I want to get out of this habit as soon as possible, anyone have a good idea to shift from focusing on the numbers on the paper to more along the lines of the character's personality and style?
If you want to play epic characters, just increase the number of point.
Simple, fair and you wont throw your dice away because they roll 9 three times.
Anyway, point buy is good. its a balancing agent for players that focus too much on numbers, IE, you. :D
Your character's stats represent both strengths and weaknesses, and you decide what the numbers mean. Take the following scores for instance: Str 8, Dex 14, Con 13, Int 13, Wis 7, Cha 6. Here's just two different ways these same numbers could be interpreted.
1- Rath has good health (Con 13) but he's not very strong (Str 8) because he's lazy. His low Wisdom and Charisma (7, 6) shows his "I'm not gonna bother" attitude. Fortunately, Rather's natural wit (Int 13) and Dexterity (14) keep him from being a total loser :P.
2- Rath has several good points-- he has studied hard (Int 13) and practiced his manual skills (Dex 14), unfortunately his Strenth is low (8) from a lack of exercise (all those endless hours spent reading books). Despite that, Rath's health is still good (Con 13). His low Wisdom and Charisma (7, 6) are a result of his lack of social contact.
Rath's stats are obviously not the "best of the best", but it's possible to turn these "disappointing" stats into a character who is both interesting and fun to play. Instead of worrying too much about "good" stats, focus on the opportunity to role-play, create a unique and interesting personality for your character.
My best advice for anyone "obsessed" with ability scores
.I want to get out of this habit as soon as possible, anyone have a good idea to shift from focusing on the numbers on the paper to more along the lines of the character's personality and style?
Learn to enjoy failure.
Seriously.
I've played in games where everything worked without a hitch. At first it is fun to say you came, did what you did, and saved the world/kingdom/whatever. But after a while, that is kind of boring.
Screwing up, doing things you know your character sucks at, and then making the most of it can be exciting and fun. It makes for far more rememorable stories.
Pick a serious character flaw that you and the group can have fun with and you would enjoy roleplaying and the group would want to interact with.
Example: Loud Drunkard - low Charisma, average Con. Dump all skill points into Drinking (for 4th take it as a Trained skill). Demand to loudly talk to all NPCs, especially important ones. The group will have to try to sober you up before adventures and keep you away from meetings. A good DM can work with it (you might win money in drinking contests or regain consciousness in the drunk tank next to the NPC the group can't find.) Note that not all groups enjoy this kind of thing, so get their okay on it first.
There are lots of other possibilities. A warrior that has always been terrified of horses. A bard with a speech impediment. Any character that is compelled to spend far beyond their means and take loans from shifty NPCs. When you have a fun idea you want the mechanics to follow that concept, rather than just focus on being the best at everything.
You can still try to do this with all stats 18+, but it is more believable when your low Cha, low Con, shy quiet guy who is afraid of girls has to address the princess and is so nervous he accidently pukes on her.
You can still try to do this with all stats 18+, but it is more believable when your low Cha, low Con, shy quiet guy who is afraid of girls has to address the princess and is so nervous he accidently pukes on her.
I don't think your party would have let you within arms length in the first place...
I don't think your party would have let you within arms length in the first place...
Oh, you can go much farther than your arm!
And if you are dragonborn I think you might get a good long line - or maybe a burst if you take some feat
Think about famous characters... comic book heroes... famous story characters, etc... What makes them memorable, real, deep and close to your heart? It's not so much what they can do, as what hinders them. Think of Superman, and you think of Kryptonite. Think of Drizzt Do'Urden and you have to think of a whole can of worms.
A quote in Hellboy "We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their defects." states this very well.
Additionally... My personal advice beyond this... is to really find a PERSONALITY in the character you mean to play and make that the focus of your character developement before you even write up a sheet, or failing that, at least as you play. Be more concerned with WHO they are than WHAT they are or HOW GOOD they are. Some of my favorite characters get their arses handed to them over and over but there's some saving grace that makes this not only acceptable, but funny as hell most of the time. ;)
As an example... I recently wrote up two great character backstories (In my humble opinion) after becoming inspired by some of the new 4E content. I gave my characters DEEP backstories and then the personalities came very naturally. (If you'd like to read those backstories: www.arsieiuni.net/roleplaying.html)
After making those two characters, I needed to make one for another game that started and I had NO ideas... so I started from class/race combo for once. Very rare for me. Ultimately, I came up with an Eladrin Wizard. This is a strange thing for me to play and that's part of why I wanted to do it. A roleplaying challege. So then I couldn't determine their gender... so I decided to play the fun, hilarious aspect of "no one's quite sure", which with an Eladrin is really funny because 1) they are kinda foreign to a lot of common folk, 2) males and females aren't SO different if you look at them... 3) They're kinda androgynous anyway. Is this redundant to statement 2? Oh well.
Anyway...So I play an androgynous Eladrin wizard with a chaotic neutral personality. (My Dm uses the old alignment system because it's just plain better. :P )
Ru'ara Killemitore` is born. Having little idea who they will be and less time to figure that out since the character was generated on the fly for a session... I had to wing it and I found something GREAT. The starting scenario involved us all ending up in the same town that had a problem with recent monster infestations becoming so serious that they townspeople thought it a curse. So, Ru, immediately after discovering that horses were ridiculously unaffordable, went about town and noticed signs offering a reward for fixing this monster plague. Ru then marches up to the local mayor's office, fey steps up to the front desk as prestidigitation throws a puff of wind into (his? her?) cloak and hair and addresses the mayor's receptionist mightily "Greetings, sir! My name is Ru'ara Killemitore` and I am a POWERFUL WIZARD who has come to alleviate this fair town of the horrible curse that plagues its good people!" Sparkles fall about Ru's head and the receptionist is wow'd by a high diplomacy check. Ru has used the meager magic tricks (he? she?) is capable of producing to awe the ignorant common folk... and begun what will be a character quirk as well as an eventual reputation. With this, my character received the best reception to the mayor of any of the party members, ended up talking out a bigger reward, and gained the near-total allegiance of one of the other party members in like manner. The character has told me now who they are to be... and I am very amused as well as pleased and ready to play along. The character is very chaotic, grandiose, nearly aloof with intelligence and exceptionally diplomatic (Ru couldn't seem to roll up less than a 20 composite score on diplomacy, ever.) Ru also speaks very quickly, tends to kinda talk above people's heads, doesn't seem to mind that, and sometimes lets train of thought just carry (him? her?) away.
In addition to all that.. it's hilarious to let people just wonder if they're dealing with a lady or a lord... and who knows when/if that will be revealed. Just a lot of flavor to the character.
So my point is... a quirky, fun character with interesting personality is more fun to play than a guy with all 18's and lots of great feats. In fact, to me, that would be boring. What would be the point?
Remember to put roleplaying over roll-playing and you should be fine.
And as a final note, if you find yourself lacking on inspiration? Don't be afraid to rip something off, at least as a starting point. If you're familiar with Order of the Stick? Ru is kinda inspired by Varsuvius.
Do the other players care? No, they're just enjoying the ride. Roleplaying isn't all about originality... and a lot of originality can spring from an unoriginally-inspired character. Best wishes in your roleplaying endeavors and I truly hope this will help!
Rei
If people insist on rolling dice, I will let them roll a 1d6 for bonus points, instead of a flat 3, but everyone has to use the same method.
Normally I DM so usually I wouldn't have this problem. But when I sit down to make my character it seems that I always focus my attention the most on my stats because stats mean power. Whenever I roll low stats or even normal stats i'm always very tempted to keep rerolling until I get crazily good stats so that my character owns everything. I really hate myself for this, and I find that its pretty degrading for a DM to try and Min/Max and Power Game as a player. Even though our current DM prefers for us to roll our stats for these characters, I'm choosing to do point buy because that way there's no temptation and I get to make my stats the way I want them.
I want to get out of this habit as soon as possible, anyone have a good idea to shift from focusing on the numbers on the paper to more along the lines of the character's personality and style?
The best advice I could give is to break down and play a "non-optimal" character. I suffered from the same affliction as you describe until I was forced to play otherwise.
I was in a campaign where we had to roll our stats in order. 4d6, drop lowest, that's your Strength. 4d6, drop lowest, that's your Dexterity. And so on.
I ended up with a Paladin with an 8 Dexterity and a 12 Charisma. Needless to say, that was a character I would never even consider playing before. At first I was upset, but then I came up with a concept for him. Miles was a child when a demon was sent to kill his family. His father was died defending him, but Miles was still badly burned in the attack leaving him lame in one leg. He was deformed and sort of single-minded in his determination to root out evil, which tended to make him less charismatic than your average paladin, but he was steadfast and brave to a fault. He had an irrational fear of fire but would also go out of his way to face it and prove that fear did not control him.
He wasn't that much less powerful than a min/maxed pally of the same level, and man did he have flavor. And whenever Miles accomplished something heroic, for some reason it was more satisfying.
I had a lot of fun playing that character, and it cured my overwhelming drive to optimize.
Nobody is perfect.
Flawed characters with weaknesses do exist.
Because they have more challenges to overcome, if they can do things that people without that weakness can do, people see them as heroes who have overcome adversity.
I want to get out of this habit as soon as possible, anyone have a good idea to shift from focusing on the numbers on the paper to more along the lines of the character's personality and style?
It's tough to break that habit, isn't it?
For some of us, coming up with a character that is defective is anathema. Part of the problem is that the numbers do in fact influence how you role-play your character, and among us are some who do not WANT to role-play characters that are unimpressive, physically weak, pathetically sickly klutzes with no common sense. I see nothing wrong with wanting your heroes to be, well, heroic. It IS problematic if you want your character to be the best at everything.
I'd recommend finding a niche, discussing it with your fellow players and seeing if they'll cede you that niche. If you want to be the strongest, or the fastest. . . or the best hunter, the best swordsman (not necessarily best combatant) then it's easier to do if everyone else knows about your personal desire.
The way I see it, at least they'll know where you're coming from, even if they choose not to indulge you. Conversely, it'll be much easier to rein in your own desire to inflate your stats knowing it's horning in on someone else's territory, if your fellow players have chosen to respect your desire to be "Da Man" in your chosen field.
By the way, it makes it especially easy to force yourself to play a character like this if your DM gives you some sort of tradeoff for your personality flaws. For example: Take a -4 to all will saves against fear in exchange for one or two skill points, etc. If there is some material gain to playing a flawed character you will be more satisfied playing him. In the game I played my first flawed character in I gained ability scores, but I also had a *lot* of flaws.
So one day, I started an adventure , and I made a character with only 65 ability points, level one with regular gold. I focused entirely on story plot, and decided instead of xp I would level on a planned basis. It was a lot of fun. I had to enlist a lot of help, but xp was not an issue, it felt like I was playing a more realistic person. I was still a hero, because the intelligence my rogue provided was invaluable, and I participated in major fights.
Now, I just try to make a fun person to RP. Yes, I still play with a munchkin and an RP ***** (who isn't really all that bad), but I no longer have to uber. The last adventure we had, they argued with me for 10 minutes as to why I would use a falchion instead of a greatsword. I just said it looked cooler. I played an alchoholic female warrior with a rough personality but a good heart.
My character wasn't better, but I was good enought to survive, and I had a lot more fun.
If you have to argue with yourself in terms of rules to get you there, just view making a balanced character as having a -1 penalty to everything but your specialty, which is -3. Your a little weaker, but it is ok because you will have more fun.
edit: they finally put up a word filter. Cool. But I can't call people an RP ***** anymore.
arsieiuni has a really good point. There was a time my brother and I were playing and he decided to be an ubered out homebrew character. He created a crusader with full base attack and all cleric spells.
Obviously overpowered.
At the same time I was bored of playing the same old characters, so I rolled my race and class, and even my name.
I played Kent the half orc druid for a long time. Sure, I had trouble keeping his spells going, he had a decent strength and cool character. He always carried a large scimitar, and later on became known as the "devil". ( he hunted troll invasion parties as a black panther. very cool.)
His greatest moments included being trapped in a cave by a coven of hags for 3 days after losing to them in a fight. When I got a chance, he used his staff to summon a greater earth elemental (earth elemental + cave = strategic advantages)
Is other greatest moment was when he destroyed his staff in a true ritual as an offering to the nature spirits to awaken forest (S&S, modified rules).
Anyhow, the uber characters are usually stereotypes and not much fun to run. You won't remember the times your fighter won a sword match. Your going to remember when he outsmarts a mage in a game of chess. Your gonna remember his blind leap onto a racing wagon, dropping his sword, and beating off the baron with a rock. Long story short, its the bad times that are so much fun!
I think my favorite character was one who was mute. Could not speak at all. It makes roleplaying more interesting in any combat situation, or even interacting with NPCs. The other PCs learned my shorthand notes and gestures so that I could easily pass along simple messages.
He was the adopted son and only heir of a minor noble house, and sought revenge for his father's murder. He had trained extensively in archery, some swordsmanship, diplomacy and history. A basic noble child's upbringing, despite being mute. And being a noble he was proud, but his muteness also gave him more empathy for others, and he would always remember anyone who helped him.
I can't remember his exact attributes, but he was higher on Dex and Int, and lower on everything else. His Cha was definitely not high, since his ability to influence others was extremely limited.
One thing you can do is to start with a story, a character concept of their past or personality, and build a character around that starting point.
I think I saw this in a white wolf game, but you start by choosing three ideas or adjectives to start with.
EX: Tough, cynical, veteran.
From there, think about his / her past. Were they always cynical, or did something happen to make them that way? Perhaps they were injured in a battle, or a good friend or family member died.
Or, for more of a twist, take this bitter and hardened person, and make them unable to resist helping others in need, their own memories of regret forcing them to not leave others to the same fate.
I do think the niche idea is a solid one. You can still powergame, fit in well with the party (since you're not out-doing everyone) and have a fun time of it.
If you are still having trouble breaking out of the min/maxing, there is a more extreme measure. Purposefully choose a large deficiency, such as complete pacifism, or deafness, or addiction. Then build a character with that in mind, and roleplay it to the hilt. The character can still be very powerful, skilled and all that jazz, but they also have a heavy drawback to balance them out. The addict, for example; as long as they get their drug of choice, they are on top of the world, but when they lose it, they start to crash, suffer withdrawal and everything kind of falls apart.
If that sounds like too much, there are other drawbacks which are less impacting, but still very fun. Give them an obsession with something, like history, poetry or opera. They will spend lots of their hard earned adventuring loot for rare tomes or to speak with a famous poet.
Hopefully these ideas will help you, and if not, toss 'em.
Good luck sir (or madam)!
Our present Dm is great, and since our group is a good mix between experienced players/dm's (10yr+), and new players he came up with a 76 point system. This has allowed every player to be creative with designing their characters, yet an equal level playing ground for the initial development of the character.
Don't get me wrong there is still some min/maxing of character's, but the initial start is the same. It has also allowed more communication between player's. The newer player's are calling us oldies in order to get together and learn more and to share new ideas. A fresh perspective from the new guys are quite refreshing, and they do have some interesting concepts. Anyways, I digress.
If you are willing to start with a set point system, along with everyone in the group. Instead of trying to powerhouse your character, you might find that you can taylor your character into a more defined set and really enjoy roleplaying the personality. Your strength's will compliment another in the group and visa versa, it helps when bringing a group together and having them work together.
Good Luck and Have Fun
One of the players (ISYN) has this absurd phobia of ever taking any damage. He takes it so far as to run if he ever even gets targeted by anything(no matter if it misses) He thinks the only people who should ever take any damage is the Defenders(no he'll never play a Defender).
The current 'leader' is so single minded he refuses to let the group explore/inspect anything. The current 'quest' is to follow an old trade route to another city, and also find out why it isn't used anymore(he says the first part is the mission the second part is not)
That's just two of them the others are varying degrees of that attitude.
What I would suggest to the OP;
Make the background and personality and have the DM make the actual character. If your Dm isn't cruel(you know having a low charisma but giving you all charisma based powers) you should come out with a fun, playable character.