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Message: <blockquote data-quote="d2OKC" data-source="post: 5710981" data-attributes="member: 97351">I typically start at the same two places each time: what does the party need, and what mini can I use to represent it? I'm a very accomidating player, possibly too much so, and it is important to me that our party is well-rounded. Usually, I wait to choose last and try to select a character that can fill in as many holes as possible to make both the group as a whole and the individual characters in the group better. Often this means I play the leader role in 4E, and in 3.5 I played a lot of clerics and bards. And I am OK with that! I like playing characters that make other people better rather than being the "best" character in the group (which, I think is why I was so excited about 4E? Because it focused more on the "team" than on the individuals, in my mind). I'm also a very visual player, and probably the kind of person that gives 4E such a bad rap for being a "minis game". But, I have a large collection, and I like using them, and I want to play a character I can acurately represent using one of them, as opposed to "oh, I guess I'll use this guy in heavy armor to represent my shaman". I'm also the guy that will buy minis for the other players in order to get good visual representation for their characters as well, because it just helps me, as a player, get more interested/ invested in the game. From there, it's very organic. We've been playing Gardmore Abbey for a few weeks, so we had to make new characters recently. The roles taken were: striker (rogue/warlock hybrid), striker (assassin), leader (ardent), controller (wizard), and defender (warden) - a pretty complete party already. In this case, it was my inclination to play another leader, because there's a good variation of options and it's nice to have a lot of healing. Next, I realized we had two ranged characters (hybrid, wizard) and three melee (ardent, warden, assassin), so I figured I'd balance it out bit and play another ranged character (which, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've ever done before!). We have a warlord in our long-running game, but he is a melee warlord, so I decided to try out the warlord's ranged build. So, leader. Check. Ranged warlord. Check. I started looking at the races that go well with warlords and instantly decided on genasi. It's cool looking, it's got interesting combat abilities, and it's not something we've ever used in our games before. I went with Sandsoul, because it dovetails nicely with the ranged warlord's maneuverability, and then went with female, because I tend to like to play female characters, I guess. Our group is made of all males, so most of our PCs are also male, and I wanted to mix it up a bit. Then when I dug through the minis, I kind of got stumped. There are not a lot of good Genasi minis, and none for a female. This is probably where I compromised the most, but I ended up choosing the Steelheart Archer mini from War Drums (which is a cool one I'd been wanting to use for a while anyway). Then, I just had to come up with a name (Pterra - which, looking back, I'm not so sure I really like it, but I'm stuck with it now) and a quick-and-dirty backstory (she escaped the court of an efreet sultan in the City of Brass and is looking for a way to gain the power to get her family out as well) and I was pretty much done. Oh, except for making the actual character. TL;DR It's a pretty organic process for me, but for the most part it involves figuring out what the group needs most and how I can make a cool character out of that deficiency.</blockquote>

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