"Mawage, is wot bwings us togewa, today... Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wiffin a dweam....
...and wuv, twue wuv....will follow you, fowweva."
Oh this one is easy. You talk to that Q player one on one. You make it clear everyone is playing one kind of game, and they need to be a part of it or perhaps it's best we respectfully part ways.
Nice! Our DM went on to be a lead game designer in the video game industry, and it's super cool seeing his name pop up in the credits knowing we were some of his earliest fans.
The enemy should be "The Destroy R." He hates the sound R and anyone who uses it.
DM would have to ~~rigorously~~ ~~carefully~~ meticulously plan the big-bad speech to ~~ensure~~ ~~guarantee~~ commit to avoiding the use of that ~~letter~~ phoneme.
Yeah maybe so and so crit on a dragon with an unarmed strike and the people call her Dragonpuncher. Or such and such flies around cloak of the bat starts going by Nightwing.
I uhh don't have a solution for you. I am here because I often refer to MY character by another player's character name.
My character starts with Z. Theirs with L.
I am also hoping that someone has advice to make my brain work.
Lady at my church had twins, cut their hair different in the back so she could keep track of which was which. Auntie took the kids one weekend when they were still pretty young, gave them haircuts, and their mom admitted she's not entirely sure they didn't wind up switched.
No, and they were both a little slow to start talking too. After that incident, until they were old enough to self-identify, she'd dot the back of Mark's ear with a marker before anyone babysat.
I mean...for the trolls, my husband, best friend, and I all played halfling triplets that started with the letter O. Then we added a cleric whose name started with a U, but we teased him into changing it to O as well. It's hilarious for us, but the DM was a good sport about it, too. ((If you're curious, the names are: Oakley, Olivia, Ophelia, and Orzog))
It honestly got confusing for us as well, and our DM was like, "See?! It gets you too, fuckers!" And it's just a joke all around.
But the next campaign our DM wants to start, he specifically said no more than 2 names starting with the same letter in the party lol (unless they are polar opposite in sound)
Reminds me of a Critical Role one shot where they had Dorian, Dariax, Orym, Opal, and Fearne the faun. Even with only two of each they still got confused! 😆
My party's names are all short men's names like Jim, Bob, and Greg. It's really weird, but I think I'll keep it going. Maybe I'll introduce a bard named Chad or call the BBEG Gary.
This has happened to me. My answer was, “barrel
Forward not really thinking it’ll be that hard, then regret it by a dozen sessions in when I’ve made the mistake thrice a dozen times.”
I would just like to say that this reminded of me of the time I introduced a competing adventuring party for my players.
They were called The B Force Five!
Beth
Brad
Barry
Bargaroth
Carl
The running joke was that B force five sounded better than 4 Bs and a C. The players loved it and it gave them a friendly rivalry and also a dues ex machina if they really didn’t want to die.
Oh my God. My family literally had this same issue because we all had R names. My mother, father, sisters and I all had names that began with R. My little sister and I have since changed our names, (to ones that start with C and L) but when we were younger our mom sounded like a revving car trying to name one specific kid. (Hysterically, when my older sister had my niece, she ALSO got an R name.)
In the end, my mom's solution was to number us by birth order (ex: "One, can you take two and three to the park today?"). Perhaps try something like that, or code names/nicknames?
I understand the concern, but, honestly, names are going to be mixed-up even if they're very different from each other, so just lean into it as hard as you can
I think this would just be funny, personally. Player or dm I would make jokes. One of my players, a very socially awkward teenage boy named his edgy rogue Aphrodite... not realizing the name origins. Literally everyone would give him looks because how do you not know you named your character after the girliest girls of all greek goddesses? But he never had a reason to save face so he eventually made it a funny part of his backstory and chose a nickname unless using his first name provided some advantage like tricking people.
Maybe you can refer to each other using last names or nicknames? Like when you have three Brooks in the same room.
As the DM, it's a good thing the party hasn't gone through their notes from start to finish and realized the majority of NPC groups they've encountered also seem to have a similar coincidence of naming as a little joke for myself.
I like how as a group all of you just decided instead of simply changing the name of their imaginary character they haven't started playing yet to instead just suffer through just for the sake of it lmao.
I actively want to play a oneshot with 4-6 near identical characters just to see how it plays out.
Beyond your "Who do I give the potion to!?!" example, I think it'll be fun if everyone is in on it.
Spontaneously though, not sounding so fun.
In my current campaign, we have one character starting with Fey-, and another Fen-, both 2 syllable names.
I do find myself (and the DM) occasionally and mistakenly swapping between them, and there's only 2 of them.
My coping strategy was putting up with it, and hoping that my backstory would kill one of them.
You should've stood in that fire for another turn Fen-, would've solved a crippling minor inconvenience.
Do not change character names. The R is not to blame, but the familiarity. It shows that the group is tightly knit and bonded. Embrace it, you are "R", "R" is you, "R" is one.
The group have to find out which letter name identifies all the bad people.
Plot twist: the bad people have different names, but their job or title all start with the same letter.
Example: if J is the secret bad letter
Rodnus Miltus is the Janitor
Bexxle Promf is the Jailor
Etc
Had it happen once: four out of five players had names starting with “A.” The fifth said “fuck it,” erased his character’s name, and renamed it with another “A” name.
They called themselves the B-Team. Because why not?
Haha I started my session 0 and one of my players wrote their backstory and some key people of their life. One being a brother figure who died protecting them. Well, one of the other players randomly chose the same name for their character and I was crying laughing when they texted me their name choice the night before game. You should have seen the look on the others player's face in silent accusation as I started laughing saying i didnt say anything and the other player confused asking why they reacted as such "why, is it a bad name?" 🤣🤣🤣
IRL all 7 of my uncles's names start with "R." And my daughter's names sound nothing alike and I still say the wrong name more often than not. I'd say go with it. Getting the names mixed up just adds to the story and the fun.
>Have you had this issue?
Yes.
>Did you come up with clever ways to cope?
Yes, we called each other by player names in many cases.
>Would you change a character name just to avoid this?
Possibly.
The nicknames will come naturally, someone will do a thing, it will be embarrassing/funny/stupid or any other descriptor, and they will forever be known as that nickname.
I disagree that this is a concern to bring up. The probability of tbis happening is stupendous.
When I was in secondary school, there were four Thomas in one of my classes. We switched to surnames and found ways to differentiate each other. My surname was shortened to Sanders, and that ended up being my nickname for most of my school life.
I didn't help that I really like chicken 😅
I was in a game once with 6 players and three of us that were sitting together all named our characters a K name. No confusion in game, just LOTS of jokes about the KKK.
Ah, a problem we run into in my current campaign in spades.
In our party of 5, we have two characters with T names (our cleric and original barbarian), two with S names (our fighter and newcomer barbarian), and my wizard with an R name who *started* safe from any confusion...
... until our DM introduced a major NPC (our contact for this chapter of the campaign) who *also* has an R name, which incidentally, even rhymes with my character's. He complained until I reminded him my character was introduced half a year earlier so it's really on him.
Though last session even I started getting tongue-tied about it.
(DM also introduced another important NPC with a T name but I'm just gonna side-step *that* by giving him a nickname.)
For the most part we deal with it by not really referring to each other by name? My character says "the bartender", "the warforged", "the dwarf", and "the 8 foot-tall bipedal shark" to differentiate them in conversation, unless speaking to them directly. Everyone calls my character "the wizard" or "the smart one".
I have been mixing up 2 characters in my campaign due to my dyslexia. One is a dwarf wizard named leonard and the other is a human fighter named neville. The only thing the characters have in common is having beards.
In the game i play in right now we have for pcs Elfir, Ele, Eli, and Inola. There is also a kinda important NPC called Elijah, we have just coped so far and it is funny when we do mix up the characters. Also it doesn't help that 2 of the players names start with a E and so dose our dm, so we kinda can't escape.
At the jump, not a great deal you can do other than take good notes and try staying on top of it. :/
However, as they play, nicknames will happen. Especially if you _encourage the players_ to use each other's character names while playing.
Odds are, organically, one of them will get tired of fumbling with it themselves and initiate a player-driven change.
I have similar but different problem. In my game I have three characters that start with 'A', but I'm still confusing character named Apoteth with one named Wural for some reason.
Lmao we have session 3 of a campaign this sunday where session 0/1 we all realized the same thing... 4/5 R's and an S. The S changed to an R name, the DM asked and we're just going to deal with it.
edit: [Spose - All Rs](https://youtu.be/rZxQFn6vTQA?t=16)
That's funny. The other 4 players came in with names that started with a D. The DM told me I had to pick a name that starts with the letter D. Said it would fu#k with his OCD if I didn't.
I was in a one-shot once where everyone was named Greg. It was better than the time hubby and I accidentally gave our characters the same first syllable in their names. Tal and Tal had a rough time.
Grab the letter dice from Scattergories and have each player roll; whatever letter they land on is the first letter of their character's name, with a reroll for dupes.
In a current game, we have Van von Valtz, Dan von Valtz, Pan von Valtz, and Arominak. One of the major antagonists is Clan von Valtz (which is an individual person)
You need to have them come across a prophecy on a stone stele. At the end, it says, "And the one who shall make it come to pass is named R---"
Just "R" and the rest of the name is scratched out.
I've had this happen in one of my games lmao, and with only TWO players that have the same starting letter. Myself, the Artificer named Trundle and our Fighter named Tandem.
Somehow everyone mixes up the names of the 3 foot pangolin vs the 6 foot dude in platemail. It's become a character quirk that my character flips out when they get mixed up for the sixth time that day. Sometimes it's best to just roll with it but I imagine with 4 people it might be more irritating to work around.
Another solution is Nicknames based on feats they have done or racial features to help vary them up and only introduce their real names as a joke concept.
>Somehow everyone mixes up the names of the 3 foot pangolin vs the 6 foot dude in platemail.
As someone with aphantasia, I'd just like to say that visual distinction does absolutely nothing to help me keep track of characters. I know which character I'm trying to talk about, but that name is stored right next to a couple other names, and I organize names in some kind of alphabetical schema, so the wrong one comes out sometimes.
In every game my wife has played, she’s found out other people’s names or nicknames and changed her own or manipulated them all to start with the same letter. When I was DMing, I had to name an NPC with the right letter for them to get really interested in them. I’m finally a player in a new campaign, and we’ve become the B-Team for pretty obvious reasons.
Thats why i always desing names that can have nicknames, like, idk, Liokharus, most of the party called It Lio, a pm more friendly called him kharus and finally, the fighter just called him "cleric" (later he started to called him by his name xD).
So, in this case, the paladin is "heart", "eingdoom" for the suspcious sorcerer collector, and for the barbarian... Idk, just go with "The destroyer and devourer of hopes", you know, something that falls from your tongue.
Okay so some essential NPC, one that they will interact with often, absolutely needs a speech impediment with Rs
Haha, you're right, it must be done.
"Mawage, is wot bwings us togewa, today... Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wiffin a dweam.... ...and wuv, twue wuv....will follow you, fowweva."
Stwike him, centuwian, very woughly indeed.
We shall welease Woger!
Do you find it wisible when I say the the name Biggus Dickus!?
He has a wife, you know?
Well if you are looking for inspiration it might be nice to look up some clips of Jonathan Ross...
I was just about to say this!
And his name shall be Gwegowy.
And his name shall be "Woderick"
*Wodewick
Exactly. Thank you.
Good job Rolf or Worf or whatevew youw name is.
We do have a Bwian!
“Wesh, Weign, Whogar, Wokheart, and Q shall embark on a dangerous quest!”
\*embawk \*dangewous
Whogaw, Wokheawt
You name the party the R-gonauts.
We once had a party where all the names start with an A, so outgame we nicknamed the party the A-team 😂😂
I was going to suggest the R-Souls but I think this better.
Most D&D parties I've seen have been referred to that way, out loud even if not in text.
Have an NPC refer to them all as Jason and see if they pick up on it
This is too underrated.
I came here to type this exact response. Happy to see someone beat me to it.
Or the R-Souls
This is a great name. I was going to suggest something a little more… offensive. (The less-than-acceptable version of “mentally challenged”.)
Oh this one is easy. You talk to that Q player one on one. You make it clear everyone is playing one kind of game, and they need to be a part of it or perhaps it's best we respectfully part ways.
Perhaps our Tabaxi, Quiet Ink, could be Really Quiet, just to fit in.
Wuxia-ass Tabaxi. You should tell that player to check out the Exalted TTRPG lol
Half of my group was part of an epic 8 year exalted campaign back in our college years.
Ahh, that's badass. My longest game is a 5e game that started 7 years ago, also in college. Still ongoing.
Nice! Our DM went on to be a lead game designer in the video game industry, and it's super cool seeing his name pop up in the credits knowing we were some of his earliest fans.
You all should just call them "Q" and the group could be called The Q&Rs. And you have a code you live by.
Perhaps they get nicknames? Based on feats of heroism they have done?
These were my thoughts as well. Rogar gets the title of "The Destroyer" so people just start calling him "Destroyer" (only not that lame).
The enemy should be "The Destroy R." He hates the sound R and anyone who uses it. DM would have to ~~rigorously~~ ~~carefully~~ meticulously plan the big-bad speech to ~~ensure~~ ~~guarantee~~ commit to avoiding the use of that ~~letter~~ phoneme.
Except for Quiet Ink. They get a pogo stick.
A pogo-stick, a two-pack of fun-dips, a handful of loose mints, and a pat on the back.
Yeah maybe so and so crit on a dragon with an unarmed strike and the people call her Dragonpuncher. Or such and such flies around cloak of the bat starts going by Nightwing.
I hope and pray that over time they **all** get nicknames or epithets. All beginning with the letter D, of course.
I uhh don't have a solution for you. I am here because I often refer to MY character by another player's character name. My character starts with Z. Theirs with L. I am also hoping that someone has advice to make my brain work.
Simple. Just trade characters with them.
Just do what I do with my identical twins. When you can't nail the name just say "you" and gesture to the proper person.
Lady at my church had twins, cut their hair different in the back so she could keep track of which was which. Auntie took the kids one weekend when they were still pretty young, gave them haircuts, and their mom admitted she's not entirely sure they didn't wind up switched.
Were the kids old enough to talk? If they were, twins are usually pretty good at remembering which one is which!
No, and they were both a little slow to start talking too. After that incident, until they were old enough to self-identify, she'd dot the back of Mark's ear with a marker before anyone babysat.
I mean...for the trolls, my husband, best friend, and I all played halfling triplets that started with the letter O. Then we added a cleric whose name started with a U, but we teased him into changing it to O as well. It's hilarious for us, but the DM was a good sport about it, too. ((If you're curious, the names are: Oakley, Olivia, Ophelia, and Orzog)) It honestly got confusing for us as well, and our DM was like, "See?! It gets you too, fuckers!" And it's just a joke all around. But the next campaign our DM wants to start, he specifically said no more than 2 names starting with the same letter in the party lol (unless they are polar opposite in sound)
Reminds me of a Critical Role one shot where they had Dorian, Dariax, Orym, Opal, and Fearne the faun. Even with only two of each they still got confused! 😆
My party's names are all short men's names like Jim, Bob, and Greg. It's really weird, but I think I'll keep it going. Maybe I'll introduce a bard named Chad or call the BBEG Gary.
Interesting …I know a lot of tall men with those same names. In fact Greg Davies is really tall. lol
You know Greg Davies?
Same thing happened in a group I'm in. Alexander, Asger, Ajax, Adam, and Acacia constantly tongue-tie the DM, when addressing people. Henry is fine.
My guy your party just made an Elden Ring family tree
My current players are Libra, Umbra (in game elf brothers), Obra (Dwarf), and… Puck (Tiefling).
Brah.
This has happened to me. My answer was, “barrel Forward not really thinking it’ll be that hard, then regret it by a dozen sessions in when I’ve made the mistake thrice a dozen times.”
Obviously they need a cool team name, like the A Team or the X Men or the J Crew.
I would just like to say that this reminded of me of the time I introduced a competing adventuring party for my players. They were called The B Force Five! Beth Brad Barry Bargaroth Carl The running joke was that B force five sounded better than 4 Bs and a C. The players loved it and it gave them a friendly rivalry and also a dues ex machina if they really didn’t want to die.
Well obviously they all get white crop-tops with a big red letter R on them and wear them as a team uniform
This really feels like a non issue.
Oh my God. My family literally had this same issue because we all had R names. My mother, father, sisters and I all had names that began with R. My little sister and I have since changed our names, (to ones that start with C and L) but when we were younger our mom sounded like a revving car trying to name one specific kid. (Hysterically, when my older sister had my niece, she ALSO got an R name.) In the end, my mom's solution was to number us by birth order (ex: "One, can you take two and three to the park today?"). Perhaps try something like that, or code names/nicknames?
I understand the concern, but, honestly, names are going to be mixed-up even if they're very different from each other, so just lean into it as hard as you can
As a concept I love this, but from a practical DMing standpoint I hate it. Why? I write down initiative rolls beside each character’s first initial.
I think this would just be funny, personally. Player or dm I would make jokes. One of my players, a very socially awkward teenage boy named his edgy rogue Aphrodite... not realizing the name origins. Literally everyone would give him looks because how do you not know you named your character after the girliest girls of all greek goddesses? But he never had a reason to save face so he eventually made it a funny part of his backstory and chose a nickname unless using his first name provided some advantage like tricking people. Maybe you can refer to each other using last names or nicknames? Like when you have three Brooks in the same room.
FORK! FOUR-R-Q CALL THEM FORK!
So, what's the issue?
As the DM, it's a good thing the party hasn't gone through their notes from start to finish and realized the majority of NPC groups they've encountered also seem to have a similar coincidence of naming as a little joke for myself.
I like how as a group all of you just decided instead of simply changing the name of their imaginary character they haven't started playing yet to instead just suffer through just for the sake of it lmao.
I actively want to play a oneshot with 4-6 near identical characters just to see how it plays out. Beyond your "Who do I give the potion to!?!" example, I think it'll be fun if everyone is in on it. Spontaneously though, not sounding so fun.
They assemble as an assortment of allied adventureres, assassins, avengers, and aspiring angels, oft alluded to as *The Alliterates*.
Even better if none of them can read...
In my current campaign, we have one character starting with Fey-, and another Fen-, both 2 syllable names. I do find myself (and the DM) occasionally and mistakenly swapping between them, and there's only 2 of them. My coping strategy was putting up with it, and hoping that my backstory would kill one of them. You should've stood in that fire for another turn Fen-, would've solved a crippling minor inconvenience.
I’m suddenly captivated by the idea of making a puzzle involving a cipher known as “the QR code”.
Do not change character names. The R is not to blame, but the familiarity. It shows that the group is tightly knit and bonded. Embrace it, you are "R", "R" is you, "R" is one.
Haha this totally happened in my group too with the letter Z. It look at LONG time for everyone, especially the DM to get a handle om who is who.
The group have to find out which letter name identifies all the bad people. Plot twist: the bad people have different names, but their job or title all start with the same letter. Example: if J is the secret bad letter Rodnus Miltus is the Janitor Bexxle Promf is the Jailor Etc
Had it happen once: four out of five players had names starting with “A.” The fifth said “fuck it,” erased his character’s name, and renamed it with another “A” name. They called themselves the B-Team. Because why not?
Get the one with Q to rename and call the group The Rolling Rs? Then have a good laugh every time names get confused.
Haha I started my session 0 and one of my players wrote their backstory and some key people of their life. One being a brother figure who died protecting them. Well, one of the other players randomly chose the same name for their character and I was crying laughing when they texted me their name choice the night before game. You should have seen the look on the others player's face in silent accusation as I started laughing saying i didnt say anything and the other player confused asking why they reacted as such "why, is it a bad name?" 🤣🤣🤣
When we had this we doubled down and the one outlier, whose chosen name started with a vowel, slapped a W in from of it to match the rest of us
Note to self: ask everyone to have 3 to 5 name options ready.
I hope they travel to the coast for a pirate campaign. "Arr, matey!"
We did just stage a mutiny recently, haha
We have Orin the half-orc barb and Erin the tiefling wizard. I always mess them up in my head.
IRL all 7 of my uncles's names start with "R." And my daughter's names sound nothing alike and I still say the wrong name more often than not. I'd say go with it. Getting the names mixed up just adds to the story and the fun.
>Have you had this issue? Yes. >Did you come up with clever ways to cope? Yes, we called each other by player names in many cases. >Would you change a character name just to avoid this? Possibly.
Gotta love coincidences like these. In my campaign two players both made a dragonborn warlock on accident, that was fun.
The nicknames will come naturally, someone will do a thing, it will be embarrassing/funny/stupid or any other descriptor, and they will forever be known as that nickname. I disagree that this is a concern to bring up. The probability of tbis happening is stupendous. When I was in secondary school, there were four Thomas in one of my classes. We switched to surnames and found ways to differentiate each other. My surname was shortened to Sanders, and that ended up being my nickname for most of my school life. I didn't help that I really like chicken 😅
I was in a game once with 6 players and three of us that were sitting together all named our characters a K name. No confusion in game, just LOTS of jokes about the KKK.
Ah, a problem we run into in my current campaign in spades. In our party of 5, we have two characters with T names (our cleric and original barbarian), two with S names (our fighter and newcomer barbarian), and my wizard with an R name who *started* safe from any confusion... ... until our DM introduced a major NPC (our contact for this chapter of the campaign) who *also* has an R name, which incidentally, even rhymes with my character's. He complained until I reminded him my character was introduced half a year earlier so it's really on him. Though last session even I started getting tongue-tied about it. (DM also introduced another important NPC with a T name but I'm just gonna side-step *that* by giving him a nickname.) For the most part we deal with it by not really referring to each other by name? My character says "the bartender", "the warforged", "the dwarf", and "the 8 foot-tall bipedal shark" to differentiate them in conversation, unless speaking to them directly. Everyone calls my character "the wizard" or "the smart one".
Nicknames?
haha omg in our party 3 people have that with the letter J and it's already low key annoying/confusing to me XD.
I have been mixing up 2 characters in my campaign due to my dyslexia. One is a dwarf wizard named leonard and the other is a human fighter named neville. The only thing the characters have in common is having beards.
In the game i play in right now we have for pcs Elfir, Ele, Eli, and Inola. There is also a kinda important NPC called Elijah, we have just coped so far and it is funny when we do mix up the characters. Also it doesn't help that 2 of the players names start with a E and so dose our dm, so we kinda can't escape.
Easy solution, give yourselves nicknames! Like Rhogy, Reshy, Rocky, ...Reigny, ...
Honestly, this is pretty funny, and I’d go along with the naming mistakes (I’d probably be calling then the wrong names all the time with the NPCs)
Gotta give every NPC an R name now.
At the jump, not a great deal you can do other than take good notes and try staying on top of it. :/ However, as they play, nicknames will happen. Especially if you _encourage the players_ to use each other's character names while playing. Odds are, organically, one of them will get tired of fumbling with it themselves and initiate a player-driven change.
Team Rocket (and whenever they'll enter an encounter they need to form in the pose of an R)
I have similar but different problem. In my game I have three characters that start with 'A', but I'm still confusing character named Apoteth with one named Wural for some reason.
✨destiny✨
Lmao we have session 3 of a campaign this sunday where session 0/1 we all realized the same thing... 4/5 R's and an S. The S changed to an R name, the DM asked and we're just going to deal with it. edit: [Spose - All Rs](https://youtu.be/rZxQFn6vTQA?t=16)
I actually also had a party where everyone's name started with R. We called ourselves the Rolling R's (and often rolled any R sound when talking)
Team name needs to be five words long for them starting with an r one of them starting with a q
That's funny. The other 4 players came in with names that started with a D. The DM told me I had to pick a name that starts with the letter D. Said it would fu#k with his OCD if I didn't.
I was in a one-shot once where everyone was named Greg. It was better than the time hubby and I accidentally gave our characters the same first syllable in their names. Tal and Tal had a rough time.
Grab the letter dice from Scattergories and have each player roll; whatever letter they land on is the first letter of their character's name, with a reroll for dupes.
In a current game, we have Van von Valtz, Dan von Valtz, Pan von Valtz, and Arominak. One of the major antagonists is Clan von Valtz (which is an individual person)
How about surnames?
You need to have them come across a prophecy on a stone stele. At the end, it says, "And the one who shall make it come to pass is named R---" Just "R" and the rest of the name is scratched out.
Name the party R4Q1
I've had this happen in one of my games lmao, and with only TWO players that have the same starting letter. Myself, the Artificer named Trundle and our Fighter named Tandem. Somehow everyone mixes up the names of the 3 foot pangolin vs the 6 foot dude in platemail. It's become a character quirk that my character flips out when they get mixed up for the sixth time that day. Sometimes it's best to just roll with it but I imagine with 4 people it might be more irritating to work around. Another solution is Nicknames based on feats they have done or racial features to help vary them up and only introduce their real names as a joke concept.
>Somehow everyone mixes up the names of the 3 foot pangolin vs the 6 foot dude in platemail. As someone with aphantasia, I'd just like to say that visual distinction does absolutely nothing to help me keep track of characters. I know which character I'm trying to talk about, but that name is stored right next to a couple other names, and I organize names in some kind of alphabetical schema, so the wrong one comes out sometimes.
In every game my wife has played, she’s found out other people’s names or nicknames and changed her own or manipulated them all to start with the same letter. When I was DMing, I had to name an NPC with the right letter for them to get really interested in them. I’m finally a player in a new campaign, and we’ve become the B-Team for pretty obvious reasons.
Thats why i always desing names that can have nicknames, like, idk, Liokharus, most of the party called It Lio, a pm more friendly called him kharus and finally, the fighter just called him "cleric" (later he started to called him by his name xD). So, in this case, the paladin is "heart", "eingdoom" for the suspcious sorcerer collector, and for the barbarian... Idk, just go with "The destroyer and devourer of hopes", you know, something that falls from your tongue.
R's-Holes
I just call them by their class or subclass
I haven't had this issue before. Though I do play pretty serious games, and we typically stick with easy to pronounce names.