D&D General Have you ever retired a character?

[Older Beholder]

As the title says.
I'm not talking about writing an ending for your character when the campaign is over.
Have you ever retired a character and made a new one instead to continue playing?

If so, why?

I've only ever retired a character once, (that I can recall) he fell in love with an NPC and retired from the adventuring life.

I've put this in a DnD thread, but feel free to mention other systems as well.

 

[Kurotowa]

A couple of times, over the decades. If I feel like the PC just isn't suitable for the campaign, or find I don't enjoy either their personality or mechanics, I'll talk with the DM about retiring the PC and swapping to a new one. But that's the most severe step. Other times, I've just arranged a mechanical revision while keeping the character going.

 

[James Gasik]

In a long-running campaign, I retired a character who had become a demigod, simply because I thought adventuring as a god was a bit silly. I had another character become an immortal (basically the same thing with different rules) who I did retire, but later went back to only because they had a lot of unfinished business I wanted to resolve. Eight years later and I still haven't managed to get them back into retirement.

I've had a character forced into retirement in an online V:tM game, something that still leaves a stale taste in my mouth- I'd been worried about their power level and had asked the staff if they were a problem, and was told they weren't repeatedly. Then I got busy IRL and had to take a month off from the game. When I came back, the entire game had been rebooted- some characters were allowed to stay with "rebalanced" (ie, nerfed) stats.

Mine was not. When I asked why, apparently my character was one of the reasons for the reboot. Like, I could see their logic, obviously, because I'd had concerns myself, but they first dismissed my concerns, then went ahead and booted me out the instant my back was turned.
: (

The only other time was when I tried to retire my Cleric in a 3e game where they had been branded a heretic and the archbishop who hated my character kept sending powerful assassins that my party ended up having to deal with, so I was ready to walk off into the sunset, but the party insisted they would stand with me.

To be fair, that was before two characters died and ended up reincarnated after a fight with a Retriever (powerful demonic construct able to plane shift, hard to kill, and can unleash nasty eye rays), but by that point the game was on it's last legs- we had one more session after that where we fought a Remorhaz, and then the DM balked at the thought of us using 5th-level spells and prestige classes so the game went on a permanent "hiatus" while he "re-evaluated" the campaign.

 

[Sulicius]

I had been playing a PC for 4 years, and I felt like her story was done. I had lost the interest in her for a while.

She was an elderly dwarf, so in agreement with the DM, I rolled a d100 after every long rest to see if she’d pass in her sleep.

Right when we saved her home town and I had cool role play, thanking everyone for their efforts, she passed.

I couldn’t have made it so perfect if I tried.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

Yes, I retired my first real DND 5e character after about a year or so. I had participated in a DND 5e game before, but I didn't really know what was going on then. So this was my first real earnest attempt at playing a TTRPG.

When I started, I was obsessed. I had spent so much time on this character's. I wrote a novella for his back story. I spent time imagining how he'd speak and move. Then one day, I stopped feeling good about playing the character. So I worked with my GM to basically write him off: he succumbed to a curse, and he left the party so that his party wouldn't hurt anyone else.

I took a break for a few months, then rejoined the campaign with a gag character.