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HMS Invincible
2009-10-04, 09:40 PM
What is the best way to make a higher level character that looks like a character who's been leveling from the start? I've noticed that many just made characters look so different from characters who have been in campaigns since the start.

In essence, How can we improve upon the character creation rules for higher level characters? Or is the answer to just let it slide and it'll fix itself? I play 4th and 3.5 edition, but it shouldn't matter too much.

Chrono22
2009-10-04, 09:49 PM
The hard way I guess would be to level the character, one level at a time.
Only make decisions that benefit you immediately, or within one or two levels. Don't plan in advance for the endgame and that should be good enough.

Temet Nosce
2009-10-04, 09:52 PM
What is the best way to make a higher level character that looks like a character who's been leveling from the start? I've noticed that many just made characters look so different from characters who have been in campaigns since the start.

In essence, How can we improve upon the character creation rules for higher level characters? Or is the answer to just let it slide and it'll fix itself? I play 4th and 3.5 edition, but it shouldn't matter too much.

Have a chat with the DM and work out various adventurers that might have occurred, instead of simply buying useful magic items either roll for them or determine what the DM would have given you from the adventures. You will probably end up with an odd assortment of items, and you may also have a rather spotty spell list (or at least I've noticed I'm less thorough when starting at low levels).

Flickerdart
2009-10-04, 09:53 PM
Just don't build crazy cheese-builds relying on a 20th level combo to pull off. A run of the mill Ubercharger scales fairly well, as he starts off being able to mince things and then just minces them better with time. A Gate-abusing Truenamer, on the other hand, starts off as a shmuck and will likely be dead far before the Gate utterance becomes available.

Salanmander
2009-10-05, 12:43 AM
If you are willing to spend a relatively long (but fun!) time doing this, i would suggest the following:

10 Create Kth level character
20 Have friend make appropriate CR encounter
30 Fight this battle
40 Add K levels to character
50 If at desired level, end. Else, goto 20.

Foryn Gilnith
2009-10-05, 10:56 AM
I second Flickerdart's suggestion. The two parts of the character are build and magic items. My DMs are loose with magic items (no shops with millions of GP worth of items stacked together, but relatively easy liquidation/acquisition), so that's no hassle. The build, though, should work at all levels. No Con 6 Wizard who went into Necropolitan, because that wouldn't survive to level 3. No Str 6 Cleric of Hextor, because Hextor doesn't roll with weaklings even though his effective strength is 14 atfer buffs. Et cetera. DMs don't usually enforce having appropriate spells known to deal with level-challenges, but if you want to simulate this out of your own desires, it's a simple matter to just select some spells known that would be more helpful to a lower-level character than to you.

jiriku
2009-10-05, 11:15 AM
If you're a character with a spellbook, choose a number of specialty/utility spells that don't have an obvious general-use purpose or don't fit with your character's core concept.

When I level with a wizard, I find I'm always hunting down a particular spell because it would be useful against a specific monster we're hunting, even if the spell isn't generally useful.

Alternately, I may pick up a couple of related spells because I want to try something new, then find that it doesn't work as well as I hoped, so my character grows in a different direction and the spells stays in my spellbook, largely unused.

Also, equip yourself with a couple of the odder magical items and a couple of unusual pieces of nonmagical treasure. Think of brief anecdotes about the history of the item or its last owner or how you acquired it. My characters are always keeping some odd item because it has sentimental value or because I haven't figured out what it is, and I think it might be useful later, or holding on to some odd magical item because it's just so weird that I want to keep it until I can figure out a use for it.