All of these characters should be party members, because just adding them in as NPCs is boring or has already been done.
- A tiny person. I'm talking fairy sized, here.
- A fat person. I'm talking Blob from the X-Men, here.
- A newly created non-humanoid creature, similar to that of Red XIII.
- A lead character who is a robot.
- A married couple in your party that go through a divorce (as in, they don't fall back in love with each other).
- A parent/child combo.
- A parent who has lost a child (instead of a child who has lost a parent, which is cliché to hell). And I don't mean crystallised, I meand they DIE.
- A full-on traitor who turns out to be the central villain right at/near the end. It shouldn't be obvious.
- An alien.
- Someone unable to control their magical capabilities when they are emotional, essentially causing death. They could, perhaps, have killed their parents accidentally, for example.
- X-Men styled characters that each have their own unique but notable power.
- People with actual families. You know. Proper ones. With two parents, siblings, perhaps grandparents and aunts/uncles and whatnot. That kind of thing. ALL OF THEM, too. Not just one of them. It's completely ridiculous how many people don't have a family in these games, when having a family actually makes you fight more (see: Nora).
- A teacher of skills, perhaps fighting, perhaps gathering, perhaps crafting.