Your first character

[Gilladian]

First character that I remember; a cleric (original edition, or my brother's homemade version of the rules, anyway). His name has long been forgotten. Stung to death by giant bees in a secret chamber. I remember being so thrilled to find the secret door, and so furious when that fascinating buzzing noise turned out to be deadly!

 

[Wombat]

Quite honestly, I do not remember my first character.

I do remember coming up with a character for a game early (c. 1977) on when my brother decided to GM -- Elhul of Darzhu. My brother, upset over the fact I had killed his last character (really, it was an open die roll, but he thought I was out to get him), killed my character within 10 minutes of creation.

So I created Elhul II of Darzhu.

And he died within 10 minutes.

By the end of the day I was up to Elhul XII of Darzhu. It was downright comical

Probably explains why I like Paranoia now

 

[Staffan]

My first character wasn't a Dungeons & Dragons character. It was for a Swedish game called Drakar och Demoner (a cousin of RuneQuest that got the name on account of the publisher wanting to rip off D&D's name recognition, such that it was). It was a dwarven fighter whose name I don't recall, but I do remember that he had a two-handed axe that did 21 points of damage (at the time, we hadn't cottoned on to the fact that "damage: 2D10+2 meant that you rolled each time, so we thought that each weapon had its own specific damage).

 

[wingsandsword]

Back in 1998, my first PC was a humble Half-Elf cleric named Eandra Moonsilver (Generic Lawful Good Cleric, since the DM allowed generic alignment clerics and I didn't know the gods of his world), written under AD&D 2e with another player in the game helping me write her up. I'd written a long character background to the DM about her childhood, about the temple she studies in, about her life.

Which went promptly out the window 10 seconds into the game. There were 9 other PC's and I was the only cleric (the other PC's begged me to play a cleric, it was a party of almost entirely Fighters and Mages, a Paladin and I think a Thief/Psionicist). The party was ~14th level, but I was starting at 1st (DM's rules). To get me into the fray quickly, he had my character back at her temple accidentally step through a one-way Portal one day she didn't know about and wind up in the same dungeon room as the PC's (on the other side of the world).

It was a bit of a challenge keeping an brand new 1st Level Cleric alive in a High-Level 2e game. There was a little culture shock since all I knew about D&D was reading the old "Black Box" Basic Set from the early 90s'. I was amazed I got spells at 1st level instead of 2nd, and thought I was dead when I hit -1 HP in the first encounter.

In one adventure on the Outer Planes we encountered the true form of his campaign world's God of Lightning, a playful CG deity who wanted to spar with us. So we fought the true form of a god (he promised to revive us all afterwards, he just wanted to see how well we could fight). Now, the DM had a house rule that Gods lost most of their divine powers on their home planes so we lasted most of a round. Thanks to sheer luck my PC was one of only two to hurt him (nonartifact weapons could hurt him on a Natural 20, and one PC had an artifact sword he had Specialization/Mastery in so he did some damage himself). From that point on she carried around her morningstar, stained with the blood of a god with pride, something of her own personal symbol. After the campaign was over it became a minor artifact.

She ended up surviving to 17th level, when the campaign ended, I still keep her character sheet around for the memories.

 

[Galethorn]

Well...

The first character I ever played in a real game of D&D (3.0 to be exact) was a chaotic good level 2 human ranger, named Galethorn. It was a three-player/1 DM game, and all three of us players were pretty much novices. My character followed the the chaotic evil wood elf fighter and the chaotic neutral human fighter-wizard around, basically.

We started out meeting some gypsies. The elf showed a gyspy girl his 'greatsword', her father backstabbed the fighter-wizard, the elf killed him (and the other gypsies), and I healed the fighter-wizard afterwards, then gave the gypsies a proper burial...after admonishing my friends.

So, after a while longer on the road, we made it to waterdeep. The elf led us to a tavern and started a brawl, where he killed people with his sword. The militia came to stop 'us', so we fled into the sewers. We made it into the slums and slept for the night.

Now, the following morning, we decided to visit a temple to a lawful good god of good behavior. The elf climbed into the bell-tower, beheaded the head priest, and cut the bell free. The bell crushed several more priests, of course.

After that, we made a speedy getaway to the docks, and stole a ship. Once we were at sea, we were attacked by pirates. We jumped onto the ship, killed most of them, and intimidated the rest of the crew into working for us. After that, we sailed to neverwinter, sold the boats, and went into early retirement.

 

[Shadowdancer]

A human fighter named Dirk Stryker. His main weapon was a bastard sword. He was maxed out in Str and Dex, also had a high Con. Int, Wis and Chr were -- barely average.


I remember our first adventure, we fought some skeletons, then some renegade gnomes. My character almost died when he fell into a pit trap with a spring-loaded top so it reset immediately, leaving my PC alone in the dark. Then the watch weasels attacked. . .

 

[Woas]

My family has a summer house/camp on a lake in upstate NY. When I was young, probably around eleven or twelve years old, I had a neighboor up at the camp. He was a lot older than me, probably around eighteen or ninteen at the time. His name was Thomas, but everyone called him 'Tee'. Anyway, Tee told me about a game where you used your imagination and the whole game was played in your head... basically (Fantasy) Role Playing. We never really played an official game or anything. The idea simmered in my head for awhile though and I became really interested in the genere (Fantasy). Unfortunetly, about three or four years ago, Tee past away. He had bad asthma (his father died from it in fact) and sadly, Tee had an asthma attack while on a camping trip, couldn't make it to the hospital in time, and passed away. I missed him a lot and going to the camp in the summer just wasn't the same...

...about two years ago, a friend of mine started a D&D (3.0) game. Nobody in my circle of friends really had played a Pen & Paper game like this before so this was the first 'official' roleplaying game we've tried. And my first character? I cleric of St. Cuthbert, named Tee. The campaign lasted about 2 months and Tee survived the whole game.

 

[tec-9-7]

7th grade I think. It was an Elf in Holmes Basic. Don't remember the name, but he explored the Caves of Chaos w/ the help of a half dozen men-at-arms hirelings.

 

[Fingers Boggis]

It seems Galethorn runs rather more extreme characters than me I remember my first time though. I played a young thief (almost typed rogue there, 3e has brain washed me) called Kain and I'd be the first to admit its a rather lame name but he was so fun that hes become a recurring character. The rest of the party began to hate him, he didnt steal off them as he needed their help to get through alot of situations but he did make sure that he got the best of the treasure first. He also had a nasty habit of disappeariing whenever combats started, before long the party fighter confronted him about his action,"worry not" said the silver tongued rogue "im just biding my time." and sure enough he was, the very next encounter was supposed to be a tricky one according to the DM and involved a "mage of some renoun" or at least some renoun for the level we were at. With a curse on the fighters lips as he charged the "horde" of allies (about 5, low level remember) the mage had he spotted Kain slip down a side corridor out of view. some rounds passed and it wasnt looking good for the party without a caster of our own we were getting pretty beat up and it was then kain reappeared (his pockets laced with treasures from other rooms) to backstab the mage and kill him. After that he recieved no more confrontations from the fighter or the rest as tehy all knew that when the chips were down and the treasure rooms empty Kain would return in the nick of time to get a telling backstab on whichever opponent was giving the party the most grief.

For anyone interested Kain is currently busying himself in a solo adventure in Waterdeep and has developed his range of tricks to the point where he is now a sor/rog/AT though he may meet back up with a party soon.

 

[Particle_Man]

!st ed AD&D. The name is lost to history. A human fighter. Died when he left the party and met with shadows. The next 5 characters were human fighters and also died. Then I found out about this thing called healing magic. Then I rolled up a human cleric and he lived! Then I Dm'd, became a munchkin and the character became almost godlike eventually (Mary-Sue eat your heart out!). Then I sobered up. Or hit puberty. Or something.

Hmmm...I remember playing an elf, and forgetting that 90% resistance to sleep spells when I fell victim to one. Live and learn!

My longest 1st ed. character was a half-elven paladin (got special permission for this 1st ed. goodness). Loved that guy. Pity he and his cleric cohort fell to a lich's chain lightning spell.

My first 3rd ed. character was an elven paladin. Lost her paladinhood, alas.