First Character Stories

[Shinovar]

I was thinking the other day about how bad my first character was and how differently I would build him now. I just had a fundamental misunderstanding, not only of character building, but of the very rules of the game.

My first character was a human sorcerer, who I took up to level 8 (started at 1).
My feats were Run, Toughness, Weapon Focus (ray), and Point blank shot.
My familiar was a toad who I used for the hitpoints and then forgot about.
My skills went to Knowledge Arcana, Spellcraft (I did something right at least with those first two), and putting 1 rank at least in Listen, Spot, and Search, which we used so often.
Worst of all (which is saying something), I specialized in blasting, but had a huge misconception about how caster levels work. I thought that my caster level was the same as the highest level of spells I could cast. So at level 7, I cast spells as if I had a caster level of 3. And I was excited about those 3D6 fireballs. It was not an optimized group.

What about you guys? Do you have any similar stories from before you understood the game?

[Tim Proctor]

My first character was a long long time ago, (20 plus years) and I don't quite remember him. My first 3.x character was a fun one though.

Our DM gave us some weird spell-like abilities to start off with, and we were able to get them at a cost of 2pts per spell level from your point buy and it had to only effect your character. This was before PHBII were everyone would have got Chasing Perfection. But I grabbed Reincarnate, named by guy Shawn Castillian Uno Demar or SCUD for short, the disposable assassin (after the video game), I ran around trying to maximize crossbow with PHB//DMG only, it didn't work out so well. But the guy kept coming back.

[Invader]

Its been like 12 years and I can't remember much about the campaign but my character was a cleric of Pelor. I can't remember any of his stats or even his name but I do remember walking into a deserted town and finding a magical mace with the symbol of Pelor on it in a well or small shack or something and destroying some undead shortly after.

I've been hooked on clerics ever since.

[ManInOrange]

I had a female (Mistake #1) Gnome (Mistake #2) Bard (Mistake #3), took weapon focus with a whip (Mistake #4), and always wore leather armor (Mistake #5).

...I was in a group with a bunch of other guys. Someone commented that we didn't have any women in the party, so I decided I could totally do that. Not only was this character disastrous mechanically (Mistakes 2, 3, and 4), I believe she was the source of the highest density of inappropriate jokes per unit of time I have ever borne witness to (Mistakes 1, 2, 4, and 5).

She had only been in the campaign for 2 sessions when she died in a tragic accident involving an ice slime.

[Amoren]

First character EVER (not counting the Marval Superhero character my mom made for me when I was a baby) was for Palladium Heroes Unlimited (crossed over with Nightbane). A half-Chinese, mutant martial artist; bad ass Shaolin skills mixed with mutant bio-armor (think Colossus' armor), Winged Flight, Healing Factor (ruled to heal his bio-armor as well as himself), and Extraordinary strength (which, when combined with his +strength skills and martial art abilities, caused the DM to rule that he was treated as having supernatural strength rather than extraordinary). First combat, his punch knocked a demon's head clean off of his shoulders and out the window behind him.

I MAY have been a bit of a munchkin.

First DnD character wasn't TO bad. My only mistake was being level 2 rather than one, because of the fact we didn't have the book, so I had to rely on a demo for a character generator. I wanted to create Link from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time, so I played a Fighter/Bard human with pointy ears (was going to go half-elf, and the only thing that stopped me was that the description for half-elf said they only had green-eyes), and his feat was Quick Draw and... Something else, but I was intending on getting the whirlwind feat chain down the road.

In my defense, I thought that it was a sort of hybrid option I had picked (like 4e).

[Togath]

My first character was a 80 year old human "fighter", he never made it to
2nd level, ironically, I had planned to have him be fighter 1, cleric of cuthbert 19. his death ended up coming at the hands of the bard and rogue, do partly to a mis-understanding(they thought I was mind-controlled or something, as they were both fairly new to dnd. though I do wonder why they decided the best way to cure me of mind control was to attack me, then coup de grace me when i was down, and loot my body to sell my equipment, while dumping his corpse in the woods so the local church made up mostly of paladins wouldn't find it), the thing that triggered the mis-understanding was me trying to take a random goblin captive, and mis-understanding the dm's description of "he's just breathing dirt now" as an odd way of saying he was dead, after thinking te party had killed the random goblin(who, now that I've read the adventure path the dm was running, would have helped move the plot back to it's correct path, probably anyway) I attacked the rogue trying to knock her out and rolled a 1, which should have missed had the dm not suddenly decided to use his fumble house rules(he hadn't been using any until then), due to the dm's fumble rules the miss turned into "hit for standard damage", which made them gang up on me and kill me.
Afterwards the dm decided to restart the campaign and I started over with a elven druid who spent most of his time turned into a puma.

[Water_Bear]

My first character was a D&D 3.5 Monk with the feat Vow of Poverty. He had no ACFs, no feats to mitigate MAD, mediocre randomly rolled stats and slightly less than average HP for his level at all times.

I am still amazed he survived as long as he did, from 1st level all the way to level 6.

Highlights of that campaign included killing and running away from the Good Guys for at least a half-dozen sessions because they wore black, annoying the other PCs by refusing to let them desecrate a tomb, and my character's 'heroic' death by charging into a small army of enemies alone dual-wielding torches.

I wish I could say I got better immediately, but my second character was an absolute mess of a Bard with about six different Prestige Classes so that he could be a worse version of a Beguiler by level 30. His motivations consisted entirely of killing people in creative ways, maintaining the increasingly implausible lie that he's not a spell-caster, becoming a rock star, and apotheosis.

[Kavurcen]

My first character, pictured in my avatar, was a standard weapon finesse rogue. He was properly built, was a skillmonkey, didn't do a whole lot in combat, but I got opportunities for some remarkably vibrant roleplaying.
All in all I had a relatively mild first character experience.

[Cuthalion]

Mine was a 3.5 Dwarf Fighter. He had the feats Weapon focus and Quick draw, as far as I remember, and I had no idea how to do any of it. We lost his character sheet after the first campaign. So there was a staircase which went into a dungeon with a door on one side and a passageway on the other. So we went down the passageway, fought skeletons and a ghoul, and kinda found out after all that that through the doorway was a skeleton in a little stream with a map of where we had already gone through. :smallredface: Hehehe.

[eggs]

Mine was a half-elf fighter with Toughness, Dwarven Waraxe proficiency and a Tower Shield. I remember taking like an hour and a half to hash the character out at level 1, scribbling craft-time probability distributions of on pizza napkins to make sure all 12 skill points were distributed exactly right. :smalltongue:

[Bloodgruve]

2E Halfling Ninja named Sho. Dex 19, had to crawl on a rope over a pool of acid to get to a statue. Could only fall if I rolled a 20, I rolled a 20 and that was the end of my first character :)

Blood~

[Roguenewb]

My first character was a Human Cleric of Hieroneous (I wanted longswords!) I took the War domain, and got the longsword! I accidentally did okay, because I liked Augment Summoning, so I got spell focus and augment and that got me close to okay. I didn't really know what to pick, and prepared Summon Monster like 75% of spell slots, then never cast it, because I was bad at picking things. I remember getting really butthurt when the first player got to BAB 6. I was finally killed by Vampires, when I went unconcious, and my team mate threw a bead of force and I was mulched. Locke was his name, decently designed, badly played.

Aaah, 8 years is sooo long ago.

[The Bandicoot]

A half-ogre fighter. He had a habit of going through enemies weapons and throwing them over his shoulder when he found out they were normal. When he found a masterwork great-axe he clutched it to his chest and proclaimed "MY shiny new axe" in the three levels the campaign lasted he became a conisuer of goblinoid flesh and befriended the druid's animal companion (wolf)so much that when the Druid died it started following him around.

[Mirakk]

Ah, Solicus D'Zakath. I made an Grey Elf Wizard for my very first D&D character. This was back when THACO was in full effect, and I had no idea WTF was going on. I was such a horrible noob at the time, but people I worked with who were a bit older than me wanted to play, and I played White-Wolf games at the time. And so I embarked on what would be a long and arduous journey...

Well, not for Solicus. You see, about 5 minutes into the first dungeon, I was stabbed by a Goblin in the hallway and killed by a lucky critical hit and a low constitution score. The party was then going to take his body back to town during the next session, but the group disbanded OOC afterward. Poor guy.

I never did learn how to play 2.0. Later, a friend helped me learn during 3.5, and I've been hooked ever since!

[DemonRoach]

First one I can remember was a melee human wizard.

Started at level 1, campaign collapsed at level 3.

Feats were Run, Eschew Materials and Weapon Focus (Staff). Stats were decent all round, but the highest was strength and constitution.

I don't even remember casting any spells....

[Kurisu]

My first character ever was a dwarf paladin called Murgan Thundershield (I didn't steal the last name! I promise!) I didn't even bother learning the rules of the game for my first campaign, but that didn't stop me from playing.

I honestly wouldn't say that the DM was the best, but it was a fun time all around either way.

Murgan was just your biggest bro of a dwarf ever, he was a paladin to be feared by many. The only paladin ability he used was Smite Evil. Because Smite evil solved all my problems. Along the campaign he did things like bust out of an arena, meet some epic level adventurers in a bar randomly, took on 42 orcs with his half-elf ranger companion, and was given this weird version of a Holy Avenger which gave like massive stat boosts to everything.

In the end we ended up dragging some epic level adventurers out to this evil demon lord. My ranger buddy technically "killed" the big boss, the DM made up some excuse on the fly, and stopped it from happening though. Our epic adventurers got taken over by a million illithids. Murgan's ranger pal still tried to kill the bad guy after that, and wanted to roll a million willsaves.

Murgan was left on his own, with the big bad boss. The boss was like "Join me! I'll give you all powerful powers." or something. Murgan shook his head and said no, and stated something about how he would never do that. Then we got help from the gods after talking to the DM about the fact that Murgan's god wouldn't be pissed at Murgan for standing up for his friends and stuff like the DM originally said.

Then we won. It was fun, but really, really, stupid at the same time.

Feat wise...
Murgan had no feats. I was the bestest!

[Golden Ladybug]

My first character was a Half-Elf Ranger, by name of Daniel Iric.

His first (and only real) adventure began when he was kidnapped by [people] while hunting Deer, along with his buddy the Dwarf Paladin. They were thrown into some Gladiatorial Pits, where we beat up many halflings. It was fine enough for a first try, because neither I, nor the dwarf's player, had played before. Eventually, however, we were sprung from our prison by the DMPC (A Female Elf Rogue from Daniels hometown who was always invisible and crit on 3s and up :smallannoyed:), who I spent much of the campaign making certain that I would be able to kill at a moment's notice.

Just in case, you understand.

So, the DMPC tried to hook us into a plot about Daniels' hometown disappearing, along with meeting epic level adventurers drinking in a local pub :smallconfused:, and we were off to go adventure and be heroes. These particular heroes were level 4 at the time.

So, of course, we stumble upon a portal leading to a dark and evil demiplane filled with Evil Stuff (TM). Four Tarrasques walk out of there, ridden by a Sorcerer (apparently an Epic Level Sorcerer, as the DM told us OOC). We then, being the brave adventurers we were, ran away.

Enlisting those epic adventurers from the bar, we stormed the dark and evil demiplane filled with Evil Stuff (TM), found an ominous tower, took out 50 floors of skeleton warriors (all without rolling a dice, because the DM couldn't be bothered and just wanted to skip to his awesome BBEG) and were told that we levelled up 5 levels. So, feeling pretty good about ourselves, we walked into the BBEG's throneroom, where he was flanked by a million Illithids.

Not even kidding.

I decided that I was either going to be killed by a million Illithids/the epic level sorcerer, or I could take a chance and shoot the sorcerer in the face. Which I did. And, with our questionable understanding of how Manyshot, Rapidshot, Full Attacks and our weird collection of magic items worked, I did enough damage with my storm of arrows to kill the BBEG.

So, of course, we'd been in an Anti-Magic Field when I did this. Of course, this was revealed after I'd been told I hit and dealt damage.

Then, I got mind crushed by a million Illithids. Thankfully, the Dwarf Paladin was able to argue with the DM until we got Divine Intervention in the form of Super Powers from our God(s). Daniel was an Athiest, even though he knew the Gods were real. This was ignored; but anyway, I beat the DMPC to killing the Epic Sorcerer, we destroyed all the spooky magic crystals that were being used for Evil Stuff (TM) and saved the day.

All in all, it could've been worse.

...but even with all the bad, it was still pretty fun :smallbiggrin:

[danzibr]

My first character was a 80 year old human "fighter", he never made it to
2nd level, ironically, I had planned to have him be fighter 1, cleric of cuthbert 19. his death ended up coming at the hands of the bard and rogue, do partly to a mis-understanding(they thought I was mind-controlled or something, as they were both fairly new to dnd. though I do wonder why they decided the best way to cure me of mind control was to attack me, then coup de grace me when i was down, and loot my body to sell my equipment, while dumping his corpse in the woods so the local church made up mostly of paladins wouldn't find it), the thing that triggered the mis-understanding was me trying to take a random goblin captive, and mis-understanding the dm's description of "he's just breathing dirt now" as an odd way of saying he was dead, after thinking te party had killed the random goblin(who, now that I've read the adventure path the dm was running, would have helped move the plot back to it's correct path, probably anyway) I attacked the rogue trying to knock her out and rolled a 1, which should have missed had the dm not suddenly decided to use his fumble house rules(he hadn't been using any until then), due to the dm's fumble rules the miss turned into "hit for standard damage", which made them gang up on me and kill me.
Afterwards the dm decided to restart the campaign and I started over with a elven druid who spent most of his time turned into a puma.
Out of all the stories on here, I think this wins.

Anyway, mine was an Elf Fighter who was going to dual wield, 'cause I like swords. Started out at level 1, put all my stats into Dex, but the DM told me I couldn't take Weapon Finesse until level 2. The campaign ended after 2 sessions, my Elf still at level 1.

[hoverfrog]

First 3rd Edition character? No, no, no. 1st Edition Fighter level 3. The party was fighting this weird cat thing from Fiend Folio. When you killed it, it returned as a more powerful cat until you'd killed it nine times. It may have been called a Cat o' Nine Tails or a Cat of Nine Lives. Something like that. I thought I was doing great to drive the thing down a well till it leapt out, shredded my armour and used me as a kitty box. I had such plans for my fighter though I can't even remember his name now.

The problem was that I just didn't understand the relationship between hit points and the amount of damage that a monster could dish out. I though that having 17 hit points remaining was plenty for one more round until four claws and a bite hit and a handful of dice spelled "doom" as they rattled onto the table.

That was the day that I learned to follow the actions of more experienced players when their characters bolt.

With 3e I think my biggest mistake would have to be my Half Orc Druid 5/Ranger 2/Abolisher 4, Vrogar Vvaaranessen of the Maruk Ghaash'Kala aka Oakroot. I was trying be the party fighter, healer, tracker, offensive spell caster and everything else all rolled into one and succeeded in creating a character who really wasn't very good at anything except supporting everyone else. He's still in my folder but in a party of single class characters (including a ranger and a fighter) he'd very much weaker than anyone else. He is effectively three levels of druid down for no real benefit. Oh well, we live and learn.

[whibla]

My first character was an Elf, called Cadellin Silverbrow (yeah, so the name wasn't exactly original :smallredface:).

And, yes, he was just an Elf. None of this complicated class and race rubbish back then.

I vaguely recall him being eaten by a T-Rex on a remote island...

...but that was ok, as a couple of new hardback books had just been published (or rather had finally reached the shores of this roleplaying backwater). And so the first Solitaire put on her armour, polished off her holy avenger, and ... well, that's another story...

[Element Zero]

My first was a human wizard named Fargoth. Started the game with insanely high, power-rolled stats (4d6, drop low, re-roll 1s). He made it all the way to twenty over the course of a two year game, but what I wanted to do with him changed with the winds. First, he was going to be a necromancer, then I got impatient waiting for Animate Dead (cause I wouldn't -dream- of specializing back then. What, and lose a school of magic or two!?), and I had no idea how dumb that would have been anyway. Then, he was all about blasting things to rubble. That lasted about two months before I decided he needed WP Scythe and a level in Fighter so I could go EK. Realized -that- was dumb, and talked my DM into letting me retcon the lost levels back into wizard...where he stayed with nearly random spell selection.

He was terrible.

[Mithril Leaf]

My first character was a dwarven barbarian, using SRD only. I took cleave and power attack, charged using a greataxe. I'd been playing Dwarf Fortress prior to that, so my min-maxing instincts were strong. My second two levels were fighter, but he never got past 3 because the whole group realized just how bad the DM was.

[Heatwizard]

The first character I actually played (rather then just built) was a Dwarf Warblade. There wasn't a whole lot exciting about him, the game was an introduction to D&D for half the party and I didn't want to become too ridiculous - though I did end up cleaving a troll in twain at level 3 in one shot. (Emerald Razor power attack, hey that crit's confirmed! Maximum smugness) I'm bad at backstory though, so in lieu of any better ideas, I settled on 'from Boatmurdered'.

[Mithril Leaf]

The first character I actually played (rather then just built) was a Dwarf Warblade. There wasn't a whole lot exciting about him, the game was an introduction to D&D for half the party and I didn't want to become too ridiculous - though I did end up cleaving a troll in twain at level 3 in one shot. (Emerald Razor power attack, hey that crit's confirmed! Maximum smugness) I'm bad at backstory though, so in lieu of any better ideas, I settled on 'from Boatmurdered'.

My first character witnessed the atrocities there during a brief trade session. It was horrifying.

[AntiTrust]

Dueling gnome households pit their only sons against each-other in a contest to see who can accumulate the most wealth in a year. Loser's family is forever enslaved to the winners family. Adventuring was high-risk high-reward so it was an obvious choice.

[DoughGuy]

My first guy was (when he died thanks to a silly teamate. Cheers if you're reading this :smalltongue:) a half copper dragon half orc fighter 6. He had around 32 str and trounced encounters with a great scythe. He was great to play since it was our first campaign and no one knew how to optimise.

[Krazzman]

My First Character was an Elven Rogue. Talents were: Weapon Focus: Short Swords, Weapon Finesse, Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot... I think.

Anyway, we started on level 6 and I think he reached level 10. The Campaign started out pretty good, adventuring with an Archery Focused Fighter (had good strength none the less) and a really strong Dwarven Druid (female).

We were to clean a mine from an skelleton infestation and so we ventured. My Elf was nearly killed by the dwarf because the DM couldn't grasp any point of sarcasm (we slept on a tree because of said skelletals and i was asked how I was going down... you imagine an elf jumping down instead of using the rope construction he made). The character was cursed... every move silent roll was at first a 1 then a 18+. I had a sneak and hide modifier of +32 due to some items and even with a 33 the dm ruled i failed because of that one.
Since my character was a coward and the scout... they later had a coding of how many and what sort of monsters we are going to face depending on my screaming pattern.
Anyway we come to this lighthouse near that mine and in it we find a tablet of Lathander, which then split itself into 3 amuletts, and transmuting our things.
We closed that campaign because two players joined (a wizard and a Paladin, purple dragon knight mounted charger build) and started to harass the Druid Player because her character suddenly had a beard, a chin like Schumacher and that travolta mark... and other such things. And since the DM had to work with the DMG output of the "You don't know I'm a Paladin"-Guy it suddenly becaue pretty bizarre. From then on we just played one shots until recently. When we had to search for a new group.

[ThiagoMartell]

My first character was a human Fighter, level 1.
There was a bridge. We tried to cross the bridge. We all died.

[only1doug]

My first DnD character was (I think) a dwarven cleric (this is about 20 years ago so I'm not sure), I remember him entering a martial arts contest and beating a monk (who had been laughing about his size) with a kick to the gentlemens area. He got defeated in the next round.

I'm don't remember if buff spells were forbidden or I just didn't know enough to use them but I was suprised that he won (where these days I would be suprised if he didn't).


My first TMNT character was a mutant cheetah, he actually had far too much speed stat (once you can dodge on a roll of 2-19 any excess is wasted really and he had a lot of excess).

[Keneth]

The first 3.5 D&D character I can remember was a druid. She became a god after kicking the crap out of some evil demigod entity.

True story.

[killianh]

My first would have to have been a paladin. When I read it I thought to myself "Smiting, magic, AND fighter stats? WIN" then I ended up on the receiving end of a full attack from a barbarian after being entangled by a ranger. That's when I learned to look at mechanics rather than just the fluffy awesome

[Dusk Eclipse]

Fenris a full blooded Orc barbarian whom I based on my LARP character (first D&D session ever was during a LARPing camp). Used an Orc Double axe and twfing. I still remember him cause I failed a save against a Charm effect and killed another player's character...which was awesome cause I couldn't stand that guy in real life >_> <_< don't tell him though.

[Vorandril]

Lawful Evil Half-Orc Fighter. Had a pretty decent bastard sword and often didn't get along with the ranger (Played by my father *Vader respirator here*).

We're walking along on a "save the princess from the Grea Black Wyrm" quest and we're asked to roll spot checks. This DM tended to ask for arbitrary spot checks to avoid metagaming them.

Everyone failed but the ranger and the Fighter. All we saw around was rocks. Trees. and a pygmy goat.

Spinerender, "Hmm. Lunch." I declare I throw my sword at the goat.
The elven ninny catches my arm, "I won't let you slaughter that thing just because you're hungry. It's an animal and I'm sworn to protect nature." (Stick in the mud. :smallannoyed: )

Spinerender, "So we're gonna starve on laxative leaf eh?"
At which point I was told OOC by said ranger that if I kept delaying the game I'd get shot. Which is supported by everyone at the table because they wanted to kill stuff. Not Roleplay in a RPG.

So we round the bend because it wasn't worth it to start a fight, right?

Right?! :smallconfused:

Soooo I get asked to roll a D20. I rolled abyssmally low. I get handed two notes.
1: That was a will save.
2: You failed. Telepathic Suggestion: "You're far enough from town... Time to get rid of these fools."


Well now, this is interesting. So Spinerender looks around at the group. Weighing things. And he decides, yeah, I can do this. Should take out the healer first though.
So, SUPRISE ROUND! Crit the Dwarven Ninny of Pelor!
I won Initiative!
Crit the Dwarven Ninny again and she takes a dirtnap!

Then the rogue fails a fort save and arbitrarily falls over dead.

I get hit by everyone and pretty much laugh. No one knew I had obscene damage reduction due to an item I'd stolen.

I turn and one-shot the paladin. Leaving just the ranger and myself. I turn and face him.
It is at this point he realizes he's pretty S.O.L. and J.W.F. so he turns tail and runs. At which point there's NO chance I can catch him and my bow isn't gonna do much other than give him more ammo.

So I stab my sword into the dirt and drink a potion the Paladin was kind enough to donate by not shattering it as he died.


....

Then a little winged creature with a scorpion's tail and batlike wings becomes visible, "HAHAHA! Kid, you and me are gonna do wonderfully."

Psssst
---> It was an Imp.

[SpaceBadger]

My first character was named Elf, which was also his class and his race (this was D&D Basic Set, 1978). His name was posthumously changed to Elf #1 to distinguish him from my second character, Elf #2. Neither of them lived past level 1. I think my next character was a Dwarf, and if he had a name I don't rememer it, as he also died pretty quickly. We were a group of 16 year old wargamers trying out this new D&D thing with no real idea of how it was supposed to be played, as none of us (including the DM) had ever played before.

[hoverfrog]

SpaceBadger you've just reminded me of a long line of zombie names that our evil cleric had. Every time someone died, party member or enemy he would animate them and add them to his zombie hoard. Each was named Fred and given a number.

Well, we thought it was funny at least until one of our characters joined the Freds. Then it was annoying.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

My first character was a human cleric of Corellon Larethian. The DM pulled up a list of D&D core deities, their portfolios and domains and told me to pick one whose domains looked interesting. I wanted to be in the fray more than being a healer, so I picked Corellon Larethian because he had the war and chaos domains. We had already decided I would be human, so my picking the chief god of the elves was handwaved with my backstory. My character, Tolsemir Elfchild, had been the child of a family of human lumberjacks who were killed by a band of radical elvish eco-terrorists and was given to an elvish temple to be raised. That's pretty much all I had. No reason the temple took him in rather than sending this baby off to a human settlement. Nothing about what it was like to grow up as a human among elves. Just a sentence to handwave my deity.

I played Tolsemir pretty badly too, never really deciding whether I wanted to hang back and sling spells, or pull out my flaming long sword and rush into battle (often siding with the latter and doing it very badly.)
I never really roleplayed much. Not wanting to step on any of the other players' toes, I usually hung back and went along with their ideas until a fight started, at which point I'd spend a turn casting Prayer (because +1 on attacks and damage is so worth a 3rd level spell and an action) before running off to play fighter with my sword. I still don't think I could give more than a few simple adjectives to describe my cleric's personality.
I was far too stingy with my spell slots. It never really sank in that casting Inflict Serious Wounds (or similar) was better than my flaming long sword even though 3d8+5 (at least) as a touch should be much better than 1d8+1d6+4 rolled against full AC. After all, I might need the spell more later.
Toward the end of the campaign, I decided I wanted to focus even more on melee and decided that taking Two-Weapon Fighting and buying a spell-storing dagger and upgrading my sword to a keen flaming-burst long sword was the correct way to do this. The game ended two or three sessions later and I don't think the dagger ever landed a single hit.
For all my attempts at melee, I only cast Divine Might about 3 times in the campaign, even though it was a domain spell. I guess Chaos Hammer was just so appealing. (I got +1 caster level on it from my domain and it didn't have friendly fire as most of my party was chaotic.)
I never cast spells in melee so I never really used concentration until the final battle where I got grappled by a barbed devil and it came to light I only had a +8 to concentration at level 13. I was quickly fireballed to death by the horned devil who summoned it.


Rest in peace, Tolsemir. Sorry your player was such a noob.

[PaperMustache]

Human Artificer. Boyfriend brought me into the campaign late so the DM left it to the least rules savvy person in the group to teach me how to make a character. The sheet making process was a mess, I don't remember where we put my ability scores (probably everywhere, I remember too much strength), and putting ranks in Use Magical Device was an afterthought. I spent the first couple of levels shooting magic missiles out of my boot and there was a fairly epic one on one fight with a guy with throwing swords where I sent an unseen servant to sit on his weapon that threw him off. At some point the DM realized I was serious about the group and helped me build a bad ass chainsaw that did fire damage a few times a day. It was awesome.

[ima donkey]

My first character was about as simple as they get. Thom the human fighter, I used a greatsword and scalemail. I remember rolling for like 2 hours to get 3 18's he was a pretty good character even though we only went to like level 4. Was some of the best times I had playing D&D though.

[Hyde]

My first character was Lai zurkai-non, a ranger from AD&D (You know it as those books that were just reprinted)

Let's see. he was the exiled prince of an island nation, eventually became a homebrew psionic-werebear, was forced to reclaim his heritage after his father died and his evil sibling threatened to destroy the kingdom, and then became a de facto emperor after marrying a princess that enjoyed going on adventures with him, and her father and brother (good friends of Lai) thought that a yong married woman flying around the world with a bachelor bear on his magical airship unsupervised was maybe not cool.

Oh, and psionic werebears are somewhat immortal, apparently, so to get around the whole "insane bear lunar raging" he wished to go back three hundred years to train and gain mastery over his condition, which was, in retrospect, and entirely overkill amount of years, during which he had an affair with a werewolf chick, and so his son was a hybrid werewolfbear, that could shift into either form (who would later become a PC)

Let's see... after that he tooled around for an NPC as a bit- a cataclysm eventually befell the kingdom and his people and bloodline perished, leaving him largely alone in the ruins of his once-grand empire. He was discovered later by Lysaro Jones, a sort of blackguardy not-so-good guy. Lai took the fellow under his wing and showed him, with great effort, the path of good, until he was eventually slain by Lysaro's nemesis, Progenitus the apocalypse hydra and original creator of everything (MTG, anyone?)

My first 3.5 character was either Lash Tamaron (named after a shipping group with a way too cool name for a shipping group) or Liscena, a disarm-rogue/fighter/ranger hybrid or master of shrouds cleric, respectively. Lash's name changed to Trabaceo for not a lot of reasons, and became an NPC and Liscena was short-lived because even though she wasn't capital "E" evil, the rest of the party was a little too good, so she became a villain later on.

[roguemetal]

I remember Siggy, the abjurant champion who single handedly took on the party of adventurers he was with, took all their stuff, and went on to raise an army that would eventually both topple the big-bad and simultaneously take control of an entire continent. Raising the party as undead allowed the game to continue without Siggy ever needing to worry about annoying little things like 'free will'. He burned his face into the sky too, as an added bonus.

On the downside I didn't play with that group too much after that campaign.
Can't imagine why.

[LadyLexi]

My first D&D character was made when I was 7 for first edition(found in the attic). I don't remember what my class was but I had a ring of invisibility and a vorpal sword and something to let me fly. I tried to kill everything that wasn't blatantly a villager or human. Woe to dragons, who I went after, waiting till they went to sleep to hack off their heads. I don't even remember enough to know if we were actually following the rules.

My first 3.X character was a Drow Rogue/Assassin who wanted to kill the gods (I don't even remember why). I was 12 at the time and mostly focused on acquiring dresses and jewelry.

[JetThomasBoat]

My first character was a pre-made female monk in a 3.0 game. Our DM at the time was obsessed with the deck of many things and I ended up becoming chaotic evil and out a bunch of class features, so I think the town guard killed me when I burned all their buildings.

My first character I actually did anything with was another pre-rolled character that was a fighter that used a greatsword. I named him Wayne and soon got a magic longsword, so I asked to have my feats changed so they would apply to a longsword. I really had no idea what I was doing and after nearly being clubbed to death by some harpies after they stunned me in the second session, I used the group's "cursed" die, and pretty much for the next ten months or so, I rolled like crap. I literally probably actually hit an enemy three or four times per session, every weekend or every other, for ten months. But I miraculously never died, and as I didn't think to ask to sell off any of the various magical longswords I had picked up, I just had a crap ton of them laying around.

In the game, me, and four of my friends were playing with one of the friend's older brother. Of the four younger people playing, who were playing a gnome bard with terrible stats, my fighter that was fairly okay, a monk who tried to do special actions too often, and a druid, myself and the bard were the only ones asked back. In the rest of the group, there was another fighter who later took some cleric levels, a fighter/dwarven defender (that had played for years but STILL got confused about the class and thought it gave way more than it did) and a cleric, and of the entire group, I was the only one that didn't gain four or more levels from the deck of many things.

So I was the lowest level party member and the only one other than the bard that didn't understand multiclassing or PrCs, but I eventually took some levels in Weapons Master and some other thing for the flavor (which was still kind of silly) and everything changed around and I was left the only fighter and had to go toe to toe with a mithril golem.

But he never stayed permanently dead, even though both some kind of colossal centipede thing and...a dragon I think? killed him at varying points.