D&D 4E In 4e, why do you play the Race/Class you play?

[Pickles JG]

These are all semi active LFR characters from level 14 down

Dwarf Fighter - it's a classic & mechanically good. Raised by elves. Does not kill people - he may be need a job reference some day. People broadly defined.

Elf Ranger - it's a classic & mechanically good but boy was it boring, parlty as he never developed any character. Got respecced to hybrid ranger cleric & is more fun

Human Rogue - I had a cool Chef mini with knives, well cleaver & knife & dual wielding rogue seemed to fit. Collects exotic ingredients.

Eladrin Warlord - rounding our the martial classes can't remember why probably mechanical reasons. Grumpy old man, no RP required.

Human Wizard - mini campaign character part of a pirate crew (cartographer/navigator). Human as wizards dont need a secondary stat er I mean it's my favourite really. Only played once but we keep talking about the next bit...

Changeling Bard - Sunnite makeover artist. Shapechanges into the style she is going to model you into. Part of an abortive all Sunnite adventuring party. Fun to RP but I do not like the bard power much (warlord seems more fun to play).

Warforged Barbarian - A Lantan Gondsman that malfunctioned while sitting under the ocean for a century after the spell plague. HK53 meets Marvin with a bit of Dalek thrown in. Actually that was a mess so now he is more Psycho Marvin. Great mini but I found it after making the character up. Taken to explain why a warforged may be in the realms. Fun to RP one dimensional to play.

Dragornborn Sorcerer - chosen for the mechanics firey death & a great mini & also ridiculous intimidate. Boring to roleplay - he is about the 5th firey death merchant locally. Immensely fun in a super destructive sucidal way in the right encounters.

Vince Vice - Revenant assassin - a collector for Kelemvor. Based on a cool mini.

I am collecting classes. There is usually a mix of mechanics backstory & a figure involved, often the mechanics drive me to get a figure then I think up a back story.

 

[Zaran]

I always have a character concept before anything else. I do not consider race or class until I have that. After I have picked a combo I'll work at making them best of that race/class combo. It kind of bothers me that some people try to min max a combo before they have a concept. To each their own.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I am envisioning him with a huge drumset harnessed to him (as in a marching band) with at least a dozen drums...

... or maybe just a stand-up double bass acoustic electric. He carries an arcanely powered amplifier on his back.

Damn it I hate trying to link to videos here... Would someone please tell me how to include a link to a video without having it actually embed???

 

[Savevsdeath]

Halfling Ranger- he was my favorite character in Basic D&D (okay so he was just "halfling" class back then, but with +1 w/ all ranged weapons, shortbows doing the same damage as longbows, and the halfling racial bonuses to hiding, it was a good fit). He rode a dire wolf named Whisper.

In 4e, unfortunately, he sucked. Instead of a d12 damage, he did a d8 due to weapon shrinkage. Useless +2 CHA bonus made people always say "Just play an Elf instead".

I thought "at least the small size will let me ride a wolf". No such luck. DM ruled that my beast companion couldn't be ridden, even though the adventurers vault saddles section mentioned they were for mounts or beast companions . Lame.

I gave up on using this one in 4e, but eagerly use this character in Basic D&D, AD&D, C&C, Pathfinder, etc.

Theres a feat for this for Beastmaster Rangers called Beast rider. Your DM was right to not allow riding the beast though, its a bit powerful as an option and despite what the tunnelvision optimizers say the Small size drawbacks aren't bad enough to warrant the versatility a free mount would give.



Now on to the topic at hand - My current characters.
Lately i only play 4E in an online chat ( http://worlds-devoured.net ) and currently have three characters, all at least half psionic. Like an earlier poster, i choose human as default because its the best race, and play other races if a concept calls for it.

My main character, is a Level 4 Human Hybrid Monk|Assassin who began life as a single-classed monk but became hybrid when the Hybrid rules were allowed in-game. Hes a freakin' damage machine with insane mobility thanks to having Flurry of Blows + Assassin's shroud, and Shadow Step combined with the mobility-enhancing monk full discipline powers makes him impossible to pin down. Unfortunately, hes got a cruddy Ac and middling hitpoints, so he cant survive in a stand-up slugfest.

My second character is a Level 2 Tiefling Euphoric Ardent, a real ladies man type of guy who uses a Mordenkrad and is a debuffing machine. Demoralizing Strike plus the Bloodhunter's Dread feat means every time he hits a bloodied target that enemy is suddenly scrambling to get the hell away from him (+10 atk, 2d6+6 Damage Brutal 2, -2 to all defenses until end of next turn, -2 to attack rolls against him until the end of his next turn as an at-will.).

My third character is a Level 1 Human Hybrid Battlemind|Fighter. He is a lockdown artist; i took Hybrid Talent and Versatile Expertise as his starting feats and use a Khopesh (reflavored to an war cleaver) for flavor reasons and a heavy shield. For his Hybrid Talent option i gave him Combat Superiority. Between Combat Challenge, Combat Superiority, and Mind Spike it has been extremely difficult for monsters to even consider attacking anyone but him or trying to escape him while marked.

 

[igniz13]

Too many characters to go through individually, most of them have been inspired by the campaign, my flavour of the weak or inspired by a fictional character.

This weeks flavour of the week (possibly month) is "using the Kensai"
I'm currently obsessed with Soifon from Bleach and have tried to replicate her skills in a variety of ways.

Build is often less important than concept to me.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Generally, it's flavor, then heavily seasoned by mechanics. Often, I'll try and make things work for a race that I like even if it's spending way too much effort, like the goliath vestige warlock with a staff implement.

So far:

Minotaur Battle Cleric (Ferdinand del Toro):
This was for our first 4e game, which was set in Maztica. In recognition that the core party would be fairly small, as at least two of the people would likely not show up all the time, so it (a) made sense for me to play the leader or defender and (b) be able to lay some smack down, and at the time, using the MM writeup, I got to use an oversize weapon for surprisingly good damage. This did have the disadvantage of being relatively distinctive, as the DM had a bad habit of having the native enemies aim at the biggest target, and the giant horned demon was pretty scary looking.

Now that the party's stabilized somewhat, he's been essentialized away from semi-strikerdom and more towards being the secondary defender while conquering Maztica and converting the heathens.

Above all, whenever I get to move him around the board, I make sure and make mooing noises. That's quite possibly the most fun part!

Bugbear Brawny Rogue (Kudruk):
Our other first 4e campaign was set in Eberron, and I got to play a striker. Woot! Chose the bugbear since I could again use an oversized weapon (notice a theme?) and it had the stat profile. The DM dropped a goblinoid artifact and one of the other players convinced me to start calling myself the Lhesh Kudruk. Played him all the way up to 10th level.

Elven Pursuit Avenger (Cunnincula Peel):
Despite the rogue's ability to hit on low #s with his Piercing Strike, I kept missing. So, I figured I'd try the Avenger's ability to roll twice and see if I could get my dice to betray me that way. Yep! Her background was as a temple assassin (multiclassed rogue, then monk) and she had a heroin addiction. Also tended to run around in scanty clothing as a sort of running joke about anime, especially since her executioner's axe was taller than she was. She was quite fun, but the high accuracy really didn't make up for the low damage (rolling twice means you only hit about 50% more often), and compounded with the higher-level "hey, let's hose melee" abilities on monsters at higher levels, made me decide to shelve her at the end of paragon.

Half-Elven Storm Sorcerer (Wilon Crimas d'Lyrandar):
So, at epic, I decided I wanted to do this "stand in the back" thing. I thought about a bow ranger, but I really liked flinging lightning bolts more. I was going to go human, but feedback from Your Fellow Posters convinced me to go Lyrandar Storm Adept instead. Based on his stats, I'm portraying him as kind of a surfer dude (high Charisma, decent Dex, Con, Str, so very athletic...abysmal Wis and Int!). In combat he tends to work by checklist to make sure he doesn't space out. I've only gotten two sessions with him, but so far he's working out nicely, and I'm taking far less damage and putting far more out.


For future games, I'd really like to do a monk or a thief; my heart's generally always been with melee types. I might like to do an invoker or paladin, but I suspect the Next Game will be Dark Sun (sigh).

Brad

 

[Lord Ernie]

While I DM a lot of the time, when I design a character, I tend to so by concept more than for mechanical reasons, although they also come into play. While I have always preferred playing caster-types (mostly, because they used to have more options), I've enjoyed most of the characters I've played. The most boring is probably the 4E Elf Archer Ranger I played, which was partially because of the character, but primarily because of a railroading DM who was running Scales of War and didn't want to change anything about the scenario, and is generally poor at making combat interesting (a bad combination if you're playing a module, IMO).

As an example, I'm currently playing/co-DM'ing in a campaign, where my character is an elf cleric|invoker hybrid, revering the Raven Queen. I originally designed him as a cleric (since the party needed a leader), who believed the Raven Queen herself sent him to support, guide, and protect the party in achieving their fate - and to take out anyone who threatened it. I chose elf for my race partially because of mechanics, but mostly as a homage to an old character of mine, a 3.0 elven sorcerer, who - like my cleric now - was quite insane.

When the Invoker came out in PHB2, it felt like the class was designed for my concept, and although I wanted to change the character, the party still needed a leader (my co-DM runs a tactical warlord), so I was stuck. That changed when the hybrid rules showed up in Dragon, which seemed to fit perfectly: considering my character served as part 'shepherd', part punisher of the gods, a cleric|invoker hybrid fit even better than a pure invoker.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Baa'lek Tiefling Rouge.

I thought 4E had finally outlawed rouges--didn't Andy Collins say that they weren't 'colorful enough'?

 

[interwyrm]

Race: Whatever has the best mechanics for the class/archetype I want to play.

Class: I generally look for something with more tactical options that preferably makes other people feel like heroes. I also generally prefer int-based classes or cha-based classes... which leads to a preference for arcane characters.

Right now, I've got three characters that I'm working on.
Human Artificer|Warlord - Focus on granting attacks.
Tiefling Mage(Enchantment/Pyromancy) - focus on shoving enemies around (and lighting them on fire)
Shadar-Kai Warlock|Swordmage - I might restart this as an eladrin due to better stat synergy. The original idea was to go darkwalker for near-permanent insubstantial and a damage bonus, but that doesn't have enough tactical possibilities to suit me. It *is* fun to abuse eldritch strike sliding though.

 

[NMcCoy]

Currently playing a Dragonborn Sorcerer. (It's a fairly high-powered campaign on both the PC and NPC side of things - one character started off at level 3 with a sword that was the embodiment of the concept of dividing things, with all the scary power that that entails.) My character has relatively recently discovered that he is in fact a dragon (the wings and tail growing out was a pretty big clue), his romantic interest is a princess, and her brother is the most famous dragonslayer on the continent. Needless to say, there's a rather tense royal succession subplot going on at the moment.

I've been working with the DM on creating interesting tactical tensions for my character - he's got the squishy HP of any sorcerer, but there's (deliberately) a lot of mechanical pressure to put himself in danger on the front lines. To that end, we've given him a rather vicious "dragon claws" basic melee that counts as an arcane implement attack, and lots of items and powers (like Flamewrath Cape) that let him dish out extra damage when hurt or bloodied.

(Other characters in the campaign are just as interesting. We've got a mind-mage who started off as a drow, then spent a few levels as a lich thanks to a "boon" from the god of death, and then recently became the world's first shardmind.)