Do you plan out your character's advancement in advance?

[occam]

I'll usually at least plan out options for the next few levels, particularly at low levels when gunning for a PrC. Lately I've been making some Bo9S martial adept characters, and it's almost impossible to wind up in a position to learn a desired maneuver without a lot of forethought.

 

[Aaron L]

Always. I view multiclassing and feat choices as building custom classes, and prebuild them for my characters from 1-20.


I also find it funny how this is called powergaming from both sides. Pre-planning your character's advancement is munchkin, but so is dipping into classes and spontaneously taking levels without apprenticing into the new class, or whatever.

 

[Nifft]

I'll usually at least plan out options for the next few levels, particularly at low levels when gunning for a PrC. Lately I've been making some Bo9S martial adept characters, and it's almost impossible to wind up in a position to learn a desired maneuver without a lot of forethought.

This is a very good point. Some characters require more fore-planning than others.

A Wizard can always learn new spells, but a Fighter aiming for a certain feat or fighting style, or a Martial Adept aiming for a certain style or set of maneuvers, may need to plan carefully.

Cheers, -- N

 

[davidschwartznz]

As much as I plan my own life.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

As much as I plan my own life.

Me too, but not to the same level of detail... I mean, I don't determine what time my character is going to brush his teeth on each day of his adventuring career, because the life of an adventurer is quite unpredictable. I do, however, decide what I'm going to do with the character's upcoming resources, such as feats, skills, classes, experience points, and so on...

Later
silver

 

[Shade]

I plan my character out for as long as I expect him to last. If it's a long-term campaign, I'll probably plan him to 20 (and possibly epic). If it's a one-shot, just a level or two.

 

[messy]

always. i plan my characters obsessively

messy

 

[Mycanid]

I get a general idea of where I think the pc will be headed. After all, sometimes we in RL like to plan where we hope we are going, don't we?

But then I leave it open to the fluctuations of the game ... maybe something else entirely different will emerge, but then maybe not. This is often what happens in RL too, after all.

 

[Warren Okuma]

In an old school dungeon cut throat where the monsters do not want to be killed and they think, act, and plan? Hell yeah. I plan out every feat.

In a soft style campaign? Nope. I don't need to.

 

[Oryan77]

One of my players does this. In a way I don't like it because it's just another element that causes him to focus on powergaming and not give any thought towards character development & integrating the PC in the campaign world. Anotherwords, he doesn't make his character cool, he just makes his character do cool things.

Nothing wrong with that; I just wish he gave more thought into making his PC a part of the campaign world instead of just waiting to roll dice and levelling up.

On the other hand, I think it's good when a player plans ahead because he'll hopefully never regret what he chooses for his PC later on and he'll also qualify for a PrC which gives him some kind of goal for his character.