This is untrue. Npcs you make with qwerky flaws or stories of their own are also unique characteristics that you made. Give yourself some creative credit, friend.
ok i have several characters i want to play, a cleric which suffers from HLS, a tiefling rogue who is thought to be an edgy loner but is just really really shy and they can't interract with people all that well, or an orc barbarian who's actually really intelligent and gentle, but being an orc people shart out a house when they see him, or a buff as all merry wizard who mainly became a wizard just to get a perfectly toned and ripped body and who's pecks you can cook meat on and abs you can grind it with, those characters i might incorporate into my campaign, i like to give my characters interesting juxtapositions that i want to play, but do i mourn that i can't play them? no! i incorporate them nicely, go to a new town, you can put in the smart orc looking for books to read, or the wizard at the smiths for getting weights, the rogue being shy in the tavern or sheepishly getting your parties attention for help, or the HLS stricken cleric... well not gonna say that i would like you to see this word wall comment. your characters you rolled up, could be plot points or recurring characters in your campaigns. all because you are a DM does not mean you can't play your characters in your campaigns if they fit.
My first character started pretty damn generic, a Tiefling Hexblade Warlock. Then in his first game I had a throwaway line about having a daughter, then said fuck it and made a wholesome family of Tieflings that manage a large garden.
I did a Firbolg ranger who lost his original clan to a dragon as a child, but ended up getting adopted by a trio of dryad sisters that became his new family. They're still alive and well, he just wants to find a way to free them from their trees so they can live a full life like the one they gave him.
I have 6 characters I created and none of them have the stereotypical tragic background. They also all have siblings (except for 1 of them) and married parents alive & well. An Astral Elf Anthropologist Oath of Conquest Paladin. A Sun Elf Gate Warden Circle of Spores Druid with 1 younger sister. A Mountain Dwarf Runecarver Background Necromancy Wizard with Triplet Older Sisters. A Half Moon Elf Half Sun Elf Sage Drakewarden Ranger with 1 older sister and 2 younger sisters. A Drow Feylost Death Domain Cleric with 2 younger sisters and 2 younger brothers. A Half Moon Elf Half Frost Giant Planar Philosopher Barbarian with 1 younger brother and 1 younger sister.
My warlock of the archfey grew up in a town of druids, so she actually thinks she's a different kind of druid. I choose her spells based on how close to nature spells they are and give other spells more natural flavors. She even got the Magic Initiate feat to give her more druid spells. She insists she is a druid, but with a closer relationship with a nature spirit. It's even funnier knowing she started play with a -1 to her WIS, lol.
Also his fire bolt cantrip is reflavoured as fire sneeze. He opens his dusty tome, sticks his nose in and tries to read (except he’s illiterate) which results in the dust urging him to sneeze and that causes a fire bolt to come out of his mouth. (And yes, he believes the wizardly ways are the necessary path for him to unlock his dragon powers)
@@jeroenimus7528 That's amazing! lol I think I love him, lol. I keep wanting to play a barbarian that doesn't look like a barbarian, doing a kind of Jekell and Hyde thing where he has a spirit that causes him to rage out.
If I may add to what you said, you can also have a unique character even if you play a character that a lot of people have already made. Let's use Grog again, and Scanlan. Grog, like you said, is a barbarian with a kind soul. He's a fairly static character. A big, dumb brute that really cared for his friends while being a monster to fight is a fairly used concept. What makes him so memorable was the way Travis handled him, roleplaying wise. If we look at Scanlan, Sam obviously made him as your typical horny bard. Deep down, Scanlan suffered from troubles that he took a year (in-game) from the party to figure out, which he also learned to have more respect towards the opposite sex. He's witty, persuasive, and charming like a typical bard might be, but also one who will lay down his life and do whatever it takes to protect his family
The fun thing about DND is every character will be unique in some ways... Why? Because their choices are ultimately what define them! So, couldn't agree more
That is true, but they also had great players with PLENTY of time to make them roleplay and breathe. They were great characters *despite* their bare ideas, not _because_ or their ideas. Just as someone can easily take a unique character and play them boring, so can someone just play overall uncreatively.
My Ancestral Guardian Tortle is literally spending her twilight days with the party because she wants to see the world before she dies. She doesn't care what they do as long as she gets to take in the scenery. But that doesn't she doesn't give a hoot about the rest. She quickly fell in love with every single character and she is essentially the grandma of the party of grandkids. Also, she cooks. I have to go through recipe books just to describe how the food will taste and whatnot xD
I am about to play an old Halfling Lore Bard (with 1 level dips in Divine Soul and Peace Cleric). She's the grandma of the party and just wants to bake cookies for everybody. She dislikes combat, and specializes in buff/debuff spells. She's a guild artisan who comes from some cooking guild so she's actually a great cook! Will eventually take the Chef feat to reflect discovering a new special cookie recipe during the campaign
That's beautiful, dude. 😭 I have a fighter based on the Knights of St. Lazarus. He contracted leprosy and wishes to join the party to help as many as he can before he dies. Either he will accept death in battle, live long enough to die of natural causes, or I could cop-out and accept levels in paladin to cure him of his disease since his character background as a clergyman and knight of an order fits that class too. But I think it would be far more beautiful to have it just not be in his destiny, and he is meant to pass on before the end of the campaign in a bed surrounded by the friends he's come to love.
My first Artificer only created magic tattoos as their infusions. I played him as a master tattoo artist that did a lot of odd jobs to become a handyman and also learning from listening to his armorsmith and wizard customers (hence where all of his practical intelligence and experience with armor and magic came from). One of my all-time favorites, and we had a great moment when we were all captured by the BBEG's lieutenant. He took our weapons, magic items, and armor. And he didn't search my character for magic tattoos because my party members pointed out that I was an Armorer, logically all my weapons would be in the suit. So when we got jailed and left for a little bit, that's when the tattoo mayhem started unfolding. It was glorious, and a very clutch moment
My latest character was a human rogue with medium armor feat. He was a veteran fighter who was mortally wounded. He survived and has decades of experience under his belt but could no longer fight the same way as before. Now he's relearning combat and how to be more efficient with his strikes. This doubles as my example of an epic backstory at level 1.
Recently rolled up an Echo Knight because I wanted to take a break from playing my warlock (also noticing that there seems to be a trend with Echos in these comments lol) and since my DM has specific rules for magic in his world, we were able to work out how my character would become an Echo Knight without the use of magic. He already had this plot device setup in the place the party was supposed to be going; where my character was going to be a sort of guide as someone familiar with the area. It was a spring that grants immortality to those that drink from it, but can instead provide a mystical ability if the water has an object of some meaning to the drinker in it. My PC was supposed to be an ex-pirate, so he drank the water from the spring with the eyepatch of his dead captain. This coupled with his loneliness led the springs to grant him an echo that resembles his captain. Best part is that the higher level abilities for the echo can imply that the PC and echo become one and the same in some way, which works with my PC realizing that his echo is more than just a manifestation of what he wants, and that he has to communicate with the spring water in order to grow stronger. And for extra flavor, since the source of the power was water, he has to pull back his eyepatch and let tears flow from that eye into the form of his echo. Yes I do have a thing for characters with unresolved parental figure issues and trying to helplessly fill the void in their hearts, how could you tell?
I'm going to play a winter Eldarin Paladin with a homebrew oath that is ranged weapons based. His backstory is leaned on an old elven legend mentioned in the Witcher books and is linked to the Wild Hunt. With him having been hit by a ice shard in his heart and that's why he is pledged to the 'Snow Queen'. His smites are his arrows charged with the snow blinding light of his mistress. I think that's really thematic and can lead to great roleplay but also it's a great subversion of the melee heavy paladin class.
Take a close look at some of the Smites, some of them say "weapon attack" instead of "melee weapon attack", so you could swing that into a ranged Paladin.
I did make a peace cleric who died as a child and was broud back to life. This chanced him because he had seen the most perfect world, so he didicaded himself to try and inspire evil people to become good and then he would kill them so they didn't fall back on old habites
For me what makes a character unique is their personality more than their abilities. Yes sometimes it’s fun to weave those together but it doesn’t need to be. You can play a run of the mill dwarf fighter who had the exact same training as dozens of other dwarf fighters, but how their personality is still different. Not all dwarves are greedy taciturn bastions of pragmatism, and even if they are the degree to which this plays out is different. One of my dwarven fighters once threw down his bag with 25,000 copper in lieu of keeping his dulled warhammer wich had a -1 penalty. Why? Because they were nowhere near a town or village and he had more confidence of bashing a monster’s skull in with the flawed war hammer than with the bag of copper coins. (The spellcasters couldn’t carry copper or it’d interfere with their magic). This was years ago but I still remember it, why? Because it was a suboptimal choice but completely character driven and in line with his hyper practical thinking,
In my eyes there are two kinds of ways to make your character unique: Who they are, and how they roll the dice. I spent a good deal of time talking about how to make the dice rolling unique, but the other one is just as much (if not more) valid!
@@PlayYourRole I agree, and that is why I have made a character who is solely based on luck. He casts his spells by choosing two and flipping a coin, his decisions can entail rolling dice and when he manipulates chance it’s usually to give better odds than make certain of victory. I think some of the most entertaining things with him is that he often knows a lot of people that he considers friends, however his terminology of friends is loose, almost in spite of the “I don’t make many friends but I care about the ones I do” tropes XD
What I like to do is that I start with a theme and then find the class, race and background that best serves that theme. It started when I tried to theorycraft what kind of PC my character's potential child might be (one being a half-elf with untapped magical power and the other being a water genasi), and ended up with a sorcerer who with strong magic controls water to do what she wants, basically being a waterbender. I picked Divine Soul because they get access to cool spells that are either water based or can be flavored as water, and picked Water Genasi for her race as it gives more watery goodness despite being a suboptimal choice outside of flavor. So her main cantrip is hitting people with cold water (Ray of Frost) but she can also use water to heal someone like Katara (cure wounds, or literally any other healing spell) and while she's happy to splash mobs with Tidal Wave and knock them prone giving her teammates Advantage, she could also drop the big nukes with a steam explosion (fireball). Now lastly there's finding out what her life and personality would be depending on her parents and what they do, but instead of going to length of explaining that, I want to give some other simpler examples. Next exhibit: I saw a meme comparing fantasy archers like Legolas to English longbowmen and thus wanted something that felt like the fantasy equivalent of that, being someone buff enough to use a heavy ass bow then beat the shit out of someone with melee when that's needed. This character in question isn't magical or a nature person, so ranger is out, the best class that remains is fighter with a bow. For race and backstory I arrived at a half-orc whose tribe focuses on raining down enemies with arrows before destroying them, and having trained the same techniques and skills, but (to simplify it to hell) because of her mixed heritage she figured that raiding others for her tribe didn't feel right, so she left to use her skills as an adventurer. Last was then to figure subclass. Arcane Archer was a no-no because she's not magical and it seems limiting. I found that Samurai was the best pick because of it's features because giving her advantage on attack rolls makes her feel more like the sharpshooter she is, and the temp hp will be helpful when she goes into melee, still being buff and strong. Also fits with what Samurai were, as their primary weapons were bows and naginata, with sword as a sidearm. If you have a theme or concept, you can probably make a good PC around it, and think of ways you can change the flavor of the mechanics to feel new, like trying to think of what my OC with superspeed would be, arrived to monk and flavoring the Ki as ways of using her superspeed power, fitting better than it has any right to be. Only problem is that I haven't been able to join a game to actually use any of them, yet
Loved the creation exercice! Especially the "leaning into it" thing, that's really counterintuitive to think when trying to be original but it lead to a really cool result. Will def try to use that technique with my next character!
One of my players actually has an interesting character. He’s a divine soul sorcerer multiclassed into a homebrew warlock subclass. His power actually comes from his family making a deal with a fallen angel for power and in exchange, they basically gave them their first born, the player’s character. The divine soul comes from the angel basically owning him and the warlock from his soul being sold over to the angel.
I loooove divine warlocks. I got a true neutral ranger who vowed to banish the devil who ruined his life (boring standard tragic backstory) and then assisted a homebrew LG lesser goddess. She offered to help him in exchange for his soul to serve her as a holy huntsman/warrior for an eternity. He is a pragmatic guy with nothing to lose who would have sold his soul to anyone who offered him help by that point. The LG celestial just happened to find him first.
I usually start with a character personality/backstory, and work on their class/race after to try to fit with it. For example, I created a Rogue, technically human, but she started her life as a cat living in a wizard's tower. They cast True Polymorph on her, giving her human form, and something happened to prevent them from choosing to turn her back. So she's stuck in human form for the time being, missing her bed and her kittens and her humans' comfortable laps, but slowly learning to navigate through this two-legged world on their terms
You've described exactly how I make my characters and I can't thank you enough for it. Now I have just a little more ammunition to use when my DM tells me my rage can't be 'a state of hyper-focus'. One of my favorite ideas to play with is making European-themed Kensei Monks. From Italian condottiere longsword fensing masters and knights to landsknecht warriors having left the battlefield.
I play a yaun-ti bard who was an assassin/spy, using his musical talent and to persuasion/deception skills to trick his targets, he got the more rouge-like skills from his criminal background
I like the idea of making a Warlock who doesn't know they made a pact, so they actually think that they are a late bloomer sorcerer (someone from their family could have been a sorcerer making them have that idea) and their patrom doesn't want to tell them because it's funny go watch them act as a sorcerer.
I made a red eyed moon elf Paladin of the Watchers Oath, and his eyes are red because his father (who he never met) is an Eladrin. So he is the son of a fey, one of the types of beings he has sworn to banish. In the future he will unlock his fey powers in the form of the Fey Touched feat. I'm looking up to his development as a character.
I agree, I think one of my favorite characters is a warlock paladin whose patron is his wife that was extremely powerful when she was alive. It’s not a traditional patron by any means, but it sort of draws the attention off of my character and onto his wife as a past adventurer. He improves over the campaign because of his longing for her ( meaning he gets stronger the more he misses her) and cannot die because his pact won’t allow it, at least as of yet he still can die ofc. The intention for this character was also for a good resolution, if he died, then yay hopefully he can meet his wife again, and if he lives then as he finds something that he wants to live for, that distracts him from his longing. He would grow weaker. In retrospect it could have been some variation of sorcerer but my brain no think like that XD.
Feats can also give a really good 'twist' for a character to have and its why I love giving them to every class I make (also, why 99% of my characters are humans). And if/when I DM, I'd love to give atleast one to every player, even at level one. Especially prodigy as it is so good at helping make a person who's done and/or trained in something, probably since they were teens, seem actually like they've done THIS THING all their lives.
Foe me the 2 most important parts of making a character unique are the backstory and the personality. The backstory is more of a personal thing, the other players might never learn of it but it gives your character depth. It explains why they do the things they do, it tells the story of who the character was before the game. You can invent whatever you want for a backstory and that is the moment where you can let your mind go Wilde to yell the beginning of a story that will go on with the game. The second part Is the personality, the quirks, the charisma... That is the part that the other players will see. It is the personification of the backstory, the result of your life before the game. That is where you can make any classes it's owned because you aren't focusing on the classes or race or whatever, you are concentrating on the person the character is. A casual fighter can be both greedy or generous, malicious or helpful, friendly or lonely... this is the moment you define the character for who he is and not for what class or race he is. The backstory is a moment where you can have fun inventing the story of your character so far and the personality is the result of that backstory and who the character has become so far. These two can make any generic character concept into some ofbthe most unique characters, at least for the one who's making the character. And honestly, the important is that the one making the character feels like it's unique and likes playing the character, no matter what others think.
This is true For example my Caracter who is a wizard was rolled into a school of magic after being enlisted with the help of his friend (a caracter in the group who left shortly after my caracters introduction) and the support of his upper middle class parents, he had a breakdown considering his girlfriend (Wich I called anomaly) Wich caused him to kinda distrust his emotions, he stil felt them and he wasn't edgy about it, but it takes longer then its supposed to for him to open up a bit, But he is a wizard true and true so his alignment is lawful neutral and has the scholar backstory, he also likes books for some reason, He dislikes snakes tho (like scared shitless type dislike)
In my past D&D campaigns, I’ve played as an autumncore/cottagecore schoolteacher Abjuration wizard, a rogue/artificer who is best described as “Scottish Aladdin” (complete with monkey), a bubbly teenage celestial warlock whose diary is her pact tome from her unicorn patron, and more! All of these characters were, at the start, just collections of assorted ideas and funny gimmicks that I assembled into person-shaped forms, which then took on personalities as I started to play each of them and figure out what kind of ridiculous backstory would produce such a conceptually silly person.
I usually think of the class as just a skillset, and why the character has said skillset can be justified in an incredibly vast amount of ways. And that's how you can start to pull yourself away from the cliche stuff, and can even reflavor stuff to make it seem like something else. One of my favorite characters was an eldritch knight fighter who, in game, acted and looked like a ranger. He loved hunting, setting up traps and scouting, but wore heavy armor when he knew a fight was coming up and only had utility or non-save/attack roll spells, which sinergized amazingly with his fighting skillset.
I’ve been playing for a while now and my favorite character I’ve played is my current one, a half elf chronomancer with the gambler background who got his first Spellbook by winning (totally fairly, no cheating involved, I swear, pinky promise) it in a game of cards from a mage. Oh his father was also killed by a meteorite one day while they were walking through balders gate. Incredibly fun character that I feel is pretty unique
My personal favorite reflavor is my alchemist artificer, Rosie. Back in the day, Rosie was an Oath of Watchers paladin who aided an amethyst dragon in holding back that which lies beyond. But that was 40 years. Nowadays she runs an inn with her husband, also a former adventurer, her kobold cook, and her children and grandchildren, one of which has decided to go on an adventure of their own. She decides to accompany her grandkid, bringing her old gear and kobold along with her. Her "infusions" are her fishing old gear out of her bag of holding, her "potions" are her feeding some good food that she's cooking.
I made Mark Zuckerberg out of a Warforged (the deception variant from UA) Moon Druid - extra language, yuan-ti. Assuming his attack form of a giant plastic scorpion when someone rejected his friend request was 10/10.
Lmao that's fantastic. I made Jaden Smith as a mystic because the shit he says just hurts your head sometimes and I wanted to lean into that. Veeeeerrrry far down on my list of characters to play but still a fun exercise in character building. 😂
4:14 You forgot the background and sub-races. ... Technicly, equipment, multiclassing, feats, and choice of features like spells and skills, are mechanical customizations too.
I think you have a little bit of something here, but unfortunately current DnD doesn't give anything. Warhammer, Longsword Flail, Battleaxe, all just a d8 and mechanically are the exact same. (Cusher, piercer, I know. Ick.) I am with you flavoring wise to rebuild them as interesting things (dragonborn paladin that uses a glaive mechanics as a kusarigama) but mechanically we don't get anything different.
This is actually how I make all of my characters. So far I have a sentient bowling ball that is a Warforged open hand monk, Cuthulu's left nut, which is a grung death cleric, a goblin artificer alchemist who is just a magically good cook, a simic hybrid draconic sorcerer that had his failing heart, along with other things, replaced with a magic engine and other mechanical parts, a scourge aasimar blood hunter ghostslayer who has a malfunctioning portal to the Astral plane tied to his soul, making the souls of those who died around him trapped in him, an air genasi arcane archer fighter who uses his connection to the elemental plane of air to guide and empower his arrows, a lizardfolk inquisitive rogue who is just a psycho with a major in psychology, a stout halfling storm herald barbarian who is a both a human cannonball and the cannon, and many more.
One of my favorite subversions I did with a character was take a wizard and turn them into a special effects guy for a carnival before he became an adventurer. He was a tattoo artist as a passion, so of course his spell book became his sketch book and his magic crystal was a crystalline tattooing needle.
I love these ideas! I’ve actually used a few without knowing lol. One of my most favorite characters I ever made was a Dwarf Barbarian (Ander). Now when I was building Ander, I was going for a character, who is super outgoing and extroverted. but super silly (not annoyingly). Meet Ander, the Barbarian who loves public attention, and is literally not afraid of anything. He teases evil, and the party knows Ander always goes first. No. Matter. What. He loves telling people tall tales of the adventures he has been on, but has skill to prove his point. One thing that truly made him unique was the home brew bear hood that he wore that gave him proficiency in Intimidation. Yeah, I leaned in on the “drive it hard” aspect, and the party loved it. Whatever your feeling, use that for inspiration!!
Character I'm sitting on is a Spirit Bard with a dash of Goolock because they're not really a musician of much skill, so they made a pact with a being to make them a better musician. Their Tales from Beyond ability is really just playing the pieces he and a now-dead friend would play when they performed together. Toss in pact of the blade and a little bit of DM flavor and boom you have a bard playing violin with ghostly strings and a sword for a bow. And of course to add to fun flavor town, he summons "shades" (aka a physical manifestation of his imposter syndrome) when he plays who add to his song (extra instruments, voices, etc) and all his spells are reflavored to the shades attacking or doing something.
I play a SoulKnife rogue in one game and based on his background (spy) and personality traits that I picked in the beginning (for example, "Always calm no matter what the situation"), I ended up roleplaying him as someone with a high amount of emotional IQ. He helps talk the other party members through complicated emotions, is there to provide a cool down hug, and is enough of a smooth talker that he talked a dragon into not wanting to fight him (which backfired in a fun way, in that the dragon banished him for his safety 🤣). In another campaign I'm playing two characters who switch places with each other (one is in the material world, while the other goes into this void). Without going into all of the details, this not only factored heavily into the plot, but because of choices that was made in game, the DM created an interesting feat that helped play into this (one character is a wizard, the other a paladin). So, the paladin can now cast the wizard's ritual spells, the wizard can use lay on hands, and they have more control on triggering a switch. The roleplaying is fun as well and I'm writing a lot of fun backstory for these two.
For me, I look at the idea of a class and then twist it. For instance, I wanted to be a Heroism Paladin with a classic trying to do the right thing, so I was looking for races to pair it with and saw Dhampir and immediately thought to make an unholy Paladin as a mix of dark and light. As a result, there are other things I'm implementing for him, such as a self imposed "thirst" where he has to make a will save in fights to not spam bites and Magic Initiate are both due to the mix of Paladin and Dhampir. If you are wondering, the idea is that I view the Paladin oaths as a drive that pushes you to fulfill the oath, so mixing it with a desire to feed as a fight or flight mechanism, and it's basically consistent. The Magic Initiate is that he tried to channel holy magic to smite a guy while being turned and it somehow became an Eldritch Blast.
Just made an artificer artillerist for upcoming campaign and decided to watch some roleplay videos to prepare to play her. She’s from a powerful sorcerer family but didn’t inherit any powers so all spells and cantrips are just her using devices she or her teacher made. Also her main job is running a mechanical toy store and her homunculus is a porcelain bjd fairy doll
My newest character is a dragonic bloodline Thiefling named Hope, who I did simple flavouring: When she casts, you can notice air cools down a little and she starts talking in draconic and eyes starts shining a little.
Interestng things to think about. Thank you! I've made pc differences by their background stories & trying to have a unique way or reason for gaining the skills or choosing the path that they do. Your ideas give me more options & I appreciate that. :D
Just made a dhampir college of spirits bard, who owns a cursed book that was a family heirloom. When you write in the book about a person who has recently died, it ties a piece of their soul to it. She collects stories of those close to death and composes poems about them, thus creating her Tales From Beyond. She has lived quite awhile since she transformed into a dhampir, and has many stories of woe. I wanted a tragically Shakespearean character, so her backstory is basically Horatio, from "Hamlet," if he had fled the castle after the massacre and became a sad vampire poet. And her spells are going to be various famous quotes from classic literature, but rewritten to sound more shakespearean to reflect her studies of poetry at her bard college.
I have an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer that I recently made that was formed from the blood of an Eldritch being that had been injured while fighting another Eldritch creature. The character fell through time and space, and crashed down outside of a town in our campaign’s setting. As a newly “born” creature, his base impulses drove him to read into the humanoid creatures’ minds and take their forms as opposed to his natural aberration form. He has a real uncanny valley feel to him as he picks up on people’s emotional states and tries to come across as a regular human, though his origins grant him a form of unnatural aura that makes people either not notice or be easily deceive by him (this is just justification for the really high CHA score.) He has Eldritch Adept to have Mask of Many Faces to change form when needed, though in later levels his true form will be revealed when the abilities from the subclass come fully online
I know there's another video about making a character stand out, but I think what's more important than a character bring unique is a character that's relatable. For example, angry barbarians are relatable because angry and frustration is a base emotion we all deal with, how do you think that would affect them?
I'm about to start a campaign as a bard who is just an old Halfling lady who lives baking cookies for the party. A large proportion of her spells are manifested as a different kind of cookie. Bless? Cookie. Healing word? Cookie. Fire bolt? Flaming cookie. As long as the party characters are willing to eat grandma's cookies, they can benefit from her magic
I have a Protector Aasimar character, and when he goes into Radiant Soul, he basically gets taken over by some battle instinct and becomes a fighting machine (doesn't talk, doesn't show mercy etc.). It's a bit like rage for a barbarian. When he leaves Radiant Soul, he has various side affects (like nausea vomiting) He's slowly gaining more and more control over it and have less and less side effects.
I play a bard of valor, fighter battle master cross class. He's a veteran of a prior conflict that the party picked up in a tavern telling war stories and singing cadence's to earn coin for a living. He acts as the squad leader directing the party handing out maneuvers and bardic inspiration. The thing is he doesn't know he is a bard. He is just screaming at his party and enemies and things happen, he just accepts that he's a good drill instructor and inspires he's party and demoralizes the enemies. All his spells reflect this as well.
I have a half orc barbarian idea, who comes from a family of fighters and accomplished sword fighters, but he never got good at it, and instead made weapons, but when his estate got attacked, he ended up using weapons, and learned how to hit things really hard with them, and that he was good at it, because he was strong
I have a character concept of a noble guard who I don't have a name for, but usually goes by the nickname 'Watchtower' Watch is a freakishly tall prince who can't take the throne due to his genetic disability, Gigantism. He lives in a mansion outside the castle, said mansion being built specially to accommodate himself and his extreme height of about 11-12 feet tall. As he cannot take the throne because he's way too tall to fit inside the castle, he decided to become a guardsman, and watches over a small town near his mansion. Due to his longer proportions he had to have his armor specially made for him. Thanks to his absurdly long limbs he can run very fast and reach much farther than a typical man, but as a downside he has to essentially live as a hermit whenever he leaves his mansion as he cannot fit in any other building, he also needs a lot more food due to his increased mass. Watch is ambidextrous, but his left lower arm was lost either by getting cut off by a bandit he was chasing, or blown off by someone with magic, after this he had a mechanical prostatic hand built for him that doubles as a concealed weapon. His mechanical hand can swing back at the wrist where a large blade can shoot out of and be used to slash at enemies, this is his primary weapon. Watch is usually a cheerful guy and likes to make small talk. He laughs a lot when not on duty and acts nothing like you'd expect from someone born into royalty. But when he's serious he can have a bit of a colder and brash tone. Although he would probably have a little less health due to his spindly body as well as being a bigger target, he can reach very far and be a dangerous threat if you dare try to melee him, and if in relatively open areas it can be very hard to sneak around him when on guard without him noticing. TL;DR: incredibly tall royal prince who takes the role of a guard because he cannot take the throne because of his gigantism.
I think that I have made some pretty interesting characters. An artificer who has a hexblade metal arm that he made, and an undead druid who's druidic power in their past life stopped them from being manipulated by the woman who brought him back
Half-Orc Grave Cleric with the Haunted One Background. As a child, he was possessed by a Balrog, (I think that's the spelling,) and decimated his village. However, the Church of Ishtar came along, and sealed the Balrog back into the character, and then accepted him into their ranks, giving him a holy symbol of Ishtar, which was made to help keep the Balrog from breaking free again. Him being a Cleric, is basically the one thing that prevents him from turning back into the Balrog.
Made a Dhampir Long Death Monk that was attacked in her home one night and transformed and unknowingly killed and ate her entire family one night. She has no formal monk training instead using her supernatural abilities granted by her affliction to perform her monk abilities and pretty much freestyles in combat. Instead of actual darts to throw she uses knives and forks from her pack that she stashed prior. She is very fun to roleplay especially since most of the time she has know idea how she is doing these fantastical things but also just like attempts to eat everything that isn't friendly. My favorite was when she discovered she could walk on walls with no hands and turn invisible with the shadow touched feat. Also she's a very happy person, hates evil, and loves trusting and saving people
I play a changing wizard that uses illusion magic to act as a pseudo snake oil sales man. I had the idea of making a con man character for a while but didn't think much past that till I thought of how interesting it would be that he conjured fake items, sold them, left the town, then all the items disappeared into puffs of smoke. I first thought of being basic and using a elf or human, caring more about the con man aspect rather than the character as a whole, but soon realized it would be kinda cool if this con man changed his face all the time so no law men could pin him down. My dm and I have also found it cool that we might be able to make a twist where he appears primarily as a human but in either a tense to situation or while he's about to die in combat its revealed he's a changing. After watching this I'm definitely going to need to drop strange hints to really sweeten the reveal and play to the strengths of a shape shifting master of illusions and trickery.
I played a Rouge type character who was a spoiled child and learned her skills from her bodyguards. She would bet them that she could pick a lock in under a minute or steal a wallet without someone knowing etc. She found she had way more fun being a rogue than being a spoiled princess (not literallay).
In one of my dnd groups, we have a barbarian named Roye. He's a shifter, of the BeastHide subrace. His father was a werewolf, a bandit. He was inducted into the church, made into a crusader. Been crusading over half of his life so far. But one little Raccoon boy helped him. A boy named Remus. Remus is a were-raccoon. Remus helped Roye see that lycanthropy isn't always a curse. That you aren't responsible for what your parents did. I don't play Roye, I play a different character in the game. But, I had to share this.
I have a artificer alchemist that I eventually want to multiclass into sorcerer. Narratively, I’m flavoring it as part of an alchemy experiment gone wrong which caused the magic to fuse with him.
in an icewind dale campaign, i had everyone convinced for the longest time that i was a warlock. I was a human way of the 4 elements monk that took magic ini for warlock to pick up: bonfire so i dont freeze in the ice, the BLAST to get people from range, and HEX so when i do actually go in for the punches they do more. but you catch one arrow and throw it back at a goblin like 4 months in on a weekly game and the jig is up XD
I made a rogue with a special subclass that was made from the dm(it revolves around guns) but she isn't edgy one bit. She is actually raised in a lonely noble home and was taught many things. Even tho she is a rogue, she somewhat like an expressive yet sweet little bun to others; and despite having a gun, she still tries to knock out criminals with her shortsword. Reason for her to have a gun is cause of her backstory and the only time she uses it is when she decided that someone must die and that is really hard to convince herself to do.
My favorite pcs I made were: a hollow dragonborn warlock who, before the beginning, died and asked bought back to life by a fiend but he had to kill evil doers to reinforce the demon army (this was my first warlock) A lawful evil warforged paladin who was supposed to be able to catch souls and trap them only to later use them for his magical abilities (I also changed the name of his abilities to fit the theme) An aasimar made by Sehanine Moonbow who was sent to kill a monster many years prior, after succeeding he decided to stay and became a bard Unfortunately, none of the three campaigns lasted long and I wasn’t able to properly use either of them
I'm fairly new to dnd (currently on my third character) and i like to go with a theme and some quirks. Mu current character, a satyr kensei monk, is a tailor so his kensei weapon are a spear and darts, so needles and if he get to make other weapons kensei weapons i like the idea of a whip for a thread. So there's the theme. Monk and i do have a very loose relationship, i see them as martial sorcerers, you can perform magic but you are mostly restricted to do that magic up close. I have a character that i really want to try, a goliath champion and that might not sound interesting at all and he is.. kinda basic. Below average intelligence and so on, but in return i plan to ask the DM if he can have an excellent memory and make stuff out of clay and such or draw stuff, not to a such degree that he can sell what he make, just that they are somewhat recongnisable, that along with remarkable athlete would probably be an interesting way to help outside of combat. Oh right his quirks! He loves porridge, he's even got profeciency in cooks utensils just to make porridge and stew. And half his fighting style was inspired from his favorite board game, a game where you slide pieces until you hit another piece or the edge of the board, so he charges a lot if possible. Okay i better stop now, sorry about the lengthy post. I do love to come up with character concepts, but actually playing them is a different story.
I loooove the monk! As for the second character-I have advice and can use my own Goliath for it. I have a Goliath barb/fighter who would be very bland had I not leaned more into the culture of his home for his aesthetic/roleplay (that of the household of a Scottish knight). Pick a particular cultural background you think you could handle and maybe watch a few accent coaching videos before your games and you can really flavor them in just the way they need to just naturally come as unique from the start.
@@ea5yliver Oh i have made some changes since that post for my goliath. U have reflavored him to look like he's a half ogre, in fact his entire initial design was just the half ogre from the monster manual. Added to that i've made him unable to say *I* when refering to himself, so he just says his name. I've also made his vest into a sling and he's big, so big that i've already fired our harengon bard and gnome wizard out of that sling. In terms on personality he plays the role of the dumb guy, which his speech patern helps to sell, and wants to make people happy as he's been feared during his upbringing. The party loves him and his tom foolery. To give an example of something that happened: The party aquired a talking all knowing book, my character, Oro, whispered if the book knew his mothers secret poridge ingrediant. The Gm paused and broke out in laughter followed by another. player. So yeah he isn't the most serious character, but man if he isn't fun to play! Thanks for the tips by the way! We play in our native language and i personally find it really tough to do accents in my native tongue.
As a barbarian, I started with a musical instrument. I leaned into that for all it was worth with the bagpipes. When the rogue needs a distraction, my Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan the Barbarian ripoff starts playing "Scotland the Brave" at 1 in the morning to distract everyone. When I need the necromancer to stop his work and run headlong into a trap, I play the bagpipes in his cave. It's nearly deafening and he can't study or work in such conditions. I just plug my own ears with bees wax before hand so I don't deafen myself. Being a professional distraction is a lot of fun.
I think my best instance of doing something like this, I have a mermaid druid, but she's not part of an druidic circle or in tune with nature or anything. Instead, her power comes from an eldritch beign she found deep in the abyss of the ocean, and when she asked for the chance to walk on land, she was given the ability to turn into animals, along with magic. Basically, she's made a Great Old One pact, but for druid mechanics instead of warlock ones
My Ancestral Guardian Barb's rage is a spiritual conduit state where he lets the combined skill and experience of hundreds of past generations guide him. Thats why hes tougher, hits harder and has more strength. Hes no longer just one guy.
About your example of flavouring rage: I have a back up character of an normally not that strong aasimar who only because strong when he uses his celestial power. His strength "pops up" like a mini transformation but his body doesn't mirror his strength. The problem is that when he fully enters the state ("rage") he easily kills things around him and his mind wasn't really ready for that. The higher power he got his powers from observer that and in order to protect his psyche a little bit they make him zone out when he enters his empowered state. It always triggers when he is in danger or needs a power to fight/protect. But he always blacks out when it happens and only sees what he has done I'm the aftermath. One time he blackout out for so long that he didn't know where he was. He joined an adventure group because he needed money to survive and was somewhere in nowhere. He knew that somehow he is being protect and can fight even so he isn't able to remember how. He sees the blood and bodies afterwards which is why he knew he could take on the dangours task of being an adventure even so it scared him. His character arc would be to be able to handle hurting others and using his strength so he doesn't need to zone out during his "rage". The person who he is when he is raging is the exact same just without emotion towards his actions. His motivation and character is mainly in tact so it's not a personality split either. If I'm allowed to play him one day I hope he'll archive mastering his "rage" state and I want a difference between how he usually fights in his state and how he fights when he mastered it to signify his growth. At least that's my idea for that character.
I once played a rogue, sadly not for long, who was an orphan. But instead of being miserable or despressing, she instead did her best to help the others and their caretaker, who she grew to view as her mother. Though her mother got sick, and eventually stopped being able to do alot. So my character stumbled upon information that some merchants were going to arrive during a festival. That they had medicine that coukd save her mother. She used the festival as cover to get in and reach the medicine. She was almost caught, but another thief stepped in and saved her. They split the medicines and my character started learning under him. Eventually he was caught and the town guards caught on to their ruse and went after her. She accidentally ended up killing a guard while escaping the town. Once safe, she kept seeing the phantom of the guard. That's how she realized what she is. So she kept traveling, using the phantoms of others to solve crimes and help others, though she was still wanted. But honestly, I'm thinking about reusing that character. Cause I loved the way the way I played the class and abilities into her backstory and the tone of the character.
One of my tricks is to take a SIMPLE concept, add some DEEP lore, then, a TWIST. Example: Simple: Half-Orc Barbarian Deep Lore: He was originally a slave as a child, adopted by a wandering hedge knight and was taken from castle to castle, city to city. Twist: He's an Aristocratic Pugilist, with a Robotic Arm that controls Magnetism. Thus, Maurauk the Magician was created! (And yes, he's still a Barbarian, hence "Magician" instead of Wizard/Sorcerer, etc.
My Open Hand Monk is a Nobleman who doesn't believe in using a closed fist in fights so he slaps his opponents while shouting things in old timey slang like "Have at you". I also have two concepts for the Barbarian. One is a Mighty Morphing Power Ranger, where the Rage ability is re-flavored into a Morphing Sequence. The other is a Magical Girl where the Rage is a Bright and Seizure inducing transformation.
I had a character who grew up on the streets, dead parents, survived by stealing, all that. His class? Monk. All the growing up as an angry, edgy kid on the streets? That was decades ago. He was taken in by a monastic order, offered a place to stay in return for some help around the temple. That turned into uears and years of study and training, letting go of the past (for the most part) and moving forward in a healthy mindset that allows him to help others.
Mugi. Half-Centaur Gnome Artificer (think Labrador sized centaur) with horseshoes of Elvenkind and a decently high Persuasion skill. No stealth skill. Just walks into the enemy stronghold like it's natural and convinces enemies he is a figment of their imagination. Doesn't always work, but hilarious when it does.
If you're having trouble with this, Check out Dimension 20's Unsleeping City or other things for inspiration how to take purely the mechanics to inform your character
I made a rogue who was adopted into a very wealthy family, she gambled and bought stuff, but she got bored, feeling like nothing she had was earned. So she went out and started to steal things she wanted. She felt thrill she hadn't before, and so kept doing it. She taught herself how to fight, this comes to that, she's a swashbuckler rogue.
My celestial warlock was an archaeologicist before stumbling upon his patron sentient Heavy Flail. After discovering that they were compatible, escaped the ruins they were trapped in and over 20 epic levels fell in love together and to end the BBEG created an army of warlocks from a town of people who believed in their benevolence.
"Subverting expectations while making those subverted expectations make sense." Finally someone explains when subverting expectations makes for a good character. Also i'm glad it's been said that you can make a character unique, and memoriable while not being mechanically contrarian. Or your only character trait being "Wizard with negative intelligence" or some other literal joke that's just as played out as the edgelord rogue or lawful stupid pally. One of my favorite players to play alongside to date is a Monk/Barbarian multiclass. mechanically, he's not very optimal at all because he's not at the sweet spot yet. but he's hands down the MVP of character development and entertainment because he's the loveable goof with a heart of gold that stands as the party shield and he and my wizard have amazing chemistry in and out of battle. and he didn't have to dump strength or dex to do it.
my esso made a celestial warlock that was originally sent off by her family to be trained as a cleric. turns out, she was just really bad at all of that and nearly burnt the school/temple down and was kicked out entirely unceremoniously. they were upset by this, bc they both wanted to be a cleric and also not wanting to disappoint her family, but didn't really have much else to do. her lucky break came when she fed a wandering demigod, disguised as a dog, a chocolate bar. the demigod was like, "ok, this kid's stupid, but has heart." and started granting her boons, so she thinks she's a cleric, bc she literally has no idea how it should actually work, anyway.
Another note: there’s very little mechanical consequences to changing which mental stat your abilities or spells are based on; play a wisdom wizard who’s just a druid who learned find familiar, necromancy, and elemental damage spells instead of learning support spells or how to wildshape, play an eldritch knight who casts with wisdom because, similarly to how a druid views nature, they’re just so in tune with martial combat they learn how to draw magic from their weapons. This is really fun, and it’s greatly expands the number of possible character concepts. I’d probably make that dragon monk charisma based and make that paladin wisdom based.
"Let's create an unique monk. [...] So, basically like Iron Fist." I'm not even judging, because that's always what happens to me when I get full creative freedom, with too little guidelines to shape my creativity. The problem with D&D 5E is that the mechanics DON'T provide any help for unique characters. You get one customization option between level 1 to 3, and that's it. Of course, the books around those rules encourage the players to flavor those cookie-cutter classes to Hell and back... but it's exhausting in term of creative energy for some people (like me). I keep one 5E campaign at a time because I do love D&D, but the rest is Pathfinder so I get a system where I can take a customization option at nearly every level, notably with 2E being basically as modular as possible. Sure I'm a bit restricted by what's available, but I also get inspired by powers I wouldn't have thought about on my own. So in short, I prefer systems with not as much creative freedom as D&D 5e, but whose available options can make me think outside the box. Without those, I swear my own ideas are just as derivative as "basically like Iron Fist".
Drawing my potential characters really helps me get a feel for a personality because I have to determine body language, expression, what they choose to wear, what they carry on them, how well do they keep themselves, etc. This lets me understand who they would be as an individual, so even if they’re a standard race and class, as long as they’ve got a personality and mannerisms that FEEL real, you’ve got something unique.
My new character is druid..... who's entire backstorh is that he wanted to be an engineer/artificer but made a deal with a fey creature to plant a forest to connect the two plains..... i like playing classes with interesting twists. Got a bee cleric as a backup and yes, his god is his queen.
Playing Pathfinder: Arcanist with Whitemage and Eldrich Font archtypes. More spell slots and can convert arcane slots into cure spells. Take Dimensional Slide Arcanist Exploit(ability). Ranged healing? Nope, short range teleport healing! Also is a snake person named Cade (Caduceus is the common IRL symbol of healing you see at hospitals, you know... the one with the snakes). ALSO has a god complex and believes that he knows whether or not it is time for someone to die (conveniently the it is never the party's time).
So I started with "half-elf Sun Soul monk" as a base concept and ended up coming up with "scion of an eladrin noble family who wields her house's Moonblade. It has somehow been cursed with amnesia, is cagey and untrusting because of its lack of memories, and won't attune to her as a result (making it mechanically just a normal longsword with a personality until she builds more trust with it, which is to say 'until the DM feels like handing the party +1 weapons'). Also she's a Sun Soul monk homebrewed to use Cha instead of Wis, relying on the Dedicated Weapon optional feature to actually wield the Moonblade in question as a monk weapon and the Weapon Master feat to have proficiency with it in the first place." You may note the final character here isn't even a half-elf.
Something I like to do is give my character a goal and a roadblock. -The goal of my tabaxi fighter is to be an expert swordsman. But he’s blind and uses his advantage in hearing and smell to navigate. Take samurai so you can fight with no disadvantage for a turn 3 times a day and give them the alert feat to not be hit at advantage. Get a longsword and two hand it. (I used a samurai point to fight regularly and used action surge to attack 4 times at 1D10+3 damage I dealt 45 damage.) it felt good, sadly that’s actually the only attack I ever did because I couldn’t go anymore after the first session with the character. Dang. Idea for way of the open hand. His AC is high because he has trained to just take the blows of weapons and dodge if needed. Plays as a barbarian the goes around slapping, stunning and ground slamming people like a big brute and running like an Olympic sprinter.
I have a rogue in my game I was pretty skeptical of when he first joined. At the time the party had two already and his backstory was a pretty standard with being an orphan, house fire, stealing anything and everything he can. But the more we played it became apparent he was less than the typical edgy rogue. Like he was morbid at times making orphan jokes which we always teased him about in game, but also he was pretty fun to play with and brought a lot of humor to the party. One of the only other lightheaded ones was our druid who also had a childhood house fire. Maybe house fires make you different people in my universe? But anyways he was really more than the typical rogue and the whole stealing thing was just because he was a kleptomaniac so that made sense. Best of all he was the first person to ask if he can use a gun, which he played pretty well and sparingly.
Another thing I like to do to add interest is borrowing from other classes my current character is a bard painter that had some rouge tendencies like being a clever their that would paint a mage hand to pick pocket or paint illusions to make people to make people see things that were already long stolen
I think the character I found most unique was the path of wildmagic barb that was a former wizard apprentice who messed up a transfiguration ritual and it leads to the magic flooding his body to make it stronger while the excess floods out to creating wildmagic effects. He was quite Intelligent but had a very low wis and well trained in arcana and other means of int skills first barb that didn't have athletics for me.
I’m currently creating a scientist who studies the essence of magic and magical radiation. She’s an Aasimar wildfire druid. Her wildfire spirit is a sun and I used the scourge aasimar so she goes “nuclear”. Basically a Neutron/Fire Storm/Captain Marvel like build.
My dual wielding 4e barbarian was adopted and trained as a fighter in shield and axe combat. But dual wielding was in his blood so when he was raging he used his shield as an improvised weapon. After combat he felt ashamed about that and felt like a disgrace for his adopted family by not keeping his calm and using his shield inproperly.
Even things as simple as thinking about how your character interacts with magic can give a feeling of uniqueness and depth. Druids that are asking local spirits for aid feel very different than druids who manipulate nature through deep understanding. A wizard that is totally cut off from the feeling of magic, but is nevertheless so well-versed in magical theory and well-practiced in the necessary motions that they can cast spells anyway feels very different from a prodigy that can faintly detect the vibrations of the weave with their sense of touch and can pick just the right moment to rework its pattern into the desired effect. As a GM, I often prompt players to think about this by asking "when your character 'detects' magic, how do they experience that?" Exploring what sense responds, how the information is organized, the subjective quality of different magic are all opportunities to uniquely define a spellcaster's relationship to their class features.
You can take the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian's ghosts and turn them into spectral tentacles. Describe how they latch onto your enemies as they try hit your companions, describe a tentacle sprouting from the ground and slapping an enemy attacking your companions.
I am getting ready to play a Vistani Who returns to Barovia her child died of starvation before she buried her child an old man came into town with no place to stay so she let him stay with her she is now a Damphir headed towards Strahds castle to beg him to make sure hes people have food. I am super stoked to play her. My last 2 characters have been obnoxiously happy. One a goblin who accidently spawned a few one shots. And a halfling paladin, I have never played Pali.. so i chose to homebrew my oath.. I am paladin of "ill try any thing once.. well almost any thing" she is Vanelope from wreck it Ralph mixed with the hyperactivity of Hammy from over the hedge.
I played a conjugation wizard and maxed out dexterity first, I played him kind of like a rouge, I basically took eldritch adept for devils sight and then I would conjure poison to cover my dagger Then cast darkness and go in and deal a ton of damage
My characters are so unique that they've never been part of a campaign. :(
Forever DM op.
Ahahaha... Yeah I feel that lmao.
This is untrue. Npcs you make with qwerky flaws or stories of their own are also unique characteristics that you made. Give yourself some creative credit, friend.
ok i have several characters i want to play, a cleric which suffers from HLS, a tiefling rogue who is thought to be an edgy loner but is just really really shy and they can't interract with people all that well, or an orc barbarian who's actually really intelligent and gentle, but being an orc people shart out a house when they see him, or a buff as all merry wizard who mainly became a wizard just to get a perfectly toned and ripped body and who's pecks you can cook meat on and abs you can grind it with, those characters i might incorporate into my campaign, i like to give my characters interesting juxtapositions that i want to play, but do i mourn that i can't play them? no! i incorporate them nicely, go to a new town, you can put in the smart orc looking for books to read, or the wizard at the smiths for getting weights, the rogue being shy in the tavern or sheepishly getting your parties attention for help, or the HLS stricken cleric... well not gonna say that i would like you to see this word wall comment. your characters you rolled up, could be plot points or recurring characters in your campaigns. all because you are a DM does not mean you can't play your characters in your campaigns if they fit.
I know this feeling all too well...
:(
The ultimate plot twist for any D&D character: Their married parents and other family members are alive and well.
Lol-
My first character started pretty damn generic, a Tiefling Hexblade Warlock. Then in his first game I had a throwaway line about having a daughter, then said fuck it and made a wholesome family of Tieflings that manage a large garden.
I did a Firbolg ranger who lost his original clan to a dragon as a child, but ended up getting adopted by a trio of dryad sisters that became his new family. They're still alive and well, he just wants to find a way to free them from their trees so they can live a full life like the one they gave him.
I have 6 characters I created and none of them have the stereotypical tragic background. They also all have siblings (except for 1 of them) and married parents alive & well.
An Astral Elf Anthropologist Oath of Conquest Paladin.
A Sun Elf Gate Warden Circle of Spores Druid with 1 younger sister.
A Mountain Dwarf Runecarver Background Necromancy Wizard with Triplet Older Sisters.
A Half Moon Elf Half Sun Elf Sage Drakewarden Ranger with 1 older sister and 2 younger sisters.
A Drow Feylost Death Domain Cleric with 2 younger sisters and 2 younger brothers.
A Half Moon Elf Half Frost Giant Planar Philosopher Barbarian with 1 younger brother and 1 younger sister.
@@OGXenos free them from their trees? You mean death’s sweet embrace?
My warlock of the archfey grew up in a town of druids, so she actually thinks she's a different kind of druid. I choose her spells based on how close to nature spells they are and give other spells more natural flavors. She even got the Magic Initiate feat to give her more druid spells. She insists she is a druid, but with a closer relationship with a nature spirit. It's even funnier knowing she started play with a -1 to her WIS, lol.
There has always been a soft spot in my heart for characters who think they're a different class/subclass than they actually are
My current barbarian/sorcerer is convinced he’s supposed to be a wizard.
Also his fire bolt cantrip is reflavoured as fire sneeze.
He opens his dusty tome, sticks his nose in and tries to read (except he’s illiterate) which results in the dust urging him to sneeze and that causes a fire bolt to come out of his mouth. (And yes, he believes the wizardly ways are the necessary path for him to unlock his dragon powers)
That's pretty cool, honestly 😯🤩
@@jeroenimus7528 That's amazing! lol I think I love him, lol. I keep wanting to play a barbarian that doesn't look like a barbarian, doing a kind of Jekell and Hyde thing where he has a spirit that causes him to rage out.
If I may add to what you said, you can also have a unique character even if you play a character that a lot of people have already made. Let's use Grog again, and Scanlan. Grog, like you said, is a barbarian with a kind soul. He's a fairly static character. A big, dumb brute that really cared for his friends while being a monster to fight is a fairly used concept. What makes him so memorable was the way Travis handled him, roleplaying wise. If we look at Scanlan, Sam obviously made him as your typical horny bard. Deep down, Scanlan suffered from troubles that he took a year (in-game) from the party to figure out, which he also learned to have more respect towards the opposite sex. He's witty, persuasive, and charming like a typical bard might be, but also one who will lay down his life and do whatever it takes to protect his family
The fun thing about DND is every character will be unique in some ways... Why?
Because their choices are ultimately what define them! So, couldn't agree more
That’s what I meant to say in my comment up there. For me the uniqueness is more in the personality than anything else.
That is true, but they also had great players with PLENTY of time to make them roleplay and breathe. They were great characters *despite* their bare ideas, not _because_ or their ideas.
Just as someone can easily take a unique character and play them boring, so can someone just play overall uncreatively.
My Ancestral Guardian Tortle is literally spending her twilight days with the party because she wants to see the world before she dies. She doesn't care what they do as long as she gets to take in the scenery. But that doesn't she doesn't give a hoot about the rest. She quickly fell in love with every single character and she is essentially the grandma of the party of grandkids. Also, she cooks. I have to go through recipe books just to describe how the food will taste and whatnot xD
I am about to play an old Halfling Lore Bard (with 1 level dips in Divine Soul and Peace Cleric). She's the grandma of the party and just wants to bake cookies for everybody. She dislikes combat, and specializes in buff/debuff spells. She's a guild artisan who comes from some cooking guild so she's actually a great cook! Will eventually take the Chef feat to reflect discovering a new special cookie recipe during the campaign
This is super cute
That's beautiful, dude. 😭
I have a fighter based on the Knights of St. Lazarus. He contracted leprosy and wishes to join the party to help as many as he can before he dies. Either he will accept death in battle, live long enough to die of natural causes, or I could cop-out and accept levels in paladin to cure him of his disease since his character background as a clergyman and knight of an order fits that class too.
But I think it would be far more beautiful to have it just not be in his destiny, and he is meant to pass on before the end of the campaign in a bed surrounded by the friends he's come to love.
Holy shit another tortle player?! Can we be friends?!
My first Artificer only created magic tattoos as their infusions. I played him as a master tattoo artist that did a lot of odd jobs to become a handyman and also learning from listening to his armorsmith and wizard customers (hence where all of his practical intelligence and experience with armor and magic came from).
One of my all-time favorites, and we had a great moment when we were all captured by the BBEG's lieutenant. He took our weapons, magic items, and armor. And he didn't search my character for magic tattoos because my party members pointed out that I was an Armorer, logically all my weapons would be in the suit. So when we got jailed and left for a little bit, that's when the tattoo mayhem started unfolding. It was glorious, and a very clutch moment
My latest character was a human rogue with medium armor feat. He was a veteran fighter who was mortally wounded. He survived and has decades of experience under his belt but could no longer fight the same way as before. Now he's relearning combat and how to be more efficient with his strikes. This doubles as my example of an epic backstory at level 1.
Recently rolled up an Echo Knight because I wanted to take a break from playing my warlock (also noticing that there seems to be a trend with Echos in these comments lol) and since my DM has specific rules for magic in his world, we were able to work out how my character would become an Echo Knight without the use of magic. He already had this plot device setup in the place the party was supposed to be going; where my character was going to be a sort of guide as someone familiar with the area. It was a spring that grants immortality to those that drink from it, but can instead provide a mystical ability if the water has an object of some meaning to the drinker in it. My PC was supposed to be an ex-pirate, so he drank the water from the spring with the eyepatch of his dead captain. This coupled with his loneliness led the springs to grant him an echo that resembles his captain. Best part is that the higher level abilities for the echo can imply that the PC and echo become one and the same in some way, which works with my PC realizing that his echo is more than just a manifestation of what he wants, and that he has to communicate with the spring water in order to grow stronger. And for extra flavor, since the source of the power was water, he has to pull back his eyepatch and let tears flow from that eye into the form of his echo.
Yes I do have a thing for characters with unresolved parental figure issues and trying to helplessly fill the void in their hearts, how could you tell?
I'm going to play a winter Eldarin Paladin with a homebrew oath that is ranged weapons based.
His backstory is leaned on an old elven legend mentioned in the Witcher books and is linked to the Wild Hunt. With him having been hit by a ice shard in his heart and that's why he is pledged to the 'Snow Queen'. His smites are his arrows charged with the snow blinding light of his mistress. I think that's really thematic and can lead to great roleplay but also it's a great subversion of the melee heavy paladin class.
A ranged Paladin? Do tell! I'm curious.
The shard in a heart thing reminds me of the fairy tale “The Snow Queen”, was it one of the things that inspired the idea?
Take a close look at some of the Smites, some of them say "weapon attack" instead of "melee weapon attack", so you could swing that into a ranged Paladin.
I did make a peace cleric who died as a child and was broud back to life. This chanced him because he had seen the most perfect world, so he didicaded himself to try and inspire evil people to become good and then he would kill them so they didn't fall back on old habites
Love that idea!
"I have saved you from your sinful ways! Unfortunately, the wages of sin is death."
omg nice
sort of a reaper to send these evil people that have atoned for their sins to the afterlife so they would no longer be tempted
Ah, the Gygaxian redemption.
For me what makes a character unique is their personality more than their abilities. Yes sometimes it’s fun to weave those together but it doesn’t need to be.
You can play a run of the mill dwarf fighter who had the exact same training as dozens of other dwarf fighters, but how their personality is still different. Not all dwarves are greedy taciturn bastions of pragmatism, and even if they are the degree to which this plays out is different.
One of my dwarven fighters once threw down his bag with 25,000 copper in lieu of keeping his dulled warhammer wich had a -1 penalty.
Why? Because they were nowhere near a town or village and he had more confidence of bashing a monster’s skull in with the flawed war hammer than with the bag of copper coins. (The spellcasters couldn’t carry copper or it’d interfere with their magic).
This was years ago but I still remember it, why? Because it was a suboptimal choice but completely character driven and in line with his hyper practical thinking,
In my eyes there are two kinds of ways to make your character unique: Who they are, and how they roll the dice. I spent a good deal of time talking about how to make the dice rolling unique, but the other one is just as much (if not more) valid!
@@PlayYourRole I agree, and that is why I have made a character who is solely based on luck. He casts his spells by choosing two and flipping a coin, his decisions can entail rolling dice and when he manipulates chance it’s usually to give better odds than make certain of victory. I think some of the most entertaining things with him is that he often knows a lot of people that he considers friends, however his terminology of friends is loose, almost in spite of the “I don’t make many friends but I care about the ones I do” tropes XD
Markus Heitz‘s book-series „die Zwerge“ and „Legende der Alben“ used this really well to depict the differente races I his world.
What I like to do is that I start with a theme and then find the class, race and background that best serves that theme. It started when I tried to theorycraft what kind of PC my character's potential child might be (one being a half-elf with untapped magical power and the other being a water genasi), and ended up with a sorcerer who with strong magic controls water to do what she wants, basically being a waterbender. I picked Divine Soul because they get access to cool spells that are either water based or can be flavored as water, and picked Water Genasi for her race as it gives more watery goodness despite being a suboptimal choice outside of flavor. So her main cantrip is hitting people with cold water (Ray of Frost) but she can also use water to heal someone like Katara (cure wounds, or literally any other healing spell) and while she's happy to splash mobs with Tidal Wave and knock them prone giving her teammates Advantage, she could also drop the big nukes with a steam explosion (fireball). Now lastly there's finding out what her life and personality would be depending on her parents and what they do, but instead of going to length of explaining that, I want to give some other simpler examples.
Next exhibit: I saw a meme comparing fantasy archers like Legolas to English longbowmen and thus wanted something that felt like the fantasy equivalent of that, being someone buff enough to use a heavy ass bow then beat the shit out of someone with melee when that's needed. This character in question isn't magical or a nature person, so ranger is out, the best class that remains is fighter with a bow. For race and backstory I arrived at a half-orc whose tribe focuses on raining down enemies with arrows before destroying them, and having trained the same techniques and skills, but (to simplify it to hell) because of her mixed heritage she figured that raiding others for her tribe didn't feel right, so she left to use her skills as an adventurer. Last was then to figure subclass. Arcane Archer was a no-no because she's not magical and it seems limiting. I found that Samurai was the best pick because of it's features because giving her advantage on attack rolls makes her feel more like the sharpshooter she is, and the temp hp will be helpful when she goes into melee, still being buff and strong. Also fits with what Samurai were, as their primary weapons were bows and naginata, with sword as a sidearm.
If you have a theme or concept, you can probably make a good PC around it, and think of ways you can change the flavor of the mechanics to feel new, like trying to think of what my OC with superspeed would be, arrived to monk and flavoring the Ki as ways of using her superspeed power, fitting better than it has any right to be.
Only problem is that I haven't been able to join a game to actually use any of them, yet
Loved the creation exercice! Especially the "leaning into it" thing, that's really counterintuitive to think when trying to be original but it lead to a really cool result. Will def try to use that technique with my next character!
One of my players actually has an interesting character. He’s a divine soul sorcerer multiclassed into a homebrew warlock subclass. His power actually comes from his family making a deal with a fallen angel for power and in exchange, they basically gave them their first born, the player’s character. The divine soul comes from the angel basically owning him and the warlock from his soul being sold over to the angel.
I loooove divine warlocks.
I got a true neutral ranger who vowed to banish the devil who ruined his life (boring standard tragic backstory) and then assisted a homebrew LG lesser goddess. She offered to help him in exchange for his soul to serve her as a holy huntsman/warrior for an eternity.
He is a pragmatic guy with nothing to lose who would have sold his soul to anyone who offered him help by that point. The LG celestial just happened to find him first.
I usually start with a character personality/backstory, and work on their class/race after to try to fit with it.
For example, I created a Rogue, technically human, but she started her life as a cat living in a wizard's tower. They cast True Polymorph on her, giving her human form, and something happened to prevent them from choosing to turn her back. So she's stuck in human form for the time being, missing her bed and her kittens and her humans' comfortable laps, but slowly learning to navigate through this two-legged world on their terms
You've described exactly how I make my characters and I can't thank you enough for it. Now I have just a little more ammunition to use when my DM tells me my rage can't be 'a state of hyper-focus'.
One of my favorite ideas to play with is making European-themed Kensei Monks. From Italian condottiere longsword fensing masters and knights to landsknecht warriors having left the battlefield.
I play a yaun-ti bard who was an assassin/spy, using his musical talent and to persuasion/deception skills to trick his targets, he got the more rouge-like skills from his criminal background
I like the idea of making a Warlock who doesn't know they made a pact, so they actually think that they are a late bloomer sorcerer (someone from their family could have been a sorcerer making them have that idea) and their patrom doesn't want to tell them because it's funny go watch them act as a sorcerer.
I made a red eyed moon elf Paladin of the Watchers Oath, and his eyes are red because his father (who he never met) is an Eladrin. So he is the son of a fey, one of the types of beings he has sworn to banish. In the future he will unlock his fey powers in the form of the Fey Touched feat. I'm looking up to his development as a character.
I agree, I think one of my favorite characters is a warlock paladin whose patron is his wife that was extremely powerful when she was alive. It’s not a traditional patron by any means, but it sort of draws the attention off of my character and onto his wife as a past adventurer. He improves over the campaign because of his longing for her ( meaning he gets stronger the more he misses her) and cannot die because his pact won’t allow it, at least as of yet he still can die ofc. The intention for this character was also for a good resolution, if he died, then yay hopefully he can meet his wife again, and if he lives then as he finds something that he wants to live for, that distracts him from his longing. He would grow weaker. In retrospect it could have been some variation of sorcerer but my brain no think like that XD.
Feats can also give a really good 'twist' for a character to have and its why I love giving them to every class I make (also, why 99% of my characters are humans).
And if/when I DM, I'd love to give atleast one to every player, even at level one.
Especially prodigy as it is so good at helping make a person who's done and/or trained in something, probably since they were teens, seem actually like they've done THIS THING all their lives.
Foe me the 2 most important parts of making a character unique are the backstory and the personality.
The backstory is more of a personal thing, the other players might never learn of it but it gives your character depth. It explains why they do the things they do, it tells the story of who the character was before the game. You can invent whatever you want for a backstory and that is the moment where you can let your mind go Wilde to yell the beginning of a story that will go on with the game.
The second part Is the personality, the quirks, the charisma... That is the part that the other players will see. It is the personification of the backstory, the result of your life before the game. That is where you can make any classes it's owned because you aren't focusing on the classes or race or whatever, you are concentrating on the person the character is. A casual fighter can be both greedy or generous, malicious or helpful, friendly or lonely... this is the moment you define the character for who he is and not for what class or race he is.
The backstory is a moment where you can have fun inventing the story of your character so far and the personality is the result of that backstory and who the character has become so far. These two can make any generic character concept into some ofbthe most unique characters, at least for the one who's making the character. And honestly, the important is that the one making the character feels like it's unique and likes playing the character, no matter what others think.
This is true
For example my Caracter who is a wizard was rolled into a school of magic after being enlisted with the help of his friend (a caracter in the group who left shortly after my caracters introduction) and the support of his upper middle class parents, he had a breakdown considering his girlfriend (Wich I called anomaly) Wich caused him to kinda distrust his emotions, he stil felt them and he wasn't edgy about it, but it takes longer then its supposed to for him to open up a bit,
But he is a wizard true and true so his alignment is lawful neutral and has the scholar backstory, he also likes books for some reason,
He dislikes snakes tho (like scared shitless type dislike)
In my past D&D campaigns, I’ve played as an autumncore/cottagecore schoolteacher Abjuration wizard, a rogue/artificer who is best described as “Scottish Aladdin” (complete with monkey), a bubbly teenage celestial warlock whose diary is her pact tome from her unicorn patron, and more! All of these characters were, at the start, just collections of assorted ideas and funny gimmicks that I assembled into person-shaped forms, which then took on personalities as I started to play each of them and figure out what kind of ridiculous backstory would produce such a conceptually silly person.
I usually think of the class as just a skillset, and why the character has said skillset can be justified in an incredibly vast amount of ways. And that's how you can start to pull yourself away from the cliche stuff, and can even reflavor stuff to make it seem like something else. One of my favorite characters was an eldritch knight fighter who, in game, acted and looked like a ranger. He loved hunting, setting up traps and scouting, but wore heavy armor when he knew a fight was coming up and only had utility or non-save/attack roll spells, which sinergized amazingly with his fighting skillset.
This feels like a sequel to your video about flavor. And I love it!
True! The sequel to the first video I recorded!
I’ve been playing for a while now and my favorite character I’ve played is my current one, a half elf chronomancer with the gambler background who got his first Spellbook by winning (totally fairly, no cheating involved, I swear, pinky promise) it in a game of cards from a mage. Oh his father was also killed by a meteorite one day while they were walking through balders gate. Incredibly fun character that I feel is pretty unique
My personal favorite reflavor is my alchemist artificer, Rosie. Back in the day, Rosie was an Oath of Watchers paladin who aided an amethyst dragon in holding back that which lies beyond. But that was 40 years. Nowadays she runs an inn with her husband, also a former adventurer, her kobold cook, and her children and grandchildren, one of which has decided to go on an adventure of their own. She decides to accompany her grandkid, bringing her old gear and kobold along with her. Her "infusions" are her fishing old gear out of her bag of holding, her "potions" are her feeding some good food that she's cooking.
I made Mark Zuckerberg out of a Warforged (the deception variant from UA) Moon Druid - extra language, yuan-ti.
Assuming his attack form of a giant plastic scorpion when someone rejected his friend request was 10/10.
Lmao that's fantastic.
I made Jaden Smith as a mystic because the shit he says just hurts your head sometimes and I wanted to lean into that.
Veeeeerrrry far down on my list of characters to play but still a fun exercise in character building. 😂
4:14 You forgot the background and sub-races.
...
Technicly, equipment, multiclassing, feats, and choice of features like spells and skills, are mechanical customizations too.
I think you have a little bit of something here, but unfortunately current DnD doesn't give anything. Warhammer, Longsword Flail, Battleaxe, all just a d8 and mechanically are the exact same. (Cusher, piercer, I know. Ick.) I am with you flavoring wise to rebuild them as interesting things (dragonborn paladin that uses a glaive mechanics as a kusarigama) but mechanically we don't get anything different.
This is actually how I make all of my characters. So far I have a sentient bowling ball that is a Warforged open hand monk, Cuthulu's left nut, which is a grung death cleric, a goblin artificer alchemist who is just a magically good cook, a simic hybrid draconic sorcerer that had his failing heart, along with other things, replaced with a magic engine and other mechanical parts, a scourge aasimar blood hunter ghostslayer who has a malfunctioning portal to the Astral plane tied to his soul, making the souls of those who died around him trapped in him, an air genasi arcane archer fighter who uses his connection to the elemental plane of air to guide and empower his arrows, a lizardfolk inquisitive rogue who is just a psycho with a major in psychology, a stout halfling storm herald barbarian who is a both a human cannonball and the cannon, and many more.
This is just fantastic advice, thank you!!
Glad you enjoyed!
I made the Ninja, a rogue subclass for one of my players, basically a monk/echo knight hybrid. He loves it.
That's a great idea!
One of my favorite subversions I did with a character was take a wizard and turn them into a special effects guy for a carnival before he became an adventurer. He was a tattoo artist as a passion, so of course his spell book became his sketch book and his magic crystal was a crystalline tattooing needle.
I love these ideas! I’ve actually used a few without knowing lol.
One of my most favorite characters I ever made was a Dwarf Barbarian (Ander). Now when I was building Ander, I was going for a character, who is super outgoing and extroverted. but super silly (not annoyingly). Meet Ander, the Barbarian who loves public attention, and is literally not afraid of anything. He teases evil, and the party knows Ander always goes first. No. Matter. What. He loves telling people tall tales of the adventures he has been on, but has skill to prove his point. One thing that truly made him unique was the home brew bear hood that he wore that gave him proficiency in Intimidation.
Yeah, I leaned in on the “drive it hard” aspect, and the party loved it.
Whatever your feeling, use that for inspiration!!
Character I'm sitting on is a Spirit Bard with a dash of Goolock because they're not really a musician of much skill, so they made a pact with a being to make them a better musician. Their Tales from Beyond ability is really just playing the pieces he and a now-dead friend would play when they performed together. Toss in pact of the blade and a little bit of DM flavor and boom you have a bard playing violin with ghostly strings and a sword for a bow.
And of course to add to fun flavor town, he summons "shades" (aka a physical manifestation of his imposter syndrome) when he plays who add to his song (extra instruments, voices, etc) and all his spells are reflavored to the shades attacking or doing something.
Woot! First to comment!
And I do love the idea of making alterations to the standard class that people think of.
Flavor is, and will forever be, one of my absolute favorite parts of the game!
I play a SoulKnife rogue in one game and based on his background (spy) and personality traits that I picked in the beginning (for example, "Always calm no matter what the situation"), I ended up roleplaying him as someone with a high amount of emotional IQ. He helps talk the other party members through complicated emotions, is there to provide a cool down hug, and is enough of a smooth talker that he talked a dragon into not wanting to fight him (which backfired in a fun way, in that the dragon banished him for his safety 🤣).
In another campaign I'm playing two characters who switch places with each other (one is in the material world, while the other goes into this void). Without going into all of the details, this not only factored heavily into the plot, but because of choices that was made in game, the DM created an interesting feat that helped play into this (one character is a wizard, the other a paladin). So, the paladin can now cast the wizard's ritual spells, the wizard can use lay on hands, and they have more control on triggering a switch. The roleplaying is fun as well and I'm writing a lot of fun backstory for these two.
Man I love hearing about other peoples characters, it's just always so inspiring! Keep it up!
Agree there, learning about the various wonderful characters that are out there is a great joy.
For me, I look at the idea of a class and then twist it. For instance, I wanted to be a Heroism Paladin with a classic trying to do the right thing, so I was looking for races to pair it with and saw Dhampir and immediately thought to make an unholy Paladin as a mix of dark and light. As a result, there are other things I'm implementing for him, such as a self imposed "thirst" where he has to make a will save in fights to not spam bites and Magic Initiate are both due to the mix of Paladin and Dhampir.
If you are wondering, the idea is that I view the Paladin oaths as a drive that pushes you to fulfill the oath, so mixing it with a desire to feed as a fight or flight mechanism, and it's basically consistent. The Magic Initiate is that he tried to channel holy magic to smite a guy while being turned and it somehow became an Eldritch Blast.
Just made an artificer artillerist for upcoming campaign and decided to watch some roleplay videos to prepare to play her.
She’s from a powerful sorcerer family but didn’t inherit any powers so all spells and cantrips are just her using devices she or her teacher made. Also her main job is running a mechanical toy store and her homunculus is a porcelain bjd fairy doll
My newest character is a dragonic bloodline Thiefling named Hope, who I did simple flavouring: When she casts, you can notice air cools down a little and she starts talking in draconic and eyes starts shining a little.
Interestng things to think about. Thank you!
I've made pc differences by their background stories & trying to have a unique way or reason for gaining the skills or choosing the path that they do. Your ideas give me more options & I appreciate that. :D
Just made a dhampir college of spirits bard, who owns a cursed book that was a family heirloom. When you write in the book about a person who has recently died, it ties a piece of their soul to it. She collects stories of those close to death and composes poems about them, thus creating her Tales From Beyond. She has lived quite awhile since she transformed into a dhampir, and has many stories of woe. I wanted a tragically Shakespearean character, so her backstory is basically Horatio, from "Hamlet," if he had fled the castle after the massacre and became a sad vampire poet. And her spells are going to be various famous quotes from classic literature, but rewritten to sound more shakespearean to reflect her studies of poetry at her bard college.
That's got a loooot of studying and effort behind it and I'm friggin here for it.
Little stuff like spell/ability flavor really makes characters.
I have an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer that I recently made that was formed from the blood of an Eldritch being that had been injured while fighting another Eldritch creature. The character fell through time and space, and crashed down outside of a town in our campaign’s setting. As a newly “born” creature, his base impulses drove him to read into the humanoid creatures’ minds and take their forms as opposed to his natural aberration form. He has a real uncanny valley feel to him as he picks up on people’s emotional states and tries to come across as a regular human, though his origins grant him a form of unnatural aura that makes people either not notice or be easily deceive by him (this is just justification for the really high CHA score.) He has Eldritch Adept to have Mask of Many Faces to change form when needed, though in later levels his true form will be revealed when the abilities from the subclass come fully online
I know there's another video about making a character stand out, but I think what's more important than a character bring unique is a character that's relatable. For example, angry barbarians are relatable because angry and frustration is a base emotion we all deal with, how do you think that would affect them?
I really like what u said
I'm about to start a campaign as a bard who is just an old Halfling lady who lives baking cookies for the party. A large proportion of her spells are manifested as a different kind of cookie. Bless? Cookie. Healing word? Cookie. Fire bolt? Flaming cookie. As long as the party characters are willing to eat grandma's cookies, they can benefit from her magic
My aberrant mind sorcerer is an unconscious body being psychically piloted by the 20 cranium rats in their backpack
I have a Protector Aasimar character, and when he goes into Radiant Soul, he basically gets taken over by some battle instinct and becomes a fighting machine (doesn't talk, doesn't show mercy etc.). It's a bit like rage for a barbarian. When he leaves Radiant Soul, he has various side affects (like nausea vomiting) He's slowly gaining more and more control over it and have less and less side effects.
I play a bard of valor, fighter battle master cross class. He's a veteran of a prior conflict that the party picked up in a tavern telling war stories and singing cadence's to earn coin for a living. He acts as the squad leader directing the party handing out maneuvers and bardic inspiration. The thing is he doesn't know he is a bard. He is just screaming at his party and enemies and things happen, he just accepts that he's a good drill instructor and inspires he's party and demoralizes the enemies. All his spells reflect this as well.
I have a half orc barbarian idea, who comes from a family of fighters and accomplished sword fighters, but he never got good at it, and instead made weapons, but when his estate got attacked, he ended up using weapons, and learned how to hit things really hard with them, and that he was good at it, because he was strong
I have a character concept of a noble guard who I don't have a name for, but usually goes by the nickname 'Watchtower'
Watch is a freakishly tall prince who can't take the throne due to his genetic disability, Gigantism.
He lives in a mansion outside the castle, said mansion being built specially to accommodate himself and his extreme height of about 11-12 feet tall.
As he cannot take the throne because he's way too tall to fit inside the castle, he decided to become a guardsman, and watches over a small town near his mansion.
Due to his longer proportions he had to have his armor specially made for him.
Thanks to his absurdly long limbs he can run very fast and reach much farther than a typical man, but as a downside he has to essentially live as a hermit whenever he leaves his mansion as he cannot fit in any other building, he also needs a lot more food due to his increased mass.
Watch is ambidextrous, but his left lower arm was lost either by getting cut off by a bandit he was chasing, or blown off by someone with magic, after this he had a mechanical prostatic hand built for him that doubles as a concealed weapon.
His mechanical hand can swing back at the wrist where a large blade can shoot out of and be used to slash at enemies, this is his primary weapon.
Watch is usually a cheerful guy and likes to make small talk.
He laughs a lot when not on duty and acts nothing like you'd expect from someone born into royalty.
But when he's serious he can have a bit of a colder and brash tone.
Although he would probably have a little less health due to his spindly body as well as being a bigger target, he can reach very far and be a dangerous threat if you dare try to melee him, and if in relatively open areas it can be very hard to sneak around him when on guard without him noticing.
TL;DR: incredibly tall royal prince who takes the role of a guard because he cannot take the throne because of his gigantism.
I think that I have made some pretty interesting characters. An artificer who has a hexblade metal arm that he made, and an undead druid who's druidic power in their past life stopped them from being manipulated by the woman who brought him back
Half-Orc Grave Cleric with the Haunted One Background. As a child, he was possessed by a Balrog, (I think that's the spelling,) and decimated his village. However, the Church of Ishtar came along, and sealed the Balrog back into the character, and then accepted him into their ranks, giving him a holy symbol of Ishtar, which was made to help keep the Balrog from breaking free again. Him being a Cleric, is basically the one thing that prevents him from turning back into the Balrog.
Made a Dhampir Long Death Monk that was attacked in her home one night and transformed and unknowingly killed and ate her entire family one night. She has no formal monk training instead using her supernatural abilities granted by her affliction to perform her monk abilities and pretty much freestyles in combat. Instead of actual darts to throw she uses knives and forks from her pack that she stashed prior. She is very fun to roleplay especially since most of the time she has know idea how she is doing these fantastical things but also just like attempts to eat everything that isn't friendly. My favorite was when she discovered she could walk on walls with no hands and turn invisible with the shadow touched feat. Also she's a very happy person, hates evil, and loves trusting and saving people
I play a changing wizard that uses illusion magic to act as a pseudo snake oil sales man. I had the idea of making a con man character for a while but didn't think much past that till I thought of how interesting it would be that he conjured fake items, sold them, left the town, then all the items disappeared into puffs of smoke. I first thought of being basic and using a elf or human, caring more about the con man aspect rather than the character as a whole, but soon realized it would be kinda cool if this con man changed his face all the time so no law men could pin him down. My dm and I have also found it cool that we might be able to make a twist where he appears primarily as a human but in either a tense to situation or while he's about to die in combat its revealed he's a changing. After watching this I'm definitely going to need to drop strange hints to really sweeten the reveal and play to the strengths of a shape shifting master of illusions and trickery.
I played a Rouge type character who was a spoiled child and learned her skills from her bodyguards. She would bet them that she could pick a lock in under a minute or steal a wallet without someone knowing etc. She found she had way more fun being a rogue than being a spoiled princess (not literallay).
In one of my dnd groups, we have a barbarian named Roye. He's a shifter, of the BeastHide subrace. His father was a werewolf, a bandit. He was inducted into the church, made into a crusader. Been crusading over half of his life so far. But one little Raccoon boy helped him. A boy named Remus. Remus is a were-raccoon. Remus helped Roye see that lycanthropy isn't always a curse. That you aren't responsible for what your parents did.
I don't play Roye, I play a different character in the game. But, I had to share this.
I have a artificer alchemist that I eventually want to multiclass into sorcerer. Narratively, I’m flavoring it as part of an alchemy experiment gone wrong which caused the magic to fuse with him.
in an icewind dale campaign, i had everyone convinced for the longest time that i was a warlock. I was a human way of the 4 elements monk that took magic ini for warlock to pick up: bonfire so i dont freeze in the ice, the BLAST to get people from range, and HEX so when i do actually go in for the punches they do more.
but you catch one arrow and throw it back at a goblin like 4 months in on a weekly game and the jig is up XD
I'd be curious to see where else you see opportunities for uniqueness. Great vid!
I made a rogue with a special subclass that was made from the dm(it revolves around guns) but she isn't edgy one bit. She is actually raised in a lonely noble home and was taught many things. Even tho she is a rogue, she somewhat like an expressive yet sweet little bun to others; and despite having a gun, she still tries to knock out criminals with her shortsword. Reason for her to have a gun is cause of her backstory and the only time she uses it is when she decided that someone must die and that is really hard to convince herself to do.
My favorite pcs I made were:
a hollow dragonborn warlock who, before the beginning, died and asked bought back to life by a fiend but he had to kill evil doers to reinforce the demon army (this was my first warlock)
A lawful evil warforged paladin who was supposed to be able to catch souls and trap them only to later use them for his magical abilities (I also changed the name of his abilities to fit the theme)
An aasimar made by Sehanine Moonbow who was sent to kill a monster many years prior, after succeeding he decided to stay and became a bard
Unfortunately, none of the three campaigns lasted long and I wasn’t able to properly use either of them
I'm fairly new to dnd (currently on my third character) and i like to go with a theme and some quirks. Mu current character, a satyr kensei monk, is a tailor so his kensei weapon are a spear and darts, so needles and if he get to make other weapons kensei weapons i like the idea of a whip for a thread. So there's the theme.
Monk and i do have a very loose relationship, i see them as martial sorcerers, you can perform magic but you are mostly restricted to do that magic up close.
I have a character that i really want to try, a goliath champion and that might not sound interesting at all and he is.. kinda basic. Below average intelligence and so on, but in return i plan to ask the DM if he can have an excellent memory and make stuff out of clay and such or draw stuff, not to a such degree that he can sell what he make, just that they are somewhat recongnisable, that along with remarkable athlete would probably be an interesting way to help outside of combat. Oh right his quirks! He loves porridge, he's even got profeciency in cooks utensils just to make porridge and stew. And half his fighting style was inspired from his favorite board game, a game where you slide pieces until you hit another piece or the edge of the board, so he charges a lot if possible.
Okay i better stop now, sorry about the lengthy post. I do love to come up with character concepts, but actually playing them is a different story.
I loooove the monk!
As for the second character-I have advice and can use my own Goliath for it.
I have a Goliath barb/fighter who would be very bland had I not leaned more into the culture of his home for his aesthetic/roleplay (that of the household of a Scottish knight).
Pick a particular cultural background you think you could handle and maybe watch a few accent coaching videos before your games and you can really flavor them in just the way they need to just naturally come as unique from the start.
@@ea5yliver Oh i have made some changes since that post for my goliath. U have reflavored him to look like he's a half ogre, in fact his entire initial design was just the half ogre from the monster manual. Added to that i've made him unable to say *I* when refering to himself, so he just says his name. I've also made his vest into a sling and he's big, so big that i've already fired our harengon bard and gnome wizard out of that sling.
In terms on personality he plays the role of the dumb guy, which his speech patern helps to sell, and wants to make people happy as he's been feared during his upbringing.
The party loves him and his tom foolery. To give an example of something that happened:
The party aquired a talking all knowing book, my character, Oro, whispered if the book knew his mothers secret poridge ingrediant. The Gm paused and broke out in laughter followed by another. player.
So yeah he isn't the most serious character, but man if he isn't fun to play!
Thanks for the tips by the way! We play in our native language and i personally find it really tough to do accents in my native tongue.
As a barbarian, I started with a musical instrument. I leaned into that for all it was worth with the bagpipes.
When the rogue needs a distraction, my Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan the Barbarian ripoff starts playing "Scotland the Brave" at 1 in the morning to distract everyone.
When I need the necromancer to stop his work and run headlong into a trap, I play the bagpipes in his cave. It's nearly deafening and he can't study or work in such conditions. I just plug my own ears with bees wax before hand so I don't deafen myself.
Being a professional distraction is a lot of fun.
I think my best instance of doing something like this, I have a mermaid druid, but she's not part of an druidic circle or in tune with nature or anything. Instead, her power comes from an eldritch beign she found deep in the abyss of the ocean, and when she asked for the chance to walk on land, she was given the ability to turn into animals, along with magic. Basically, she's made a Great Old One pact, but for druid mechanics instead of warlock ones
My Ancestral Guardian Barb's rage is a spiritual conduit state where he lets the combined skill and experience of hundreds of past generations guide him. Thats why hes tougher, hits harder and has more strength. Hes no longer just one guy.
Is a rogue who gets their abilities from the memories of the deceased? That sounds like Desmond from assassin's creed! kind of cool
About your example of flavouring rage:
I have a back up character of an normally not that strong aasimar who only because strong when he uses his celestial power. His strength "pops up" like a mini transformation but his body doesn't mirror his strength.
The problem is that when he fully enters the state ("rage") he easily kills things around him and his mind wasn't really ready for that. The higher power he got his powers from observer that and in order to protect his psyche a little bit they make him zone out when he enters his empowered state. It always triggers when he is in danger or needs a power to fight/protect. But he always blacks out when it happens and only sees what he has done I'm the aftermath. One time he blackout out for so long that he didn't know where he was. He joined an adventure group because he needed money to survive and was somewhere in nowhere. He knew that somehow he is being protect and can fight even so he isn't able to remember how. He sees the blood and bodies afterwards which is why he knew he could take on the dangours task of being an adventure even so it scared him.
His character arc would be to be able to handle hurting others and using his strength so he doesn't need to zone out during his "rage".
The person who he is when he is raging is the exact same just without emotion towards his actions. His motivation and character is mainly in tact so it's not a personality split either.
If I'm allowed to play him one day I hope he'll archive mastering his "rage" state and I want a difference between how he usually fights in his state and how he fights when he mastered it to signify his growth.
At least that's my idea for that character.
I once played a rogue, sadly not for long, who was an orphan. But instead of being miserable or despressing, she instead did her best to help the others and their caretaker, who she grew to view as her mother. Though her mother got sick, and eventually stopped being able to do alot.
So my character stumbled upon information that some merchants were going to arrive during a festival. That they had medicine that coukd save her mother. She used the festival as cover to get in and reach the medicine. She was almost caught, but another thief stepped in and saved her. They split the medicines and my character started learning under him.
Eventually he was caught and the town guards caught on to their ruse and went after her. She accidentally ended up killing a guard while escaping the town.
Once safe, she kept seeing the phantom of the guard. That's how she realized what she is. So she kept traveling, using the phantoms of others to solve crimes and help others, though she was still wanted.
But honestly, I'm thinking about reusing that character. Cause I loved the way the way I played the class and abilities into her backstory and the tone of the character.
One of my tricks is to take a SIMPLE concept, add some DEEP lore, then, a TWIST.
Example:
Simple: Half-Orc Barbarian
Deep Lore: He was originally a slave as a child, adopted by a wandering hedge knight and was taken from castle to castle, city to city.
Twist: He's an Aristocratic Pugilist, with a Robotic Arm that controls Magnetism.
Thus, Maurauk the Magician was created! (And yes, he's still a Barbarian, hence "Magician" instead of Wizard/Sorcerer, etc.
Your monk just solved my blood-bender Dhampir concept dilemma. Thank you!
Such great advice!
My Open Hand Monk is a Nobleman who doesn't believe in using a closed fist in fights so he slaps his opponents while shouting things in old timey slang like "Have at you".
I also have two concepts for the Barbarian. One is a Mighty Morphing Power Ranger, where the Rage ability is re-flavored into a Morphing Sequence. The other is a Magical Girl where the Rage is a Bright and Seizure inducing transformation.
I had a character who grew up on the streets, dead parents, survived by stealing, all that. His class? Monk. All the growing up as an angry, edgy kid on the streets? That was decades ago. He was taken in by a monastic order, offered a place to stay in return for some help around the temple. That turned into uears and years of study and training, letting go of the past (for the most part) and moving forward in a healthy mindset that allows him to help others.
I play a barbarian that is severely emotionally repressed and can only rage when he drinks and is always embarrassed when he does
Mugi. Half-Centaur Gnome Artificer (think Labrador sized centaur) with horseshoes of Elvenkind and a decently high Persuasion skill. No stealth skill. Just walks into the enemy stronghold like it's natural and convinces enemies he is a figment of their imagination. Doesn't always work, but hilarious when it does.
If you're having trouble with this, Check out Dimension 20's Unsleeping City or other things for inspiration how to take purely the mechanics to inform your character
I made a rogue who was adopted into a very wealthy family, she gambled and bought stuff, but she got bored, feeling like nothing she had was earned. So she went out and started to steal things she wanted. She felt thrill she hadn't before, and so kept doing it. She taught herself how to fight, this comes to that, she's a swashbuckler rogue.
My celestial warlock was an archaeologicist before stumbling upon his patron sentient Heavy Flail. After discovering that they were compatible, escaped the ruins they were trapped in and over 20 epic levels fell in love together and to end the BBEG created an army of warlocks from a town of people who believed in their benevolence.
"Subverting expectations while making those subverted expectations make sense."
Finally someone explains when subverting expectations makes for a good character. Also i'm glad it's been said that you can make a character unique, and memoriable while not being mechanically contrarian. Or your only character trait being "Wizard with negative intelligence" or some other literal joke that's just as played out as the edgelord rogue or lawful stupid pally.
One of my favorite players to play alongside to date is a Monk/Barbarian multiclass. mechanically, he's not very optimal at all because he's not at the sweet spot yet. but he's hands down the MVP of character development and entertainment because he's the loveable goof with a heart of gold that stands as the party shield and he and my wizard have amazing chemistry in and out of battle.
and he didn't have to dump strength or dex to do it.
my esso made a celestial warlock that was originally sent off by her family to be trained as a cleric. turns out, she was just really bad at all of that and nearly burnt the school/temple down and was kicked out entirely unceremoniously. they were upset by this, bc they both wanted to be a cleric and also not wanting to disappoint her family, but didn't really have much else to do. her lucky break came when she fed a wandering demigod, disguised as a dog, a chocolate bar. the demigod was like, "ok, this kid's stupid, but has heart." and started granting her boons, so she thinks she's a cleric, bc she literally has no idea how it should actually work, anyway.
Another note: there’s very little mechanical consequences to changing which mental stat your abilities or spells are based on; play a wisdom wizard who’s just a druid who learned find familiar, necromancy, and elemental damage spells instead of learning support spells or how to wildshape, play an eldritch knight who casts with wisdom because, similarly to how a druid views nature, they’re just so in tune with martial combat they learn how to draw magic from their weapons. This is really fun, and it’s greatly expands the number of possible character concepts. I’d probably make that dragon monk charisma based and make that paladin wisdom based.
"Let's create an unique monk. [...] So, basically like Iron Fist." I'm not even judging, because that's always what happens to me when I get full creative freedom, with too little guidelines to shape my creativity.
The problem with D&D 5E is that the mechanics DON'T provide any help for unique characters. You get one customization option between level 1 to 3, and that's it. Of course, the books around those rules encourage the players to flavor those cookie-cutter classes to Hell and back... but it's exhausting in term of creative energy for some people (like me).
I keep one 5E campaign at a time because I do love D&D, but the rest is Pathfinder so I get a system where I can take a customization option at nearly every level, notably with 2E being basically as modular as possible. Sure I'm a bit restricted by what's available, but I also get inspired by powers I wouldn't have thought about on my own.
So in short, I prefer systems with not as much creative freedom as D&D 5e, but whose available options can make me think outside the box. Without those, I swear my own ideas are just as derivative as "basically like Iron Fist".
Drawing my potential characters really helps me get a feel for a personality because I have to determine body language, expression, what they choose to wear, what they carry on them, how well do they keep themselves, etc. This lets me understand who they would be as an individual, so even if they’re a standard race and class, as long as they’ve got a personality and mannerisms that FEEL real, you’ve got something unique.
I wish I could draw that fast. I'm playing catch-up years later still. 💀
My new character is druid..... who's entire backstorh is that he wanted to be an engineer/artificer but made a deal with a fey creature to plant a forest to connect the two plains..... i like playing classes with interesting twists. Got a bee cleric as a backup and yes, his god is his queen.
Playing Pathfinder: Arcanist with Whitemage and Eldrich Font archtypes. More spell slots and can convert arcane slots into cure spells. Take Dimensional Slide Arcanist Exploit(ability). Ranged healing? Nope, short range teleport healing! Also is a snake person named Cade (Caduceus is the common IRL symbol of healing you see at hospitals, you know... the one with the snakes). ALSO has a god complex and believes that he knows whether or not it is time for someone to die (conveniently the it is never the party's time).
So I started with "half-elf Sun Soul monk" as a base concept and ended up coming up with "scion of an eladrin noble family who wields her house's Moonblade. It has somehow been cursed with amnesia, is cagey and untrusting because of its lack of memories, and won't attune to her as a result (making it mechanically just a normal longsword with a personality until she builds more trust with it, which is to say 'until the DM feels like handing the party +1 weapons'). Also she's a Sun Soul monk homebrewed to use Cha instead of Wis, relying on the Dedicated Weapon optional feature to actually wield the Moonblade in question as a monk weapon and the Weapon Master feat to have proficiency with it in the first place."
You may note the final character here isn't even a half-elf.
Your description of the phantom rogue reminds me a lot of Bayek from Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
Something I like to do is give my character a goal and a roadblock.
-The goal of my tabaxi fighter is to be an expert swordsman. But he’s blind and uses his advantage in hearing and smell to navigate. Take samurai so you can fight with no disadvantage for a turn 3 times a day and give them the alert feat to not be hit at advantage. Get a longsword and two hand it.
(I used a samurai point to fight regularly and used action surge to attack 4 times at 1D10+3 damage I dealt 45 damage.) it felt good, sadly that’s actually the only attack I ever did because I couldn’t go anymore after the first session with the character. Dang.
Idea for way of the open hand. His AC is high because he has trained to just take the blows of weapons and dodge if needed. Plays as a barbarian the goes around slapping, stunning and ground slamming people like a big brute and running like an Olympic sprinter.
I have a rogue in my game I was pretty skeptical of when he first joined. At the time the party had two already and his backstory was a pretty standard with being an orphan, house fire, stealing anything and everything he can.
But the more we played it became apparent he was less than the typical edgy rogue. Like he was morbid at times making orphan jokes which we always teased him about in game, but also he was pretty fun to play with and brought a lot of humor to the party. One of the only other lightheaded ones was our druid who also had a childhood house fire. Maybe house fires make you different people in my universe? But anyways he was really more than the typical rogue and the whole stealing thing was just because he was a kleptomaniac so that made sense. Best of all he was the first person to ask if he can use a gun, which he played pretty well and sparingly.
Another thing I like to do to add interest is borrowing from other classes my current character is a bard painter that had some rouge tendencies like being a clever their that would paint a mage hand to pick pocket or paint illusions to make people to make people see things that were already long stolen
I think the character I found most unique was the path of wildmagic barb that was a former wizard apprentice who messed up a transfiguration ritual and it leads to the magic flooding his body to make it stronger while the excess floods out to creating wildmagic effects. He was quite Intelligent but had a very low wis and well trained in arcana and other means of int skills first barb that didn't have athletics for me.
I’m currently creating a scientist who studies the essence of magic and magical radiation. She’s an Aasimar wildfire druid. Her wildfire spirit is a sun and I used the scourge aasimar so she goes “nuclear”. Basically a Neutron/Fire Storm/Captain Marvel like build.
You could probably make a character who's basically Bat Man (don't forget the grappling hook) that'd be neat
My dual wielding 4e barbarian was adopted and trained as a fighter in shield and axe combat. But dual wielding was in his blood so when he was raging he used his shield as an improvised weapon. After combat he felt ashamed about that and felt like a disgrace for his adopted family by not keeping his calm and using his shield inproperly.
That rogue idea is straight up Shaman King, works well for the rogue
Even things as simple as thinking about how your character interacts with magic can give a feeling of uniqueness and depth. Druids that are asking local spirits for aid feel very different than druids who manipulate nature through deep understanding. A wizard that is totally cut off from the feeling of magic, but is nevertheless so well-versed in magical theory and well-practiced in the necessary motions that they can cast spells anyway feels very different from a prodigy that can faintly detect the vibrations of the weave with their sense of touch and can pick just the right moment to rework its pattern into the desired effect.
As a GM, I often prompt players to think about this by asking "when your character 'detects' magic, how do they experience that?" Exploring what sense responds, how the information is organized, the subjective quality of different magic are all opportunities to uniquely define a spellcaster's relationship to their class features.
Ooooh, I'm sure someone's already said this but I really love that paladin idea...
You can take the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian's ghosts and turn them into spectral tentacles. Describe how they latch onto your enemies as they try hit your companions, describe a tentacle sprouting from the ground and slapping an enemy attacking your companions.
I am getting ready to play a Vistani Who returns to Barovia her child died of starvation before she buried her child an old man came into town with no place to stay so she let him stay with her she is now a Damphir headed towards Strahds castle to beg him to make sure hes people have food. I am super stoked to play her. My last 2 characters have been obnoxiously happy. One a goblin who accidently spawned a few one shots. And a halfling paladin, I have never played Pali.. so i chose to homebrew my oath.. I am paladin of "ill try any thing once.. well almost any thing" she is Vanelope from wreck it Ralph mixed with the hyperactivity of Hammy from over the hedge.
I played a conjugation wizard and maxed out dexterity first, I played him kind of like a rouge, I basically took eldritch adept for devils sight and then I would conjure poison to cover my dagger
Then cast darkness and go in and deal a ton of damage