Anyone else have a difference between fun to builld and fun to play characters?

[Rfkannen]

I've noticed that what I find fun to build is rarely what I have fun playing in an actual game.

In concept, I love coming up with martials with complex backstories. You can mess with all the feats, weird combos of multiclassing, fighting styles, etc. Figuring out just the right combo is a ton of fun! And you can come up with all sorts of deep, complex backstories and hooks and then make the build reflect that backstory...

But the characters I have the most fun with are casters I made 3 seconds before the game who have a three-sentence long backstory with like 1 or 2 hooks for the gm to pull on. I prefer learning who a character is in play; coming in with everything figured out feels limiting. And while I like martials narratively, playing the background support is a lot more my playstyle.

What about you? Do you have a difference between the characters you find fun to build and the characters you find fun to play?

[heavyfuel]

I agree that there is a difference.

Martials are fun to build, but they are generally one-trick ponies in combat, which gets stale after a couple of sessions. But you can have fun building a caster as well! Coming up with a ridiculous backstory of how you got kicked out of Wizard Academy or whatnot is just as fun as coming up with the background for a Fighter

[Teaguethebean]

I think ultimately I enjoy martials more than casters in play and I enjoy building martial. To be honest I think martial are generally more fun to build as they have heavy limits. A caster doesn't really have a trade off for picking up all of the best spells.

[Frogreaver]

I find I have the most fun when I build and play characters built holistically toward a specific playstyle and then usually layer on a fairly eccentric personality feature.

Example builds.
8 Con Wood Elf Rogue with Sharpshooter. Had good dex and wisdom. Utilized expertise in perception and stealth, long range capabilities, my higher move speed + cunning action to elude enemies in combat. I had the assassin subclass to grant advantage on round one and also allowing me to be an effective sniper from extreme longbow range. In combat after turn 1 assassin advantage i could then find a place to hide to keep up advantage and limit things targeting me or if things got too close cunning action dash away.

Wizard with eccentric research above caution personality. My spell choices were focused around ones could be used to save the party for when I inevitably convince the party to throw caution to the wind. For example: Level 1 prepped spells were sleep, fog cloud, Silent Image, shield.

Battlemaster CBE+SS+Precision Attack Human. This was back before most people really understood the benefits of precision attack for such a build. Very Redneck personality - had the whole "watch this y'all" vibe going. Very fun and effective character.

[JellyPooga]

I actually find casters the least fun to play because the best choices are usually the most obvious and hardest to refluff towards being thematic. That makes every caster feel very samey. Martials, on the other hand, tend to lean hard into their theme and the best choices aren't so far ahead of the other options that those other options are a wash. This makes it easier to play the character I want rather than the cookie cutter caster.

[Chronos]

I have two separate subfolders in my D&D folder, for "builds" and "characters". But in my case, it's the ones whom I find fun to play who get the elaborate backstories. The ones that I'm building just to build rarely get anything.

[CapnWildefyr]

I've noticed that what I find fun to build is rarely what I have fun playing in an actual game.

In concept, I love coming up with martials with complex backstories. You can mess with all the feats, weird combos of multiclassing, fighting styles, etc. Figuring out just the right combo is a ton of fun! And you can come up with all sorts of deep, complex backstories and hooks and then make the build reflect that backstory...

But the characters I have the most fun with are casters I made 3 seconds before the game who have a three-sentence long backstory with like 1 or 2 hooks for the gm to pull on. I prefer learning who a character is in play; coming in with everything figured out feels limiting. And while I like martials narratively, playing the background support is a lot more my playstyle.

What about you? Do you have a difference between the characters you find fun to build and the characters you find fun to play?

It's fun to make characters, but the ones that are the most fun to play are the ones that I don't get too detailed with, like you.

I think it's because I have in my mind too much story, and the adventure never adds up to it, or that the character concept relies too much on situations that will never comes to exist. Mostly the latter.\

For example, I created a haunted one cleric. Fun to create. Backstory - he turned albino after his devil-worshiping parents tried to sacrifice him to Cthulhu-type critters, only the rigors of his faith keeps his mind from taking vacation from reality. Was haunted by a family ghost. DM never cared, did nothing, never used the ghost, never used anything from the background.

[kazaryu]

What about you? Do you have a difference between the characters you find fun to build and the characters you find fun to play?

perhaps not as explicitly as you spelled it out. However, for characters that i plan to play, i rarely come up with complex backstories. or rather, i rarely come up with comprehensive backstories. i will *think* about the character a lot prior to the campaign, but i deliberately leave some details out, in particular about the characters personality.

part of this is that DnD is an improvised game, in the middle of play, its hard for me to remember something that i wrote down 2 weeks ago and respond according to that. So i keep the details light, and few, that way what details i DO have going into session 1, i can keep present in my mind. and from there i develop their personality. Otherwise i just end up contradicting my original intent (not really a problem, per se, but it does make the preplanning semi-useless if i just end up ignoring it later.

[Rashagar]

I don't have a caster Vs martial disparity when it comes to building characters I enjoy to build Vs characters I enjoy to play, but there are definitely characters I've enjoyed building that I then haven't enjoyed playing. Usually it's when I go out of my way to represent some kind of fiction with DND mechanics but don't have anything to latch onto character-wise. Eg. A character based on a mythological figure, so the mechanics are all reminiscent of or reflavoured to things that harken to that figure's mythological presence, but the actual on-table character is just an empty box that I don't have a starting place for filling, or worse, the mythology behind the concept gets in the way of my brain when I try to make it my own.

[Easy e]

Mechanically, I could care less. I actually prefer when a GM gives me a pre-built character that I then bring to life at the table. I find creating the mechanics of a character tedious and in no way correlate to MY fun in an RPG.

Others feel different, and that is cool with me.

[animorte]

Absolutely!

Fun to build is something like trying to get the most amount of Cantrips to level 20. Or trying to make a full on bender (air, earth, fire, or water). Building a pestilence (4 horseman) type of deal with Swarmkeeper Ranger/Circle of Spores Druid/Warlock with Cloak of Flies. Of course those could be fun, but I'm not sure about forcing all the resources into just one small niche would really feel effective in game. Of course if you're playing a short campaign or on-shot without a ton of commitment, these can be quite neat.

Fun to play are sometimes just things that are exceptionally good at what they do. Or different things like a Swashbuckler/Echo Knight (maybe some Hexblade with Relentless Hex) teleporting all over the battlefield and - as I said in a recent post somewhere - handing out sneak attacks like Oprah.

There are also things in the middle like a Monk with racial choices and class dips for spell selection just to make it the fastest thing you can imagine. Or building the highest AC you possibly can and run headlong into every battle and smash everything without a care in the world.

The more things I put down though, the harder it is for me to discern. So maybe your starting question isn't as easy as all that. Because I, for one, tend to have fun building anything. I can't keep my face away from the books and forums long enough to do anything else with my free time. I get pretty serious about my characters, whether it's for flavor or efficiency, when I know I'll be playing them for a while.

TL;DR: I love building any and all of the character ideas. I don't know if all of them would be fun though.