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XenoGeno
2009-02-19, 07:58 PM
My group and I have a major difference when it comes to character creation. I feel that one should find crunch one wants to play, and then make the fluff match. Everyone else in my group seems to feel the opposite. At the same time, I sometimes seem to be the only one enjoying playing their character, and my characters usually have something to do. Many times, the DMs will fudge rolls to make sure that a character doesn't die (specific characters get this more than others), simply because they were so poorly built. When other players try my style, they tend to have a much more enjoyable time playing.

In addition, I find that I do in fact make my best fluff this way. Explaining how all the crazy class combinations and what not come together is some of the most fun I have, and this applies to my villains when I DM, too. In fact, the plot for the campaign I'm co-running now stems from me thinking of a way to explain how a Shadowcraft Mage can use miracle.

So, this has made me curious as to which way other people go. While I say in the title this is a D&D topic, I think it's more of a general issue with class-based RPG systems, one of the reasons I'm trying to get my group to start playing Mutants & Masterminds or GURPS.

Flickerdart
2009-02-19, 08:13 PM
I always have a character concept in mind, of course. But for every fluff bit, there is a hefty variation of the crunch you can use. There are a number of feats that can be tied to any concept, and quite a few spells that any smart mage would have. Do you really have to fluff-justify taking Power Attack or Time Stop?

Innis Cabal
2009-02-19, 08:14 PM
The opposite. Always. Characters are more important then the numbers.

Keld Denar
2009-02-19, 08:17 PM
I build first, flesh out later. I'm a mechanics kind of guy anyway, and absolutely love character building/optimizing. Combat is a big part of D&D, so I want to play a character that is good at it, within reason (Gentleman's Agreement). After that, you can come up all the RP and story you want to go with it. Maybe your guy has a lisp, or used to be a soldier, or aspires to marry a princess, or just plain old wants to become the most powerful [Insert Generic Role Here] in the land/world/multiverse.

For example, the last character I built is a Gold Dorf Paladin5/Fighter2/DivineCrusader2/OrdainedChamp4/DivineCrusader+7. With its feats and class abilities, its designed to swing your Cha at someone and make it hurt. He's got divine casting from Divine Crusader, and gets 2 domains. War is mandated by Ordained Champ, but the other is free to asign. I chose Travel because its mechanically strong, and because I started thinking about this guy as a wandering do-gooder. Kinda like Cain from Kung-Fu, except with a beard, an axe, lower Wis and higher Cha. The character kinda materialized around me as I built. Works out well, and all abilities streamline well with each other.

SoD
2009-02-19, 08:34 PM
The opposite. Always. Characters are more important then the numbers.

+1 +π

My concepts always begin with the fluff, or at least the basics.

For example, I recently drew up an evil Grey Elven Abjuror.

Why? I wanted to draw up a long-lived character who was afraid of death, and was looking for a way to bypass death, and live forever. So he specialises in protective magic. Barred schools; necromancy and conjuration else. Why bar necromancy for someone who wants to live forever? He wants to be alive forever, not undead for ever. He wants to bypass death, not become it, not controll it. Why evil? Because he would do anything to survive. He's hired the rest of the party as bodyguards, and adventures to gain more money to buy more protection, and to search for a way to live forever.

Mando Knight
2009-02-19, 08:45 PM
I interweave... sometimes the fluff comes first, sometimes I want to build an optimized sword-swinging fighter-guy. With both, I'll write in a bit of the crunch, come up with a bit of the fluff, write more crunch, and just try to build crunchy, fluffy characters... like a fresh box of Lucky Charms. It's magically delicious. :smalltongue:

Assassin89
2009-02-19, 08:48 PM
I prefer just setting up the race and stats first, then making the fluff. As the campaign goes on, some stories might develop depending on the setting.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-02-19, 08:48 PM
It's funny, but I think either can come first, but both must be balanced at the end.

My characters always seem to have the following:
(1) Crunch that either utilizes a fun combo, or is otherwise effective
(2) A personality trait or some other hook that gives him life

In a RPG, it is a team game, so as cool as you might think playing a blind, one-armed atheist in a D&D campaign may be, it's not fair to saddle your allies with The Load (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLoad).

Plus, I've never found those crippled characters really add much to a campaign; they generally just hang around and mope, and contribute nothing.

I guess the art of character design is to find an interesting character, and to make it work. Some things just don't (Half-Orc Wizards, I'm looking at you!) and, to be honest, that is reason enough why you shouldn't play it. The world isn't overrun with 5 year old Fighters and deaf-mute Wizards because they just don't live very long - particularly in a career like adventurer.

But never neglect "the character" part. If your character doesn't seem alive to anyone, he's just a sack of stats - not a person.

Grommen
2009-02-19, 08:58 PM
Most of the time I do the background and race first, then make the classes work around them. I don't tend to make very exotic over the top super characters so the builds behind them are rather bland.

When I'm makeing bad guys for my campaigns I look at the classes and crunch a lot harder to make them balanced and about to harrase but not over kill the players. Backgrounds are usally well laid out anyway in advance.

Sometimes I just look at a mini I have and wonder "Who is that guy?" And either a character or NPC jumps to mind and off I go. I have one on my desk right now that I'm wondering about. How do I make him fight as studly as he looks.

And DM's fudge dice rolls all the time. As a player you should not look, or even care. What comes around goes around. If your a good DM (not implying here that eveyone else is a bad one) you can fudge rolls right in front of the players and they will never catch on. Their is an art to it. Also helps to have special "fudging" dice :)

TMZ_Cinoros
2009-02-19, 09:09 PM
So, this has made me curious as to which way other people go. While I say in the title this is a D&D topic, I think it's more of a general issue with class-based RPG systems, one of the reasons I'm trying to get my group to start playing Mutants & Masterminds or GURPS.

For me, the crunch before fluff or fluff before crunch question is highly dependent on 1) the system, 2) the DM, 3) the tone of the campaign, and 4) the group.

There are times when I made suboptimal choices for my character because they fit better thematically than a more optimal choices. I have DMs that I would not care at all about the fluff of my character, because when I do I usually end up spending more time thinking about my character's back story than the DM spends on the entire campaign combined. Usually, I try to add at least a little fluff to my character, and will add to the fluff if the DM rewards it (not in treasure, but in game time focusing on the fluff or fun from situations involving the fluff) or subtract from the fluff if the DM ignores it/does nothing with it.

Fluff and crunch are all a cost-benefit analysis. If a game is primarily combat oriented, with plot being a lame excuse for the next encounter, then I will not derive any benefit from fluff and will optimize my character to the best of my abilities. If it is primarily role-play with combat thrown in, then I am willing to hobble my character.

To be honest, the best fluff is organic. Fluff put in at character creation is usually stilted or weak. I have a DM (2E) who randomizes almost everything, then connects the dots with story. For example, each character has a 10% of being a noble, with allotted gold depending on how HIGH of a noble we random roll. Everyone has a random chance of getting an item of a random strength. We all start out as formless, characterless blobs. Through the campaign, our choices and the situations our character become entangled in shape that blob into a well-developed character. This organic process is the best I have ever seen for roleplaying (if the player wants that, or they can ignore the fluff entirely and kill stuff).

I personally especially like rules systems where the fluff and crunch are intertwined. For example, Spirit of the Century forces you to write 5 ministories about your character, from which you choose two traits (beneficial or detrimental). The characters from the SotC games I've played have been extremely memorable. Also, Nobilius is cool, where you become the avatar of a certain concept (no matter how abstract or concrete).

However, I have to say that I hate the "good roleplaying" excuse for when a player decides to do something that is extremely stupid. Usually when my friends use that excuse, its because they are too lazy to think of the optimal strategy and doing something clearly subotimal to cover for it. To quote one of my friends about taking 10 levels of Mystic Theurge, "I bet he's doing it because it's GOOD ROLEPLAYING and fits his ANGSTY BACKSTORY ABOUT HIS DUAL HERITAGE. And then when he gets home, he cries."

tl;dr - Circumstances dictate whether

RebelRogue
2009-02-19, 09:20 PM
For me, it's an interaction process: a certain combination or PrC might inspire some background or character trait, which may in term make certain mechanics make sense and so on. Usually for me, the initial seed is in the crunch.

But, there's no "right" way to do it, as long as the final product makes sense as a character.

BRC
2009-02-19, 09:22 PM
Character First, Crunch later, and if I do Crunch first, it's usually a very basic crunch concept, rather than a character sheet. Take for example my current character, a Warforged Factotum (Statistically anyway, it's a time travel campaign and he's from the far future, he's the AI that runs the time machine/ship and has a humanoid node). First I looked at the Factotum class and was like "Ooh, Nifty!", then I thought up the character concept, then I actually put down some numbers.

Szilard
2009-02-19, 09:29 PM
I have an idea, make the character, and then fluff it.

Townopolis
2009-02-19, 09:47 PM
it varies.

Sometimes the party needs a tank, so I'll look into building one.

Sometimes I want to see if I can make a viable AC tank in 3.5D&D and work on something from there (Knight 15/Rebalanced Paladin 4/Sublime Marshal 1 was my best effort non-gestalt).

Sometimes I revive an old character with new mechanics.

Sometimes looking at the rules gives me a great idea for a gurps character with delusions and wierdness magnet as his disadvantages.

Sometimes I take a character from a story I wrote and make an RPG character out of him.

Sometimes I start with a backstory or personality I want to play.

Sometimes I start with a trope.

Sometimes I stare at a picture for 3 hours straight and then decide I simply must build a character based off it.

longtooth878
2009-02-19, 10:14 PM
I find it kind of funny that when I was playing 1st ed. number crunching was the thing that every one did (Who didn't have at least one psionic pc) and "fluff" was an after thought. In 2nd ed., if you crunched numbers you where a called hack and slash player. And in 3rd ed. people would brag about not even have any combat or rolling dice for a few nights; and now its like you almost have a "uber" tough PC and things like "fluff" is said like it was a bad thing. I am not saying that any one type is better; I just think its funny how we come full circle. :smallbiggrin:

Falconer
2009-02-19, 10:28 PM
Usually I work with the fluff first, but it's usually inspired by some class or race that looks like it would be fun to play.

example:

*browses SRD for ideas*
"Ooooh! Oooh! Thrallherd! Mind control-y-ness! That looks fun!"

(eventually settles down and thinks)

"Now what kind of person would have that class? How would they view their psychic powers?" And so on and so forth.

Weezer
2009-02-19, 10:31 PM
I usually get an idea of the character archetype that i'm going to play and then form the character stats around that and then flesh out the fluff later.

monty
2009-02-19, 10:36 PM
It depends. Sometimes, I'll have a build that I want to try out, and I'll make up fluff to fit it. Other times, I'll have a character in mind, and come up with a build that makes it work.

RTGoodman
2009-02-19, 10:54 PM
It depends. Sometimes, I'll have a build that I want to try out, and I'll make up fluff to fit it. Other times, I'll have a character in mind, and come up with a build that makes it work.

This, exactly. There's no "right" way to do it, and it just depends on person, character, the campaign, and any other number of factors.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-02-19, 10:54 PM
I think of a basic concept, build the stats, work the fluff in, finalize the stats, finalize the fluff.

For example, I recently made a Human Monk/Sorcerer. I was thinking I wanted a character that had been cut off from the world. Then I decided I wanted to make a Sorcerer (yay, sorcerers are fun!). I visualized him growing up in a hidden monastary, manifesting sorcerer powers, then leaving. Then I made it work optimizingly and finshed the fluff.

xPANCAKEx
2009-02-19, 10:57 PM
crunch then fluff

however - if i cant think of a fluff concept that REALLY appeals to me i'll scrap it and start a new character. Trying to fit a crunch to a character concept can sometimes lead to massive disapointment - they always seem much "bigger than life" in your head, then mechanically never fully lives up to expectation

with the crunch first approach, the character grows naturally from something i really like, when the game starts, to something i really REALLY like as the game progresses - and his abilities grow with it, rather than thinking "yes - in 2 levels i've have feat y that allows me to finally be one step closer to being able to play the character as i have it in my head!"

Draz74
2009-02-19, 10:58 PM
It depends. Sometimes, I'll have a build that I want to try out, and I'll make up fluff to fit it. Other times, I'll have a character in mind, and come up with a build that makes it work.

Same here. What's more, it's rarely a one-way street. I may decide to think up a character because I want to play a Warblade who abuses the Emerald Razor/Power Attack combo ... but then, once I have the character in mind, I'll choose at least some of her feats/maneuvers/skills based on the fluff I've determined.

Eldariel
2009-02-19, 11:01 PM
My character building process #1:
1. Think of an interesting concept.
2. Think of what build would best suit the said concept.
3. Scrap the build since the party sucks and try to think of an interesting concept in the field the party lacks a character this time.
4. Repeat 1-3 a few times as players switch their characters around. Then game starts and I end up doing a 5-minute build again 'cause everyone else had a last-minute change.

#2:
1. Find/come up with a really awesome-feeling build I want to try.
2. Tell everyone what I'm playing and tell them to bugger off.
3. End up without an arcanist/a divinist/a skillmonkey/whatever and die a horrible death once we end up with an appropriate challenge that we can't deal with 'cause our party sucks.

#3:
1. Play a solo-game.
2. Optimize the living bejezus out of my character.
3. Have the DM get bored with the campaign and hit my weakest area with something that would take a dedicated character to survive.

Vexxation
2009-02-19, 11:34 PM
I'm a fifty-fifty builder. I've built mechanical concepts, then attempted to justify them as a character, and I've built concepts and crunched them out.

For example, what are two of the weakest things in D&D?
Why, the Soulknife and the Vow of Poverty.
Well now, I just loved the idea of combining them and getting a character who quite literally walked around wearing a poncho and nothing else. A character who, despite not having possessions, could kill things with his mind (...blades).

Fun! Not particularly effective, but fun.

I really don't care one way or the other. Whatever stroke of "genius" you get struck with first, take it and run with it.

Fiery Diamond
2009-02-20, 12:02 AM
1) Character Concept, including basic personality, perhaps some background, what types of specialties
2) Rolling up stats till they are usable with the concept (with permission from the DM, obviously)
3) Mechanically building the character
4) Further developing personality, emotions, and motives through play

Xyk
2009-02-20, 12:07 AM
I will usually find a character concept, build that character, then never play it because I am a DM. On the off-chance I do get to play it, I make sure it is decent at fighting too, it's not that hard. I mean, it's not like you're trying to build a noncombatant concept, that would be dumb.

Morandir Nailo
2009-02-20, 01:55 AM
I'm a big "roll and see what you get" type person, so I roll stats, choose a class that fits, and let that serve as a springboard for developing the character. For instance, I recently made a character for Labyrinth Lord. I rolled 14, 14, 10, 13, 8, 8, and settled on an Elf. He's strong, agile and smart, but not very charismatic or perceptive. I decided that he's obsessed with occult knowledge - a little too obsessed for his own good, but he doesn't realize that. His obsession makes him seem a bit odd to those around him, as he talks of little else. He adventures to uncover lost lore both mundane and magical. I decided that he's of Lawful alignment - generally a good person, but foolhardy and liable to get himself into trouble. Beyond that I don't know; he'll become more fully developed as the game progresses.

Mor

Samakain
2009-02-20, 02:14 AM
get the fluff you wanna play
make the crunch match
if the crunch can only be horrible, rewrite the fluff

Deepblue706
2009-02-20, 02:24 AM
For casual games, I tend to begin with a build, and then write-in some fluff to go with it. These characters generally have a very limited investment on my part, and don't really help me to have a memorable experience. It's just the bare minimum for games I participate in merely to pass the time.

For games I think to have great potential, I begin with a personality. Not an actual image of the character, what they do, or what their job is. Just, a personality. I come up with a few defining traits, and then I begin to think of ways they might be justified. This is where background comes in. After filling in the reasoning behind the personality, I then try to find what class is best associated with the character. After determining the best class to make the character follow, I think consider what would they would hope to do in the future. And that would determine what kind of build I make; unless I accepted the possibility of the game world itself shaping the way my character developed, in which case I'd just run with it.

Random NPC
2009-02-20, 02:28 AM
I do the following in order:

-Think of a role in the party
- Look for classes with that role, if anything seems appealing, I take it
- Think of reasons why or how the character has the abilities from that class (Binder of Rakshasas in Eberron, Dragonmarked Sorcerer, veteran Warforged Warblade, Lyrandar Bard)
- Build the heavy crunch
- Fluff him up
- ???
- Profit!

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-20, 03:12 AM
When building a character, I normally look at what the party needs. If I'm one of the first people to enter the campaign (I always play online), I always pick what I want to try if it's allowed. I'll then look at a build which I think it would work before constructing the character's personality around it. I will sometimes have a character concept in mind, but I'm pretty awful at creating backstories, and most of my characters end up being helpful and friendly due to my lack of ability with RPing non-good characters.

Being as I'm poor at fluff, I tend to like using a wide class variety while looking at variants in addition to using homebrew races as well. (For instance, while it may not be optimal, the first Fenneckin, http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104140 , character is a Whirling Frenzy Barbarian who's going to get Spring Attack and Combat Focus before Power Attack: http://mydndgame.com/character/1407/sheet (rolling really well helped a lot :smalltongue:). I always try to make characters effective due to classing inefficient characters as unrealistic based on how I'd expect everyone to want to be as effective as possible, and rolling up new characters is annoying.

arguskos
2009-02-20, 03:14 AM
I tend to find a mechanical concept that I really love (like "hellbred Vow of Poverty Saint" or "dvati anything" or "Force Missile Mage" or "Magelord") and sorta fluff from there. I fluff it out, then crunch it up, and then go play it (that step is sorta nebulous, and doesn't typically happen >_<).

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-20, 03:21 AM
I'm not sure if what I'd do would class as basing concepts on mechanics or not. Usually, it's either "I think I'll try making a Domain Wizard" or "The Moon-Warded Ranger variant looks neat. I'll combine that with the Solitary Hunter variant to avoid the need to mess about with a companion". I forgot to mention this before, but the main reason why I favour mechanics over fluff is because I tend to see the character's abilities as more important regarding how they solve problems then their personality (and I don't like the idea of inconveniencing the est of the group with a poorly built character).

mikej
2009-02-20, 03:29 AM
I do the following in order:

-Think of a role in the party
- Look for classes with that role, if anything seems appealing, I take it
- Think of reasons why or how the character has the abilities from that class (Binder of Rakshasas in Eberron, Dragonmarked Sorcerer, veteran Warforged Warblade, Lyrandar Bard)
- Build the heavy crunch
- Fluff him up
- ???
- Profit!

Similiar to how I write up a new character.

I don't go into great detail about how that character possessed those abilities. Just think up a good usefull optimized character that fills the particular role, then work on the fluff later.

Arcane_Snowman
2009-02-20, 03:30 AM
I interweave... sometimes the fluff comes first, sometimes I want to build an optimized sword-swinging fighter-guy. With both, I'll write in a bit of the crunch, come up with a bit of the fluff, write more crunch, and just try to build crunchy, fluffy characters... like a fresh box of Lucky Charms. It's magically delicious. :smalltongue: +1, Whether fluff or mechanics is first is completely different from character to character. But in the end I often end up discarding the fluff that is given to me by the books, and I just look at what the mechanics actually allow.

An example is one of my most recent characters:
a Kalashtarian Psion/Incarnate/Soulcaster who beats the odds by being capable of dreaming; a problem arises with this because the Kalashtarian mind is not capable of supporting such night time brain activity, so it’s slowly driving him mad. To stave off the lunacy (to at least postpone it until after his human wife's demise, after that it doesn't matter), he has developed a way in which to make his imagination, and subsequently his nightmares, real, and thus keeping the bad dreams out of his head, at least for a while.

Fluff wise it makes Incarnum and Psionics overlap, because both are products of his imagination, they are just manifested in different ways.

There are also times where it's just one or the other, like with my RL gaming group, were a bunch of hack and slashies and I enjoy being something mechanically convoluted and optimized. I've also been known to play a freeform RP here and there.

cupkeyk
2009-02-20, 03:38 AM
I used to massively create fluff, build around the idea and then do the math and if the math is bad then the concept gets scrapped.

then my friends pointed out that regardless of fluff or build, all my characters are arcane, arrogant, cruel megalomaniacs with a tendency to be verbose and to laugh maniacally. they say i just make a version of me with magic to live up to my real life unjustified superiority complex.

so in each campaign, i play myself with variations on my destructive options, like comamancering, diplomancering or whatever.

kamuishirou
2009-02-20, 07:38 AM
A lot of times I see a cool picture and want to build a character out of that. So I'd say I'm a fluff first and then crunch.

monty
2009-02-20, 01:15 PM
(and I don't like the idea of inconveniencing the rest of the group with a poorly built character).

This. Make sure the character works before you get too attached to it.

Kalirren
2009-02-20, 04:51 PM
I think that the most important thing is organic development of characters. A character should be able to develop interests, focuses, niches, talents, skills and powers that are all concordant without running afoul of the system. What I find to be silly about D&D, and simultaneously what a lot of other D&D players seem to take for granted, is that the D&D rulesset results in very shoehorned behavior. There are only a few viable niches, and the challenge becomes to find them, then insert fluff where fluff is needed to make the character interesting. For many groups and people this works, and I know it can be rather gratifying.

I am not one such person, nor is ours one such group. I would rather be able to think of an interesting, plausible character concept first, and then figure out a way to describe it in-system. As a result we tend to play using systems that handle organic development much better than D&D does. As an example, compare d20 to d10.

What stands out to me is that the crunch-first/fluff-first debate stems from D&D itself. Because we cannot pursue organic development without ending up with an underpowered character, we are forced to choose between putting crunch first and putting fluff first. If having to make this choice bothers you, I would support your interest in investigating/homebrewing other systems that handle organic character development better.

Syne
2009-02-20, 05:01 PM
The first step for me is formulating a fluff concept or idea, such as a warrior with a spiritual connection to death and the ethereal plane. The next step is building the character mechanically. I sometimes have to make adjustments to my original image of the character due to mechanical constraints. I am scared of making a suboptimal character due to past experiences. The last step is generally to compose the background and give life to the character.

AslanCross
2009-02-20, 05:11 PM
I find that the fluff and crunch for my characters go together so closely that I typically can't tell where one ends and the other begins, but for the most part I think the fluff comes first. I only start looking for feats and class features after I've decided on what the character should be able to do. At the same time my character ideas sometimes come from seeing certain feats and class features and wondering how I can work with them. It's a little bit of both in my case, I guess.

Narmoth
2009-02-20, 05:12 PM
I start by finding out what the campaign will be about
Then I come up with a fluff concept, like playing a paladin that tries to, but fails to live by the paladin code.
Then I find the most optimized mechanical build for it, like playing a blackguard with so and so many paladin levels to get most powers at the starting ECL
Then I boost the build with anything I find later in course of play

Satyr
2009-02-20, 05:54 PM
When I create a character, I normally start with a basic idea, often only an aesthetic idea. I normally try to make the fluff and the crunch more or less at the same time so that both can interconect. For me, character creation works best when it is an organic progress, not when the different elements are artificially seperated. I am not sure if fluff and crunch really could - or should - be divided, and the best characters I played were normally those in which I invested the most time and changed both the mechanical and the narrative elements several times until both feel linked. Good characters take days, if not even weeks to create, and character creation should be regarded as an ongoing progress, not a finite activity.

Frog Dragon
2009-02-20, 06:22 PM
1. Think about what kind of a character I want to play functionally
2. Think basic concept
3. Crunch it and think about fluff while doing so
4. Fluff it
5. Play

That's my method of creating characters

Draken
2009-02-20, 10:06 PM
I personally think the crunch at the same time I am mulling over the fluff.

That said. I spend much more time over the crunch, overthinking the fluff is only good to make a character you will not feel... Natural, I suppose.

Besides. You can't roleplay a dead character in most campaigns can you?

monty
2009-02-20, 11:07 PM
Besides. You can't roleplay a dead character in most campaigns can you?

Roy would like to have a word with you.

For the most part, you're right though. Death usually means either the cleric prepares Raise Dead tomorrow morning or you roll up a new character, depending on the campaign and level.

Deepblue706
2009-02-21, 12:44 AM
Besides. You can't roleplay a dead character in most campaigns can you?

If a character's survival were the only thing to consider here, I think Monks actually fulfill that quota. :smallbiggrin:

monty
2009-02-21, 12:53 AM
You know, every time I see this thread title, I can't help thinking "the chicken or the egg."

Mushroom Ninja
2009-02-21, 01:24 AM
I normally think up a mechanical concept that I would enjoy playing first. Then I think about what sort of character I would like to play from a more flavorful point of view and create a personality.

Dacia Brabant
2009-02-21, 05:22 AM
Yeah I would have to say I conceptualize first, which for me almost always means thinking of what sort of melee warrior I want to be today. Then I crunch out the basics like what stats and skillsets do I want to focus on, which race and base class(es) to pick. One thing about that though--I only will pick races I have at least a decent idea of how to roleplay, which tends to limit the field quite a bit.

Then after that I work on the background, specifically questioning what in-character reasons they might've had for becoming/switching their class, what their past goals and accomplishments might've been and where they're planning to go from here. This helps not only from a "fluff" characterization standpoint but also to shape which sorts of feats to take, which disciplines or schools or powers to focus on, etc., and start "optimizing" those choices, though I prefer to think of it as the character seeking out the best means for getting where they want to be.

For example, my last three major character concepts have all been derived from the same basic idea, a Lawful (or lawful Unaligned) military commander with good mental attributes and prefers to use some sort of spearing weapon and if possible a shield. From that I've gotten:



An extremely mercenary but word-is-his-bond, Norse-ish Human Taclord (yeah Eladrin would've been better crunchwise but I wasn't quite sure how to roleplay one and as the group leader and talker that was kind of important) with high Str and Int, good Cha and decent everything else, uses a glaive to lead from just-behind-the-meatshield and wants to turn his para-military band into the spearhead for a new kingdom;

A classically virtuous, Just War Theorist, Greek-ish Aasimar Paladin (http://zyanya.wikidot.com/characters:ariadne-dikaian) (ToB variant) who started out as a Priestess of Athena (represented with a level each of Bard and Cloistered Cleric) but became inducted into an order of her knights, has exceptionally high Cha and good/decent everything else, spear-and-shield hoplite who leads from the very front and wants to spread the teachings of her school of battle throughout the world;

And the makings of a romanticized Medieval knight version of Captain America (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheets/view.php?id=108470), Warblade with Knight splashed, high physicals and good Int (probably should've had higher Cha and lower Wis), am still fleshing out the character but I'm trying to get the best of both worlds by going mounted with lance and board, and obviously wants to lead his team to patriotic victory for great justice. :smallbiggrin:

FatR
2009-02-21, 05:35 AM
Build first, fluff later. Experience had taught me, that if you try to do otherwise in a game where everyone generate characters separately (such as PbP), you will get punished for your folly every single time.