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<blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 7251534" data-attributes="member: 6802765">I answered &quot;other&quot;. Anything on your list (any many other things besides) can serve as an initial inspiration. After that, for me it's a recursive process where thematic or mechanic elements inspire other ideas that would mesh well, which in turn inspire yet more ideas. When it works well, each iteration of the character has an ever-improving fit between the mechanics and the thematics, even as both stray from the initial inspiration. (Build/concept harmony is what I usually optimize for.)When it doesn't work well, the nascent concept can get too broad, and sometimes split into several different competing versions of the character (or even multiple characters). Sometimes that just gives me more ideas for future characters, but other times I'm left with too many character pieces, some of which are mutually exclusive. In that case I look at how the pieces conncect to see if there is a core concept lurking in some subset of the various options. (If that fails I usually pick my favorite bit and start the process over with stricter criteria on what new ideas I'll consider.)The two primary advantages to my method are (1) it produces multi-faceted characters I'm proud of with a very tight integration of mechanics and thematics, and (2) it's a delightfully fun process in its own right. The biggest downside is the time required: a new 5e character can take me ten hours or more to take from initial inspiration to ready-to-play character. (By contrast, a new 3.5 character could take 40 hours or more.) A secondary downside is that my character creation approach makes starting at 1st or 2nd level unappealing to me: there simply aren't enough moving pieces to make the process interesting.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Xetheral, post: 7251534, member: 6802765"] I answered "other". Anything on your list (any many other things besides) can serve as an initial inspiration. After that, for me it's a recursive process where thematic or mechanic elements inspire other ideas that would mesh well, which in turn inspire yet more ideas. When it works well, each iteration of the character has an ever-improving fit between the mechanics and the thematics, even as both stray from the initial inspiration. (Build/concept harmony is what I usually optimize for.) When it doesn't work well, the nascent concept can get too broad, and sometimes split into several different competing versions of the character (or even multiple characters). Sometimes that just gives me more ideas for future characters, but other times I'm left with too many character pieces, some of which are mutually exclusive. In that case I look at how the pieces conncect to see if there is a core concept lurking in some subset of the various options. (If that fails I usually pick my favorite bit and start the process over with stricter criteria on what new ideas I'll consider.) The two primary advantages to my method are (1) it produces multi-faceted characters I'm proud of with a very tight integration of mechanics and thematics, and (2) it's a delightfully fun process in its own right. The biggest downside is the time required: a new 5e character can take me ten hours or more to take from initial inspiration to ready-to-play character. (By contrast, a new 3.5 character could take 40 hours or more.) A secondary downside is that my character creation approach makes starting at 1st or 2nd level unappealing to me: there simply aren't enough moving pieces to make the process [i]interesting[/i]. [/QUOTE]

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