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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nightson" data-source="post: 4653027" data-attributes="member: 61515">I go for a personality, past, plot hooks approach when designing characters.Personality is a rough idea of how you plan to play the character.  Past should generally be on the shorter side, a little bit on their early to late childhood, keep the mundane stuff short it can still be there, but try and make space devoted to something roughly equivalent to how important it would be to your character.  Plot hooks are things the DM can throw out that you've agreed to recognize and pay attention to.  Things like an old spurned lover, a rival from the magic school you went to, veterans from the brief war you fought in, priests from that temple you stole that thing from, anything that your DM could plop down in front of you and you'd follow.Here's an example I'm pulling up from memory, a multiclass sorcerer/rogue named Dahlia.Personality:  Dahlia rarely speaks, doing so only when absolutely necessary, she prefers to get her point across through gestures and other nonverbal communication.  She's cautious, and although she is a kind person at heart, she's mistrustful and too often believes the worst of people.  If she gives her word, she does absolutely anything in her power to fulfill it.(I'm getting tired so these parts are going to be briefer the usual for me)Past:  Got abducted by slavers when she was a teenager, killed her parents, took her and her brother.  When they got to the big slave city, the stress unlocked her latent sorcerer powers and she lit the place on fire.  She managed to escape (her brother was held in a different place and didn't) and fled into the streets.  She grew up there, taking to thievery and learning silence.  Her small talent in magic served her well enough that her life was not miserable.  When she tried to track down her brother, she was told that he had died in an escape attempt.  After a run in with some adventurers passing through the city, she decided that it was the life for her and set out to seek her fortune.Plot hooks:Brother:  She was told he was dead, but she never saw a body, and those types of records and people aren't always reliable.  Dahlia's brother might be alive and well, maybe he escaped in the attempt, maybe he didn't and is still a slave.Slavery:  Dahlia harbors an intense dislike for it, although recognizing it as a social problem and not one that can be solved by one person, she has no problem showing her disgust for slavers or slaveholders and will be more then happy to sabotage any slave trade or free any slaves should the opportunity present itself.Adventuring Party: In the actual character history I had more on them, but they had a big impact on Dahlia and she'd be interested in anything having to do with them.Anyway, that's how I do it, you just got to find the method that suits you.</blockquote>

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