How did your Character Concept come about?

[Stalker0]

We all love talking about our characters right? Tell us about your concept, and how that concept came about.

My current character started with a name. I was playing a 3rd edition Binder, and one of the vestiges was named Zagan. I don't know how its supposed to be pronounced, so I called it Zah-Gone.

I absolutely loved the name, I would repeat it over and over again in my mind. When that campaign was over, I knew I wanted to play a character named ZAGAN.

The name invoked absolute raw power to me, and I loved saying the name, so I decided the character would be in love with it to.

Enter Zagan the barbarian. A Hercules, son of two gods. Utterly dumb, maximum strength. Zagan never says I, he always talks about himself in the 3rd person, saying his name like the holy word it is!! Completely narcissistic, Zagan believes he is the ultimate warrior, and so acts accordingly. He is also a simple man, he just needs a lot of ale and a lot of ladies (never whores, Zagan never has to pay to get the ladies!!). Zagan is iliterate, but being so prideful he never admits it. But because books are so foreign to him, he treats them with a certain amount of awe and reverence.

That campaign didn't last long, but after a hiatus we converted to 4e. I decided I hadn't gotten enough from Zagan, so it was time to play him again. I gave him a small flavor makeover. Changed his parents to fit the new pantheon, but it was still super strong ultra dumb ilterate Zagan. The big change was that in the previous game (E6), Zagan was almost max level, so was practically the strongest warrior of the land. In the 4e game, we were low level in a world with epic creatures, so I had to account for that.

The new Zagan was a full fledged 30 level demigod who was sent from the heavens to protect a fellow party member. However, Zagan's father recognized that Zagan's ego would ultimately be his undoing. His father bound Zagan's strength to a small fraction of his normal power in order to teach him humility.

But poor dumb Zagan doesn't get that, and so he still struts around like he's a living legend! However, Zagan has failed a few challenges recently, and has had to face the weight of his own living legend as he attempts to understand his new weakness.

 

[Asmor]

I'm a DM, you insensitive clod!

 

[Qwillion]

Lately I have been using TVTropes.org for all of my character ideas.

 

[Shroomy]

My character is very, very loosely based on the character Michael Weston from USA Network's Burn Notice (I'm a big fan). It came to me after watching an episode where Weston impersonated a safecracker; I liked the show's conceptualization of a safecracker as an artist, and the idea of playing a coolly competent, MacGuyver-like character (without the corniness) appealed to me. I wanted a more fantastic character, so I selected the artificer class and eladrin race.

 

[DeusExMachina]

After my cleric bit the dust I just created an Eladrin spearfighter with lots of mobility based powers and training in acrobatics and athletics as well as some warlord multiclassing. She's an ex-sergeant in the army of a powerful fey creature based on a sort of Changeling faerie theme, with seasonal courts and such.
The feywild and eladrin concepts appealed to me a lot and adding some of the faerie themes of Changeling just seemd to make sense. Also the mobile dextrous fighter (who will be using her spear as much as a polevault as a weapon) is a concept that is to me much more evocative than the heavily armored tank...

 

[Shroomy]

After my cleric bit the dust I just created an Eladrin spearfighter with lots of mobility based powers and training in acrobatics and athletics as well as some warlord multiclassing. She's an ex-sergeant in the army of a powerful fey creature based on a sort of Changeling faerie theme, with seasonal courts and such.
The feywild and eladrin concepts appealed to me a lot and adding some of the faerie themes of Changeling just seemd to make sense. Also the mobile dextrous fighter (who will be using her spear as much as a polevault as a weapon) is a concept that is to me much more evocative than the heavily armored tank...

Check out the "Class Acts: Warlord" article from Dragon 369. There is a warlord utility power that allows you to use a pole arm as a pole vault. (Level 6 Encounter Utility power Polearm Vault), so a great spear would work really well for you.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

My character is very, very loosely based on the character Michael Weston from USA Network's Burn Notice (I'm a big fan). It came to me after watching an episode where Weston impersonated a safecracker; I liked the show's conceptualization of a safecracker as an artist, and the idea of playing a coolly competent, MacGuyver-like character (without the corniness) appealed to me. I wanted a more fantastic character, so I selected the artificer class and eladrin race.

Good taste! My second to last character was a spy also based loosely on Michael Westen's character. Unfortunately, that game died rather quickly.

My current character was created mostly to try out two classes, the Ninja of the Sublime Way I made up, and the Shadowcraft Mage prestige class I adored from the first time I saw it. The game is gestalt, so I got to be both, cloistered cleric/ScM // Ninja. The god I worship is at the center of the campaign, and one of the other players my first convert (and a much better proselytizer than me).

For the Ninja side of it, I'm trying to hew as closely to the Shinobi (as in the video game) model as possible. A Ninja should merge into the shadows, and rely not on toughness but on never getting struck at all. For the casting half, I am trying best i can to replicate the cold, deliberate, strategic personality of the character Dais from Ronin Warriors. Known as the demon of illusion, battles against him involve peeling through layers of decepetion, never sure of what is real, with him toying with his foes like "rats in a maze." As for religion...I'm bad at that. Never had anything particularly in mind to use as a guide, either.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

The last character I played... I mean REALY played, not just for the game but loved playing in character and out was, and still is Zinhald. A Dwarf Monk/Drunken master. Ugly as a pile of horse-mud and but strong as an ox. I would play Zin as a self-loving combat expert and expert drinker to boot.
My concept for Zin came from the "Strongbad sings" album from Homestarrrunner. Theres a song that goes;
"Hey, you look pretty nice, what'd you do? Take a shower?"
and that line was the birth of Zin.

He thinks he's gods gift to the world, and acts like it... and will fight anyone that thinks otherwise. Great fun to play!

 

[evilgenius8000]

Well, lets see...

I have two characters right now. One of them - the one I'm playing currently in LFR - is a genasi swordmage named Zan-Bal. He's Arabian themed, with the whole loose pants, sandals, and vest schtick going on, and usually refers to himself in the 3rd person. I came up after combining a few basic ideas: 1) I've always wanted to play a magic-using sword-wielder in D&D, but 3rd ed made it somewhat difficult. Thus, swordmage was an obvious choice, especially considering the setting is Forgotten Realms; 2) Him being a genasi was mainly a matter of it being a decent race, but it lead to his theme after I read some about their 4th Ed incarnation; 3) I read in one of the 4E FR books that many genasi could be found in Calimshan, a place I've been fond of ever since I read about it in the Drizz't novels. Thus, it was almost a no-brainer that my character would be from there. Thus, the Arabian theme.

My second character is a little different. He's a mysterious Githzerai, who apparently is named Nostradamus Jones (though it is hard to tell if he was referring to himself when he said that name), who just recently appeared in a 3.5 campaign after my old character (a halfling bard potion salesman named Gillie Goldenfoot) died in the process of looting a fallen enemy's corpse. My idea for this Githzerai is based on the Planescape Xaositect faction, which I found out about in Planescape: Torment... Thus, he's completely crazy (which I've emulated through Flaws) but its hard to tell if he's just insane or if there's a method to his madness. He claims to be from the future (or that he can see the future) but in truth he most likely fled/was forced to leave Limbo for some reason. He's currently a Enlightened Chaos Monk (Mind Blade fighting style) 2 / Battle Dancer 1 (a mixture of Dreamscarred Press's psionic Enlightened Monk and the Chaos Monk variant from Dragon Mag plus the Battle Dancer from Dragon Compendium I)

Otherwise... I'm a DM. However, my group doesn't always have a full party (and I'm not big on deviating from the normal rules) so I often have a DMPC travel along (though he/she usually ends up dying a horrible death). I'm not running a campaign yet, but I have a 4th Ed one in development. I'll spare the details of the setting for a different thread, but the character I'm thinking about running is a famous musician in the setting's only city. He's a drow troubador (using the class from the APG but with features from the Bard preview in a Ampersand DDI article) whose stage name is The Darkness... He's basically modeled after the self-important, ignorant rock musicians of our world. You know, with names like Sting or The Edge. He has the Alchemist feat, which he mainly uses for remedies after a hard night of partying.

So, yeah... the characters I usually play are rather odd. But I prefer that to a typical fantasy archetype.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I usually am DM/Storyteller. But a couple characters of mine (from two different games):

Sez, 3.5, Beguiler from Sigil who stole one of the skulls that Lothar has:

This character came about from multiple sources:
1. The Beguiler was the only magic-user class I enjoyed in 3.5. Probably mainly thanks to its Roguish-ways, it also felt very "Sigily".
2. My friend and DM had always adored Planescape and specifically Sigil, as do I thus while talking about it he brought up Lothar and his library. I thought this was a very cool library.
3. Planescape: Torment and Morte greatly influenced me in wanting to have some manner of intelligent-skull NPC (voiced/played by the DM).
4. The rest of the party wasn't based in Sigil so being chased by Lothar was a easy reason to leave.

Barb, Promethean: The Created, A Unfleshed Aurum Promethean whose body was comprised of melted down (by Divine Fire) toys and especialy Barbies.

Once more multiple sources:
1. I had just recently watched a episode of CSI where the person who died was obsessed with being perfect to the point of weighing her food and her feces to try and stay even intake and outake and then finally she began to carve away her skin to make herself perfect. Well this led itself well to an idea for a Promethean and in this case, Barb feels compelled to look like a "perfect human" as such she uses a carving knife to shave away her plastic form to try and make herself into the "ideal woman".
2. I had simply just finished reading up on the Unfleshed and found them interesting and well cool and wanted to make one up as a character.
3. After number two had been done, I began to figure out what type and my mind wandered back to how when healing or using Transmutations a Promethean's true-form is apparent. Well I thought it be neat is if part of that true-form was something very bizarre and unnerving and thus the idea of toys came into effect. As such when this occurs the toys inside her light-up or make their noises or sometimes even move.

I have some ideas for a 4e character, but since DMing right now and my mind thus is always altering it.