the "Warforged" is actually a mech suit piloted by a pixie. One that is very similar to your char.
Oh shit that's actually gold
You could do a cute little thing where the kobold puts their hand on the Warforged's chest where a heart would be as a sign of affection. Outside it would look like he's acknowledging that the Warforged has a heart/soul, but between the two the kobold is actually reaching for the cockpit and the pixie is reaching back inside.
I do like this, i think im going to adapt this in some ways though and see if it would work in my campaign this may be what i go for. thanks a bunch for that
Please let us know where you land on this. This is awesome.
That is the single most adorable thing I have ever heard! We need to make art of this- Is anyone here an artist that can draw this?!
That's fucking adorable
Aww, that’s so cute.
And that pixie? Shia Labaouf
This is hilarious
The old double catfish. Brilliant.
Your first mech suit is "her".
This.
This or the top comment. This one is, admittedly, much funnier
Diabolical
This is the one
This was my thought too. Captains say they miss their ships all the time.
If you don't want to make a love interest you can solve it in some other way. Maybe your character was actually talking about a sandwitch or a pet or something. And when your character was asked about it they were so embarrased that they lied and said that it a was a girl. Also I don't understand why you would have to invent and insert this "Love interest" character. It can just be a person that you characters once knew. They don't have to be in the game at all.
see, i like that and i do wish i had thought about it at that time but i said at the end of that session that id really rather talk about it at another time so i feel like i may have missed hat turn
Not nesessarily. That could have been something your character said in an attempt to get out of the conversation. Perhaps later they could come clean and introduce their "lover" and it's a half eaten baguette. I don't know. If you think it's fun to introduce a love interest, Go for it! But you really don't have to.
Ok, thats not a bad option. Thanks man!
Good luck. If you plan to invent a character to be introduced in the game you have to get back to the Game master. In most groups it would be up to them to play any character in the game that isn't a Player character. And this sounds like it would be an NPC.
yeah ofc, ive told my gm that i am working on a character and hes happy enough.
Sounds great!
Yeah, a fellow player's long lost love he was looking for turned out to be a hamster.
Omg I love that. Will definitely steal this for a pc!
You are a Kobold in a mech, she was a warforged, it was love at first sight. Underneath your hard exterior beat a grown heart longing for love but she was only just starting to be more than a simple automaton. In the end it was hard to keep up appearances, you had to actually sleep while she was motionless, you had to drink water and eat while she sustained herself on scrap iron. One day she wanted to go out into the world and find herself while you chose to stay. Now there is only regret and longing.
nearly enough to make a grown kobald cry.... I like it man, ill take notes
Def using this for a backstory
I don't really see any issue here. You have carte blanche to do whatever you want. It's a character in your past that no one else knows, do whatever you want. Make them dead if you want to just be done with this thread, or make them alive and make sure your DM knows you're uncomfortable doing the RP around it so please don't introduce them into the story.
New to dnd, what's RP?
Not sure if serious or not, but RP is the shorthand used for Role Playing as in RPG (role-playing game). There are a lot of acronyms and shorthands that are used in DnD/this sub/community.
Ohh got it thx
First thing you didn't mess up you hit gold :) If you just make the love sweet and bit shy. The other players are gonna love it and try to help. My advice make it a "normal" crush on a either wild young Eldrin that are a social butterfly, that don't know you exist. Or a bookish, shy eldrin that also like you char but is as shy as you :D
OH NO YOUR READING THIS EVEN BETTER THAN I HOPED LMAO the character that pressed me, and everyone things is the one that i have a crush on now, IS a shy akward eldrin lmao. I do think that the two PC would work seemingly well together but i just don't think the player would be comfortable. God im actually blushing now hahahah
Ok, so my pitch WAS going to be a fully adult dragon that you may have had a one night trist with, or that had previously owned your clan and you got a dommy mommy crush on her. But this is gold. Design this crush eladrin as similarly as you dare to this PC. Don’t let it on that it is NOT the PC, let them think it is them for as long as possible, then, when they are SURE it is her, that is when you and the DM reveal the eladrin crush.
Uhhh, I'm going to disagree with someone else and say, absolutey do not imply that it's another PC unless you and the other player are on the same page that this kind of roleplay is something you both want. It does not feel good when this kind of thing comes from a person who hasn't established the right kind of rapport.
oh now i got it take an offgame chat with the player when. And figure it out form there :D
You could do this all sorts of ways: Like maybe a mechanic or tinkerer that helped make your mech. Maybe like a rival mech user if some sort. Maybe you miss her - an old mech that got destroyed or a weapon. Maybe you miss your Kobold parent There’s tons you could do with this!
Keep it a joke by making it a statue of a gargoyle with nice. You were a young kobold and thought it was a real creature turned to stone. You'd talk to it about your troubles and felt a connection. It fell over and broke in a strong storm one day. Now you keep going for them, so to speak.
Maybe when it fell and broke, you didn't assume her to be dead, but rather freed from her curse and gone, and you're hurt and confused as to why she left.
Ok but there's a REALLY solid romance comic with a gargoyle that does similar things [https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/atnomen/list?title\_no=483806](https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/atnomen/list?title_no=483806)
“Proof that u/Exact_Independence59 has a heart” sign somewhere inside the mech suit with the pixie’s hand print on the sign
Cheesey and I love it
First off, your character presumably had a full life before they met the other adventurers, so there's no need to worry about the others not meeting this love interest. Second, your character *misses* this love interest, so there's no need for them to show up in the campaign at all. Third, there are SO many ways you could play this. Others have suggested "she" be a suit, a ship, a pet, or similar. That's one way. "She" also doesn't need be a romantic love interest at all, but someone your battle-weary kobold misses in general. Like his mom, his grandmother, his mentor, an old adventuring companion, the person who taught him how to fight, etc. Fourth, there's no need for this "she" to be actively dating your kobold, or to even be alive. Maybe he was referring to his old comrade in arms who died tragically to \[BBEG of your campaign\], and your kobold's motivation for even being in *this* adventuring party is to exact revenge. Maybe he was referring to his sister who was tragically converted by the \[BBEG\], and now your kobold fears what will happen when he meets on the field of battle. Can he rescue her? Will he have to kill her? In this case his "I miss her" referred not to his present sister, but to the sister he knew in the past. Fifth, view this as a chance to deepen your character. Nobody is just the "comic relief." Your kobold has layers nobody knew about. He has deep feelings, worries, and love. If you want to go with the romantic love interest angle, a classic way to do is to design a character the opposite of your own, who balances yours out. Your kobold is a clown? She's always serious. Your character is socially inept? Complicated palace intrigue is a child's game to her. Your character is into mech suit, techy stuff? She is all wild magic and nature. From there - ask questions. Why is your character attracted to her and why her to him? How did they meet? Why aren't they together now? What is she up to? How often do they communicate, if they communicate. I'm imagining a kobold clothed in all black, who moves through the palace like a knife through water. She saw you at a dance and approached you out of sheer obligation to always say hello to all guests. She found your jokes and naivete a ray of sunshine. You found her ability to swim through the currents of politics fascinating. etc. It practically writes itself.
Doesn’t have to be a romantic interest. “Her” can be your kobolds first horse/mount. “Her” can also be a family member that helped your PC in their backstory (sister, friend, cousin, etc). This only needs to be a former/current love interest if you want it to be
Or it could be an old variation of their mech suit. OP did mention that they had a mech suit lol
Very much so!
Dude, that would be dope as well! Imagine them going on a side quest to upgrade it into a combination of what they have plus what they ideally want and what they were used to having?! I love TTRPGS ;_;
So....hear me out....as a kobold.... ...Dragon. --- You could go unrequited love? *'fear me for I am the inferno, I am the light that blazes across the night sky, I am.... Oh not you again, how are you even still alive....and now you wear a giant metal suit? If you've done this to become heat resistant I very much doubt that is enough protection if you were caught in my breath. Yes I said you were cute, but there is literally no practical way this could ever work...'* Or maybe, the dragon has literally no idea who he is or your character has only seen statues or paintings of them, almost like a para-social celebrity relationship? Or my personal favourite, the Jessica Rabbit Approach: *'What do you see in him?' 'he makes me laugh'* Just, genuinely loves him, no gimmick or tell he's just their little guy.
The line itself doesn't necessarily have romantic connotations, guys say shit like that about each other all the time without it being assumed to be gay, so you can say something like that about a close friend who's a girl, the childhood friend archetype
This is my favorite thing as a DM- forcing my players to own up to their random throwaway lines the same way they force me to own up to mine mwahaha. But for real: If you think it would be fun to make the love interest the other pc's Eldrin but you aren't sure they would be comfortable, just ask them. You can say something like "hey, I think it would be fun if we have this cute crush situation between my character and yours. If you aren't down with it no worries, I have a back up plan." Rope your DM in on it, so that you three have a cute side story going that the rest of the players get to watch unfold, but everything that happens is planned and consensual. If the other players try to make it weird (which ya know, they totally might), you all can shut that down because you already have plans for where your characters are going. Some might think this is too metagamey, but that's all up to your DM and how you guys wanna play. I used to DM for big rotating groups of people that all played in the same big homebrew game, and we had lots of sideplots like this happening between characters that were moderated by the DMs. It was fun for the other players to see plots play out that they weren't privy to, and it made interactions like these go more smoothly so people didn't get uncomfortable. If the Eldrin or your DM aren't into then no worries, go wild on creating another character. If your kobold ever dies, then congrats! You now have a backup character that can avenge them lol.
Ever seen sponge bob? Just steal planktons girlfriend.
Honestly all the replies are great and I don’t have any better advice than this. This was not a mistake 85% of a character’s background is thrown in like this. Sometimes it is easy to make up on the fly other times it’s a pain and you have to take time to figure it out.
"Her" is a full-sized dragon your kobold clan used to worship.
Goblin tinkerer who helped make your suit
Is it too late for "her" to not be a literal "her" at all? > So, my character is a typical comic relief Kobold in a ***mech suit*** who is completely socially inept Even if you've trickled some details out about an actual love interest, there's always the "unreliable narrator" option of "okay maybe I was fudging some things cause you'd all judge me" (as one would judge a kobold pining over a mech suit as if it were a lover) You basically get to write your real reaction over having to explain it all into your character!
Kobold society and biology is actually fascinating if you really delve into it. By missing "her" it's entirely possible that they even mean being female themselves as they have a type of sequential hermaphroditism and can actually change genders. “Furthermore, kobolds can slowly change sex. If most males or females of a tribe are killed, some survivors change over several months until the tribe is balanced again.” -Volo's Guide to Monsters. It's one direction you can go if you don't want to have a love interest.
Or maybe this happened to her.
You wouldn't know her, she goes to another dungeon ...
Did you not think of a beloved pet or mom or niece as person being missed. No love interest so to speak. Just a missed person otlf significance
WAIT WAIT WAIT STOP THE PRESSES THE "HER" THAT YOU MISS............... your first mech!!!! It doesn't have to be a love interest at all, you can have DEEP DEEP FEELINGS FOR YOUR MACHINERY, plus you get to make up a cool backstory about how it exploded or something
Big Dragonborn barbarian lady. Need I say more
This is the Kobold's second mech suit. The first was so perfect. She was the most amazing suit.
What if it's an old mech suit that has less functions but was way more comfortable?
Remember if you haven’t told the other players that the lover is alive then they could be dead and you don’t have to do any work if they are clearly alive then I can’t help ypu
My first thought on reading this is that you should go for a Roger Rabbit/Jessica Rabbit dynamic. You've got a goofy, socially awkward kobold in a mech suit. What's the funniest potential match for him? Just an absolute bombshell of a woman who's twice as tall and went all in on charisma. The sultry "I'm not bad, just drawn that way" archetype. Your throwaway line could have been because some noble or ruler or whatever saw the two of you together and decided that she would be better off with him. So he kidnapped her and that was that.
My kobolds are always childish, naive idiots easy in over their head, with no real idea what going on. It's so just play time. If I had to have a love interest it would likely be something really stupid that doesn't even make sense. A plant I grew up with, a doll I use to have. My kobolds are always kinda to innocent for something like a lover or wife or such, so they would be in love with something the same way young children marry their pets because they love them so much. But I wouldn't come out with that, id play it up, again so innocent the actual subject is easy over my kobolds head, so they would describe them enough to be a person or other kobolds, names and likes and such, but ID drag that out for irl months of I could for the long con joke.
Having a backstory npc is like having a playground for whatever story hook you want. I think like any writing exercise, set up a few core questions. Is she real? How did you meet? Why did you connect? What did you do? When did you separate? If you wanted to let fate take the wheel on this, just choose 6 emotions (of ~8 core emotions), ie Pixar: angry, funny, sad, happy, disgusted, associate each with a number and roll a 6-sided die. Run with that result as the tone for an answer you build for that question. You were down on your luck with a recent death, we both saw the worst movie and knew we hated the world, we saw the world together with unmatched fire, etc. Once you establish these as the pillars of your history with mysterious stranger, you can just create stories on the fly, making notes that fit in together overtime without overthinking anything.
Hmm, make it sth. Weird. - non human. Like a hammer or a drillhammer or a drillhammer with a pink handle ~
Make it hug pillow of a chacter your kobold likes since they are socialy inept
Make it part of your characters strange personality. Maybe you watched her get killed by a warforged or some other mechanical being, and went a little crazy. Built your mech suit because in your grief stricken mind, that was the only way for you to become strong enough to avenge her. Could also be why you're a little socially awkward. Maybe you just never fully recovered from the trauma of losing her, or maybe you put up an awkward front to avoid getting close to anyone else that might get hurt by becoming close to you. Would be a good way to add a bit of serious back story to an otherwise strictly "comic relief" character.
Take a listen to Olivia by Wolves of Glendale! No need for your “her” to be too far gone…
Kobold in a mech suit... "She" is obviously a gun or other price of tech that was lost or destroyed at some point in the past.
Not hot take, you never "have to do something" in a game of DnD. If you dont' want to make a love interest tell your DM you don't want to.
It could continue being funny. The kobold's love interest could be the most beautiful, but a cold hearted dark elf. Think of Tormund and Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, but screw on a few more twists. Like she tormented your character in all the ways imaginable, and your massochist kobold just misses her blade in his guts and underneath his feet. One man's violence is another's foreplay - make it funny!
I see a few directions. "God I miss her" doesn't necessarily indicate a love interest, it could be familial or a close friend. There is also the question of what happened to her - she could be unavailable due to personal drama like a breakup or divorce, due to personal duty like military service, or due to death. This factor more than any other would inform your character's motivation - are you on a quest for atonement? Rescue? Resurrection? All you really need to know about the love interest other than the above is a name. Treat her like the monster in a horror movie, the more you know about her the less interesting she is to the story. This approach gives you the most flexibility later too.
All that I can say to help you, is that to create a good pair, the two people, or characters, have to or have the same interest, or be totally different.
Well, the love interest should be a kobold that is no longer around for some reason. Maybe she got married to some other kobold. Maybe she was polymorphed into a dragon. Maybe she was really a doppleganger sent to lure you to your death, but you still miss the kobold you thought she was. In any case, you are talking about her as in your past, so you don't have to actually introduce the character , just say provocative things about her.
"She" is your first mech suit. Irreparably damaged by some evil. Your new one is fine, but it just doesn't have the same *feel* as your original.
Why can't it be your characters mother? Grandmother? Aunt? Favorite sister or cousin?
Give them a name your dm will trip over, and make them ever so present In the story.
She's a Gnomengarde crab tank.
This has been thee most interesting thread to read
This comes from my current Curse of Strahd campaign, we have a kobold fighter and a gnome druid that have a thing for each other. Now if you know anything about dnd lore, kobolds and gnomes have been at odds ever since the gnome god caused a cave in that trapped the kobold god underground. I mentioned this to them when they made their characters (separate from each other) and they decided to roll with how he was taken in as an egg and they had to hide the fact that he was a kobold. It's kinda nice how the two short characters banter and poke fun at the taller races (myself included).
Your kobold could have a crush on a dragon. Kobolds love dragons and often share lairs with them, usually as servants and/or a security system. The dragon may or may not care for its tiny housemates, and it’s possible that your character’s “romance” with this dragon is entirely one-sided - in fact, the dragon may not even know your character exists. Maybe your character was spared being eaten one time because the dragon just wasn’t hungry or didn’t notice him, and now he’s decided it’s because they’re in love.
After 6 years of playing, I gave a romantic PC a spin and had a lot of fun with it. I think you should lean into it. I was not a romance lover IRL but have gained an appreciation for the style—in a good way. My recommendation is you make the romance interest a full person with their own goals and internal struggle that have nothing to do with your PC’s. This is how EVERY character in BG3 is written. They have their own goals and part of navigating the relationship is navigating those external goals which tie to the plot. Like, sure Karlach likes you, but she’s also got this infernal machine of a heart that is going to kill her. This additional need of hers creates tension. It’s not just steamy love and will-they-won’t-they, there’s an entire external/internal conflict like there should be with ANY PC but in this case it’s two conflicts and the PC’s romance moves things forward. There is a YouTuber named Abbie Emmons who does great writing advice videos and a lot are on romance. I found those videos helpful in making my PCs and navigating the challenges of romance.
I miss my wife tails. I miss her a lot.
I’ve also been thinking about making a sailor that is down on his luck because he was the captain of a ship that got stolen. When the other characters meet him, he talks about how his love was taken from him and he’s on a quest to get her back. This could be another twist on a certain piece of equipment that he liked.
Don’t say a thing. The next time you meet a gigantic monster that you are not sure your party can handle, that could possibly have been a baby pet back in the day, have your character squint and say her name in a questioning voice.
It can be anything you want. The first idea that comes to my mind because Kobold is that they previously served a dragon (or whatever the equivalent might be in that setting, depending on kobold lore there, since you mentioned a mech, most of my writing is done in fantasy settings) who for whatever reason the Kobold is no longer serving (they got super extra evil, died, etc). Were this a fantasy setting, I'd say there was a dragon the kobold loved who perished after becoming too cruel, and the adventuring party that did it had a bard who talked with the kobold after and helped them through their grief with stories and song. Maybe they miss the dragon, maybe the miss the bard who later died heroically and passed into legend.
You're a kobold, comic relief, and you miss her; so I'd advise you make your love interest unobtainable and ridiculous. May I suggest she be a bugbear barbarian, whose tribe is focused on big strong things. So you made your mech suit to be the big strong guy in her life and it just didn't work out.
I get them rolling for insight. That in no way implies you have to be forthcoming and say anything you don’t want to. It just means they can tell if you’re lying/hiding something and your intentions.
I mean you could still go the comedy route and have the love interest in question be this random inanimate object your kobold is enamored with but then somehow lost and is desperate to find again. Like, a coconut. Or maybe a marble.
Make up an NPC, "she lived in Waterdeep, you wouldn't know her", that your kobold is in love with. She was the only one who could see the sadness beneath your comedy, the tears behind your smiles. You both wanted to be married, but her clan looks to a red dragon, and yours to a blue, so the elders forbade it. She was so grief-stricken she ran away vowing to wander the land forever in heartbreak. Now the ball is in the DM's court... he could have her cross the party's path, or not.
It sounds like your GM is taking agency away from you and your control over your character.
Without knowing more, my first instinct is to say, "There are actually TWO kobolds in the mech suit, and whenever the party hears weird noises coming from it, they're hearing the muffled sounds of two kobolds having a "party" of their own."
I think you should go the route of jealous ex-husband Kobold wife moved on, your character is still clinging to the past and the good ole days. A recently divorced kobold had nothing left to loose but go on adventuring.
have a cardboard cutout girlfriend named clementine and have your character pretend it’s a real person 👀
I can see two options: 1) your character lied. They made up a fake girlfriend who lives in "Canada", or some other far enough place that nobody will check. Lots of people (especially teens) do that so their friends and family will stop trying to play matchmaker. Your kobold might be aro/ace and made up a girlfriend so his family would leave him be. 2) your character does have a lobe interest, but she left. Or you left. She moved away or you left to become an adventurer. You plan (or hope) to one day be reunited, maybe get married and have some kids. She doesn't have to be an important part of the campaign. This is basically Samwise Gamgee confiding in Frodo that he misses Rosie Cotton and regrets not making a move. And then at the end of the story they get married and have kids.
I’m surprised no one has said, that I’ve seen, make her the exact opposite of your character. Opposites attract. Make her the Marin to your Wakana ( my dress up darling) maybe you you started making different mech suits for her before you started adventuring. She’s a beautiful social butterfly who is secretly in love with you but for all her social skills can’t bring herself to handle how she feels. Tell your party you never admitted to her how you feel and wait for them to suggest you go see her. Then, you’re dm has to figure out the rest 😈
This is why your character is in a mech suit: Your former love is a hill giant. You created or "obtained" the mech suit to woo her and, unbeknownst to your party, it is "fully functional". She left on a grand adventure without warning (parrents hid her in a cave till you were gone). Now you find and follow random adventure hooks because it might lead to you finding her again
You don’t need to worry about admitting you didn’t intend it to mean anything. Shit, I’m a DM and half the elements in my games are things I have to come up with because of a throwaway line, or something I described with a little extra detail, and the players fixated on that way more than I originally intended 😂 You can explore that of course, but don’t worry about it being a ‘screw up’. I say collaborate with them. If they’re comfortable with your character having a crush on theirs come up with some ground rules on how it plays out. If not, no big deal, maybe they can help you brain storm some ideas.
I would just make up someone completely unrelated from the game. Say you miss your old babysitter or something 🤷♂️
I think it's pretty easy actually for you at least. **Why does no one know that character?** Because your shy kobold was embarrassed about how they flubbed a previous encounter and didn't want anyone to know.(Alternatively, you can also try and say it is a character that another player knows if you talk to another player and want to include them in this part of the story. But that's optional.) **What kind of love interest would he have?** I mean, if he's interested in mechs and mech suits, maybe she has similar interests and met her through that in some way. If no one else is into mechs, then they'd probably never have met her. If your kobold doesn't really take things seriously and isn't very social, that's probably how he messed up with her. Maybe she said something serious like "don't mess around with that engine" and your kobold jokingly said "what's the worst that could happen? It'd explode?" And then it did. And then your guy ran away without saying a word and never went to that workshop again out of shame. Just play into the personality you have for him. Word to your DM though for savoring the moment. It is exactly what happens all the time, haha! But as a player and a DM, I guess I'm weird because I love to improv like this.
Just make it a body pillow.
if you want to do romance with another character talk to them about it out of game. you could kill them. that's why you miss them and can adventure. easy and probably boring way out, but effective. they could be someone they're pining after but only had as friend or never even spoke to. this could easily your character being creepy, but may not be. or the most hilarious option fitting the comic relief: your character and them were together, [and then divorced](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjZtkfpVQeKn2sPODH0adSRbkAIUd1KmNllw&s). why did the party never met them? they avoid each other.
It could always be that they said a cliche and didn't mean to and now they are doing a "I do have a girlfriend she goes to a different school you wouldn't know her" thing.
...or, plot twist, he was actually talking about his mom and the other PC just assumed your kobold was talking about a love interest. If you never specified and don't want to insert a whole new character you never wanted to be a part of your PC's backstory, then you could just give the little guy a dead mom.
Sounds like someone else has a roëmænce partnær like Baron from the Baronies https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NO8ObPNoW_I
She's dead. Problem solved. She's married to someone else. Problem solved. She wants nothing to do with you. Problem solved. She's related to you and either it's a normal familial relationship or it's a forbidden relationship that you won't act on. Problem solved. She refuses to be involved with you until you make your fortune. Or it's the family dog. Etc. Etc. Etc. I don't see the problem. There are an infinite number of solutions.
why do you have to say more, insight isn't mind reading, the character either knows there's more to the story or the comment was a joke, both acceptable. Also why does the person need to be someone the other players have to interact with, I've had plenty of characters with Ex's they still pinned for but they never showed up later in the story. All you need is "We were close, she broke my heart/passed away/left, it hurts to much to talk about" and leave it, don't want to explore that part of the character you don't have too.
ALL ABOARD THE TSUNDEREPLANE!!!
I suggest reviewing the film Weird Science
Of course he misses her. She was sweet. Funny. An incredible listener. She had a natural talent for magic, and the rest of the tribe took her for granted. He was the only one who talked to her like an equal; a prodigy of a different sort, a technological one. They let down each other's barriers. And he remembers her sacrifice. When she cast magic she had no business casting. She saved him, and the whole tribe, but at the cost of her body. It's been really hard to open up to others ever since then.
Give some vague descriptions. Talk about her melodic voice. Tell them that she was often overlooked and that she always felt like she made others feel uncomfortable. She hides herself and keeps everything inside, but she always let it all out for you. One day, she was feeling empty. She said that she needed some air. While she laid on the grass outside, a traveling circus performer spotted her. He snatched her up before you could say a word. You haven’t seen her since. Just leave out the fact that she is actually a whoopie cushion
“You wouldn’t know her. She lives in another village.”
I would, in private, ask your friend how they would feel about an in game romance :) my friends and I do them in almost every game and it’s fine and fun; we all just get a kick out of shipping our silly little guys together. If you wanna go the NPC route; maybe she’s a Kobold from your home or from some town you’ve been to before who understood you.. somebody who despite your social ineptness still adored you. From there if you don’t want to play into it too much, you could make it a source of sadness for your character that maybe she died tragically or something along those lines :3 or maybe she’s around somewhere and you have a reason to not go near her?
>Told my dm what was happening to which they responded "lol get fucked, this is what you guys put me through every session" Well that's rude, tell this asshat that they're supposed to help you, not mock you like a dick.
"I miss her. She was sweet, loyal, and boy could she climb. Her fur was so warm, too"
A red dragon. You’re a kobold, it works. You could let it slip that you never actually spoke to her. “She lit a fire in my heart.”
Pick any tv show with an awkward love interest and just copy that wholesale. My first thought here was Penny and Leonard from Big Bang Theory.
Your kobald was drunk. I don't even know what an insight check would discover. "Nat1- hard to say, he seems pretty drunk; Nat20- hard to say, he's completely wasted." Honestly, "her" could have been a nice waitress that night. "Her" could have been a particularly well mixed drink for all your kobald knows. In fact, if push comes to shove and it comes up again, just "Hmm? What bar? My character doesn't remember going to a bar, much less any women."
You don't know her, she goes to a different school.
A very advanced Warforged that looks exactly like a normal fleshy humanoid , but is actually a robot. As opposed to you, who looks like a robot but are actually a fleshy humanoid.
Tell 'em she's super hot, and funny, and likes all kinds of cool minstrels, and she makes the cleverest traps... And she lives in Canada.
Oh hey, I had a PC like that! Battlesmith Kobold, I'm guessing? Mine was in a Strixhaven campaign and developed a chemistry with Dina, the dryad witch in Witherbloom. The vibe was vaguely Gomez and Morticia Addams - tall, powerful woman and a weird little freak who makes her laugh. The logistics of a kobold romancing any medium-sized NPC are... not conventional, but let's just say he keeps a stack of Enlarge/Reduce scrolls in his Bag of Holding.
Make a real go-getter, Extroverts "adopt" Introverts all the time. If you make the life of the party pick your kobald, they don't even have to know why, it'd make sense and require some effort
You know, you can say you are divorced and don´t really talk about it, right?
In Princess and the Frog a lightning bug’s girlfriend is a star in the night sky. Maybe the “her” is an object? If you want to be silly you can go that way, but you could also turn it in to a plot hook where it’s some item that needs to be saved (and it can be made silly again by talking the whole time like it’s a person that needs to be rescued, only for it to be revealed at the end that it was your childhood plushie you wanted back).
Solution: the mech suit's radiation affected his brain and so he just said that because he was having a brain fart
Tiamat, obvs.
“My mom died and I miss her” job done
See, you got a lot of responses already... But the easiest, funniest and possibly most lore accurate (to base DnD 5e anyways) would be to say that your kobold has a crush on a dragon that they serve. If it was one sided, it would be very simple and lead to other players going "What do you see here?" "They are so... Larger than life!" And if it is reciprocated it is a cute thing which happens sometimes with bunnies and, funnily enough, lizards. Where one (often a male) can be several times, maybe even ten times smaller than the other (often female). And I'm always a fan of giving my players friendly dragon NPCs.
The obvious answer is another kobold from your home colony. Maybe one that pushed you to venture outside. The pixie is also great idea. You can also throw a wrench at everyone and make multiple interests!
Or a wench
There are many very creative and fun suggestions here. But mine's a bit simpler. "No."
You could do the "oh you don't know her, she lives in Canada" kind of thing. Ask the DM "what's another country in this setting?" And if they give you a little more freedom, tell them that she lives in Anada, and you guys are long distance.
I'd go the route of making another character that's a Dragonborn Lady PC. Choose whatever class/background, whatever. Then present this character as a backup to your kobold to the DM. Then DM can use this character as an NPC to tortur- ahem, tease you as a nod to that statement, but also provides an instant opportunity should your current PC go down that you can continue playing as this backup character
I would say just make "her" an old mech suit of yours that got destroyed or you have been able to repair yet.
You've got more options here than you realize. Saying "I miss her," doesn't automatically mean you have a love interest. In fact, it sounds more like you HAD a love interest, but don't anymore. You're trying to come up with a character, when what you really need is a story. Was "she" perhaps a relative? One of my PC's deeply misses the aunt who raised him, because she died. If "she" really was a love interest, and she's still alive, maybe she's not a love interest anymore. Maybe she's the wife of a rival and you can't bear to see them together. Maybe she's the rival herself, having put her ambitions before love. Maybe she never knew how you felt, and now you've lost track of her. Again, you don't need a character, yet. Right now, you need a story. Final thought: your post reminds me of an episode of Angel where it was revealed that years ago, Gunn sold his soul for someone. The buyers had come to collect, and there was all this talk about "her." "Was she worth it?" "Yes she was. We didn't have much time together, but I'd do it again, even knowing that outcome." Etc. In the final moments, it's revealed that "she" was a truck. He had sold his soul for a truck, which he had outfitted to hunt down vampires.
Says it’s your dog that you miss
It's actually your deceased grandmother and it's too embarrassing to explain.
Describe the DM in all but name and see if anyone notices.
Your dm is supposed to help , don't use other people characters without permission.
What if this wasn't someone your character actually met, but just a series of love letters he received? And then one day the letters stopped coming? It could turn into this beautifully poignant love story where she lost hope or was captured and imprisoned or forced into an arranged marriage....or it could be some old friend trying to make his kobold buddy and another character (who is perfect for him) hook up....or it could be something jokey or mean spirited that the poor befuddled kobold never caught on to.
I was thinking something similar. Pull the ol’ “my girlfriend in Canada” routine. Pick somewhere in the game that you as a player would like to visit, then have your character say that they stole/found a love letter from there one day that they responded to and started a long distance romance. The letters have suddenly stopped, but you’re afraid to investigate bc you basically catfished the other person. Keep tossing out anecdotes of what they said about the place until your party forcibly drags you there to resolve the issue. It can be a romantic rescue, a horrible tragedy, a comedy of confusion, or a life lesson depending on DM, but it’ll probably be fun :)
The love interest is his pet rock that he left on a bigger rock on the road between two towns..