D&D 5E Losing Interest in Character/ Class?

[Krachek]

I think playing a straight champion fighter could help.
but also take a look at background, personality, bond and flaw, and each session try to improve your finesse in personality, bond and flaw. See those as feature, and add notes and details as you were acquiring new powers. After a while you may find that you will have dozens of options to react to every situation, switching from personality, bond, flaw and other aspect.
so take time to see how your character react to each new npc, room, situation the party encounter And have fun.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful replies!

I think a more generic subclass for each class would be good. I know Champion, Thief, etc. are "defaults", but even some of the defaults sort of pigeon-hole the character. I'll definitely give it some thought.

 

[HarbingerX]

This is exactly why my favourite version of D&D is B/X or similar ones. Without all the mass of PC mechanical crunch, the players and DM focus more on what's happening in the game, not what they unlock in their next level up. This comes from my experiences running long running B/X campaigns vs 3.5/4/5e. I know more 'personal advancement' games can be done in 5e, it's just that all the level abilities get in the way.

 

[TwoSix]

Just do 2 classes. Fighter and Magic-User. Fighter gets d12 HD, Extra Attack at 5, 11, and 20. Magic User gets a spellbook, spell progression, and cantrips. Differentiation is by Race and Background. ASIs (no feats) at 4, 8, 12, 16, 19 like normal.

Give out a lot more magic items and boons to compensate and add individuality to characters.

If that's too extreme, add in a few more classes. Each class should have one big mechanical hook at 1st level, and leveling gives out nothing but some scaling of that feature, hit points, and ASIs.

Also consider giving more mechanical benefits to backgrounds, like maybe a feat or two or a special feature. Basically, make the entire character package be in a bundle you get at 1st level, and then your character growth and distinction is entirely something you have to acquire through play through boons and magic items, not something you're waiting around to acquire.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I can't say that I have, but this is probably just one of those personal experience things. I tend to only really get invested in or remember characters by the whackiest adventures/stories attached to them, not by abilities, etc. I haven't noticed that that is particularly affected by the amount of fiddly bits in the mechanics. If anything, my experiences tend in the other direction, with earlier edition characters only differentiated by which magic items they had picked up (outside of whatever hilarious incidents had occurred).



hmmm....at least IME, the 10th level campaign cap seems edition independent. My personal guess is that that tends to have more to do with increasing HP and tons of effects overlapping and making combat a pain to run.

For the 10th level campaign: I think another factor is how long it takes to get to 10th. IIRC, the amount of game time to reach that point is about the same, and for a lot of players (myself included) you tend to hit a point around there where you've done all you wanted to do, mechanically and narratively, with that character. You can start to grow bored.

 

[Nytmare]

Just do 2 classes. Fighter and Magic-User.

This is close to something I had been playing around with for a hexcrawl game back when we were at Pitt. Instead of classes, everything was just fleshing out between magic and mundane skill trees, and your class was just the descriptors and coat of paint you put over top of it.

 

[TwoSix]

This is close to something I had been playing around with for a hexcrawl game back when we were at Pitt. Instead of classes, everything was just fleshing out between magic and mundane skill trees, and your class was just the descriptors and coat of paint you put over top of it.

Damn, that's game I'd jump all over now. (Not back then, sadly...my tastes have changed quite a bit.)

My only rationale for leaving classes is tradition, and that they're the normal vector for handing out Hit Die and leveling based features in 5e. I do think the 5e chassis is both pretty simple and robust, so I'd like to leverage that for some more out-there concepts.

 

[Arilyn]

Actually, found the opposite. In those early games, character creation rarely let me create the character I had blossoming in my imagination. I had all kinds of ideas for halflings, for example, that weren't thieves.
Maybe, create the character's goals, personality, strengths and weaknesses, etc. before deciding on an appropriate class? It might help get you away from the "build" mentality that, I admit, has settled into the newer versions of D&D. And try not to plan ahead. I know that I get caught up in this because.... treats!

 

[Blue]

So, I have a Sorlock (Sorcerer 3/ Warlock 3) in our CoS game and after reaching level 6, I feel like I am disappointed where the two classes go from here--I just have no interest in them.

This got me thinking about my mindset with 5E. With the features you get, I find myself more thinking about my character, level, and what features I want next--and where might I get them. Now, I do this with the character concept/story in mind, not just to min/max them or anything.

But it is vastly different from my 1E/2E experience. Then, it was always about the next adventure, and without the choices for the character, I never had to worry about it.

This sensation makes my characters in 5E feel less valuable to me since they become more a collection of abilities and features instead of a persona.

I am curious if other players run into this? And I wonder if it is also a big part of why games sort of die out around levels 6-10?

So play a single classed character.

It sounds like there is no change. Before you had no care because there were no customization options. You just went where the class took you. If there were options, it is likely you would have cared.

So character customization, which is a boon for most, seems to distract you from what your nostalgia tells you you want. So try without. Pick a class without many choices along the way, and not worry about it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Oddly, if we removed feats and MCing, I don't think I would be any happier because then I would be forced into features that might not fit at all. I've looked at removing a lot of things and just making it more like 1E/2E, but without such features I do worry about balance issues.

In that case, it sounds to me like your issue isn’t the number options available to you, but that the options themselves don’t interest you. And that’s fair.