How do you create characters? - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

How do you create characters?

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
chanter_hound
Feb 03, 2010 10:55:11 For me, I'm usually 80% of the time, creating the concept of a character.. A like a foxgirl who quite shy, but is a pyromaniac. Then I go out to find the mechanics to make such a character. I don't view the classes as classes, but fractions of a true class. (DnD 3.5)

For example, I may want to make a character who could vanish in the middle of the streets. So i pick up hide in plain sight from shadow dancer to do that. Later though, I find better feats i could use, and so i try cramming all the mechanics and try to find out how to get it to work using no homebrew.

My DM though takes on a different take. When he makes a character he tends to pick classes and such, then tries to make the personality afterwards.

For my characters, my artificer, the one that sparked the whole firearms debancle, was first drawn about 2003 when he came into creation. about 3 years before i even picked up my first PHB.
www.elfwood.com/~jame/Male_Cast_part_1.2...

He has since developed a bit further.
brimstone-hound.deviantart.com/art/Hallo...

And now, in about 3 days, he will have the first time he has gon DnD.

Currently, I'm looking for mechanics for a guy to use magic to cause weapons to float around him and attack, using his own attack ability. I haven't looked into psiconics yet though. I'm also looking for mechanics for a spear based fighter.. who hopefully could fly. (Big black raven character)
#2
brassbaboon
Feb 03, 2010 12:09:50 As I mentioned on the thread that I suppose prompted you to start this thread, I tend to create a concept character. Based on your description above, I'd say that there is probably a blurring of the line between "concept" and "backstory" in our definitions.

To me the concept is all about the "what" not the "why" or even the "how". The first thing I do when I'm setting out to create a character for a campaign is work with the DM to understand the setting and as much of the campaign goals as the DM will tell me. From there I try to figure out what sort of character would be the most challenging and fun to play. I would probably come up with a completely different concept if the setting is a poltical intrigue in a large city than if it's set in a jungle or the deep woods.

Here is how I came up with the concept for "Falyn" my spellthief who is now in an indeterminate state.

The campaign was initially set in a gnome city, but a city that was on the exposed edge of the frontier and was surrounded by fey forests and troll-infested hills. It seemed to me that would mean there could be some encounters between gnomes and, say, pixies.

Then I asked myself "what would happen if a pixie and a gnome produced an offspring?" From there the DM and I worked out a hybrid race, working as hard as we could to balance it. We swapped out some of the gnome special abilities for some pixie ones and gave the resulting offspring non-functioning wings (although they did provide some bonuses to jumping).

From there I worked out that I wanted to play a sneaky skill-monkey kind of character with some limited magical ability. Originally I had conceived of this as a sort of rogue/sorcerer hybrid, but I happened to purchase a copy of "The Complete Adventurer" at about that time and thought the "spellthief" class would be perfect. It turns out that the spellthief class is significantly underpowered as you go up in levels, but that's another story.

Now that I had the "what" pretty much defined, I started working on the "why" and "how" of the character, but I consider that more of the backstory of the character than the concept.

I've done similar things in creating an elf-dryad hybrid for a different campaign.

I like to play around with custom and unique races, that allows me to continue to feel a sense of the fantastic in the game after elves, halflings and the 'common' races get a little boring...
#3
chanter_hound
Feb 03, 2010 13:42:37 I totally agree with you on the 'common' races. Any race from the PHB1 bores me.. yet i continue to keep playing humans. Cause a DM has yet to allow me to use Lupin, and I don't really get level adjustment that much so i stay away from that as far as possible.

I think we run on very close the same thing, I create the what, then try to find the how. Like my artificer, I've gone through a number of different "Cat" races that would emulate. Unlike you however, I stay away from homebrew, so I'm limited to only things i can find in the books and the dragon. (The DM i'm playing with though makes some heavy use of homebrew though.) So, I found the aberition feats that would fill the cat ears, tail, and eyes. Which was also used to further fullfill the mad alchemist theme i'm doing with him.

Lol, that reminds me.. how you were talking about feats that give a small skill bonus.. The aborith feats do exactly that. Like one that gave a tail which gave +4 to balance, but gave you a -1 to diplomacy, handle animal, disguse, and gather information. Even funnier is that I took a frail flaw to get it, which gave me a -1 hp per level. So in order to get a +4 to balance, I loss out on skills and 1hp per level.

Lucky though the feat for eyes gives me dark vision.. 5 feet per abilith feat. So in order to have all this at level 1.. I take -3 to those skills, -1 hp per level, -1 AC (Vunerable flaw), and any roleplay problems that would happen.. to gain +2 listen, +4 balance, and 15 feet fo darkvision.
#4
brassbaboon
Feb 03, 2010 13:51:13 By the way, my avatar is my final concept drawing of Falyn. As part of his concept he was a dagger specialist, he ONLY used daggers, melee or ranged. He had dagger sheaths on his calves, thighs, waist, back and concealed up his sleeves.

He was a lot of fun to play, but it was clear after he hit level 4 that he was holding the party back. He simply couldn't keep up with a rogue of the same level, and his spell casting was so lame in comparison to a sorcerer that the party expressed little remorse when he fell off the cliff. The barbarian gnome I replaced him with was much more effective in combat.
#5
RPJesus
Feb 03, 2010 20:43:33
For me, I'm usually 80% of the time, creating the concept of a character.. A like a foxgirl who quite shy, but is a pyromaniac. Then I go out to find the mechanics to make such a character. I don't view the classes as classes, but fractions of a true class. (DnD 3.5)

This is generally what I do too, though I tend to think of a broad concept (one of FFTA's judges) then find a class that fits (Paladin) and then narrow the concept based on what powers and such "feel right"
Of course that's 4th ed but it's basically the same regardless. I also seem to have the advantage of most of my DMs knowing me well enough to know that, in the words of one of my friends; "I know you're not going to do anything overpowered with it, you're just going to use it for the lulz." (The item in question was a bag of tricks that could summon only cats).
#6
Mcnancy
Feb 03, 2010 21:01:01 It depends on the campaign; if it's just a fun casual game or a one shot campaign, I go with a archetype that inspires me, if it's a long serious campaign I think more about what kind of story do I want tell and then the character fall into place.

One shot game or casual campaign: absent minded elderly mage

Long epic campaign: young girl chosen as a prophet, the church grants her knighthood hands her a sword and lays all their hopes on her small shoulders
#7
chanter_hound
Feb 03, 2010 23:12:58 Lol.. With me, I'd actually kinda do that in reverse. Since my Absent minded elderly mage is one of my main characters. I love having characters who have reversed metaknowledge. In otherwords they know so much stuff that I could metagame all night long and still not know everything my character actually knows.

Happened with a character in NWN that i made to be diviner.. and well, when i tried to play her like every other character (Ignorant of other peoples names and backstory) I was told that I really didn't have to do that.. My character should have already known who she was talking to.

My friend though would play the Young girl character.. except his backstory comes to light as he makes it up on the spot. To me he seems to always be gaining for a mechanical advantage via roleplay.

Jesus.. I wish i had your DMs sometimes. I've got a handful of LoL characters, from John Doe, who i've been trying to figue out how to make him awsome, while only having 13's in every stat, using improvised weapons and not wearing armor. Then also never appearing to have any formal combat training. Essentially a guy who is so plain and ordinary it will make your eyes bleed. Course since I go strictly by the book myself, I never try homebrewing stuff too much. (Until now.. I'm starting up a homebrew "workshop")

My Dm said something about a joke campain where one person (a barbarian) is reincarnated into the form of an 8 year old girl, who still has every stat and ability of the barbarian. So I came up with the idea of actually getting an 8 year old girl to work. Cept i need to be like level 3 or so before i can cast the spells to enhance her familiar. (suppose to be a stuffed animal.)
#8
RPJesus
Feb 03, 2010 23:46:41

My Dm said something about a joke campain where one person (a barbarian) is reincarnated into the form of an 8 year old girl, who still has every stat and ability of the barbarian. So I came up with the idea of actually getting an 8 year old girl to work. Cept i need to be like level 3 or so before i can cast the spells to enhance her familiar. (suppose to be a stuffed animal.)

I've recently had the urge to play a 12 year old gnome bard girl, and keeping in the tradition of "the bard provides the soundtrack" bust out nothing but Maximum the Hormone, Detroit Metal City, etc (And likely make anybody thinking she's cute a berserk button) .
#9
chanter_hound
Feb 04, 2010 0:01:12 Reminds me of the Terrible Fightful Bloodthirty Cuteness, a halfling barbarian/bard. Totally dependent on charisma. Would go into rage, causing a frightful aura around here, and chase people with a whip. Unfortantly, in NWN there was a glitch or something and the aura never worked.
#10
oxybe
Feb 05, 2010 18:22:02 i go both ways :D

sometimes i have an idea and i hammer it out conceptually then mechanically. i get a neat idea for a character either through daydreaming, something i read online, based off an anime character or whatever. then i put it to paper. i've almost got gurran laagan the 3.5 warforged worked out. almost.

other times i create a warforged warden for the neat mechanics and then get the hilarious picture of a big 'ol tree (who's really a robot) running around with a ghost owl in his mouth, bonking people on the head with a big stone hammer.

really, inspiration strikes before or after mechanics are layed down.
#11
sebiale
Feb 05, 2010 20:29:55 I use this template:
Name-
Age-
Species-
Mates-
Offspring-
Father-
Mother-
Other Relatives-
Affiliations-
Rank/Titles-
Abilities-
Physical Description-
Mental Description-
Deeds-
Past-
Present Status-
Future-
Greatest Ambition-
Fighting Style-
Quotes-

It doesn't cover everything. But it serves as a wonderful starting point. Or points, as it were.
#12
darksavior
Feb 10, 2010 2:46:16 How do I create a character? With the Character Builder. I find mechanical concepts I like and that fit into the game world, and then develop a personality for the character after. I find that having the finished mechanics of a character helps inform the personality and backstory in a reverse engineering process. My 2 cents.
#13
chanter_hound
Feb 10, 2010 9:18:53 Ah, so you are kinda like how my DM works. He tends to find the mechanics first, then build the persona around that.
#14
sebiale
Feb 10, 2010 10:41:58 I prefer to make the personality and then the stats.
#15
adun_irving
Feb 11, 2010 17:50:17 Mine is usually a combination. Sometimes I have a good character concept, but usually I have a class as a framework. For example, my favorite (and still-current) character was based around the rogue class as a thief, but also has a massive backstory with exile, suffering, and the deaths of both of his parents. As the story went on, I enhanced his story from just being a rudimentary former thief into a big controversy where his mother's family (elves) were racist and exiled her when she married a human. Turns out, they actually exiled her because her husband - and consequently my character - carried the blood of an ancient master vampire, manifested in the Dhampyr Bloodline.

Other times, I'll decide on the race and class first (warforged battlerager fighter), and then invent a personality (the calm mediator of the group, a self-sacrificing defender, but when he gets pissed, he gets cold and cruel). It all depends on what gets me interested.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 chanter_hound Feb 03, 2010 10:55:11	For me, I'm usually 80% of the time, creating the concept of a character.. A like a foxgirl who quite shy, but is a pyromaniac. Then I go out to find the mechanics to make such a character. I don't view the classes as classes, but fractions of a true class. (DnD 3.5) For example, I may want to make a character who could vanish in the middle of the streets. So i pick up hide in plain sight from shadow dancer to do that. Later though, I find better feats i could use, and so i try cramming all the mechanics and try to find out how to get it to work using no homebrew. My DM though takes on a different take. When he makes a character he tends to pick classes and such, then tries to make the personality afterwards. For my characters, my artificer, the one that sparked the whole firearms debancle, was first drawn about 2003 when he came into creation. about 3 years before i even picked up my first PHB. www.elfwood.com/~jame/Male_Cast_part_1.2... He has since developed a bit further. brimstone-hound.deviantart.com/art/Hallo... And now, in about 3 days, he will have the first time he has gon DnD. Currently, I'm looking for mechanics for a guy to use magic to cause weapons to float around him and attack, using his own attack ability. I haven't looked into psiconics yet though. I'm also looking for mechanics for a spear based fighter.. who hopefully could fly. (Big black raven character)
#2 brassbaboon Feb 03, 2010 12:09:50	As I mentioned on the thread that I suppose prompted you to start this thread, I tend to create a concept character. Based on your description above, I'd say that there is probably a blurring of the line between "concept" and "backstory" in our definitions. To me the concept is all about the "what" not the "why" or even the "how". The first thing I do when I'm setting out to create a character for a campaign is work with the DM to understand the setting and as much of the campaign goals as the DM will tell me. From there I try to figure out what sort of character would be the most challenging and fun to play. I would probably come up with a completely different concept if the setting is a poltical intrigue in a large city than if it's set in a jungle or the deep woods. Here is how I came up with the concept for "Falyn" my spellthief who is now in an indeterminate state. The campaign was initially set in a gnome city, but a city that was on the exposed edge of the frontier and was surrounded by fey forests and troll-infested hills. It seemed to me that would mean there could be some encounters between gnomes and, say, pixies. Then I asked myself "what would happen if a pixie and a gnome produced an offspring?" From there the DM and I worked out a hybrid race, working as hard as we could to balance it. We swapped out some of the gnome special abilities for some pixie ones and gave the resulting offspring non-functioning wings (although they did provide some bonuses to jumping). From there I worked out that I wanted to play a sneaky skill-monkey kind of character with some limited magical ability. Originally I had conceived of this as a sort of rogue/sorcerer hybrid, but I happened to purchase a copy of "The Complete Adventurer" at about that time and thought the "spellthief" class would be perfect. It turns out that the spellthief class is significantly underpowered as you go up in levels, but that's another story. Now that I had the "what" pretty much defined, I started working on the "why" and "how" of the character, but I consider that more of the backstory of the character than the concept. I've done similar things in creating an elf-dryad hybrid for a different campaign. I like to play around with custom and unique races, that allows me to continue to feel a sense of the fantastic in the game after elves, halflings and the 'common' races get a little boring...
#3 chanter_hound Feb 03, 2010 13:42:37	I totally agree with you on the 'common' races. Any race from the PHB1 bores me.. yet i continue to keep playing humans. Cause a DM has yet to allow me to use Lupin, and I don't really get level adjustment that much so i stay away from that as far as possible. I think we run on very close the same thing, I create the what, then try to find the how. Like my artificer, I've gone through a number of different "Cat" races that would emulate. Unlike you however, I stay away from homebrew, so I'm limited to only things i can find in the books and the dragon. (The DM i'm playing with though makes some heavy use of homebrew though.) So, I found the aberition feats that would fill the cat ears, tail, and eyes. Which was also used to further fullfill the mad alchemist theme i'm doing with him. Lol, that reminds me.. how you were talking about feats that give a small skill bonus.. The aborith feats do exactly that. Like one that gave a tail which gave +4 to balance, but gave you a -1 to diplomacy, handle animal, disguse, and gather information. Even funnier is that I took a frail flaw to get it, which gave me a -1 hp per level. So in order to get a +4 to balance, I loss out on skills and 1hp per level. Lucky though the feat for eyes gives me dark vision.. 5 feet per abilith feat. So in order to have all this at level 1.. I take -3 to those skills, -1 hp per level, -1 AC (Vunerable flaw), and any roleplay problems that would happen.. to gain +2 listen, +4 balance, and 15 feet fo darkvision.
#4 brassbaboon Feb 03, 2010 13:51:13	By the way, my avatar is my final concept drawing of Falyn. As part of his concept he was a dagger specialist, he ONLY used daggers, melee or ranged. He had dagger sheaths on his calves, thighs, waist, back and concealed up his sleeves. He was a lot of fun to play, but it was clear after he hit level 4 that he was holding the party back. He simply couldn't keep up with a rogue of the same level, and his spell casting was so lame in comparison to a sorcerer that the party expressed little remorse when he fell off the cliff. The barbarian gnome I replaced him with was much more effective in combat.
#5 RPJesus Feb 03, 2010 20:43:33	For me, I'm usually 80% of the time, creating the concept of a character.. A like a foxgirl who quite shy, but is a pyromaniac. Then I go out to find the mechanics to make such a character. I don't view the classes as classes, but fractions of a true class. (DnD 3.5) This is generally what I do too, though I tend to think of a broad concept (one of FFTA's judges) then find a class that fits (Paladin) and then narrow the concept based on what powers and such "feel right" Of course that's 4th ed but it's basically the same regardless. I also seem to have the advantage of most of my DMs knowing me well enough to know that, in the words of one of my friends; "I know you're not going to do anything overpowered with it, you're just going to use it for the lulz." (The item in question was a bag of tricks that could summon only cats).
#6 Mcnancy Feb 03, 2010 21:01:01	It depends on the campaign; if it's just a fun casual game or a one shot campaign, I go with a archetype that inspires me, if it's a long serious campaign I think more about what kind of story do I want tell and then the character fall into place. One shot game or casual campaign: absent minded elderly mage Long epic campaign: young girl chosen as a prophet, the church grants her knighthood hands her a sword and lays all their hopes on her small shoulders
#7 chanter_hound Feb 03, 2010 23:12:58	Lol.. With me, I'd actually kinda do that in reverse. Since my Absent minded elderly mage is one of my main characters. I love having characters who have reversed metaknowledge. In otherwords they know so much stuff that I could metagame all night long and still not know everything my character actually knows. Happened with a character in NWN that i made to be diviner.. and well, when i tried to play her like every other character (Ignorant of other peoples names and backstory) I was told that I really didn't have to do that.. My character should have already known who she was talking to. My friend though would play the Young girl character.. except his backstory comes to light as he makes it up on the spot. To me he seems to always be gaining for a mechanical advantage via roleplay. Jesus.. I wish i had your DMs sometimes. I've got a handful of LoL characters, from John Doe, who i've been trying to figue out how to make him awsome, while only having 13's in every stat, using improvised weapons and not wearing armor. Then also never appearing to have any formal combat training. Essentially a guy who is so plain and ordinary it will make your eyes bleed. Course since I go strictly by the book myself, I never try homebrewing stuff too much. (Until now.. I'm starting up a homebrew "workshop") My Dm said something about a joke campain where one person (a barbarian) is reincarnated into the form of an 8 year old girl, who still has every stat and ability of the barbarian. So I came up with the idea of actually getting an 8 year old girl to work. Cept i need to be like level 3 or so before i can cast the spells to enhance her familiar. (suppose to be a stuffed animal.)
#8 RPJesus Feb 03, 2010 23:46:41	My Dm said something about a joke campain where one person (a barbarian) is reincarnated into the form of an 8 year old girl, who still has every stat and ability of the barbarian. So I came up with the idea of actually getting an 8 year old girl to work. Cept i need to be like level 3 or so before i can cast the spells to enhance her familiar. (suppose to be a stuffed animal.) I've recently had the urge to play a 12 year old gnome bard girl, and keeping in the tradition of "the bard provides the soundtrack" bust out nothing but Maximum the Hormone, Detroit Metal City, etc (And likely make anybody thinking she's cute a berserk button) .
#9 chanter_hound Feb 04, 2010 0:01:12	Reminds me of the Terrible Fightful Bloodthirty Cuteness, a halfling barbarian/bard. Totally dependent on charisma. Would go into rage, causing a frightful aura around here, and chase people with a whip. Unfortantly, in NWN there was a glitch or something and the aura never worked.
#10 oxybe Feb 05, 2010 18:22:02	i go both ways :D sometimes i have an idea and i hammer it out conceptually then mechanically. i get a neat idea for a character either through daydreaming, something i read online, based off an anime character or whatever. then i put it to paper. i've almost got gurran laagan the 3.5 warforged worked out. almost. other times i create a warforged warden for the neat mechanics and then get the hilarious picture of a big 'ol tree (who's really a robot) running around with a ghost owl in his mouth, bonking people on the head with a big stone hammer. really, inspiration strikes before or after mechanics are layed down.
#11 sebiale Feb 05, 2010 20:29:55	I use this template: Name- Age- Species- Mates- Offspring- Father- Mother- Other Relatives- Affiliations- Rank/Titles- Abilities- Physical Description- Mental Description- Deeds- Past- Present Status- Future- Greatest Ambition- Fighting Style- Quotes- It doesn't cover everything. But it serves as a wonderful starting point. Or points, as it were.
#12 darksavior Feb 10, 2010 2:46:16	How do I create a character? With the Character Builder. I find mechanical concepts I like and that fit into the game world, and then develop a personality for the character after. I find that having the finished mechanics of a character helps inform the personality and backstory in a reverse engineering process. My 2 cents.
#13 chanter_hound Feb 10, 2010 9:18:53	Ah, so you are kinda like how my DM works. He tends to find the mechanics first, then build the persona around that.
#14 sebiale Feb 10, 2010 10:41:58	I prefer to make the personality and then the stats.
#15 adun_irving Feb 11, 2010 17:50:17	Mine is usually a combination. Sometimes I have a good character concept, but usually I have a class as a framework. For example, my favorite (and still-current) character was based around the rogue class as a thief, but also has a massive backstory with exile, suffering, and the deaths of both of his parents. As the story went on, I enhanced his story from just being a rudimentary former thief into a big controversy where his mother's family (elves) were racist and exiled her when she married a human. Turns out, they actually exiled her because her husband - and consequently my character - carried the blood of an ancient master vampire, manifested in the Dhampyr Bloodline. Other times, I'll decide on the race and class first (warforged battlerager fighter), and then invent a personality (the calm mediator of the group, a self-sacrificing defender, but when he gets pissed, he gets cold and cruel). It all depends on what gets me interested.