My current character

I've had a few people ask about my character.

Faraj Haroun is from Calimport proper and the middle son of three sons and one daughter. Basic background. Figured he started training as a fighter to protect some wagons of the family and encountered a mage during his travels who showed him a different way of protecting his goods by making others blow up good.

The GM uses 80 points with nothing going above racial maximums.
S: 14 D: 14 C: 14 I: 18 W: 10 C: 10

Right now he's a Fighter 1/Wizard 5. We just got enough experience to advance again so I'm going to see if there's anything special needed to become a Eldritch Knight as that'll fit in well with what I'm trying to do, a wizard who can survive being hit by more than one spell or swordblow!

So I have some combat and survivability and of course, stat dumped on wisdom and charisma. I try to play it off in the game by not being very talkative or being direct and to the point when I do talk to cut through the 'honeyed words of false merchants.'

For feats, the GM gave us one regional feat free.
freebie: Mind over Matter. A feat from the Player's Guide to Faerun. let's me apply my int bonus instead of Con for 1st level and +1 hp every time I take a metamagic. Off the top of my head, I think it gives me a bonus to a skill.

human: Calisite Elementalist: From Races of Faerun. +1 level when casting fire based spells.

fighter 1st: Weapon Focus Greatsword

1st level: Combat casting: I know I'm going to become a mage so why not I figure.

3rd level: Spell Focus-Evocation

5th Level Wizard Bonus: Empower, metamagic

6th Level: Sudden Maximize, metagic

For hit points, GM gave us max at 1st-4th, and then either average or roll. So far I've rolled two 3s so I've got (10+4)14 + ((4+2)*3) 18 + ((3+2)*2))10 + 2 for the feat so 45 hit points. Turns out I have more hit points than the fighter asimar, who put his highest stats into Charisma and has no Con bonus.

Pretty much standard equipment but I do have a mighty composite longbow +2 strength adjusted and a masterwork greatsword.

For magic items, Bracers of Armor +2, a wand of shattering, a wand of magic missiles (part of starting equipment for a Calishite), and a Rod of Empowerment.

Now the GM was cool. I had originally picked Combat Expertise but never used it. While reading through Races of Faerun, I saw the Calisite Elementalist and asked if I could swap it since I was always using fire base spells and he gave it the thumbs up. Personally I hate it when a player has feats that he's always swapping out but the GM has a 1 swap out rule in case a PrC or something comes along that you want to qualify for. Made me more dangerous but I don't think too much more terribly dangerous.

Can't remember my skills off the top of my head, but I know for my 1st level fighter, I took craft weapons and craft armor because that's what the family deals in.

Some of the above may be wrong.

In looking at the character, I see that I used the following: Races of Faerun, Player's Guide to Faerun, Complete Arcane, and the Player's Handbook.

How do other people go about it?

I wish I had the opportunity to play, rather than DM, a D&D campaign. There are SO many character concepts I'd like to try.

How do other people go about it?

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Go about making a character?


I'm pretty methodical and research extensively from almost every book. Usually only WotC stuff because anything from another source requires DM approval.

Stat Block
Fiddle Skipstone: Male Halfling(Lightfoot) Rgr6/Rog4/DrH1;
"Small Humanoid; CR 11;
HD 4d6+7d8+11; hp 65;
Init +8; Spd 20 ft/x4;
AC 25 (+6 armor, +3 shield, +4 dex, +1 size, +1 misc), touch 16, flat-footed 25;
Base Atk/Grapple +10/+7;
Full Atk +11/+6 Two-Weapon (primary) (1d6+2;19-20/x2, +1 Longsword), +15/+10 Two-Weapon (secondary) (1d3;19-20/x2, Masterwork dagger), +19/+14 Within 30' (1d3+2;19-20/x2, Masterwork dagger(Thrown)), +17/+12 Within 30' (1d6+1;20/x3, Masterwork longbow), +18/+13 Within 30' (1d4+3;20/x2, +1 Throwing Axe(Thrown)), +12/+7 Two-Weapon (secondary) (1d4+1;20/x3, +1 Handaxe);
AL N; SV Fort +11, Ref +17, Will +8;
Str 12(+1), Dex 18(+4), Con 12(+1), Int 12(+1), Wis 12(+1), Cha 8(-1);
Skills: Appraise¹ +2, Bluff¹ +5, Climb¹ +4, Decipher Script +2, Diplomacy¹ +2, Disable Device +15, Disguise¹ +0, Gather Information¹ +0, Handle Animal +1, Heal¹ +2, Hide¹ +15, Knowledge (adventuring) +2, Listen¹ +12, Move Silently¹ +14, Open Lock +15, Ride¹ +5, Search¹ +15, Sense Motive¹ +3, Sleight of Hand +7, Speak Language +3, Spot¹ +15, Survival¹ +16, Swim¹ +2, Tumble +9, Use Magic Device +0, Use Rope¹ +5.
Feats: Improved Initiative, Point Blank Shot, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus(Dagger)"


25pt buy...(Olgar Shiverstone is the DM) he let me craft my own PrC. a ranger variant DragonHunter. with elements of the 2000ed FoeHunter and stuff from Draconomicon and off the top of my head.

Indo Ishivin, a Forgotten Realms character in a DM's homebrew world.

Indo began life as a pickpocket/street thief in the region of Tashalar in the Forgotten Realms. I must admit to not knowing a lot about Tashalar, but I picture it as being a lot like India and Southeast Asia. During this period of his life he became enamored of a beautiful young bard by the name of Ayesha Damartha. Knowing that their was no way for him, a common street urchin to woo her, he fell in with an older, wiser, suaver priestess of Talona. From this venemous lady he learned about culture, etiquette, fine clothes, fine wine, fine food (especially cheese, of which he is quite fond). He also learned dark secrets about posion, diseases and their cures, and the power of these things. In time, he grew to love the church of Talona more than the beautiful bard; his final initiation into the secrets of the church came as her warm blood spilled over his murderous hand and onto his ritual garb. To this day, he still keeps her skull and sword (a +1 long sword of dancing) as a reminder of the love he once had.

A relatively short adventuring career (he was made as a high level character to join an existing campaign), saw his power skyrocket. When he actually entered play, Indo was a human rogue 1/cleric 13. He siezed every opportunity that came before him to spread the doctrine of Talona. He spoiled clear mountain streams (that villages relied upon) with his own feces. He healed the lame that the good churches refused to heal; where the good churches were trying to teach an injured lad to work through his crippling injuries, Indo offered complete relief if only the lad would come to Talona. He hired a wererat (Phil the wererat) to spread his particular brand of lycanthropy throughout a good village dedicated to the worship of Athena.

The lot of adventurers that Indo fell in with was almost as bad as he was (a necromancer and a blood mage amongst others), yet somehow they always seemed shocked by his ill will toward the common person. As a player though, I made a point of not being completely disruptive; when the party found itself in the midst of a deadly dungeaon, Indo was able to suppress his wicked schemes (the survivalist in him kicked in) and he emerged as something of a leader for the group (much to the chagrin of the higher-level necromancer).

At present, the group has just made it out of said dungeon. Several members of the party have been made heads of some neighboring (and struggling) monarchies. Indo is heading up baronies (working behind puppet barons) in each of these monarchies; he is working to increase his economic base through the production of fine wines and cheeses. Of course there are secret churches of Talona hidden in the dank areas beneath the manor houses. He is also building knighthoods and a network of thieves and assassins that all secretly do the will of Talona.

Chad

You know diaglo, it always amazes me how up to date you are with 3rd ed as much as you tout the OD&D stuff. That character looks like a bunch of fun to play.

I am jealous of your AC there man! Mine is like 14 or something with the Bracers of Armor +2 and my Dex modifier of +2.

How's you get that statblock thought? Already have it? I've thought that it would be a good idea to have something like that in case the GM needed a copy of my character.

What do the 1s mean by the various skills?

JoeGKushner said:

You know diaglo, it always amazes me how up to date you are with 3rd ed as much as you tout the OD&D stuff. That character looks like a bunch of fun to play.

I am jealous of your AC there man! Mine is like 14 or something with the Bracers of Armor +2 and my Dex modifier of +2.

How's you get that statblock thought? Already have it? I've thought that it would be a good idea to have something like that in case the GM needed a copy of my character.

What do the 1s mean by the various skills?

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i've been playtesting the 2000ed for over 4 years. and the 3.11ed for workgroups sinc before Gen Con Indy 2003.

the stat block comes from Heroforge. Olgar loves it. the 1s represent things like synergy and magic items to boost/penalize the skill.

JoeGKushner said:

Made me more dangerous but I don't think too much more terribly dangerous.

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Now if you also had Bloodline of Fire and Practiced Spellcaster and Spell Thematics... you would be slinging empowered, maximized 10d6 Fireballs (ok, that "s" is maybe a bit much there! ).

How do other people go about it?

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Creating a character?

Start with a rough background idea and decide on race/class, then proceed by sketching up background and putting together the crunchy stuff while keeping an eye on the whole concept and the background sketch. Afterwards finalizing background details in accordance with the various character stats.

Bye
Thanee

In creating a character, it may sound crazy, but as a player, I have way more fun than as a GM.

When I play, I have a very good idea of what I want to try out. Since I've been playing so long, I tend to want to try out different combos of game mechanics. And I obviously don't get them all as Thanee has pointed out some feats worth looking into (takes crib sheet for Bloodline of Fire and Practiced Spellcaster and Spell Thematics... anyone know where they're from off the top of their head?).

When I GM however, I want to make sure that the NPCs are roughly equal to the players so that the player's don't walk over them, which requires a lot more time than grabbing a monster, or even putting a template on a monster.

When I create a character, I usually build it around a concept that I either see or come up with. Many of my characters have inspiration from books, movies and television. My favorites are my epic characters that I play. They are a lot of fun because they are so different from each other, yet make a good team in combat. Here's one of them.