Making Your Characters Unique

[DrunkonDuty]

DOn't get to play anywhere near enough. But I do an in depth character background when I do. This doubtless comes from the same impulse that makes a chronic world creator.

Specifics vary from character to character. Hobbies and interests, pets, previous employment, family. All of them play a part here and there. As someone above said: I look for something that resonates with me and the premise of the campaign.

My fave to-date: a orcish fighter thief, for an all orc game. He was basically a thug on a short road to crossing the wrong people in the tribe when the Leader showed up in camp. (A highly charismatic warlord type.) I described him as being mesmerised by the Leader and making the leap from thug to burgeoning brown shirt. The orc horde is later wiped out and the Leader killed. Recovering the Leader's bones became his goal for the (too-short) campaign. He was into Orcish racial superiority and all that nazi-like crap. Fun to play. I think I scared my GM.

 

[Tuzenbach]

I simply break all stereotypes.

Absolutely NEVER have I had a dwarf with either a huge axe or hammer. There are literally HUNDREDS of other weapons to choose from, so why be boring and go with the "most familiar" choice?

For example, how many people on this board associate the word "pugilist" with the word "elf"? All the more reason to create an elf that deals strictly in fisticuffs.

 

[Delta]

Ok, not everyone writes a backstory...

Thank you.

 

[zen_hydra]

"What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun."

 

[Doug McCrae]

There are so many splats for 3e now I can make an unusual PC (for my group, not world-wide) by going to the outer reaches of the rules. I'm planning a hadozee (Stormwrack) warblade (Tome of Battle) for my next char. Other options include a kenku (MM3) swordsage (ToB) or a warforged (MM3) psion (XPH).

In the past we've used monstrous races from Savage Species, such as drider, stone giant and air elemental quite a bit for an exotic flavor.

I did something similar to the brewer bit with a Planescape PC, a human favoured soul called Gustav Baker (guess what his useless profession was?) but tbh he was one of my less successful creations, not colourful, flavourful or interesting enough for my taste.

My two best recent characters were both NPCs in an Eberron game I run. Sirri is a redheaded halfling theatrical and adventurers agent in Sharn. She had 12 children and was heavily pregnant when the PCs first met her. Possessing a strong cockney accent (a bad impression of Eliza Doolittle), she was mercenary, persuasive, quite vain, concerned with propriety (or the semblance of it) and flirted a bit with charismatic males.

I guess the concept was basically a cockney wideboy/matriarch but somehow making her a halfling plus all the kids and the preggers bit made it unique and interesting to me.

Lady Winter d'Cannith is an artificer who was secretly an Emerald Claw agent, revealed partway thru the game, a long time foe of the PCs. Very smart, mostly humourless, dedicated, ruthless. What really made this char for me was her appearance. She had been permanently burned by something (I never decided what) in the past and covered half her face with a steel mask. One of her hands had been replaced with a steel version. She had a pet, a white wolf construct called Frost. Basically a pulp villain, like a 40s comicbook nazi.

So really, not unique at all. But pretty damn cool.

 

[two]

I don't bother trying to make the character 'unique'. Because, really, is anything unique? I try to make sure the character resonates with me (and, hopefully, my fellow players) in such a way that I enjoy playing the character.

It's insanely easy to create something unique. Just write a long English sentence. Unless you are trying to be cliche, there is a good chance it's unique. Then expand it to write a paragraph. That's almost certainly unique. 2 paragraphs will 100% be unique unless you are trying to not be unique.

"The red combustible rose which he was given for Christmas did indeed explode after the presents were opened, resulting in..."

There, done. 100% unique, guaranteed. And that's just half the sentence.

 

[dmccoy1693]

The best solution is to go play GURPS.

I thought the "best solution" was to go play C&C.

 

[Odhanan]

I give them weaknesses that show up during the game. A Knight disgusted with the butchery of war. A Fallen Paladin, still good but who defies the dogma of the established religion. An alcoholic cleric. A dwarf who becomes druid to experience the full nature of the cosmos and not only what is carved of stone and metals. A devil with a first taste of freedom that turns him Chaotic.

Anything that goes against the base concept, and yet blends with it to give volume to the personality and make it somehow believable, while providing potential hooks for interactions with PCs, NPCs and events in the game. Something that shows during role-playing. If it remains internal and isn't expressed through various in-game interactions, it's not worth the trouble.

 

[Lanefan]

Depending on the character, I'll usually come up with some sort of theme and try to build the characterization around it, either ahead of time or as the game develops. Sometimes this theme is based on a variant of a character from a book or film, other times not.

Appppil, for example, is a 3e Illusionist whose theme right from the start was "a girl of colours". Her clothes are colourful. Her illusions are colourful. Colour Spray* was her favourite spell at low level. Her character piece is a blinding splash of colour in a sea of silver and brown and black. Her character *sheet* is an artist's nightmare. And so on. (her language is colourful too, at times, but that's another issue...) And her personality is based on a combination of a character from a TV show and 2 or 3 people I've known in real life.
* - may all the gods have mercy if she ever gets Prismatic [anything]!

Bjarnni, a mostly-Ranger I play in the same game, has had his character defined much more by what's happened in-game. I started him out as a noble-hearted woodsman who became a "heavy Ranger" (DM let me trade in 2-weapon fighting for heavy armour use) and played him more like a stereotypical paladin than a ranger. As the game went along, for some reason an inordinate percentage of the items he acquired had something to do with fighting undead; so - even though I initially envisioned him as a giant-slayer - he's morphed into something undead really don't want to meet. The giants, however, are quite safe. (yet I still don't want to multi- him into paladin; and he hasn't exactly got the charisma for it)

The trick is always to find some "hook" and hang the character's personality on that, then let it grow from there.

Lanefan

 

[dpmcalister]

I always try to add something different to each character (like my human ranger who's backstory was that his wife was killed by the Scarlet Brotherhood (he's an Onnwal based Living Greyhawk character) and his son kidnapped by them). It gave me a decent, in character reason, for having humans as his favoured enemy (even though he was Suel himself).

Normally though, aside from a general idea in my head, I don't write anything down before I start playing, instead I let the character develop, in game, and note down anything that springs up from there.