Character Creation

[Lanson]

I want to make REAL characters again (Story behind this in spoiler), not just lifeless avatars that I can jump in and take off in like they're a car. Is there a particular process that anyone can suggest that they find useful?

A long time ago, in a forum far far away, I used to roleplay play by post games when I wasn't gaming IRL... anyways, those days have long passed. Back then I used to be able to make characters that had deep and rich back-stories, personalities, and felt like real people in a world of wonders.

I never went through any process to make them before, the ideas just came to me. However, nowadays, I can't seem to make a character for the life of me that feels... real. I've lost that part of myself... And it's terribly painful to admit it to my friends when they ask the story behind who I'm playing.

[Captnq]

I dunno. Stuff just pops into my head.

I've been DMing for 20+ years and I can make volumes of back story on demand at this point. Read a book on personality types and child psychology.

[JusticeZero]

Start by reading up on the world setting. Learn some anthropology, so that you can understand a bit more about the forces that shape peoples personalities and life situations.
Read some fiction, just expose yourself to some characters.
Now go for the ordinary. Don't make some crazy Mary Sue wacky character born of a dragon, an ogre, a pixie, and a succubus. Start out with, say, a peasant, or a miner, or a cobbler. A very generic common person, even if they are some sort've uncommon background. Don't go for rare and fantastical.
Look at the things going on in the game world. Have your common person react and respond to some of the things going on, in ways that inspire them to pick up a sword and join the army/run away from their village/whatever.

Congratulations, you now have a fun and coherent character who meshes in with the world.

Honestly, since a lot of things in the world are designed in ways that are intuitively coherent from the outside, but not necessarily the inside, you might find that you accidentally bake in a lot of really interesting things created by the tensions. For example, there is a minor god that I saw in the PF info that is a patron for women who are rejects of society. Said god is evil as heck. However, the people who would want to be protected by such a god because, well, lots of people are in such a position? Probably not particularly evil. This could cause a weird contradictory thing. Weird contradictory tensions are often good. You have to balance the tension somehow while staying true to your core "boring ordinary person" chassis.

[John Longarrow]

Sit back and write out a back story first. Work through WHO the character is, then try to match game mechanics to it.

Hey, if you want to be Kroner the Dwarven hunter, guy who likes trapsing through the woods instead of spending all his time down in a tunnel or workshop surrounded by all those... PEOPLE... so you can be yourself and not worry about what others are thinking, just go for it.

Game mechanics tend to lend themselves to a Ranger/Barbarian, but that is more because they compliment his solitary lifestyle and his tendancy to let his anger get the better of him.

[Red Fel]

I just browse. I let my mind wander until I find a seed - a single concept, like a race, or a class, or a feat, or a spell, or even just a word - that triggers the process. Then I examine my seed. What does it do? What is it good for? What's good for it? And I expand from there.

Say I discover a nifty little feat that gives me protection from divination spells, and it catches my fancy. What kind of character would want protection from divination spells? What made him/her this way? What would she do with it?

For me, the process is extremely organic, expanding from a single point in time/space, and spreading backwards and forwards, until it forms a cohesive whole. The most detailed creation work I do - as other posters have mentioned - is psychological. What is this person, what has happened to this person, what does this person want, that makes this person what s/he is? And what will s/he become?

It's the answering of questions like that which helps me build the character. Everything else is just mechanical aesthetic.

(That's right. I just described the fluff as the focus, and the mechanics as fluff. Deal with it. :smallcool:)

[ArcturusV]

There's three big things I tend to use when making characters to latch onto a good personality and backstory.

1) The hell am I doing?

Almost right off the bat I pick a goal for my character. It doesn't have to be realistic, possible, or even the point of the campaign or setting. But it has to be a real driving goal. Some lifelong dream where, when given a chance, I will jump at it. If I don't have a real goal and my character is "... I wanna be an adventurer" or "I wanna be powerful"... it's not going to go very far. You can still have Adventuring and Powerful as processes, but they're a means to an end, not an end to itself. You don't become a God "just because I could".

2) How do I relate to the culture my character came from?

Doesn't always have to be some exile outcast Drizz'l type "Woe is me"... sometimes, sure. But not always. But I want to have a handle on just how the rest of my society views me. Was I a half-orc wizard who grew up in the savage orc tribes? How do I think about them, how do they think about me? This sort of backwards base connection gives me a lot of information on how my character would react. If I was some orcish "runt" who was punted around until I learned the secrets of Arcana... at which point I became feared... that's going to shape how I interact not just with Orc tribes, but with anyone.

3) Personality Quirks?

Just want to have something that isn't strictly "Mechanical" or "Backstory" but an odd hook for the character. Maybe my Half-Orc Wizard is addicted to maple candy and is always hunting it down the first chance he gets? Maybe my Human Paladouche has a weakness for tavern wenches. Maybe my Elven Rogue is fond of showing off and doing "trick shots" with his daggers in his spare time? Just little tidbits like that give you a depth that you wouldn't otherwise get. Quirks shouldn't be based on backstory either. It shouldn't be "Because the orcs beat up my half-orc wizard when he was young my wizard flinches a lot when anyone buff looking comes near him". Just something mostly irrelevant... but it gives a glimpse at the personality beyond just "I'm a Paladin" or "I grew up an outcast from my society".

[SciChronic]

i think the most important thing to do is give yourself time. you can't really create a really interesting character on the spot, you can maybe get some basic ideas, but time and thought can really improve and strengthen your character (and make it all the more painful if/when they die)

I always ask myself a few questions when creating a character, first off you need to justify class choice, so what would drive a person to go out of their way and jump into danger on a daily basis, and why would they do it the way they do? Does the race have to do with it? was it family? friends? old rivals? pure and simple wanderlust?

[PersonMan]

There are several ways of doing it.

Some I've used:

Outside-In, Top-Down: Get an idea of the character's abilities. Imagine what they can do, how they do it, etc. Then build the character. Race, feats, stats, all of it with the goal of "doing this and that like so".

Now, look at your completed sheet. Ask yourself why, and what, and how.

Why can your character do what they can do?

What are the connections between them and their most potent/important abilities? Do they pride themselves in their swordfighting? See their ability to ubercharge as a shameful last resort?

How has their life been affected by their abilities? If your character has DR 3/-, and has had it for a long time, they have different views of many things. Grabbing a bunch of kitchen knives and forks and whatever by the blades? No problem, it won't even hurt!

With these questions, focus on the now - who they trained under and for how long doesn't matter, but the fact that they still sleep with their pillow sideways because of something that happened during that time is.*

Now, you'll hopefully have a character you can play right away. You have stats and a solid personality, with quirks, etc. added on as you feel like it. Now, make a backstory covering the Why of most of these things. Something as simple as "the character's father always hummed an Elvish tune to put the character and their siblings to bed, so the character does the same when they're comforting someone"**. In fact, covering the simple things can make a lot more depth than expanding on each and every thing they did during their time travelling southern Herp Derp.

Inside-Out, Top-Down: In this case, you make the sheet's mechanics first. I do this if I like a game's premise or want to try a mechanical idea (such as a gestalt Wizard/Swiftblade//Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker, AKA "watch me go from 0 to unkillable unslowable combat monster in 0.1 seconds"). Work out what the party needs and how far you should optimize your character. If inspiration hits you, act on it, but your focus here is building your sheet.

Ok, your sheet is done. Now, think about how your character's abilities modify their past and present. When I'm told "I want a concept, not a sheet", I clear my class/race/etc. with the DM anyways, because a real character isn't a disconnected bit of fluff with a sheet somewhere. 14 Str is just as much a part of your character as "loves fluffy pillows". Got that absurdly awesome 18/18/17/16/14/12 array1? Think of how your life would be if you were good at more or less everything. Are they intolerant of failure? Do they have a pride issue and rage against the thought of not being good enough? Do they simply shrug and say 'well, I dunno, I guess I have the talent' and get surprised when others don't?

Work your abilities into your backstory. Starting level plays a huge role here. I play a lot of characters for whom the level 1-3 or similar would either be "is at training academy" or "is not alive". Did your character just grow into their power? Are they a prodigy (i.e. did they start at level 3 and easily outclass most newbie warriors?)? Did they work hard for each +1 on each skill?

Now you have the fluff and mechanics.


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Fusing these works well, too. For example, in one game I recently applied to, my concept was "very huggy, lazy mage type who is like a human sloth". With her high starting Int I made magic easy for her (she focuses on spells like Invisible Servant, to avoid physical labor) and her high Con I described as 'well, she hits rock bottom during physical activity very quickly, and complains up a storm, but just keeps going way longer than normal people'. Fusing these traits, I have "super lazy, but once she gets into something she will stick with it when others would have given up long ago".




*Personally, I leave huuuge blanks in my character backstories. Why? Because it sucks to play a game and have to reread a few chunks of your character's history to remind yourself of some details, or to realize that you missed something or made a mistake or whatever. I prefer to write "and then the character wandered through Herp Derp I'm a Country Name for two years before going south", then fill in the details as I go.

**This is exactly the kind of thing I mean. I'll come across a time where the character comforts someone else, get an idea of humming a tune, then work that into a detail that's totally always been there but never came up.

1: I once had a character for whom I rolled amazing stats. Unfortunately, it was before I had much RPing experience, but half of the character's personality was basically "always succeeds" because of getting an average result of 17 or so on any d20 she rolled. It was a lot of fun and I could have worked with it so much more than I did (the obvious 'my faith is what gives me this power' angle, especially with a comically low-rolling other melee type in the party). Then one of the other players faked their death and tried to rejoin as someone else, but that's a different story.


EDIT: Oh yeah, by the way:

'Inside' = character sheet
'Out' = character fluff
'Top' = character personality
'Bottom' = character backstory



If I don't have a real goal and my character is "... I wanna be an adventurer" or "I wanna be powerful"... it's not going to go very far. You can still have Adventuring and Powerful as processes, but they're a means to an end, not an end to itself. You don't become a God "just because I could".

I actually have a few characters for whom "become powerful" is the main goal. This is how I made it work:

The first is Airis [long list of titles here], a duelist* who wants to live up to her vision of what they are. She wants to be brave, dashing, make handsome men swoon with her heroics, and above all, be utterly confident in her ability. What this means, for now at least, is that she is honing her swordplay and control over her power until they are better than they are now, with a vague goal in mind for them.

In-game, she got involved with someone and entered a protector role. Seeing this person face the intense psychological trauma from their past and failing a few times, Airis' goals have gone from "acquire power, become awesome duelist" to "acquire the power to protect anyone from anything".

There are also some aspects where I tied her mechanical abilities to her sense of self (for example, she's Fearless, which I attribute to simply not feeling fear and having this cold, emotionless core that is occasionally unveiled in very dire situations). "How can I be brave if I can't be afraid?"

The second is...uff, I don't even remember her name anymore. It was for some high-level thing like level 15 gestalt or similar. The point is, it was a military girl who had achieved her goal of 'be the very best that no one ever was'. A big theme of the character was going to be how she dealt with having achieved her goal. So suddenly she realizes she has all this power - not just personally. Due to her heroics, she's the highest ranking military figure in her home nation and has a ton of political clout.

So now she's having a crisis of identity and has no idea what to do next. Her big issue is that she's achieved her goal of 'become powerful' and has nothing to replace it, apart from 'gain even more power'. Either she'd find something to fight for, or she'd end up in the odd position of having great power but nothing she wants to do with it.

She's the type who could really end up gathering more power until she hits divinity and then going 'so, uh...now what?' Either her ambition would grow and she'd spend the rest of her existence trying to climb the next ladder, or she'd just stop somewhere an listlessly ponder how the heck she got there.


*Mechanically, Tristalt Warlock//Swordsage//pile of templates

EDIT 3: Oh my goodness, this is my longest post ever, I think. Apart from homebrew. Just...wow! Look at that thing!