Character Personality

[ReluctantReaper]

I was just wondering how you guys all come up with personality's for your characters, because it seems everytime I play they are fixed on the class they are. So and suggestions to help me breath some life into my characters so there not always the same boring thing?

[RTGoodman]

There are different methods. A lot of times I come up with a backstory first, and then figure out the build that goes along with it afterwards.

If you've got a class picked out already, you might want to check the Player's Handbook II (PHB2) if you have access to it - it has a list of traits and stuff for each class, as well as a short section detailing possible roleplaying hooks and applications for each one.

[Miles Invictus]

Something I suggested in another thread was to write a very short background sheet. Three quirks, likes, hates, three friends (and why) and one nemesis (and why).

[Telonius]

A good rule of thumb is to create the character first, and then assign the class to it. Come up with an interesting idea for a personality. Then, figure out what sort of things that person would be interested in learning - what can they do?

Let's say you come up with an idea for a young man from out on a farm, who always wanted to go to the city and meet other people. What is he like? What is he good at? (Don't even consider things like feats and classes when you're asking these questions). So let's say that your guy is kind of naive, but very sociable. He likes talking to people - that's why he wants to go to the city. The farm is too small, too lonely. He talks to anybody who walks by on the road. He's actually not all that good at being a farmer anyway; milking cows every day at 6 in the morning isn't his idea of fun. He doesn't have any formal military or magic training.

So, let's have a look at what we have. A fairly charismatic character, who enjoys cities and likes talking to people. He collects stories. Well, there are two classes that jump out at me, that could represent this person pretty well: Bard, and Rogue. Both have a lot of charisma-dependent skills; things like Diplomacy, Bluff, and Gather Information. Bard has an ability specifically for gathering stories. Rogues have a little bit more skills, which can be put into Knowledge (local) or (history), to reflect his knowledge. Either one would be good, depending on whether you wanted to take your character in a magic or non-magic direction. Bards do get Whip proficiency, which might make sense if he's using a whip to herd animals. Plus, I like magic, so we'll call him a Bard.

Notice what I did there. I came up with a character first, and then tried to figure out which class best fit it. I have a bit of a backstory (though it's really simple right now). This could end up as a much better-developed character than if I'd said, "I want to play a Bard," and worked back from there. If I'd done that, it would have probably been a variation on, "He wandered around playing music for everyone. Then he met the adventuring party." That would be a pretty boring character.

[ReluctantReaper]

Thanks that helps a lot...with the whole bard thing

[SadisticFishing]

Heh, those all are good ways of doing it, but I like my way. I build a character, pick one (possibly two) character traits, and just... play. Personality whips itself up, in my experience.

My characters (real ones I've played/planned to play more than once) have been:

(haha, this has just become a rant about my characters, mostly useless to you but I'll leave it anyways)

The asterisks are the things I chose beforehand.

Torgoth, the LG Warblade/Bloodclaw Master. (Rolled CRAZY stats, ended up with 18 str, con, and int at level 4 with no items) A little bit crazy, he stuck to morals* no matter what and always tried to do the right thing. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to uphold the law, though. Oh, and extremely paranoid*.

#92, the N Binder. Highly intelligent and charismatic, a utilitarian* and pragmatic. Will try to do the right thing, and has saved many, many lives, but would pull off Arthas levels of "evil" if it was necessary, which it almost was, 3 times.

Aramil Nailo, the NE* grey elf archivist/fiendbinder*. Highly "proper", did not succumb to cannibalism when the rest of the group did (first session, it's a highly evil campaign). Likes things neat, and I've recently realized that he dislikes having enemies. So, when he makes them, he gets rid of them - quickly.

As you can see, ish you don't need much preplanning to have a cool, unique character.

[valadil]

I go with personality and then classes. Actually I pick the personality, and then a prestige class. Out of all my books 3-5 PrCs usually fit what I have in mind so I can usually pick something reasonably powerful and then build classes from there.

The ideas for personality often come from TV, books, movies, people, etc. Usually I'll take on a single aspect of a character and combine that with aspects of other characters. As long as you don't borrow too many concepts from any one source you still end up with something mostly unique.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I usually come up with something random I want to do, a trait or quirk, then work out from there. This is how I ended up playing a magician who could actually call on the Voudun for magical support in an "All Flesh" campaign.

[horseboy]

If you're stuck and can't come up with something, stuff like Cyberpunk's life paths are really handy and with a little tweaking can work for most things. Other than that there's the old writer's tricks like "What kind of key chain does he have and what's on it?"

[RTGoodman]

I just thought of something else. One roleplaying system (I'm pretty sure, but not 100% certain, that is was the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying system) makes you roll a random starting profession when you start your character. It's not the same system, but if you could get a hold of it you might be able to make a D&D version. That'd certainly be a different and interesting way to come up with a character.

[Prometheus]

I second the idea of coming up with the character sketch first, usually having one dramatic characteristic helps. Here's example from quirky characters I've played or made:

-Paranoid Goblinoid
-Half Fiend with Amnesia
-Pacifistic Firefighter
-Halfling with a special connection to a particular Frost Giant
-A Bounty Hunter transformed into a rabbit
-Jester in Denial
-A nobody forced into a hero archetype
-a monster trying to teach people to be civilized
-A wizard obsessed with immortality
-A shameless hedonist.

[MorkaisChosen]

I tend to think of a concept first. This might be a class/race combination (Half-orc Paladin) or a personality idea (feminist who fights people if they insult her), and I just carry on from there, fleshing out why they have that personality and, if I didn't specify in the concept, what class fits best (for instance, fighting people when they insult her? That's a challenge- make her a Knight).

[kamikasei]

I usually come up with something random I want to do, a trait or quirk, then work out from there. This is how I ended up playing a magician who could actually call on the Voudun for magical support in an "All Flesh" campaign.

Yeah, this. Sometimes there might be a particular personality trait at the core of the idea, sometimes some mechanical aspect. Starting from a small seed, the rest of the character is then constructed through an iterated feedback between description and mechanical representation.

Eg: character is so compulsive a liar that he doesn't entirely grasp the concept of "truth" any more and deludes himself as much as others. Okay. Do I want to represent this as a social skill-monkey, illusionist, or mindbending enchanter? Which do I feel most like playing, both in flavour and in the mechanics I'd have to employ? Given the constraints of the stat gen in play, what attributes will he have high? How many skill points will he have to play with? How does this influence what he can be represented as being good at (note: "being good at" as opposed to just "liking to do" or "having an interest in" - I am interested in medicine but have fewer than no ranks in Profession (surgeon)). If I decide he should be more charismatic than intelligent, or vice versa, how will that influence his personality? And so on.

[warmachine]

I tend to start with the class and signature abilities, rather than starting with personality, as ineffectiveness is no fun in AD&D. It is difficult to describe how to devise a backstory to explain how the character obtained these abilities but there are a few questions that can be answered.

• What does the character value? Money? Justice? Knowledge? Fame? His tribe?
• How much of what he values has he got? Not enough? Nation overrun by invaders? Never ending injustice done by bad guys?
• What does he think of other outlooks, such as tribalism, selfishness, religious duty or secular humanism?
• Why would he leave his home and adventure? Beat up bad guys? Write an epic novel? Recover a kidnapped brother?

Existing films and novels are a good source of inspiration.

[bbugg]

Try this thread for some ideas...

Lately my players and I have been experimenting with the first method I mentioned there and we're having a blast! I'm debating bringing it to the forums to see what develops... Maybe tomorrow. Here's what we're doing:
We have a table with the main characteristics for a character. People take turns filling in one field at a time. They can be filled in in any order and there can be multiple entries in a field as long as they're not contradictory. We've made a few really neat characters this way. They eventual player still needs to fill in the crunch (stats, feats, skills, etc.) but the concept is there. Here are the fields we have in our table:

Race
Class
Strong Stat 1
Strong Stat 2
Weak Stat
Alignment
Physical Trait
Personality Trait
Motivation
History
Name

[Toliudar]

I actually start with what I know about the campaign. If there are one or two major recent events, or one or two details that catch my eye (eg, a war, a plague, "In this world, dwarves are sombre raft-builders who rely on trade and passenger service for their living."), I'm apt to consider how that event/detail might affect one individual. Were they disfigured by the plague? Are they a dwarf who's phobic of drowning? That gets me started, with something that's grounded in the setting.

I'll usually switch over to crunch from there, setting out ability scores, class, race, any major focuses for their abilities. This often generates ideas for a personality (as with Toliudar, my 16-year-old-girl flower-child paladin.), background, etc.

Wherever possible, I think of one important existing relationship for the character, and I think about what that relationship is like. Are they still close with a parent? Is there a mentor figure who they idolize, or resent? Is there a former friend and current nemesis lurking out there somewhere. This key relationship can open a lot of doors to how that character interacts with everyone else.

[Telonius]

I tend to start with the class and signature abilities, rather than starting with personality, as ineffectiveness is no fun in AD&D.

Good example of the Stormwind fallacy.

Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean he cannot also roleplay well. Just because a character plays his character well does not mean he cannot be optimized. As a corrollary, characters who are min/maxed are not automatically played worse than those who are not, and characters who are deliberately handicapped are not automatically played better than those who are not. It's easy to imagine players who are good at either one of those things, or bad at both, or good at both.

Starting with the character concept does not necessarily lead to weaker (or stronger) mechanics. Starting with the build doesn't necessarily lead to weaker (or stronger) character development. That said, I've found that doing the hard stuff first helps a lot with both build and character. Doing something first focuses your attention on it. If you're having trouble with character development, starting with the character can help you learn how to do it much better. If your weakness is mechanics, start with the mechanics and fill in the character afterwards. If you're excellent at both, it doesn't matter which order you build it.

(I usually build my characters mechanics first. Math is not my strong suit).

[BRC]

Character Concept and Optimization are not mutally exclusive, but sometimes they can get in the way of each other. With a good DM, it dosn't techncially matter how good your character is, what matters is how good it is in relation to the rest of the group. If sombody with a character concept for a Monk who was also a skilled muscian (or somthing) and makes a monk/Bard character with ranks in Cooking, thats all fine and good. Unless the rest of the group is uber optimized batman wizard/dairy lords (Dairy lord, a PRC I thought up just now that is built for the use of cheese), all of which have Pun-Pun cohorts. Then you may have a problem.

[warmachine]

Meh. I love character creation and I could create a mechanically weak character but interesting personality and enjoy it immensely. Indeed I have with a straight sword-and-shield fighter that was overshadowed by a later, straight barbarian. Of course, I did not know AD&D properly at the time and I could recreate it now with better feats whilst keeping the same personality.

One thing I have learnt is that creating a fun character and having it die in combat is ****ing annoying. Hence, I focus on mechanics first to think of an (non-cheese) edge and squeeze it for all it's worth. Then build the personality around that. Yes, I could just as easily do it the other way round. I still focus on the mechanics first as I want to make sure my character concept has a high chance of surviving each combat. Concepts that won't are dropped before I waste time with a long backstory.