I had more characters planned than the 5 man band, even before I knew about that being a trope. Having had to juggle five characters, I fully understand why writers keep it limited to 5; there’s 5 lions in Voltron, and nobody talks about vehicle Voltron’s 15 characters anymore (well, this wonderful picture does). Its really hard to keep characters distinct when you have too large of a cast, to say nothing about them having meaningful interactions. One of the dynamics I had wanted to explore with my B-tier roster was the idea that they were actually not the bottom of the barrel. For that, I needed the other tiers, and saved some notes on them to share. So take this as a cutting room floor view of characters that didn’t make the cut.

Ooruk the sasquatch

Ooruk is an optional party member in a story featuring optional party members. He was the character you had to pass by his location at the exact right time to recruit him, and so nothing in the game required him to be around, because most likely he wasn’t.

• Optional Party Member: Ooruk plays this to a tee. Whereas Pox is often uninterested in participating in the plot (and, truth be told, she’s annoying), Ooruk entire existence in the storyline is optional. He’s not even addressed by NPCs, only vaguely lumped into “And your ally(s)” and an unfocused crowd glance that may or may not include him. When shop keepers have items (claws) that only he could possibly equip, they won’t even notice that Ooruk has clawed paws. “Oh, and we suddenly got a shipment of miscellaneous gear that I doubt anybody could use.” Not surprisingly, he gets no lines of important dialogue. Which is good because:
• Mute: Ooruk doesn’t really talk. He will mutter his name, but it’s not pokemon speak, and it might even just be him belching. Even Alastrina, patient as she is, quickly gives up on trying to talk to him — he’s just that stoic. He does gesture symbolically, but nothing as complex as miming — he might try to sign something to the tune of “Food that way?” or “Big danger” in snuffles and baring of fangs, but as far as character interactions go, he absolutely did not get those.
• Berserker/Beware the Quiet Ones: Out of combat, Ooruk is as serene and docile as a well fed cat. He even tolerates Flonk calling him “Flea bag” and “walking pile of allergens”, either because he doesn’t understand the words or care a whit about what is said about him. In combat, however, he is singlemindedly ferocious, and apart from (long cooldown?) targeting abilities, he pretty much autos combat. The disadvantage of this, of course, is unlike the rest of the party who could support one another, Ooruk does not have any ability to throw support items. He largely acts as if he is oblivious to the rest of the party, and seems autistic in nearly all regards.
• Ooruk was a bit of a parody of Vincent Valentine, who was a loner edgelord in FF7, and an entirely forgettable optional character. The problem with writing a character like that is that they have no moments of awesome, or even funny; they’re simply there filling a space.

Ungawa, the primitive boy

• He was basically a feral boy who tagged along with the party, but constantly scampered off to go learn from the wilds. Like, literally he’d just leave the party whenever they got to a new biome and go native for a while to live amongst the animals. So the party had to go back and fetch him from whatever herds of gazelle he had loped off with, give him a flea bath, and he would have learned some new combat move.
• The name was a straight up lift from Tarzan’s Hollywood invented jungle tongue. Of course, with Ooruk also being basically mute except for saying what people used for his name, and Pox having her own speech issues, the writing would have gotten pretty hack.
• I don’t have any notes on character interactions with him. That’s probably why he didn’t make the cut despite him having a pseudo interesting game mechanic.

Cecil, the flavor of the month try-hard

• Cecil’s role was to show up and audition. Repeatedly he’d come puffing up the hill after Alastrina and her friends, saying “guys! guys! Wait up! *puff* Behold my new power!” His entire shtick was that no matter how hard he tried to impress them, he was lousy. He’d show up as an Ovinomancer, with the power to control sheep in battle. Or a Dartificer, who was proficient in throwing darts at carnival balloon games. Or a battle mime, able to do… the box.
• Each time Cecil would audition, it would be long after the action was over — after the boss was defeated and the local troubles were solved, he’d show up, clutching his bags, and proudly proclaim he was fully ready to join their cause. And of course, each time, there would be absolutely no need to take him along, and various excuses why his particular role wasn’t as helpful as he might have thought (especially considering they had done just fine without him).
• I wanted to play with the Goldfish Poop Gang trope, only not make him a pathetic villain, but more a pathetic hero. He’s also heavily inspired by Doofus Drake, the fat, sinus-y tryhard kid that the main cast tolerated charitably but clearly did not belong anywhere near the action. While he was a funny idea, the joke was thin, and more importantly, the idea of Alastrina of all people being forced to reject Cecil’s attempts to join them seemed out of her character. If she was hurt by being cast aside as trash, then would she really be able to do that to another soul?
• I considered making him an act villain, a la Syndrome, but well, that has been done, and done incredibly well (see what I did there?). While the Face-Heel Turn would be a reasonable character arc for anybody repeatedly rejected by their idols, making the comic relief guy turn into a villain stretches things a ton and doesn’t add to the story in a way I wanted.

I ultimately decided to cut these characters because they just didn’t take the story anywhere at all (Ooruk and Ungawa) that other characters (Pox) did, or took it in directions (Cecil) that weren’t ideal. I didn’t want joke characters to ruin the vibe and ultimately decided to leave Alastrina and her group the B tier status to The Hero’s A tier team. Of course, almost all the A tier characters we learn about do not come to good ends, so maybe it was better off being where they were!

What character concept fragments have you kicked around, only to kick aside? Or, what jobs would you give to Cecil as another failed attempt for class choice?