How do you get character inspirations?

[The Redwolf]

Either most often or the ones that have given you your favorite characters? Do you just come up with something randomly and try it out, do you look through and stumble on a class or race you think would be fun to play, do you try to emulate the themes of characters from movies/games/books/etc.? I'm just interested in knowing how people here come up with their characters and how they feel about them. I'd also be interested for anyone to share examples of characters they came up with in and how the character turned out, notable details from a campaign or a description or something similar.


I have personally only been in a couple of campaigns, but I have a lot of characters that I have planned to make some day, and most of them seem to be inspired by outside sources. My personal favorite is a warforged monk that I'll be playing in a campaign soon that was inspired by the Burning Gundam from G Gundam. I even took the Monk of the Four Winds archetype so elemental fist will work like the Burning Finger. Other ones I look forward to are a samurai based off of Kenshin Himura using the Sword Saint archetype and a catfolk/weretiger rogue using the Knife Master and either Scout or Cat Burglar archetypes, depending on the setting, based off of Rei from Breath of Fire 3.

[Quietus]

It depends. Sometimes I'll read something in a particular class, and just have to play that class. Other times, I'll be playing around with ideas in my head and come up with something interesting I want to try out. Yet other times, I'll outright steal ideas from things I've read, usually something on these very boards.

By way of example, when I read the Seeker of the Song class, I abruptly wanted - NEEDED - to make a Bardish-based dance specialist who wore a mask and was and was striving to perfect her art by pulling on the very fabric of the cosmos through nothing more than dancing. Another character that I have wanted to play for quite a while now is a Warblade, or other generally competent martial character, whose uncanny abilities with a blade are due to a demon that has been trapped within one of his arms, and any maneuvers/spells/whatever he produces are a result of that demon's power being channeled or just plain bursting out. I'm having trouble thinking of something I've outright stolen recently, unfortunately.

[The Redwolf]

Another character that I have wanted to play for quite a while now is a Warblade, or other generally competent martial character, whose uncanny abilities with a blade are due to a demon that has been trapped within one of his arms, and any maneuvers/spells/whatever he produces are a result of that demon's power being channeled or just plain bursting out. unfortunately.

That sounds quite awesome to be honest.

[eggs]

1. Roll 3d6 six times in order.
2. See what I'm working with.
3. Pick whatever's the best fit of the classes I've been thinking about.
4. Take what I know about the DM's campaign, and work the character into it. Try to tell a good story with a few good plothooks, fun details, innovative quirks, ties into another character's story to jump in smoothly.
5. Begin the first session.
6. Get eaten by undead lichens because even when I've got the Soulborniest of stats, I suck at making Soulborns not terrible.
7. Oh crud the session's already going, I have to have a new character in a minute or two - Roll faster - Let's say Ranger this time, they're hard to screw those up - Favored enemy: undead lichens of course - Backstory? His family was eaten by undead lichens, now he's out for licheny revenge I dont even care,let'sdothis

:smalltongue:

[Werekat]

I tend to get struck by inspiration just as I think I've decided on a concept and go to the DM to clear it with him. Then I open my mouth... And something completely different from what I'd been thinking about comes out. In any case, I usually start with a phrase that summarizes the character, and then put meat on those bones during play. Some favorite examples:

One character began as the phrase "She was the victim of immaculate conception," as in its product. She was half-fae (in a world loosely based on Lorel Hamilton's Anita Blake series), and her father basically used his fae powers to infiltrate a young and very Christian girl's house, woo her and impregnate her. The girl was long-term grounded at the moment, so her parents knew for a fact there had been no one else except them and their daughter in the house. So they came to the only logical conclusion, and treated the resulting offspring as a product of immaculate conception. Needless to say, once she grew up, the half-fae girl was delighted to get away and to live on the fringes of the faerie world.

Another character concept began with this: "He's an elven wizard who is lazy, a bit too much of a scaredy cat, and somewhat greedy to boot. For the laziness, he was kicked out of the mages' academy of his elven city, and is now travelling the world." The campaign evolved into what was basically a Neon Genesis Evangelion/Tsubasa Chronicles crossover with elves. The character, after the meat was placed on the bones, was the son of a powerful wizard and sorceress. The sorceress was turned into a ghaele as the result of the wizard's breaking a contract with the Seelie Court. The wizard, who wasn't that stable mentally to begin with after several expeditions to Pandemonium, basically dedicated his life to bringing her back - all the while pressuring his son to become a wizard. Since it's usual for our elves to be apprenticed outside of the family, the boy got sent to a mages' academy, but the father did keep a close watch and tried to pressure him into studying through magical, if not mind-controlling means. The son, my character, was pretty much as bull-headed as his father and did not want to learn magic. There was about 40 years of headbutting (in the middle of a city, and about as loudly as you can imagine with an archmage involved), at the end of which the younger elf did begin to realize that he kind of liked doing magic... But it was way too late, even CG elves were way too fed up with the constant bickering that meant weird magical special effects in the city, and quietly asked him to leave. And leave he did. Grew up to become the youngest archmage in the history of the city, at least. :P

The weirdest product of that approach (one of the few cases where I actually had no core phrase when I started talking) was a 60-year old Mexican female doctor, who was also a Voodoo shaman (yes-yes, I know, the game was a postmodernist pastiche) and worked for the mafia as an information gatherer and poisoner. And then she got trapped in an MMORPG (the mafia was using it as a place to exchange coded messages, so she logged in once - and was trapped there with the rest of the party) as it became a real world in its own right, and became the first necromancer of that world. She was my only NE character, and great fun to play.

Another character was someone I made when I was 15 - it was a oWoD Vampire game, and I was thinking of making a girl about my age, who was New Agey and just barely in the university. Instead, I started talking.... And suddenly made a 23-year old museum worker, who had a spirit mentor for Druidism and who was a good scholar of the fine arts in her own right. We started as mortal, and she eventually evolved into being a Kiasyd priestess of Morrigan, basically standing on the border between life and death to be a psychopomp and seer as needed, as well as preventing the worlds from bleeding over, either from overzealous ghosts or overzealous necromancers. That character's stuck with me for some 10 years.

So... Um, yeah. Even the simplest of core phrases can become really zany and weird once the game has begun - and those are the most fun, I believe.

[DoughGuy]

I tend to avoid outside sources when making characters. I prefer to take a class (preferably a prestige class) and an alignment and work around that. I'll then take a look at the build I have, think about what sort of personality they would have and create a back story from there.

[Duke of URL]

I don't consciously use outside sources to create characters, although as with plots, here are a finite number of character archetypes, and everything is eventually derivative of something else.

As at least one other has said, I most often start from the mechanical side -- there is a race/class combination that I really want to play, and I build the character I want to play from the specific game setting and rules. Then I work backwards -- how did the character get to be at that point in his/her life (or, in rare instances, unlife)? How does that fit in with the backdrop elements my GM has put forth? Why would this character want to work with the others?

Now, that said, I will reuse some character concepts if I really like them, but the game they were in fizzed out. I have an insight into the character's personality already, and I can adapt the backstory to fit a new setting without too much trouble.

[Talionis]

I usually find that by looking through these boards and other "Handbooks" I find interesting powersets. I keep a list of all the combinations of feats and classes that I like and I put together something dependent on the campaign setting and my conversations with the DM.

I think the most important thing is that I fill a role in the party that is needed and that I am on a power level similar to the rest of my team. I always have a lot of ideas.

Sometimes I self gimp, in order to play a Wizard or Sorcerer in a lower power level game. Sometimes, I keep something really powerful in my back pocket for a whole campaign and never use it. Some of the DM's I've played with would have found ways to punish me for using "cheesie-tactics" and while I wanted an "Oh Shoot!" Switch to save my party in a pinch, if the DM's didn't send anything totally unfair, I never used the particular combo. Often it felt like I wasted feats, but it actually made the gaming more fun. But I've also played in some high op games and found them to be fun too. Its just that everyone needs to be on the same page.

Sometimes, I high or slightly optimize bad classes in order to make them good enough to play with group. I have fun trying to give them something that makes them special. Sometimes, I don't even mind playing a Robin type character to allow other people to be Batman. I find ways to make being Robin fun.

I watch a ton of anime. I read a lot of fantasy. So I get ideas on what would look cool, but usually any of these, I put my own twist on. I find that outside sources are more beneficial to help fill in back story and flesh out the character I want to portray. If he is a tough fighter then maybe some of his back story is similar to Gutz from Beserk. But I usually add a little of something else and by the time I put my spin on all of that, it would be hard to tell that my back story had anything to do with Berserk.

I have a ton of characters that I love, my Spellthief, my Chameleon, my Duskblade, so slightly different iterations of those characters happen again and again. But I like trying new things and new characters.

[Psyren]

My preferred method is to play against racial stereotypes, but do so in a way that is mechanically strong.

For instance, Elves make great Alchemists mechanically (Int and Dex bonuses), but fluff-wise Elves are very unlikely to take up alchemy. So my Elf Alchemist was a troubled individual who wanted to be a druid (like his family line before him) but found out he was never particularly good at it. He turned to alchemy as an alternate way to care for the beasts of the forest by strengthening them against the intrusions of civilization chemically, becoming sort of a benign geneticist. (Naturally, this involved the powerful Preservationist (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/spellcastingClassOptions/alchemist.html#preservationist-%28archetype%29) archetype.)

When his druidic masters found out what he was up to, they considered his experiments to be anathema, and he was forced out of his wilderness home. He now lives in the city, but continues protecting any nearby beasts of nature via his own methods (and collecting particularly powerful specimens to use as breeding stock - this is represented by e.g. his Augment Summoning feat and Bottled Ally abilities.) Whether he is sane or not is for others to determine, as he doesn't really care - he is focused on what he sees as the "greater good" - but he's developed a healthy disdain for traditional magic (and druidism in particular.)

Alignment: TN

[HunterColt22]

It depends honestly, but I mostly get it from just reading the material and then thinking that would be fun. I have never really looked much at how a class functions based on its "ranking" or tier usage but rather what is fun. Two examples are in order I guess, and here them come.

Recently I was looking through the books and was looking in Dragon Magic, and said I want to make a dragon mixed race. I picked a fireblooded dwarf for fun. I then went on to make him a Monk1/Ranger9/Drunken Master10. He isn't in a campaign yet but he is all planned out. Loathing his draconian ancestry for what it means, and also what it has done to ostracize him due to the wings feat I took for him at lvl1. Thus, he is a flying dwarf that gets drunk and then kills things. He also has a dire tortoise carry around his extra kegs of ale to continue his fire spewing drunken fly bys. Effective, oh god no. Fun, and interesting idea that I had to make, oh god yes.

My next thought is a warforged Ranger/Rogue/LandforgedWalker. Again not the most optimal thing in the world, but who isn't going to put loads of points into intimidate, and then transform into a Huge plant and eat someone while stealing their loot?

[Igneel]

Generally it varies from game to game for me. Majority of them I think/hear/see about certain character ideas that sound interesting and try to put my own spin on it. Then there are the times that I'm just surfing through the web on art/image sites like Deviantart or Photobucket and I get inspired, or while reading a book I wonder what a certain character would be like mechanically in DnD. I try not to outright copy the resource material (take Drizzt for example) by doing my own spin off of it. (Gnome Blade Bravado/Telflammar Shadowlord anyone?) Another practice I like to do is alternating between races/genders/alignments/etc, so one game I'll play a CE Male X, and the next a LG Female Y for example.

For example, one of my not so recent, but still going and pretty close to being my favorite character is a Female Human Shapeshifting variant Druid. I was inspired by some Pagan/Wiccan books I was reading at the time of creation for research and so I stylized her in a similar fashion in that she talks to the 'spirits' of nature, summons elementals (via Elemental Summoning reserve feat) by asking for assistance, paying back the more powerful ones (via Nature's Ally) by giving them a piece of herself, and is the party healer (more because our cleric died early). When she casts spells I generally have some loose translations of English to Welsh to make it sound like she is speaking something akin to Druidic, most of which involves her invoking nature to do things for her.

Another example is a Epic Gestalt 'Nations' game I'm playing where the DM allowed me to play as a vampiric White dragon that worships a homebrewed draconic god of winter that is set on blocking out the sun with a eternal blizzard not only to make it so future vampires he makes not have to fear the sun, but to also spread the influence of winter. Being a nation game, he also has his own little nation to rule over that is based on a image I found going through Deviantart of city of ice situated behind a giant ice sculpture of a dragon's face as a gateway into the city. I incorporated that along with making my nation a mobile fortress in the form of a iceberg made of blood.

A final example is a Cleric/Deadgrim (Magic of Eberron) 'undead hunter' styled character that wields a Sunsword from Ravenloft as her favored weapon, being called the Lightbearer as a nickname. Somewhat going off the fluff for the Deadgrim she has started turning herself into something akin to the very foe she hates, and so despite her urge to carve away the darkness to make way for the light, the same darkness is always around her beckoning her to join their numbers. She walks literally on the blade of a sword to battle the undead that she could easily become and turn on her once-friends. Always afraid she might fail, always fighting back the calls of darkness, always holding onto the hope that what light she makes will help even the tiniest flicker elsewhere to become a bigger beacon then she could ever be. Largely inspired by various superhero-like stories, yet also inspired by my interpretation of the forces of evil vs good and the ever shifting balance between the two.

[Narsis]

i personally tend to start from the mechanical side of things. classes or races and such that i'd like to try out. and then find a way to work such a character into whatever the setting is. as such the character tends to be very much connected to the mechanics that created them. and for the most part it's worked out fine.

there is however a character that i did a bit differently and he is by far my fav.

he is a halfling paladin of freedom. originally was gonna end up with a mounted charger build...but i fell in love with the personality and background that i built for him and he has since transcended mechanics in my mind. there are probably a dozen different mechanical ways to model him...but only 1 him. i have yet to find an appropriate game for him though.

[Quietus]

That sounds quite awesome to be honest.

Thanks! I almost had the opportunity to play him once in a play by post, but the game never got off the ground.

[GeekGirl]

I look at pictures. I will just start scrolling though images of "characters" I have saved and look for something that just jumps out at me.