D&D 5E How many more characters (full PC rules) have you made than you have played?

[cbwjm]

I create quite a few and, when I have a chance to play them, I create something completely new anyway. I often create a few when I think my current PC is gonna die. I have a few on Dndbeyond who are hanging around wondering why my current PC is still alive

 

[doctorbadwolf]

At least a hundred built for every one played. Building characters is one of my favorite idle boredom activities.

 

[MNblockhead]

Not sure if my answer is in the spirit of the question, but I've made well over a hundred PCs in D&D Beyond. Most of that is to help me understand player character options as a DM. I mostly DM and find that I have big blind spots on the mechanics of many spells and character options. Also, I like to build many of my NPCs up in the same way I would build a PC. So these are not PCs that I've built because I hope to play them someday but more theory crafting and self-education.

But also, building characters is a kind of mini game for me. I enjoy it. It is similar to doing world building on settings I may never get around to DMing.

 

[Lanefan]

As a player I've played maybe 70 characters in my life and can't offhand think of more than a very few I've rolled up and not played*. One or two for sure, rolled up for campaigns that simply never started, and another one or two rolled up as replacements and then never needed because the original was revived, but that's it.

* - ignoring NPCs rolled up as DM and then never encountered by anyone; there's been quite a few of those.

 

[Charlaquin]

I used to make characters with no immediate plans to use them in an actual game quite a lot, but haven’t done so of my own volition in many years. Pretty much since I switched to primarily DMing. That creative urge is more than satisfied by DMing prep for me. That said, I have a very creative partner who loves making characters, and loves collaborating with others (well… mostly with me) on character creation, making characters with various social connections to other people’s (again, mostly my) characters. So, I end up creating a lot of characters in tandem with them. We probably have at least half a dozen joint character concepts with varying degrees of likelihood of ever actually playing.

 

[Shiroiken]

I'll sit at the other end of the scale - I don't generally construct characters unless I intend to play them. My ratio is probably pretty close to 1:1.

Same. I might have a few ideas in a rough draft somewhere, but nothing close to completion. For 5E, I'd probably say 2 or 3. Going back over the decades, I'm probably up to a dozen or two. It's just not worth the effort unless you're going to play them.

 

[Lyxen]

Very, very few, actually. I have made... I don't know how mant characters I've made but probably 100+ and I don't remember any that I've not played. I like to actually play the game, if I want to create something "offline", I create an adventure or a setting, so I create characters according to what is going to be played next. It's not like it takes a long time to create...

 

[S'mon]

For many, especially me, making characters is a part of D&D you can play on your own. Often I sit and create new concepts, some conventional and others out there, but in different ways than I see online (minimal powers rather than maxed out). Some of these wind up seeing use as NPCs that have full PC rules behind them. Others just sit in my notebook, or twitter feed, or DnDBeyond to never see the light of day.

Usually I'm the DM, but have played a handful of characters. Recently I did the ratio of created to played characters for myself. It's a big number somewhere around 50:1.

What's your ratio?

Zero - I did have Kyre, an unplayed character in D&D Beyond for a little while, an experiment in making a DEX-based Paladin, but then I needed a new PC for a new game so I used her.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Probably 4:1 or 5:1,and that's only if you count "characters I made when applying for a game" as unplayed characters. I don't tend to make characters unless I'm at least attempting to play, unless I'm making them for the sake of argument. I mostly tend to look at the options themselves and try to figure out how they'd piece together.

 

[Horwath]

about 3:1

I like to have 2 backup characters ready anytime.
That is, if my character dies and resurrection is not immediately available, I do not like to hassle other players with that or missing out a session or more to get my character resurrected.