How do you Build your Character?

Hussar said:

I forgot about that table in the 1e rules. It's a good start, but, something a bit meatier might better.

Click to expand...

The table I use is somewhat more elaborate than the 1e DMG one - it lists about 20 past professions; I'm up to over 100, not counting sub-professions (were you sailor-pirate or sailor-merchant vessel or sailor-navy). For characters coming in at over 50 years of age (all Elves, most Dwarves and Gnomes) they roll another for each 50 years as what they did primarily during that time...which can include adventuring, though the skills learned have been forgotten or renounced since.

I wonder if a system where you start at like say, 9 years old, then a mini game where you send your fledgeling PC to various life path tables and wind up with a 1st level character at the end exists.

Click to expand...

If it does exist, I've never heard of it. And good luck running a 250-year-old Elf through that...I hope you've some time on your hands.

Nearest I can think of is that 1e module - I think it's called Treasure Hunt - where you start as basically a commoner and come out as a 0th or 1st level member of whatever class you gravitated to during the adventure. I've no idea whether that could possibly be converted with any success to any other edition, though.

Mostly, the biggest headache for me, particularly with long-lived races, is figuring out how much of the world they know about and-or have seen, particularly when it's early in a campaign and some or many things about the world aren't yet common player knowledge. Like right now, in my case.

Lanefan

Hussar said:

I wonder if a system where you start at like say, 9 years old, then a mini game where you send your fledgeling PC to various life path tables and wind up with a 1st level character at the end exists.

Click to expand...

Burning Wheel does exactly this just without the levels.

Your final age and paths chosen determine various things such as total number of stat points available, skills and traits you can purchase, number of points to buy those skills and resources, influence etc.

Ideally, before I make a character, I get some sort of campaign background information. I don't need a whole meta-plot, but knowing what kind of campaign it will be is helpful (i.e. dungeon crawl, wilderness exploration, nautical, urban, etc.).

Then I think about what kind of character I'd like to make and what kinds of characters the other people in the group are likely to make (with my group, there are certain archetypes certain people are likely to create over and over again). I only think in general terms at this point about classes, though race does get considered at this point.

Usually, I'll write up a background for my character at this point. After that's done, I'll choose a class based on what best fits my character concept and background. I build the class based on what skills and talents I think my character should have based on those factors (not neccessarily on what will give me the most bang for the buck). I rarely plan a character out for more than a couple of levels at a time; most campaigns I play in are fluid enough that what I thought was a good path at level 1 doesn't seem so good at level 6.

This can backfire, of course. I was very dismayed when I created a character for a "nautical" campaign only to have him and the rest of the party stranded on an island one the first session and remain there until the campaign petered out 4 levels later making all of my nautical optimizations (back in the early days of 3.0 using 3PP supplements) useless his entire career.

Sometimes, what I think is a cool character will eventually prove to not work out (like a human-hating halfing druid defender of the forest--after 4 sessions or so of playing his angst, I realized that there was no logical reason why he would continue adventuring with this bad of tall misfits and their materialistic, destructive tendancies).

Still, it works well for me.

Hussar said:

Does anyone use Life Path creation systems? And, if so, can you point me in the direction? I like the idea, although, the only one I used was from Traveler and that was WAYYYY too long. I'm wondering if there are any life path chargen systems for fantasy games. I haven't found one.

Click to expand...

I have...and I should have mentioned that in my initial post.

The ones I've used the most are:

1) Traveller's system. Very well done, your PC can die during creation (as my 1st one did), but only really useful for sci-fi or modern campaigns.

2) Everway. (OoP) Jonathan Tweet's non-D&D FRPG contribution to WotC's product line has a card-drawing based background generator. The cards themselves are of great sci/fant art you may or may not recognize (some ARE pretty iconic). I also use the cards for plot generation...and occasionally use M:TG or Hyborian Gates CCG cards in a similar fashion.

On Character Creation in Everway - Jonathan Tweet

3) Task Force Game's Central Casting books. (OoP) This series of books covered a variety of genres, each book taking a different one. Very well done. The one for fantasy would be Heroes of Legend.

RPGnet RPG Game Index: Central Casting: Heroes of Legend (1995 Task Force Games edition)

Honestly, I find a picture that I captures my imagination and I base my character on it.

For example, I stumbled upon this in Deviantart:



And thus was born Wormwood, the greatest Warlord in the history of the Elsir Vale---seriously, just ask him.

1. roll the dice and let fate guide me to the class, then add the rest

2. pick a class that works well with what other people in the group are creating

3. pick a mini out of my giant box of PC minis and let that inspire me

I start by breaking something. My goal is to have a character so good at dealing melee damage in some way that everybody else says, "That's ridiculous." It usually starts with my seeing something that tickles the brain that says I can break it, then when we start the next campaign I build it.

From there, I tend to have a standard grab-box of abilities that I layer in as best I can:
1) High movement rate if possible. This often means no armor.
2) Eliminate surprises. This means high Spot/Listen or other relevant abilities if possible.

Some examples over the years include:
3E with splats) Wulfgar, half-orc barbarian/fighter/weapon master with Mercurial Greatsword (x4) that crits on a 16, along with huge strength, and crazy feats around automatic criticals, higher-damage criticals, and related feats.
3E core-ish) Cade, halfling rogue/wizard/arcane trickster that abused Expeditious Retreat and Improved Invisibility as much as possible.
2E with splats) Raven, human 'dual-class' figher/cleric/magic user that used Combat & Tactics, Spells & Magic, etc., to do ridiculous unarmed damage, permanent True Seeing, Weapon Master unarmed, movement rate 18, shapeshifting abilities and could attack like 13 times/round starting in Very Fast phase with Tentacles. (In that campaign we allowed people to 'buy' extra attributes with experience that I used to meet Dual prereq 17s.)
2E 'core') Logan, human 'wanderer,' a custom class using the DM guide class building system. He basically didn't buy much except a good THAC0 and arcane spells, so his level progression was super quick, meaning he got spells 'ahead of schedule.'

A few caveats before you all burn me.
1) From there I lay on a lot of character. When people reminisce (sp?) about those campaigns, it's usually quirky/fun/cool things my character said/did that live on. Wulfgar had entire battle songs I'd written, Cade's high-pitched enthusiasm for everything (and his continual disappointment in his cohort Bernie, a sorcerer who 'just never would study!'), Raven's menacing demeanor, Logan's almost child-like naivety when it comes to personal interactions, etc.
2) We welcome power gamers in our groups. If you don't care about doing mega damage, that's fine, but you should be aware that a couple of us view that as half the fun. So people fall into three groups - (i) us power gamers, (ii) those who aren't but don't like to be out-classed, so they let us help them tweak power levels after they've done their personality/goals/general themese design, and (iii) those who don't care at all, with whom there's no problem.

Errrr... should I make this post longer? Sorry about that .

I usually start by picking a class, a choice which is usually influenced either by what would fit in well with the group or by what I've wanted to play for a while.

The next step is picking a race, which is almost entirely determined by what would be interesting in the context of the group or unusual (but not silly) for the class. Human is definitely my default; I prefer to define a character by personality rather than assuming race is a substitute for personality.

The third step is coming up with a simple "hook" for the character's personality, based on the question "what makes a person want to become a member of this class?" For instance, my first post-release Fourth Edition character, in a short-lived game, was a dragonborn rogue; I thought about what sort of experiences or influences would push someone towards that class rather than fighter, warlord, paladin, or something more fitting with the dragonborn race's overt physicality and brashness.

After that, I ask myself why this character is an adventurer, instead of sticking around his family/home town/et cetera and living a safer, more quiet life. This often ties into the "why is this character in this class?" question, of course, and this is also the stage at which I start thinking about other touches to the character's personality - religious, political, or philosophical opinions, for instance.

Vess, my dragonborn rogue, for instance, was devoted to the Raven Queen because of his clan's experiences (when he was very young) hiring on as mercenary soldiers in service to a wizard who turned out to be an honourless necromancer fond of raising dead foes to fight for him. His family raised Vess to have a strong distaste for people like that wizard, but Vess never became a soldier like his cousins because he was temperamentally unsuited to military discipline. Instead, he decided to align himself with the Raven Queen's goals of eliminating the undead and those who raise them.

I also decided that he wouldn't have a morbid personality - he was an extremely skilled killer, due to his training, and he intended to use those skills against the proper targets, but his attitude towards death was that its inevitability meant that people should get the most out of life that they can, albeit not to excess. His relationship with his clan wasn't very close since he made different choices than those expected of him, but he was still very proud of them and preferred to boast of their exploits rather than his own when tavern talk turned to tall tales.

I like to combine mechanically-effective characters who have a strong "niche" or "schtick" with a creative personality sketched in broad strokes like you see above, which can then be developed in play and have the details filled in. I didn't, for instance, decide how Vess felt about Bahamut, the deity followed by his clan as a whole, or about other gods, preferring to leave questions like that open to being answered in play. Nor did I decide whether or not his parents were still alive - just that the clan was now led in battle by one of his female cousins.

Hussar said:

The whole antagonistic DM thing certainly didn't help.

Does anyone use Life Path creation systems? And, if so, can you point me in the direction? I like the idea, although, the only one I used was from Traveler and that was WAYYYY too long. I'm wondering if there are any life path chargen systems for fantasy games. I haven't found one.

In case you don't know what I mean, a lifepath chargen system is a set of tables, usually with some degree of randomness, that you consult for each set period (a year, a few years, whatever) of time to determine what the PC did before you start the campaign.

Thinking about it though, I'm not sure how well this would work for D&D - D&D PC's tend to be very young, and, with the xp system the way it is, it doesn't make too much sense for my first level fighter to have been a soldier for five years.

But, anyway, is there a system out there I could take a gander at?

Click to expand...

And it really doesn't have to be an evil, conniving DM to get these face-less characters. That little RPG meme though I'm sure will last the test of time. But even still, when a RPG is set up in a way that everything that has happened up to this point to a character has no true meaning and is just 'window dressing'. But everything now from this point forward (the point being the creation of the character on paper and introduced into the game) is what is going to define the character then just aren't going to care. Or at least be able with any meaningful ability to use that info as a tool. So you get stuff like, "Yeah, my character was a disenfranchised noble. Pfft I dunno who cares though he's a Level 13 wizard now however that happened. Not like it can help me cast a second meteor swarm this round..."
Since players in a D&D or D&D-type game need to look to the future of the character's career which will determine what the character 'can do', there is no incentive for the past.



As to suggesting a "lifepath" system. Three games that I play frequently with life paths are Traveller, Barbarians of Lemuria and Dogs in the Vineyard. Now I'm sure there are plenty more... for example I also know Burning Wheel utilizes a LP char gen system and maybe other people more familiar with the games could correct me but I believe Spirits of the Century and Ars Magica have LP char gen. But those three I am very familiar with.
As for the Traveller char gen system, as I don't know how much you fooled around with it but after you get the 'rhythm' of the system (and I actually made a quick, hand drawn flow chart for new players that really helped once they saw a visual of it all) the system flies. Faster than whipping up a 1st level human fighter? I guess you got me beat there, but honestly I would stay not by much with a little 'practice'.


Also I think you might want to broaden your view of what a Life Path system entails. Or perhaps there are other terms that I am not familiar with that are used to separate the unique systems that sort of do the same mechanical thing...
What I'm getting at is, for me a "Life Path" char gen system doesn't necessarily have to be like what you would find in stock Traveller. That is your, "roll to see what your character did for 4 years of his/her life and find out what skills you get."
I would say that, for example, Dogs in the Vineyard char gen is nothing like Traveller but could be considered a Life Path system, in that you generate things in your characters past that define them in the present and assign stats to them which then get used in the mechanics of play, benefiting the character and defining what they 'can do'.


How a system like this could work with D&D. I'm not sure. The easy answer is it couldn't because D&D is it's own thing... and Life Paths sort of represent a different type of how you play. I can't really think of any games off the top of my head that use Lifepaths and also include strict class-defined skills/abilities/power pre-sets a character runs along as they advance. So I think you would need a different perspective on how the game runs, what to expect from/with it. Not that I don't think it couldn't be done. In fact if I recall there was an article or editorial or something from a WotC person about how they experimented with Traveller-like char gen for 4th Ed. And I've tried myself a half dozen times...

Wormwood said:

Honestly, I find a picture that I captures my imagination and I base my character on it.

Click to expand...

You and every other gamer who gets a lot of ideas from fantasy art (like me) would be well served by getting a copy of Everway and/or a look at the various CCG art that is out there.

Also, scouring the bargain book stores for art books or of CD-ROMS or DVDs of the various great collections from the world's major museums would pay dividends as well.