Played a 3.5 game where I was one of a set of twins. My character was a bard pacifist who focused on diplomacy/deception to get her way, resorting to disarming/tripping opponents with her whip and inflicting subdual damage whenever combat occurred. Her brother (a fellow PC) was the guy who did the "unthinkable" in her eyes. He protected her from having to do the violent things by doing them himself. She might not be able to kill the goblin; preferring to talk her way out of things, but he knew such things were sometimes necessary for her safety, so he did them.
Of course, the DM had some issue with ONLY putting undead enemies in his campaigns, so our abilities were basically useless since undead were immune to subdual damage and critical hits in 3e (and anything immune to criticals were also immune to sneak attack damage). So we ended up dropping those characters and making min/max characters (I was a paladin who focused on the SEVERELY broken Cha ability feats that basically made me invincible and he went Evocation Wizard).
My favorite 5e character is a Pact of the Tome half-elf Warlock with the Sage (researcher) background. His Intelligence is equal to his Charisma (using point buy) and he has all the INT-related skills (and Persuasion, because he's a half-elf and everyone loves half-elves). He's basically the Faerun equivalent of a night spent on Wikipedia when you're supposed to be doing something else. He started researching something, which led him to something else, which led to something else... which eventually led him to the Great Old One mythology (think Lovecraft/Cthulhu). Since the books are all either lost or in a language that most humanoids don't understand, he made a pact to learn all the languages he could so he could keep uncovering more info about this (taking Eyes of the Rune Keeper and Book of Ancient Secrets as his invocations and Deep Speech/Undercommon as his background languages). He's super eager to learn new things, and as such doesn't take the typical precautions that a normal person would. Wisdom is his dump stat, because he's generally naive about the world (spending so much of his time in the library) and is HORRIBLY imperceptive to pretty much anything going on. He's the kinda guy that will pull the mysterious lever in a dungeon, just to see what it does; and is genuinely surprised when the trap is sprung.
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
I love backgrounds. I tend to chew on mine for a while when dwelling on a new character. I might even play a few sessions without sorting everything out. But then it clicks, and I have who I want to be.
My backgrounds are usually no more than a few paragraphs. Which I'll streamline for my DM and fellow players.
I like to have all my players sit and do a session zero. The first night is for detailing your character background. The more detailed the background the easier it is for me to write in character specific content. I can weave in all kinds of player hooks and perhaps even have your past come back to haunt you. The more you give me to work with the more exciting your story will be. It's your story after all.
One of the best things about the first night is that you have presented me with a good background story... and I'm looking for the character behind all those numbers. I will award a point of inspiration.
I had to roll up my first character in about 20 years and I went way over board on the story behind it that it ended up as a short story. In the process I started wanting to making a cleric and as I went through the story it was looking like a rogue and ended up a fighter. I still kept the cleric side a bit with a coin of Tymora which I would flip to make decisions. The coin of Tymora says we need to go this way.
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JT "You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
I honestly find background writing one of the best parts of D&D! I usually try to keep my descriptions vague enough for the DM to work with, but flavorful enough to flesh out my character and make them an interesting addition.
My method varies, based on nothing at all. I was once invited into a campaign that had been in progress for many years already because their cleric left and they kept dying, so I had to be a cleric (which is fine, I don't really have a favored class) but they were also presently in a dungeon, literally, like locked up, by Lizardfolk. I was asked if I wanted to be locked up with them and to join them in that fashion as a fellow prisoner but I wanted to play a lizardfolk. At the time that wasn't a playable race (not sure if it is now?) so I made up...everything. Including the healing spells he'd use which were a variation on Druid spells. Currently I jumped into playing this Dragonborn paladin without a back story, but it was evident that he had to have some skills already - even as a first-level character - so I wrote his background as an assassin that found god (Bahamut) and changed his class to compensate for Bahamut's teachings, which aren't exactly in line with assassins. Then I did the bulletpoint list of his immediate history after finding god and fleshed those out as chapters. I guess I just like writing.
I usually write a timeline and a page or two of narrative at character creation. As my character progresses, I will fill in his backstory more as the DM allows.
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I do this all the time:
Played a 3.5 game where I was one of a set of twins. My character was a bard pacifist who focused on diplomacy/deception to get her way, resorting to disarming/tripping opponents with her whip and inflicting subdual damage whenever combat occurred. Her brother (a fellow PC) was the guy who did the "unthinkable" in her eyes. He protected her from having to do the violent things by doing them himself. She might not be able to kill the goblin; preferring to talk her way out of things, but he knew such things were sometimes necessary for her safety, so he did them.
Of course, the DM had some issue with ONLY putting undead enemies in his campaigns, so our abilities were basically useless since undead were immune to subdual damage and critical hits in 3e (and anything immune to criticals were also immune to sneak attack damage). So we ended up dropping those characters and making min/max characters (I was a paladin who focused on the SEVERELY broken Cha ability feats that basically made me invincible and he went Evocation Wizard).
My favorite 5e character is a Pact of the Tome half-elf Warlock with the Sage (researcher) background. His Intelligence is equal to his Charisma (using point buy) and he has all the INT-related skills (and Persuasion, because he's a half-elf and everyone loves half-elves). He's basically the Faerun equivalent of a night spent on Wikipedia when you're supposed to be doing something else. He started researching something, which led him to something else, which led to something else... which eventually led him to the Great Old One mythology (think Lovecraft/Cthulhu). Since the books are all either lost or in a language that most humanoids don't understand, he made a pact to learn all the languages he could so he could keep uncovering more info about this (taking Eyes of the Rune Keeper and Book of Ancient Secrets as his invocations and Deep Speech/Undercommon as his background languages). He's super eager to learn new things, and as such doesn't take the typical precautions that a normal person would. Wisdom is his dump stat, because he's generally naive about the world (spending so much of his time in the library) and is HORRIBLY imperceptive to pretty much anything going on. He's the kinda guy that will pull the mysterious lever in a dungeon, just to see what it does; and is genuinely surprised when the trap is sprung.
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
I love backgrounds. I tend to chew on mine for a while when dwelling on a new character. I might even play a few sessions without sorting everything out. But then it clicks, and I have who I want to be.
My backgrounds are usually no more than a few paragraphs. Which I'll streamline for my DM and fellow players.
I like to have all my players sit and do a session zero. The first night is for detailing your character background. The more detailed the background the easier it is for me to write in character specific content. I can weave in all kinds of player hooks and perhaps even have your past come back to haunt you. The more you give me to work with the more exciting your story will be. It's your story after all.
One of the best things about the first night is that you have presented me with a good background story... and I'm looking for the character behind all those numbers. I will award a point of inspiration.
I had to roll up my first character in about 20 years and I went way over board on the story behind it that it ended up as a short story. In the process I started wanting to making a cleric and as I went through the story it was looking like a rogue and ended up a fighter. I still kept the cleric side a bit with a coin of Tymora which I would flip to make decisions. The coin of Tymora says we need to go this way.
JT " You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
I honestly find background writing one of the best parts of D&D! I usually try to keep my descriptions vague enough for the DM to work with, but flavorful enough to flesh out my character and make them an interesting addition.
My method varies, based on nothing at all. I was once invited into a campaign that had been in progress for many years already because their cleric left and they kept dying, so I had to be a cleric (which is fine, I don't really have a favored class) but they were also presently in a dungeon, literally, like locked up, by Lizardfolk. I was asked if I wanted to be locked up with them and to join them in that fashion as a fellow prisoner but I wanted to play a lizardfolk. At the time that wasn't a playable race (not sure if it is now?) so I made up...everything. Including the healing spells he'd use which were a variation on Druid spells. Currently I jumped into playing this Dragonborn paladin without a back story, but it was evident that he had to have some skills already - even as a first-level character - so I wrote his background as an assassin that found god (Bahamut) and changed his class to compensate for Bahamut's teachings, which aren't exactly in line with assassins. Then I did the bulletpoint list of his immediate history after finding god and fleshed those out as chapters. I guess I just like writing.
I usually write a timeline and a page or two of narrative at character creation. As my character progresses, I will fill in his backstory more as the DM allows.