Your BEST & WORST Character Creation "ADVICE" 

Phone your older brother Thunderf00t he misses you!

Beautiful dice, but please don't lose it. It will give "caltrops" a new painful meaning during a night craw to the fridge. Looks like someone rolled a natural 1 and stomped a d4! Ouch!

I'd go as far as to say that it doesn't even need the first act... "Dude's an orphan, who doesn't know his parents. He grows up on his uncle's farm, far away from civilization. He dreams about becoming a space pilot, but his uncle wouldn't let him go to the academy for one reason or another. All his friends already left the place, so he sits alone in the middle of nowhere when adventure finds him." ...is a way better backstory than any of my players ever gave me.

this is going to be my new standard, this is perfect framing

Right up til he finds his aunt and uncle dead. That's where the adventure starts. Great way to put it. I'm stealing this.

The campaign starts in the cantina 😅

@Wolfsspinne To me, that doesn't justify 1st level. That's a commoner with proficiencies from their background. If your backstory was until a week ago you were a town guard, you haven't made a 1st level fighter, you've made a guard.

Thanks! It's about fun first :)

I think that would depend on how the DM decides how they perceive time and how their biology works. They could decide that since an elf is an adult at 100 years old, then that equals an 18 year old human because of how they perceive time and how their biology works. The adventure for the human could be a huge life changing thing but for the elf, it could be that one awesome summer. It could also be that the elf doesn't become "old enough" to practice whatever it is until way later in the timeline than the human. If an elf has to be 100 years old to be the same age as a human who is deciding their profession and learning their specialized skill, who's to say that the elf knows anything before hand. It's like how tortoises can live a long time but that also means that they become adults a lot later than other animals. There's a manga that touches on that very thing. It's called Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. The story begins with the heroes defeating the big bad and promising to meet up again during the next meteor shower. Fast forward 50 years and the elf Frieren has a very different understanding of things than everyone else. Consider the elf looking at 50 years after living a 100 vs the human looking back at the past 50 years when he ended the journey at 30. An elf might not practice every day because they know they have another 200 hundred years to get better where a human will practice every day because they only really have another 10 solid years in them before things start going downhill. It's like in many vampire fictions where the vampire doesn't find the need to learn about the people of a certain land because they have already seen the rise and fall of so many kingdoms, countries, and peoples. It's why they see no rush in doing what they need to do. "Rushing is such a mortal thing because their life is fleeting where mine is eternal." Leisure is a luxury. Having more leisure is going to paint their perspective. An elf could be like "it's only been 50 years and you have grandkids??" The human is like "yeah...I couldn't actually wait this long to have kids. I literally stopped having the ability to have kids 30 years ago." The way I see it, an elf looking at an human's life is the same way a human would look at a mouse's life.

"It is literally impossible to be a 200 year-old elf or 100 year old dwarf without having done something of note" Is that a challenge? Do you think I can't waste 200 years doing pointless stuff?

That's a valid point, but there's the kind of long epic overly complicated backstory that comes from a player (usually me) typing up a 10 page long document outlining a character's values and what led them to decide professionally getting stabbed and set on fire was a good idea, and then there's our group's other elf, who started play with essentially no backstory and just made up wild and possibly exaggerated or made up stories about their long and storied adventuring career as they thought of them and decided that certain situations would be familiar to their 150 year old character. There are more ways for a backstory to emerge during play than having your elder party members live completely uninteresting lives for decades or centuries before dropping everything to make an extremely dumb career choice.

As a DM, I expect a certain amount of background information from my players so that everything fits into a logical pattern (but not much - how detailed they get is still up to them). But as a player, I'm looking for the reasons for my character's phobias and peculiarities. For instance, my Faerûnian elves had 150 years of lore to go through to determine what major experiences they'd had. But their grandmother had nearly 800 years of background history / lore, and it totally colored my character's upbringing once I'd looked through it all. When a character witnesses certain events firsthand, it leaves an impression upon them that reading about it in the history books does not.

I agree. Plus, how did you get from being a commoner to being a wizard? Not like you can just grow up begging for change on the street and then one day you have a spell book and can wield the magic of the cosmos. Doubt you could become a wizard in the same amount of time it takes to become a rogue. Just gotta not be dumb about it.

I play a character who attended "Alchemy School" and immediately upon graduation was struck on the head. Living as a bumbling gross thief for a decade before said thief was rebrain damaged and my wizard sprung back out. Love some goofy stuff 😌 (This was just an excuse to pop my character in in the middle of a dungeon from one of the NPCs they had)

I do the same, I take a silly idea or a bit it like and then fully flesh it out and give full story and personality to the characters. My main 5e character really just started as "What if druid but dinosaur" and then fully developed the idea, background and story so that it works out

Yeah that's a great concept to start from!

i have a somewhat similar character actually! his name is jupiter and he is a small tabaxi who's parents enrolled him into a fancy magic school, but he was kicked out because he just couldn't learn to cast any magic no matter how hard he tried. he then decided to move into a hut in the woods and start brewing magic potions to replicate spell effects instead. mechanically he plays like a standard evocation wizard, flavor wise he is just chucking around explosive bottles to cast fireball and what have you. he loves blowing stuff up :]

I am so stealing this idea. LOL In fact I may take it a step farther and say the frog literally IS his professor who he accidentally permanently trapped in a Frog form and his quest is to someday find out what he did and reverse it. LOL I love this!

I've done something like that with one of my most recent characters. He's a storm sorcerer with a severe case of amnesia who found himself travelling with this group of adventurers and since he neither knows how to get home nor where home even is he just sticks with the party. But he is still convinced that he's not an adventurer, he's just a lost commoner far from home who screams out loud when he sees a homunculus or just at the mention of a dragon roaming around in the area.

Yes! There's a player in my campaign who plays the "reluctant adventurer" cleric who just wants to stay home but his god makes him go adventure to spread awareness about the god. So the character is always moaning and complaining about everything, but without actually avoiding the adventure. And it's friggen hilarious!

Preach. My favorite character I've played, leading to me playing them repeatedly, is a hobgoblin war wizard (no multiclass) who wields a sword and wears half plate and a shield. Supremely good ac and saves, maxing con with the hobgoblin bonus means my hp is competitive with most martials, and my damage is the weakest portion but between buffs like haste, vampiric touch, and tenser's transformation when I reach higher levels, blade cantrips, etc even his damage is not super lacking. He pulls his weight. Plus as a hobgoblin noble it gives me an excuse to play a loyal and trustworthy but arrogant and vindictive noble type. It's hardly the most out there build but it is definitely "non standard"

@@sassyviking6003 That is such a cool build, love the concept!

@@jemleye thanks

Was about to comment a similar thing, altho, i have a video game that doessomething similar to that, FF V, the final fantasy game where they pulled the mechanic where, you can swap your class at will, to put in FF XIV, go take a look, that game sure would be inspiration to use as a DM when a player would request swapping their class

It was a great comment! :)

That sounds like a good way to go. I like the idea of the reluctant adventurer, when it is done right. A character who is an adventurer due to circumstance and gradually grows into the role certainly could work out. One straightforward example would be a person from a small village who would have been perfectly happy to stay there, but something bad happened (i.e. family conflict, political conflict, lack of economic opportunity, or the village is destroyed by stinky ogres), and the character has to leave. Another example could be a character that signed on to a mundane job (i.e. miner, caravan laborer, bureaucrat), but the job led to some unexpected events. This situation could be a good starting point for a DM who wants to do something other than "everyone randomly meets in the tavern." If the event in the character's back story that caused the character to start to wander is somehow tied to the DM's overall story, that could help keep the character motivated throughout the campaign. A good reluctant adventurer needs a motivation in the back story to embark upon an adventurer.

Magic School Bus analogy sold me 👍

As a GM, as long as you want the Reluctant hero to go on the adventure as a player, and are willing to come up with reasons to come along, its fine....but its super annoying when the reluctant hero player is maybe new, and gets frustrated and just says "I don't want to go into the dungeon guys, I'll see you at the tavern" and then gets mad at me for somehow not making an adventure for a character that doesn't want to go on an adventure.

Yea I think you can make a reluctant adventurer if you also build in the reason they have to adventure from the beginning. Like they are in debt, or they are being blackmailed etc.

That's actually a really good way to make the reluctant character. Well done!

@@AndrewJHayford Even "this isn't my jam, see you guys when you get back" can work if the player then doesn't get mad when their narrative "involvement" boils down to "you spend the night drinking in the tavern". Obviously if the rest of the party _needs_ their capabilities to not die or whatever, that's a problem. But if it's a "milk run", and especially if you have a player that's there, but isn't up to a serious game for the night, parking their character in a tavern can be a reasonable solution.

@@lperkins2 That player effectively does nothing though while the rest of the folks play the game. Typically in my session zero I tell people, if you decide your character would not participate in the party any longer, as in your goals no longer align with the group, its time to roll up a new character and your old character becomes an NPC.

I agree. Lots of people plan out their character progression before the campaign even starts. I never do that. I let the game story direct my development. Sometimes it will mean taking some multiclassing. Sometimes it will steer me towards retaining prior choices.

That’s how I like to do it when everyone’s making characters together

Yes, this is exactly what I do. It also prevents the best rolled character front totally overshadowing the worst rolled character during the game.

I'm playing at a table that did something similar, but everyone rolled their own set of 6 stats, and then those arrays were treated as a community pool of arrays to pick from. Being able to make choices typically feels better as a player, but it also kept anyone from feeling stuck with subpar stats. That didn't stop two people from picking the array that had both a 4 and a 7 in it, but at least it was a choice they made. :P

@@jorih3995 I saw a Curse of Strahd campaign do this and someone rolled four 1s. But they've been enjoying it.

@@MarcusNoble One of my favorite characters I've played recently was a swashbuckler rogue with a wisdom score of 6. Very charming, very dashing, not a lick of common sense in her head. Having that one major stat can be a lot of fun for some people, but it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

Yep the last line is crucial. The character is not their past! Furthermore, long backstories ARE cool, but the player who writes it should also be able to provide the GM with a short summary or ideas of how to incorporate some elements if they're expecting the GM to do that

Clearly a Tomb of Horrors veteran.

Yeah finding a stat generation method that fits the setting/tone is more important than making big numbers

I like this method as well. It makes it feel like rolling stats is collaborative between the players rather than adversarial. It allows the players who want high stats either for powergaming or to pull off some weird build to have the opportunity to do so while not harming the players who don't care much about their stats being high. It also helps ward off the minor resentment or jealousy between players who just rolled different numbers and some didn't get the stats they might have wanted.

Yeah I think 4d6 drop lowest seven times has become a pretty popular method for 5e

I've never started with a name. The name is literally the hardest part for me.

@@patrickbateman3146 Same with me, but I've always gone with the rule that if I can come up with a good name, everything else will fall into place.

for me the name was the hardest but most important part of Making my character. I never understood why so many never cared.

@@patrickbateman3146 Same, unless I have a name ahead of time it's the most difficult aspect of any character system. But othertimes a joke or interesting name can lead to some great character ideas.

The name is always the last thing I come up with. I will make a full character sheet, backstory outline, and come up with every backstory proper noun before I name my character. I have joined a pre-existing campaign without a name for my character and let the other PCs come up with one for me in-character. I do not know why I am like this. It has never not worked out.

Definitely an interesting concept! It's a bummer when that kind of planning doesn't build to much, but if it was fun making the secrets, it was still worth it

All the tables I play ban Tasha's and one of them even bans Xanathar's. I love overcoming creative obstacles in order to get what I want. Beats having to curate wildly different homebrews, arbitrarily picking favorites and making people jealous.

i love restricted settings, they can have so much more intent and flavor behind the few choices instead of the dm needing to half assedly fit everything into the same setting! i take my restricted settings into a bit of a different direction though, picking some species from source books and adding a bunch of homebrew species on top of that, to build on the specific theme i want. like my homebrew setting where all allowed species are stuff like lizardfolk, grung (i remade the lore because wtf is the official lore), bullywug, locathah, tortle, a homebrew snail people, etc. humans and more human-like species just wouldn't work in my setting!

I so disagree with you guys on that. Not saying that you are wrong. But I think really differently on that but I am trying to understand your guys point of vue, because I tend to see more people to be vocale online about limiting races and classes and subclasses then the other way around I don't understand. I get the point where you like a race and don't like another but to prevent other players from enjoying their favorite race I don't get it.

@@fishsticxz But why wouldn't they work. Even if the human are treated poorly so what. Personally I can handle npc being angry or r*cist or hateful or whatever toward my character. Maybe you are a humanoid that somehow found their way to that region, maybe they were teleported to this realm, or dimension by an evil wizard or a magical door or trap or a planeswalker who teleported into the wrong plane. I think that most often these decision are born of elitism, selfish behavior, lazyiness and lack of imagination. And I am not saying that you are any of those things, these are based on my anecdotal experience of DM and other player thinking like that.

@@Barthenn It's like OP said. It's a question of boundaries. The presence of a flying bird man character may ruin the enjoyment of some people in certain instances. Or in Fishsticxz's setting, it's the "normal" races that would ruin what he is going for. Art only exists because of boundaries. The fun comes from making choices, and this process would not be possible without boundaries. Also, this is a communal game. You have to deal with other people to play, and so, the setting of boundaries is vital. It's not because "do whatever" is an option that everyone is forced to take that option. Like everything in human interactions, it's a question of negociation, not of possibilities.

I don't like starting with names because I can't make up names to safe my life so any character I make will ultimately be named "Jemand" literaly meaning "someone" in german

Careful.... you don't want to go SO far as to make your character useless and incompetent. Then why is this character even here? The party would've been better off kicking this character off the team. If you're talking about spellcaster characters, that's fine (hopefully you didn't put a dump stat into the primary spellcasting stat though).

@@guyman1570 It is possible to make a functional spellcasting build that never calls on your spellcasting modifier for any of the spells and avoiding features that use it as well. The big issue is being locked out of multiclassing. Like, for instance, a nonHexblade melee (or even ranged weapon later on if you want) Warlock that relies on Booming Blade and Prestidigitation, with buffing spells like Armor of Agathys or Spirit Shroud, and various interesting Invocation choices. Could be a meathead jock type with all mental stats dumped that accidentally made a pact with an otherworldly entity, or the lawful stupid paladin that's not actually a paladin.

Yep even the jack of all trades should be missing a trade or two :P

Another point for DCC basing level 0 characters on their "Occupation"!

That's why I use point buy

Thanks for sharing the info about Treantmonk’s alternative stat process. Much of our group has been playing for decades and I’m always looking for ways to mix things up.

I'll have to look into TM's method!

Yep I think providing a summary is key. Much like how the GM can create chapters and chapters of lore, but they still have to find easy and simple ways to share that info in ways that matter to the players

Great points!

I appreciate that! :)

Thank you!

100%

Haha yes if it's understood like that, and seems to be done with quickly, that would work for me :)

I'm late! Good afternoon :)

That can work okay and as long as you are playing with a group that has a good grasp of the stat rolling method. I could see someone that hasn't heard/used it before getting confused or frustrated by the fluctuating rules for the stats.

Yeah mix it up!

Haha rolling 1d20 for a stat sounds incredibly chaotic xD

Well said!

That sounds like a good process!

I've seen the end point of this. One of the longest running campaigns I've been a part of, my best friend was playing a classic Dwarf Cleric of the life domain. He started the campaign bright eyed and optimistic. Over the course of the campaign, the entire party around him changed around 4 times, due to a very, very high rate of character death. He was the only one that survived the entire course of the campaign. By the end, when all was said and done, he had completely lost his optimism, and felt it was his obligation to bear witness to the nobility of the doomed adventurers who would accompany him.

@@infinitesheldon5710 That's epic. Sad, but Epic.

For some people that is a good tactic. Hating backstories is a bit much but if they mean they hate characters starting with a LOT of backstory i could understand the sentiment.

One of my players "hates" backstories, so she loved to play Mausritter and DCC where background is randomized. She can roleplay past occupations very well, she just doesn't like to come up with them.

yeah if the backstorie is more then 7 words is trash, just "farmer", "city-guard" or "librarian" is enough.

There's probably a bad experience involved, maybe a player made this elaborate backstory and kept pushing it on the other players/DM.

I always keep my backstories very simple for D&D type games. Only ever get in depth for call of cthulhu type stuff.

It works!

🤠

I’m building a LotR one shot right now, I’m ecstatic

But it said Monk and you said hell no

@@trappedinamerica7740 ...what insinuates that?