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

[bedir than]

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?

 

[Mad_Jack]

For just 5th Edition?

I've yet to play an actual game other than a play-by-post that pretty much fell apart before it really took off, but I've converted or created, let's see...
Yeah, there's basically four characters I've created or converted to 5E that I haven't played. Versus the one I have.


But if we're speaking about all editions... well...

I'm 50 years old and I've been playing since I was 8...

I have stacks of notebooks filled with fully-statted characters that I've never had the chance to play.
Versus the... eighteen(?) characters I've actually played in games.

 

[Umbran]

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.

 

[Blue]

Early on I did a bunch of theorycraft builds, looking to be viable levels 1-12ish. But I almost never play a theorycraft builds, so none of them ever hit "column B".

Since then I'll occasionally do one. 5e has a balanced number of character creation options for the rules complexity - some of the people I play with wouldn't be comfortable with more complex rules. But frankly the mini-game of character creation doesn't have the "replayability" of an RPG like Hero System. For Hero System I haven't been in a Champions game in over a decade, but I still make characters occasionally.

I used to be crazy with 3.5 with the vast amount of options, but when going back to look at my notes a few years later I realized it would be a huge undertakingto try to pick that back up with it scattered all overf the place - this racial level here, that PrC there. Unless I was constantly wading in it, there is no way I would want to do that again, vs. Hero System where it's all collected and there are so few exception-based character design (like those racial replacement levels).

 

[bedir than]

Early on I did a bunch of theorycraft builds

this is an example of my opposite of maxing

My next D&D character is a quilter. They craft the past and present of their community in order to build a better future. An Artificer who helps provide warmth and healing, they are a forest gnome. Their little friends help them with placing the squares, the batting, the long arm.

And yes, there's a full set of stats and such somewhere in a notebook.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Since I very rarely get to play, but will sometimes explore concepts for when I get the chance, it is probably about 5:1 maybe.

 

[Omand]

Ummm ... lots?

While usually a forever DM, I have crafted many characters just cause I like rolling dice and coming up with ideas from time to time.

And this is for every edition, kind of a hobby sideline.

Cheers

 

[Omand]

Oh, and no idea on what the ratio is. It will be a high ratio though.

Cheers

 

[overgeeked]

For 5E. I have made about 20. I have played 5. So about 4:1. I like having backup characters ready to go. I've played: Artificer, Bard, Barbarian, Monk x2.

 

[J.Quondam]

For 5e, it's exactly 1:1 for me. And for all other editions, it's very close to 1:1, as well. I can't think of a time since the 80s that I built a PC just to tinker with and that didn't see play. Only one fully-built but unplayed PC* immediately springs to mind across all editions.

Character concepts (for PCs) just don't come to me until I'm thinking in the context of a specific campaign/setting that I'll be playing in.


* However... There have been a small handful of PCs I built for specific games that were planned but never got started, for whatever reason.