D&D General Character Advancement Poll

[LordEntrails]

Interesting. With zero votes for total plan, the "theoretical builds" of character optimization do seem "theoretical".

I was actually glad to see this. 100% preplanned characters seem, to me, to be so ... fake. IMO, characters should grow based upon their experiences. Just like a campaign should not be a railroad, nether should a character.

 

[payn]

I usually plan well, but make exceptions for events in game. I have zero issues planning the mechanics offline, and playing the character at the table. I dont need the two to inform each other. I like to call it keeping the mechanics under the hood. Its the only way I can make sense of the settings most of the time. It helps maintain my immersion as well.

 

[Lyxen]

I have some general ideas where I might head but I don't really make any final decisions until about 15 minutes before the game starts and I realize the DM told us to level up before the next session. Then I just panic and choose whatever is bright and shiny or let the cat walk on my keyboard while I have DndBeyond up to see what happens.

Which might explain why I have a paladin wizard rogue.

It's bizarre, because I usually do it right after the end of the session where the DM told us to level up, so that I'm fully in the spirit of what just happened and make decisions accordingly, but then, at the start of the next session, I always forget about the new things anyway.

 

[Lanefan]

If-when in a game where there's any degree of choice to be made at level-up I'll have a vague idea and that's it, with everything malleable to changes or better ideas that have occurred/arisen during play.

Much of the reason I don't plan far ahead is that I don't even know if my character is going to survive long enough for it to matter, thus my attitude ends up as "I'll blow up those bridges when I get to them".

That said, I far prefer systems where for the most part your choice of class (and in a few cases, species) at char-gen pretty much sets up what you're gonna get as you advance as it's mostly or all baked in. That way I only really have to make one choice, once, and the rest of it all takes care of itself.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Overall I'm somewhere between 2 and 3. That is, I do tend to plan pretty well, but if a game runs on a long time there's usually something I couldn't have planned for in advance that I should adapt around.

Partly...it just helps that a lot of character planning is simply "filter out all the actually BAD (or at least generically undesirable) options until only decent ones remain." At least, in the games I prefer to play. 3rd edition and PF lean incredibly hard into character building where you need to plan 6 levels ahead just to not gimp yourself, and I don''t tend to like that very much, because it feels incredibly confining and frustrating.

For games I do like to play--13th Age and 4e being prominent examples--I can usually just pick options that are generically wise or are reasonably strong given some particular aesthetic I'm looking for. The Mithral Arm or Champion of Order paragon paths, for example, are both solid options that can be fitted to almost any character-history a Paladin would reasonably have. That's one of the reasons why I put so much emphasis on "I'd really like to play a Dragonborn if possible," since if I have at least a handful of basic characteristics for the character, I can plan pretty well without ever really painting myself into a corner. It would be difficult for the kind of person I am to play the kind of character I'm pursuing in such a way that the plan I have would become illogical or inappropriate--and if it does, then I'm almost certainly going for some new plan, which is totally cool.

 

[Shiroiken]

Other than in 3E, where the system kinda made you plan levels in advance for prestige classes, I've only had the basic idea. I might have a feat, spell, or other feature I want to get at the first opportunity, since they're part of the character concept I have in mind, but after that I take it for what happens. I've tried to plan ahead before, but often real game experiences overshadow whitepaper designs.

 

[Minigiant]

I build my character as my character would build themselves.

"That's what my character would do"

The fact that my PCs are mostly in-world optimizers or griefing trolls, I tend to have to plan ahead.

 

[GreyLord]

Just like the poll says. In general, what sort of planning do you do for your character advancement?

For example, in my current campaign as a player, I'm playing a Rune Knight. The only plan I had for advancement beyond that was taking Crusher at 4 and Sentinel at level 6. By level 4, based on in-game scenarios, I started to lean towards Wisdom Resilient instead at level 6 (after being charmed and fighting my own party on two occasions).

But by level 5, I found myself fighting a whole lot of monsters resistant to non-magical weapons and there aren't really any magical weapons in game (none so far, and I doubt I'll find one that is a bludgeoning weapon like my hammer), so now I'm leaning towards magic initiate and going with shilleglagh

This happens a lot for me, where I only have a general build outline, but change that often based on what's been happening in the game. You?

Depends on the edition. I voted one choice but that really only applies to earlier versions of D&D, whilst newer versions it really depends on the edition and the campaign type.

 

[niklinna]

You left out "I make at least a dozen preplanned builds ahead of time in a spreadsheet with cross-references and side essays about possible factors that might prompt choosing one option over another".