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

[Anon Adderlan]

As asked on another site (though I've had time to make it somewhat clearer I think)...

Do you have your character's growth planned out in advance of play? In other words, do you already know which skills, feats, and classes your character is going to have/be at each level before play even begins?

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Maybe not every specific skill point/feat/talent per level, but I usually have a pretty clear picture of what direction I want my characters to go, and typically have a mental checklist of what level I can get feat/talent/power X. Helps make sure the character can do what I want them to do, with as little deadweight as possible, such as a feat/talent that looked cool at the time but later on proves to be almost worthless.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

First of all: Welcome to ENWorld!

As to the question: Yes, a lot of the character is planned before I play him:

Skills: Most of the time, I just pick a number of skills and max them out: A human fighter with int 12 gets 4 skill points per level, so I have 4 skills, always at maximum rank. Some of the time I pick up languages as I go along, sometimes skill points are divided up (more or less evenly) among 2 skills or so, but most of the time, I don't spend much time each level to pick skills.

Classes: Since they're one of the most defining features a character has, my character concept usually dictates the class(es) involved. Of course, sometimes a cool new PrC shows up that fits the character, or things happen to the characters, and my plans change on the spot, but usually I know what class(es) I'll get.

Feats: Now that depends. Some concepts need certain feats (Two-weapon fighting for a rogue with two short swords, or quicken and persistent for a battle cleric) or there's big feat chains involved (like a fighter concentrating on one weapon, getting all weapon-specific feats for that weapon), but sometimes, they're not critical for the character, and I often pick something up as I go along (or I got a new feat coming after the important ones are already there).

FX (spells, psionic powers, manoeuvres, and the like): Assuming that there is a choice, it can go either way, or be a mix of the two: A wizard, for example, will get magic missile, fireball and meteor swarm, and also invisibility (and greater invisibility), fly, and mirror image, but beyond that? A character from the Tome of Nine Swords will have his selection predetermined by the disciplines he chooses. Again, sometimes I wait and let the campaign unfold before choosing some of the spells (Devilhunters? No fireball! Demonslayers? No lightning bolt!).

 

[Buttercup]

More or less, yeah.

If I've decided I want to play a finesse type fighter, say, then there are some obvious class, feat and skill choices. If I'm playing a wizard, then I probably won't decide what spells I will want in my spellbook in detail, because I might run across some spells I wasn't thinking of during the course of play.

 

[Quel_technoh]

I generally make my character change according to what skill and abilities he uses most often; so if I do a lot of swimming, I will get a skill point in that, but he'll still have ranks into Spellcraft and Concentration and such for simply using magic. I feel that that is better because it resembles real life more, and allows me to connect my character to what has happened to him.

 

[Boddynock]

I voted 'rarely'. I would have said 'never' but have just planned out a character in detail for the first time. It came out of a concept for a dwarven smith - and I've just scoured the books to come up with a workable character to achieve that.

Usually, though, although I have a strong character concept, I like to see how the character itself develops - and sometimes I've been surprised.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Often. A 1st-level character rarely matches what I want to play. This goes double if they're going to multiclass.

 

[phindar]

Yeah, most of the time. I don't usually plot out the full progression, but I have an idea where I'm headed over the next few levels at least. My current character I plotted out 1-20 because he had a lot of fighter levels and the build was feat-intensive, so once I built him to 14 it was fairly easy to tack on the other 6. Skills are much more fluid for me. I generally have an idea of a skill central to the concept that I'm going to keep at max ranks (like say, Sense Motive), and everything else I put points into as I need them.

 

[hong]

Yep. It's always good to see at the end of the campaign how badly wrong I was.

 

[shilsen]

Yep. It's always good to see at the end of the campaign how badly wrong I was.

Very rarely for me. I have at best a vague idea of how I'd like to see the PC progress, but I make the level by level decision as they come up, in a fairly organic manner.