How do you build an engaging character?

[SangoProduction]

I really want to play a Lingchi Warrior from Spheres of Power. However, most campaigns on roll20 don't seem to allow SoP still, and those that do tend to have no real campaign hook to build a character off of.

So it needs to be a generic backstory (ie one that fits in to any setting, not just one that's boring). I used to be able to do that well. But...I seem to have forgotten how. Does anyone have any tips?

[Uncle Pine]

First time reading about Lingchi Warrior, but depending on the tone of the character you want to play and the level you're starting at you could play as a brigant or bandit who was successful enough to running out of places where to store the loot he was amassing. With most of the trees and badger holes in the area already packed with daggers, swords and axes, he discovered the beauty of hammerspace and is now extremely ecstasic about piling up even more cool weapons!

Tl;dr: A weapon maniac with a bandit background, greedy and ruthless enough to fit with the tone of the story and the alignments of the other party members so you don't step on each other's toes. Add redeeming qualities/self-imposed restrictions due to "honor" and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves references as necessary.

EDIT: If you're starting at 1st level, you could play the same type of character by having him develop bandit-tendencies because he knows the secrets of hammerspace.

EDIT_2: An alternative route for a Lawful Lingchi Warrior could for example be to play a descendent of a rather wealthy family who inherited an Ancestral Relic in the form of a weaon (does PF have Ancestral Relics?) and has left home to unlock the relic's true potential and bring honor to his family. The reason the character is a Lingchi Warrior is that apparently sucking magic out of his enemies' weapons has left him able to throw the weapons' "souls" back at them, or it could just run in the family.

EDIT_3: The third son of a minor baronet who brought ruin to his house after depleting all of his already relatively scarce riches is expelled from his house because his father just can't keep up with the expenses to have him around. He's now not only dirt poor, but also left with nothing but an empty family name no one cares about and a magic power he doesn't entirely know how to control. After all, when was the last time you heard about nobility fighting like paesants?

EDIT_4: Hobbits Halflings are naturally lazy people. When the goblins attacked the Shire and burned down his house, Plimsky Pimplefoot was left with nothing but the ashes of Aunt Gilda's rocking chair, the charred remains of an elven carpet his fifth cousin once brought from a trip to Eeldisir... and a locked trapdoor to a basement he had never noticed before. After a whole afternoon of lock fidgeting, Plimsky managed to open it and uncover a small hoard of dusty, rather unpleasant-looking pointy things covered in cobwebs. But Plimsky wasn't born a fighter and didn't know what weapon would be the most appropriate to use to kill a goblin. Wait. Why not just using all of them?

[SangoProduction]

I was looking for more general ways that people come up with their backstories. But Very interesting nonetheless.

[malloc]

Why did your character decide to become X class?
Why did your character decide to become an adventurer?
What is one thing your character struggles with?
What is one thing, action, or ideal your character holds in high regard?

Bob is a paladin. He decided to become a paladin since, well, his father was a paladin, and his father before him, and his father...
He's honestly pretty sick of living in his forefather's shadow. Life around the town kinda sucks when you're constantly compared to a list of the greats, and Bob isn't necessarily a great. Nor is he terribly inclined to be one. So when an opportunity came knocking, Bob took the first ticket out of town.
Bob struggles with feelings of inadequacy. All his life he's been compared to legends, expected to live up to the standards set before him, and it feels impossible. He's just...y'know...Bob.
Because of his upbringing, Bob has a soft spot for the weak, outcast, discarded members of society and hates bullying. He values freedom of choice and will never stand by and let others be forced into situations they are not comfortable.

Sarah is a paladin. She decided to become a paladin when her god showed himself to her. With a bolt of lightning that saved her...from certain death during an orc invasion.
Sarah, having discovered her new calling, has set out to be a protector of the people and a faithful wielder of her deity's justice against orcs and other evil creatures, wherever that may take her.
Sometimes, Sarah is a bit overzealous. She sometimes dispenses justice a little too early, before learning all the facts. While her leap first look second approach is great in a scrap, she needs to remember to slow down when steel isn't drawn. She carries some painful memories of failure within her heart. Maybe this will allow her to make a mistake during play, feel sad, and experience gradual character growth. :O
Sarah loves children and watching them play. Since her village was attacked when she was young and she took the sword early, she missed out on a lot of the joy of frolicking as a little girl. Watching children play reminds her of why she fights--so that others need not lose what she has lost.

Those are a few examples. I tried to use punctuation to show my thought process. You can bang out a bunch of decent backstories from this, and flesh them out further as you go along.

[Uncle Pine]

I was looking for more general ways that people come up with their backstories. But Very interesting nonetheless.

Whoops. Well in this case I just looked up the Lingchi Warrior class, which thankfully has basically a single class feature, and started wondering why would someone have so many weapons around. How did he amass them? Most characters focus on one or maybe two weapons, so there has to be a reason to have so many. Has he stole them from others? Does he have a weapon fetish? Would a greedy ass obsessed with his blades and stealing be welcomed into the average group? What redeeming qualities can be added to the character? Honorable bandits with a heart of gold are common enough to be relatable, and you don't need to be ruthless to like weapons (although it's certainly a common depiction).

Focusing on redeeming qualities made me think about what a heroic version of the above look like. Now Lingchi Warriors just happen to summon a whole bunch of non-magical masterwork weapons: why non-magical? Maybe they've been sucked of their powers. Is there any melee-oriented power for mundane characters in d&d that let them suck magic out of things? Ancestral Relic.

Speaking of "redeeming qualities", especially honor... I'll be honest, writing honor twice simply made me download Zuko (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender)'s deluxe honor package onto the build, make it non-Evil and coming up with a simple non-Evil excuse for which the son of a noble would be kicked out of his house.

At this point I had closed the thread four times and moved on with the rest of the day, but then realised all the ideas I came up with were basically backgrounds for human Lingchi Warriors and that sometime people get bored always eating vanilla ice cream. What other base races would make sense hoarding weapons? Dwarves like to hoard gold and metals. And weapons made of metal. But halfling like to hoard food and furniture, especially fat ones. That seemed more interesting, but how does a fat Bilbo Beggins get his hands on hundreds of weapons? He's forcefully called to adventure and smoked out of his tiny peaceful hole by goblin, orcs, grey wizards, or hopefully something more original. Most importantly, from the same hole also pops out a stash of exotic, nasty silverware sets.


In general I come up with a mechanical concept before I build the character, so when I'm done putting the crunch together the only thing that's left to ask is how and why. Unless I already got good ideas during the process, then I'm simply done.

I haven't had the chance to use 10-Minute Background (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?91813-10-Minute-Background) yet, but it certainly looks fantastic.

[Gazrok]

We have a list of Flaws and Merits. Flaws give you points, Merits cost points. These really help to give you an idea of who the character is.

Example. Flaw: Obsession (gives 2pts), character is obsessed with something, like a collector, it may be Elven items, or collecting trophies from monsters, etc. - Merit: Strong-Willed (costs 2pts) +1 to Will saves.

We developed quite a long list over the years, like rich/poor, orphan/good family, gift item, family heirloom, clergy contact, underworld contact, color-blindness, etc., etc.

Really helps to give the character a bit of flavor, and you can really tailor it to fit your campaigns.

[Darrin]

Some general ideas:

1) Pick a stereotype, then subvert it. Thogaturge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?195049-Help-Me-Be-Annoying-with-a-Barbarian-Wizard) is a good example. My favorite 3rd edition character was a Halfling barbarian raised by orcs. Carrot Ironfoundersson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh-Morpork_City_Watch#Captain_Carrot_Ironfoundersson) from Pratchett's Diskworld is another good example. Pick a common fantasy trope and reverse or flip it around to create an absurdist parody of the trope. From there, play it straight and come up with a set of circumstances that would create this particular character. "Orphan from race {blah} adopted by different race {foo}" covers a lot of these.

2) Internal conflict. The character was raised or trained as {X}, but is forced to take on role {Y} for various reasons (family obligation, mistaken identity, unpaid debt). For increased drama, X/Y should be opposites in some way, such as Thogaturge pairing Barbarian/Wizard or the reverse, a half-orc wizard desperately trying to prove to his tribe that he's a "true" barbarian warrior who has no idea what those strange arcane symbols could possibly mean ("No, I did not cast bull's strength! That was, uh... my barbarian rage! Yeah, I was totally angry right there.") Rogue/Paladin are also great dramatic pairings: the "Black Sheep" son is mistaken for his "White Hat" brother, or even the reverse where a Paladin has to infiltrate a Thieves Guild while somehow not violating his vows.

3) Pop-culture reskinning. Take a trope common in some other genre, and reskin it in a fantasy setting. My last 5E character was a reskinned "Starsky-and-Hutch" style disgraced cop (uh... "Forest Warden") who was convinced the bad guys were all involved in an illegal drug-smuggling operation (dreamweed, magic mushrooms, opium, etc.). There are several different ways to do a decent Batman-style masked vigilante. Buffy the Vampire Slayer = Ranger. Sometimes it's hard to match up the power curve differences between genres (particularly when you're borrowing from various anime sources), but sometimes it works a lot better than it should.

Note: the standard D&D mechanics do not work very well with creating flawed or internally conflicted characters, and in fact has a tendency to punish you for making sub-optimal character choices for the sake of background or flavor. Yes, there are traits/flaws, but the system is klunky and mostly a meaningless figleaf so you can grab another couple of feats. Yes, Stormwind Fallacy says you don't have to sacrifice power for flavor, but just be aware that the structure of the rules tends to work against you when you don't deliberately build towards the big shiny "I Win" buttons.

[Karl Aegis]

Usually you would start with an engaging character and then make a build for it. Like if you have a princess that firmly believes good food is justice so they cook food for defeated enemies you... build a princess using relevant princess tropes. The specific abilities of your character is circumstantial to what your character actually is. You really don't need a mechanical ability for "doesn't know what commoners eat". Getting too specific usually leads to a Mary Sue character.

[Nifft]

Build an engaged character. (Not necessarily betrothed.)

Engaged with the setting, and some NPCs, and hopefully also the other PCs. Play a character who picks up plot hooks and bites them hard enough to leave a dent.


You know that cliche where the PC has no ties, no family, no debts or obligations, no pre-existing relationships? Do the opposite.

The no-ties PC is a cliche because ties are risky. You risk your heart, just a tiny bit, every time you put something you care about (or are supposed to care about) in a place that the DM can reach it. Take that risk.

Care about something in the setting / campaign. Play that out.


It's a bit like that old saying: if you say, "I'm bored", what you mean is "I'm boring".

If you want your character to feel engaging, build someone who is engaged.

[Ellrin]

I really want to play a Lingchi Warrior from Spheres of Power. However, most campaigns on roll20 don't seem to allow SoP still, and those that do tend to have no real campaign hook to build a character off of.

So it needs to be a generic backstory (ie one that fits in to any setting, not just one that's boring). I used to be able to do that well. But...I seem to have forgotten how. Does anyone have any tips?

Every time I open a thread by SangoProduction, I know I'm not going to be able to contribute anything because it'll be about Spheres and I still haven't started reading any of the material for that system yet, but he keeps asking questions I want to give answers to.

That said, to give a somewhat generic response to your problem of genericitinessitudinal issues—don't make generic characters. Make a character whose backstory is open enough that it'll fit within a certain subsection of fantasy settings (preferably a subsection under which the setting your character will presumably be entering will fit into), sure, but worry more about making an interesting character than a character that will fit.

BUT—and this is the key point—just before you've finalized decisions and gotten everything set in stone, that's when you start to pay more attention to the setting you want to put him in. That, at least for me, is the single point at which it's most feasible to start making connections to the setting and other characters (if their players want to forge those connections, anyway). Sometimes this will prompt you to change something you initially thought would be pretty significant in the character, but that can just as often as not be a good thing.

This way, instead of having a character that's entirely molded to a setting (a good way to make a boring character even in an interesting setting), or a character who's just entirely out of touch with the world around him, you can create a character who's connected to the world around him, but is also his own man. /Woman. /Gelatinous cube.

/Etc.

Anyway, this method really works best if your DM is pretty readily available to ask questions regarding the setting and/or a pretty detailed account of the setting to work with. If you've got a wall of stone for a DM and only a little blurb telling you what the world is like, well, this way may not work out so well for you.

[SangoProduction]

Every time I open a thread by SangoProduction, I know I'm not going to be able to contribute anything because it'll be about Spheres and I still haven't started reading any of the material for that system yet, but he keeps asking questions I want to give answers to.

Glad I've got such a powerful reputation already.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by SangoProduction
Glad I've got such a powerful reputation already.

I just want to know what Sango is and how you produce it.

:smalltongue: