I think of a moment the character may go through or something they may say and then make something around that. A recent on I was thinking of is the character, after being asked to do something for the greater good or something, they look to the asker, eyes cold and dead from years pf pain, a soft but gravelly voice ringing out "I'm not good... I'm a soldier."
It's hard to say where I get character ideas. Sometimes a novel or a movie is inspiration. Sometimes I just have an idea I want to try. Sometimes a set of abilities will suggest a personality. I'm not sure I can nail down exactly how I do it, to be honest. Often it comes in stages... I start thinking about it one way and then as I dig into it, the character turns out to be different from how I imagined.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My pcs come from movies, cartoons, books, and even memes. I am working on a old barbarian currently. If you seen the meme where grandmother is angry over some one using her fabric scissors, you know what she will look like.
My characters usually come from inspiration from other sources like movies, anime, books, etc.
Quite a few of my characters also come from reading the mechanics of a class/race/item itself, and I just want to expand on it. For example, I have a draconic sorcerer whose entire concept just revolves around traveling and getting in and out of places, and I am still working on what spells I want her to have.
I’m usually the DM, but when I get to play I usually start by picking a class (and probably subclass, even if that possibly won’t strictly matter for another one or two levels). That choice still leaves a broad range of possibilities, but it’s the first step narrowIng things down for me. Usually it’s background - race - stats - skills - spells - equipment from there, in pretty much that order. Those choices follow backstory decisions though, and the further down the list the more everything is already decided by previous decisions. Basically it’s class first, then what kind of character from that class follows more or less organically.
My first character upon returning to D&D was a Half Elf Bard. He was a copy of a character I had when playing EverQuest (OMG I am old!) Anyway, he was very much like me, in ideals, goals, ambitions and such. I wanted an "easy" character ro RP, so I took a lot of my own personality traits and beliefs, so I could be true to the character. He was a little bolder than I am, and (obviously) significantly more talented so a fair bit of stuff I would like to try worked out well for him. Some really cool acrobatics at times, a lot of verbal banter (which is an area I excel in when motivated) and it all came together smoothly.
Second character is a Genasi Monk, Air Soul. He is a little backwards at times, and speaks as a child might, without thought of how it might be taken. He is a TON of fun and his personality and what I gave him for a background (raised entirely in the Monastery, never had "family" aside from the other Monks) as a scholarly type, fascinated with Primordials and a little Demonology, has led him to religion.I said at the outset he wasn't interested in the Gods, but a strange occurrence had him die (like really die) and be brought back with a scroll.....which had been provided by a re-emerging Goddess (all my son's Homebrew) .....which led my Monk to believe the Great Lady (Mother of Stars) was responsible for him living. BINGO, the agnostic Monk is a follower of the Starmother. I am loving that he's taking over now and I am along for the ride.
IMO, if you create a personality first, it's going to be best RP wise. Who they are, what motivates them, what their history has been, to shape that character. THEN go into picking a Race/Class. Once you flesh out the personality, a certain combination will likely kind of lean off the page at you, grinning. Go for it, and most importantly, have fun doing it!
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Thoruk the Barbarian was a basic barbarian rolled up with no backstory and no plans, and has become my firm favourite, with a rich backstory, a lifelong quest for vengeance against the duck which killed his parents, and a definite character to role play, which all manifested over the first couple of sessions.
I made an Elf character who was a poisoner-assassin, who's name escapes me but it meant "agony death" in elvish, and had plans on how he would work, and it didn't work. Haven't played him since, he sucked for the whole one-shot and I never really connected.
Griswold "Gizmo" Grayling was a character I was thinking about for a long time before putting him to effect, and he worked how I wanted, and became my second favourite character. I prefer his character to his stats & how he plays, so he's becoming an NPC for my campaign so he gets some screen-time whilst I'm DMing.
Reading up on a race's background and history helped for me, especially for an NPC I wanted for a homebrew. They are called Monitor and they are a warforged. The only one of their kind in an unforgiving landscape that ignores them because they don't have that existential dread that the land feeds off. I read that warforged try to find purpose and since it was a later generation of warforged and the war ended quite early on for them, they had nowhere else to turn to. Even when the war was in full swing Monitor was more an envoy, a pen pusher at times at a desk, so they do not have much in the way of combat capabilities. When they come across a group of survivors (to whom it refers to as 'fleshers') who had no idea about this hellish landscape, Monitor will take the time to teach them about what to look out for. Monitor will also create maps and reports for fleshers, folding them in to little origami set pieces around its office like a tiny paper museum. Monitor is an "it" because they didn't choose a gender like some of their warforged kin did after the war or try to adopt a personality other than "these people need my help."
Come up w/ the character concept, such as a pacifist wizard (What I'm playing now)
Make some general decisions, such as race and subclass
Fill in some of the fluff blanks (Height, weight, hair color, etc...)
Try to optimize or min-max the build
Think about how I would go about playing my character (How could I reasonably use these spells and abilities to contribute to the party and it's goals)
I had recently watched BSG, and thought "Kara is a cool name..." but I wanted darker, I was thinking Tiefling, so I went with Ashkara'a. But she goes by Ash, since she caused a fire that killed her mom and brother. Her brother called her Kara. Nobody else will. For aliases, I used Cinder and Ember.
I was mowing, and for some reason the phrase "bad penny" popped into my head. I thought , that could be a good last name, but... why? And for who? So, after a couple more mowing sessions, I worked out that he's a "noble" Bladesinger, always training, and irritating his fencing teacher. "Ah, here comes the bad penny... always turning up." Feeling that as the 4th child in his family, Baron Riesling Algonquin Locklear the 5th, he had almost no chance of ever taking control of the estate from his 2 older brothers, he might as well set out as Locklear Badpenny. He pretends to be Half-Elf, and lies about having Darkvision.
My current PadLock is based on the true story of Saga Vanecek, an 8 year old girl who found a 1000 year old Viking sword in a lake. The campaign ended up being set in Grecian times, so instead of Saga, I named her Electra, and she's 14.
I made a Ranger based on the TV show Grimm - his name is Saethydd Grymm. His first name means "archer" in Welsh. He inherited a magic bow from his aunt, and all of her written notes about various monstrosities.
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I think of a moment the character may go through or something they may say and then make something around that. A recent on I was thinking of is the character, after being asked to do something for the greater good or something, they look to the asker, eyes cold and dead from years pf pain, a soft but gravelly voice ringing out "I'm not good... I'm a soldier."
It's hard to say where I get character ideas. Sometimes a novel or a movie is inspiration. Sometimes I just have an idea I want to try. Sometimes a set of abilities will suggest a personality. I'm not sure I can nail down exactly how I do it, to be honest. Often it comes in stages... I start thinking about it one way and then as I dig into it, the character turns out to be different from how I imagined.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My pcs come from movies, cartoons, books, and even memes. I am working on a old barbarian currently. If you seen the meme where grandmother is angry over some one using her fabric scissors, you know what she will look like.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
1: Come up with the base idea and theme.
2: Personality/Traits/Species.
3: Abilities/How they fight.
4: Try to match those aspects together.
5: Realise they don't match in a satisfying or useful way.
6: Get annoyed.
7: Scrap the idea.
8: Repeat steps 1-7 for two months.
9: Realise that the session is due to start any minute and I still have no character.
10: Pick a class/species and just play with that, thinking of the backstory and personality later.
My characters usually come from inspiration from other sources like movies, anime, books, etc.
Quite a few of my characters also come from reading the mechanics of a class/race/item itself, and I just want to expand on it. For example, I have a draconic sorcerer whose entire concept just revolves around traveling and getting in and out of places, and I am still working on what spells I want her to have.
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I’m usually the DM, but when I get to play I usually start by picking a class (and probably subclass, even if that possibly won’t strictly matter for another one or two levels). That choice still leaves a broad range of possibilities, but it’s the first step narrowIng things down for me. Usually it’s background - race - stats - skills - spells - equipment from there, in pretty much that order. Those choices follow backstory decisions though, and the further down the list the more everything is already decided by previous decisions. Basically it’s class first, then what kind of character from that class follows more or less organically.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
My first character upon returning to D&D was a Half Elf Bard. He was a copy of a character I had when playing EverQuest (OMG I am old!) Anyway, he was very much like me, in ideals, goals, ambitions and such. I wanted an "easy" character ro RP, so I took a lot of my own personality traits and beliefs, so I could be true to the character. He was a little bolder than I am, and (obviously) significantly more talented so a fair bit of stuff I would like to try worked out well for him. Some really cool acrobatics at times, a lot of verbal banter (which is an area I excel in when motivated) and it all came together smoothly.
Second character is a Genasi Monk, Air Soul. He is a little backwards at times, and speaks as a child might, without thought of how it might be taken. He is a TON of fun and his personality and what I gave him for a background (raised entirely in the Monastery, never had "family" aside from the other Monks) as a scholarly type, fascinated with Primordials and a little Demonology, has led him to religion.I said at the outset he wasn't interested in the Gods, but a strange occurrence had him die (like really die) and be brought back with a scroll.....which had been provided by a re-emerging Goddess (all my son's Homebrew) .....which led my Monk to believe the Great Lady (Mother of Stars) was responsible for him living. BINGO, the agnostic Monk is a follower of the Starmother. I am loving that he's taking over now and I am along for the ride.
IMO, if you create a personality first, it's going to be best RP wise. Who they are, what motivates them, what their history has been, to shape that character. THEN go into picking a Race/Class. Once you flesh out the personality, a certain combination will likely kind of lean off the page at you, grinning. Go for it, and most importantly, have fun doing it!
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I've played 3 characters so far:
Thoruk the Barbarian was a basic barbarian rolled up with no backstory and no plans, and has become my firm favourite, with a rich backstory, a lifelong quest for vengeance against the duck which killed his parents, and a definite character to role play, which all manifested over the first couple of sessions.
I made an Elf character who was a poisoner-assassin, who's name escapes me but it meant "agony death" in elvish, and had plans on how he would work, and it didn't work. Haven't played him since, he sucked for the whole one-shot and I never really connected.
Griswold "Gizmo" Grayling was a character I was thinking about for a long time before putting him to effect, and he worked how I wanted, and became my second favourite character. I prefer his character to his stats & how he plays, so he's becoming an NPC for my campaign so he gets some screen-time whilst I'm DMing.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Reading up on a race's background and history helped for me, especially for an NPC I wanted for a homebrew. They are called Monitor and they are a warforged. The only one of their kind in an unforgiving landscape that ignores them because they don't have that existential dread that the land feeds off. I read that warforged try to find purpose and since it was a later generation of warforged and the war ended quite early on for them, they had nowhere else to turn to. Even when the war was in full swing Monitor was more an envoy, a pen pusher at times at a desk, so they do not have much in the way of combat capabilities. When they come across a group of survivors (to whom it refers to as 'fleshers') who had no idea about this hellish landscape, Monitor will take the time to teach them about what to look out for. Monitor will also create maps and reports for fleshers, folding them in to little origami set pieces around its office like a tiny paper museum. Monitor is an "it" because they didn't choose a gender like some of their warforged kin did after the war or try to adopt a personality other than "these people need my help."
Now everything you know has disappeared
It's gonna get weird...
Often, I'll come up with a name.
I had recently watched BSG, and thought "Kara is a cool name..." but I wanted darker, I was thinking Tiefling, so I went with Ashkara'a. But she goes by Ash, since she caused a fire that killed her mom and brother. Her brother called her Kara. Nobody else will. For aliases, I used Cinder and Ember.
I was mowing, and for some reason the phrase "bad penny" popped into my head. I thought , that could be a good last name, but... why? And for who? So, after a couple more mowing sessions, I worked out that he's a "noble" Bladesinger, always training, and irritating his fencing teacher. "Ah, here comes the bad penny... always turning up." Feeling that as the 4th child in his family, Baron Riesling Algonquin Locklear the 5th, he had almost no chance of ever taking control of the estate from his 2 older brothers, he might as well set out as Locklear Badpenny. He pretends to be Half-Elf, and lies about having Darkvision.
My current PadLock is based on the true story of Saga Vanecek, an 8 year old girl who found a 1000 year old Viking sword in a lake. The campaign ended up being set in Grecian times, so instead of Saga, I named her Electra, and she's 14.
I made a Ranger based on the TV show Grimm - his name is Saethydd Grymm. His first name means "archer" in Welsh. He inherited a magic bow from his aunt, and all of her written notes about various monstrosities.