LOTTE
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After a good six years, our Pathfinder campaign has finally come to an end. This means, of course, that it’s time for me to come up with a character for our new campaign. Now I know there’s people who have tons of ideas for characters that they want to play, but I personally found myself drawing a blank.
To help myself – and you! – I compiled a list of ways to come up with a new D&D character. Let’s get to it!
1. Place an existing character in a fantasy setting
One very easy trick to coming up with fun characters to play is to think of characters that already exist. There’s really only so many different types of “unique” characters humanity can come up with, so why not take some inspiration from some characters from popular fiction? You could even just choose a celebrity to “reference”. The key here is to choose someone for whom you can quickly guess how they would respond to a given situation.
Some examples:
- Fantasy Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, going to school for magic to get back a guy, but finding out she’s actually really good at it
- Fantasy Bones from Star Trek, a cleric who’s really just annoyed to be here all of the time, but his friends wanted to go on an adventure so here he is, I guess
2. Mixing fantasy with real life jobs or archetypes
Another way to think of fun characters can be to try to place “real world” people in a fantasy/sci fi setting. I don’t know about you but there’s nothing I love more than the overlap of fantasy and the mundane. You know: like that scene from Shrek where the guards complain that they don’t have dental insurance?
Some examples:
- A yoga girl monk
- A Warlock influencer whose patron is a brand (This is actually an idea I really wanted to use for our campaign, except we unfortunately play Pathfinder, where Warlocks seem to be a fully different thing from what they are in D&D).
3. Go for an unusual race/class combination
There’s some classic race/class combinations, but why not switch it up? If you choose a strange combination, you’re instantly prompted to discover just why this character would have chosen this class.
Some examples:
- Why would a gnome have decided to become a barbarian? Maybe they’re just packing a lot of rage in their itty-bitty body, but perhaps they chose this path to protect their village. Even a village of gnomes needs someone to stand guard, right? Or maybe they grew up reading books about barbarian adventurers and decided to set out and prove that they, too, can learn to rage.
- A dwarven Druid may have spent their whole life living in caves with their family. Not being particularly strong or smart, they didn’t think they were much use to others. When they eventually step out into the outside world, they realise that their special talent was never going to serve them well underground: this dwarf has a special connection with nature. They decide to set out to explore their gift, leaving their familiar caves and rocks behind to venture out into the woods.
4. Go for the classics
There’s really nothing wrong with going for a “classic” D&D character. Those of us who’ve grown up with the Lord of the Rings may recognise finally getting to indulge our childhood desire of being a fancy high elf princess or a halfling rogue in our first D&D game. Besides: everything has already been done before anyway, so you’re never going to be truly original.
Anyone who’s watched an actual play D&D campaign series will likely have worried about being as “good” a player as the cast of Critical Role, or as funny as the cast of Dimension 20. It can be easy to forget that just like you shouldn’t compare yourself to professional artists or Olympic figure skaters (I genuinely did think I was gonna be a phenomenal skater right away – turns out skating’s really hard actually, lol), you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to professional improvisers playing D&D.
So don’t think you need to be hilarious or even original, especially if you consider the fact that no one will watch you play except your friends.
Some examples:
- A Fancy magical lady elf
- A Brooding rogue
- Literally just Merry and/or Pippin from the Lord of the Rings
I hope this helps you with creating characters for your future campaigns! Meanwhile I’ll be back here, brainstorming…
Wish me luck!