Your first character?

[Sylthia]

I thought I'd see what everyone's first experience with RPGs and their first character was.

My first experience was with 2nd ed AD&D. I was a complete noob back then, but it was fun. I had a CG half-elf ranger. I lost the sheet long ago, but I think my stats were something like.

Str: 15
Dex: 13
Con: 18 (I wanted lots of hit points)
Int: 8
Wis: 9
Cha:6

My stats weren't the greatest. I remember none of my mental stats were above 10 for sure.

[Malak'ai]

My first RPG experience was with M.E.R.P (expanded with RoleMaster).

I had an Noldor Elf Fighter who went onto learn some open Essence spells.
He had some pretty good stats.
Strength: 102
Agility: 97
Constitution: 99
Intelligence: 87
Intuition: 91
Presence: 71

Played him for about 18 months. Ended up being about level 9 or something.

[imaloony]

My first character EVER was a Ninja in a system that my friend designed. It was used in an arena-combat game that was mainly just for kicks.
I don't remember the first character that I ever used in a real campaign. The earliest I remember was an Elven Ranger in our 3-year long AD&D campaign.

[ManifestPR]

My first character ever was a level 5 Dwarf Fighter named Melari in a 3.5 D&D game. I think I got to level 8 until my friend and I had a falling out which then prompted me to GM my own game and then start my own group.

[Vixsor Lumin]

My first character was a 3.5 warforged psion starting rolls were awful, not that I knew it at the time. I remember he pretty much the worst build ever and couldn't function in combat. Still knew of my favorite characters ever, because of all the work and time I put into his background. To bad the game died during the first combat it was pbp

[Rhynn]

Finnish translation of Mentzer Basic D&D, a fighter. I think he had a 16 Strength, which was awesome. I wanted him to become a paladin but he never got to a high enough level. I also know the character sheet was lost a few times and I had to write him up, from (poor) memory, on a new one.

I had a specific miniature for him, from the board game Kalahen: a sort of skinny guy holding a sword before him in both hands, pointed straight ahed and a bit up.

I don't remember his name. I want to say it was Taran (possibly gotten from The Black Cauldron PC adventure game; I never saw the movie as a kid), but I doubt it actually was.

[Marcus Amakar]

In my first game I don't think we use any stats at all. We just had Hp and the weapon we were using. We rolled d20 to do something and if the roll was good enough (DM's call but in reality group consensus ) we succeeded.

As we didn't know any rules we ended up all dual-wielding dire-flails

My first proper character was Renius, a NE fighter of Nerull. Stats were
Str 15
Dex 13
Con 15
Int 12
Wis 12
Cha 13

Looking at the character sheet about 50% of it was filled in wrong.

[Icewraith]

I had a bard. It was mostly me and one other newbie, so I figured we needed to cover all the bases. His rolled stats were decent under 25 point buy, but terrible compared to the other players, most of whom also didn't know what they were doing - except for the one guy playing a half-dragon I-don't-remember-the-class. I discovered after I started DMing how little the DM knew at the time, even though he was the one who got us all playing. I thought two-weapon fighting was the best thing ever. You got to roll twice as many times!

I found the character sheet during my last move, the armor I had actually was pretty awesome, mainly because it was studded leather armor of thorns with stats cribbed directly from Diablo II (I think the DM recited them from memory and I just wrote them down) instead of anything you could possibly get out of the PHB or DMG.

Later I got tired of not doing any discernable damage and my spells rarely seemed to be useful (so why not use the off hand for another weapon? Also I couldn't cast while bardsonging), clearly the way to go now was a half-orc fighter, so I could at least try to get a 20 strength. The way to go here was still clearly two-weapon fighting with a heavy mace and a handaxe, because I had doodled it while bored in class one day and it looked cool. Also I had noticed the DM had some very entrenched preconceived notions regarding the value and desirability of "pretty" races like elves vs. "ugly" races like half-orcs.

Once we started discovering third-party splatbooks, but before we realized the difference between first and third party, I ended up playing a wild mage with spell and ability lists drawn from a multitude of third party sources (but this was still 3.0, so I never used the official 3.5 wild mage, which would probably have been safer and more effective than most of the stuff I was using).

I also at some point had an assassin that only had levels in the assassin class. It was probably around this point that I started reading more of the DMG, realized what a vast amount of options there was regarding magic items and prestige classes and how little of it we were actually using, and that a lot of the rules we had been going by were not rules or not correct according to the rulebook.

While those early adventures and characters were fun, and I don't think I would change them for anything, it's staggering how much more interesting things got once we learned enough of how the system was supposed to work that we understood most of the options available to us in and out of combat.

[Amoren]

The first character ever that I made myself (and wasn't a joke character my mom made while she was DMing and had to take care of me at the same time) was a mutant martial artist from Palladium's system (Heroes Unlimited mixed with Ninjas and Superspies, I believe), set in the Nightbane universe.

He... Was effectively given supernatural strength, could fly, had the armor of a tank, and healing factor. On top of martial artist capabilities. He also had amnesia. He punched demon's heads clean off their shoulders, and was the ultimate expression of screw you if he ever got in melee range (and he could fly darn fast).

I may have been a bit of an unknowing munchkin at the time, but the character did grow to become a more rounded character as he explored more of the Buddhist philosophy and martial arts legacy of his Shaolin form.

[Angel Bob]

My very first character was way back in elementary school, in some 3.x edition my friend invited me to play. I made your standard elf wizard, who may even have had a raven familiar...

After came a hiatus, until the same friend invited me into a D&D 4E group that remains today. I had very little grasp of the rules, but the friend built me an eladrin tactical warlord. I maxxed out his Intelligence whenever I had the opportunity and basically characterized him as the Eleventh Doctor, right down to asking the DM if I could have a magic fez. Arbitrarily, he decided that if I rolled a natural 20, I could find one. That was my first critical. XD

You know, perhaps we should have a "First Natural 20" thread. In my D&D group, almost everyone has had an extremely notable first critical. (The dwarf cleric's first 20 was on a Thievery check to pick a lock with her beard, a la Artemis Fowl.)

[Avilan the Grey]

First character was with a Swedish game called "Drakar & Demoner" (basically Rolemaster).

Duck warrior AFAIR. (And no, the picture is not mine, nor of my character, specifically).

[Kikon9]

My first character was a 4e pixie arachnomancer. I had to use homebrew stuff I found online because I only had the rules compendium available. As I recall, she had a single dungeon crawl, nearly got killed by a necromancer, was outwitted by a child, and retired in a small village in the wilderness.

[Mordar]

I remember very little about my first character, other than his "class": Elf.

Yup, that long ago. Boy, did I love those boxes and booklets...

- M

[LimeSkeleton]

I remember playing a human rogue named Trace in basic d&d with my friends a long time ago. We had no idea what we were doing (including the DM) and ended up getting devoured by a chuul. Still had a blast though.

[Aolbain]

The elven rogue Nicomo. He survived longer then expected but died crying in his own pee.

[Knight.Anon]

I had a 1e Psionic Barbarian.

[Lord Torath]

It's hard to remember. Blue Book Basic D&D. I suspect it was a wizard named Gandalf (I know, I know. I was 6. Cut me some slack.) who completely over-estimated the effectiveness of Magic Missile (Come on, everyone knows what missiles are! I see them in G.I. Joe and Robotech all the time! One of those should easily kill a giant crab!)

Either that or a human fighter with a flail, shield, and a horned helmet (the kind real vikings never wore) because my older brother (the DM) had a miniature that looked like that. Again, this was ages ago, so I'm not certain.

[sktarq]

I remember very little about my first character, other than his "class": Elf.

Yup, that long ago. Boy, did I love those boxes and booklets...

- M

Same here. Class:Elf All of our info was badly water damaged or 2nd hand. Dice would not make an appearance for about a year. Great stories though.

[Sylthia]

It's funny seeing how many of the characters I've played would have been illegal if I tried them during 2nd ed. Maybe that's part of the reason so many people played humans or elves back then.

[Callin]

AD&D Elven Ranger. Sept of 98 at the start of my Senior year of HS. I remember it like it was yesterday.

[Remmirath]

My first character was a lawful good (well, lawful to begin with) cleric, who I had intended to be a paladin originally but didn't have good enough stats for it. Her name was Nedla, and I tended to think that she was better at fighting than she was (she didn't have a very great strength or constitution, and in fact her charisma was her highest stat; I didn't arrange the stats at all when after I rolled them). It was AD&D, mostly version one with a little two thrown in here and there.

It took me a long time to figure out how to play a lawful character, and so she gradually slipped into being chatoic good in the end. So, it's just as well she wasn't a paladin; she probably wouldn't've done very well as one.

[erikun]

My very first character was a pre-generated female fighter for an AD&D 2nd edition game. Mid-to-high level with a bag of holding, I think she stabbed something to death, used a spare mundane sword to clean some acid-slime off a hidden passage, and looked a hag in the eye... and promptly spent the rest of the game paralyzed until the party killed it. Not very amazing, my first time out.

My second character was when I was running at a DM, a Filborg giant cleric. He didn't have his large-sized mace, and so went around punching and throwing stuff around instead. It may sound absurd, but note that the PCs included a drow, a half-dragon, something that could polymorph into anything, and a weretiger.

The next PC character I had was a human cleric when D&D 3.0 first came out. Made a mess with his skill points. Managed to outwit the DM by having my NG naive cleric offer to bless and heal the (rather obvious) succubus and drive her away. Received two enlarged invisible Duergar axes in the back, dropping from full health to negatives in one round. Lots of fun, but the campaign ended when the DM lost all the paperwork for it, including character sheets.

[BWR]

A human thief named Pike in Zanzer Tem's Dungeon, the introductory adventure in the introductory boxed set to Basic D&D.
I can't remember much except that he had 2 hp, and died from the very first blow in the very first encounter. I hadn't played more more than an hour, probably something like 30 minutes.

[QuintonBeck]

My very first character was an interesting once because I was playing with a DM who outlawed all the basic base classes for his game, forcing us to pick the obscure classes and coincidentally odd races as well. I ended up being a LN gunslinging/sniper kenku who used a stolen etherblade from an ethergaunt as my touch-AC rifle. That was a fun campaign unfortunately it ended without much conclusion when the DM had to move.

[Buddha's_Cookie]

My first character was one of two characters, both in 3.5.

First was a human ranger Geroth, had good rolls. Don't remember why he joined the party or why he stayed for that matter. He died while the party was trying to get through a puzzle door, by drinking tea (poison) out of a pool of magic water. The DM let me bring him back as a ghost and continue with the party. It ended shortly after the hobgoblin druid cast Reincarnation (improperly) and I became an orc.

Second was a dwarven fighter Rurik, had really good rolls. He became obsolete very fast when the "power gamer" cleric joined the party (hobgoblin above). Rurik was well known for bad rolls especially while drinking, I had a record of about 4 drinks before passing out (DC started at about 12 and went up from there). Thankfully and happly, my DM for that game is rebooting the game in a few weeks with new characters.

[Bulhakov]

I started out with a stereotypical axe-swinging ale-drinking Dwarf Fighter using a simplified Warhammer system.

[Jay R]

Darkstar, a paladin, in Original D&D (plus Greyhawk, which had just come out). Back then we rolled 3d6, in order, and I actually rolled CHA 18 and STR 16.

He picked up a Chaotic intelligent sword which turned him Chaotic (which meant evil) during his first adventure, but since the rest of the party didn't know it, he managed to kill them all and take the entire treasure.

He eventually escaped the sword, atoned for his misdeeds, and recovered his paladin status.

He had a Rod of Cancellation. He actually faced Orcus once, and managed to hit Orcus's wand with the Rod. There were no rules for that then, so the DM ruled that the Wand would stop working for 30 days, and Orcus fled.

When he was last seen, his right hand had six fingers and two thumbs, and his left leg was an artificial mithril one.

He is now retired, and makes an occasional appearance as an NPC. His old Rod of Cancellation is now an artifact. It will work as Orcus's wand once, and no demon will approach within 100 yards of it.

[LtPowers]

Star Wars D6 - New Republic Bureaucrat.

Hey, it was in the book. That character lasted a long, long time.


Powers &8^]

[Joe the Rat]

First ever? Mmmm... Well, there was that nameless fighter with the 17 strength and a grudge against Bargle, but I don't think that counts...

The earliest I can remember with any clarity is the 1e Half-Elf Thief-Magic User (with psionics) that hung around with an apocalyptically flatulent Barbarian. Our greatest victories were achieved through judicious use of the flame finger cantrip.

[Raimun]

It was an obscure system, lost in time. I was an elven fighter who was armed to the teeth and who could cast a lightning bolt once per day.