I had someone who hit me with a big "epic monster hunter, hundreds of dragons" and I was looking at the proficiencies. No survival or animal handling or anything that screamed folk hero. Just the fisherman background... But they did have deception.. Last sentence in teh backstory "They're killed over 1000 town-ending monsters.. at least, that's what they claim." Need more characters like that.
Its pretty easy to counter that type of player. Just make it canon that the player spread this information to the team. And only prove or disprove the stories based on situations that happen within the game.
@@helmenhjelmen1955 I don’t even think this type of player needs to be “countered” just talk about it above table and make it clear how the player wants their character to be portrayed and then let the game handle the rest, I think this is an awesome character idea
Tumble out of cabin And stumble over the ship's dog Pour myself a cup of grog And yawn and stretch and try to come to life Jump on the deck And the cannons starts firin' Down in the hold, the bard is still lyrin' Makes me long for a simple life of 9-5.
One of my first major campaign with my current dnd group. I don't even think it was session 0 proper, it was just chatting before the campaign started. "Hey, you're playing a Half Elf. This guy is playing a Half Elf. Do you two want to be brothers?" We both said sure. And my god, did we bounce of each other super well and the dynamic came almost naturally, and it really did help draw me into the story even more. Alistair will always have his bear trap and the largest wheel of cheese.
I played a half elf, and my friend a half-orc. We were half siblings, and it was so much fun. my dad was cruel to him, so we ran off to go adventure where my stuck up elf dad didn't have power over us. We ended up forming a Merry Men style bandit group, doing our part to take down the evil king of the neighboring kingdom.
One thing I always recommend for every player, new and old, is to write a "Character Pitch" to your DM. Before you pick a race, before you pick a class, come up with a character concept is only a few sentences long and pitch it to your DM. As an example, here is one I pitched to a DM for my last campaign: A marine that is presumed dead after a mission went horribly wrong. He works as an adventurer to raise money for the families of his fellow marines that didn’t survive that fateful mission. To him, scars on the front of his body are a symbol of pride as it shows he did not allow those behind him to come to harm This simple pitch explores a lot of things (Most significant event in their life, their purpose for going on an adventure, and a rough idea of their Ideals and Flaws). This also gives lots of room for you flesh out a backstory with the DM so that the character fits within the world.
Yep, I was going to suggest just making a character from scratch that fit my DMs homebrew world for my first character, but I mentioned that I had had an idea for an interesting character. My DM asked me to essentially "Character Pitch" it to him. He is a young monk who was exiled from the temple he grew up in because he delusionally started believing he was a god, or some type of deity. Basically a character who with every success gets more delusional, and with every defeat has to face his delusions. He liked the idea and added a monastery into his already built world. He even suggested making him an actual Aasimar, which I loved and suggested he wouldn't actually believe he was an Aasimar, since if he acknowledges he is an Aasimar that's all he can be, and he thinks he's even bigger. A good DM can really make the best of your Character Pitch is the jist of this story I guess.
Good approach. That's partially pitch that helped me build an interesting PC once. Pitch 1: Magical Girl. GM: That won't fly in this setting. Pitch 2: what if the rainbows were hallucinations? Veteran with delusions problems. GM: I can work with that.
I tend to make, somewhat descriptive but also pretty vague backstories, that can throw in a location name swap or two, or, some extra planar fuckery that my character is borderline isekai but, came from a similar but just different enough realm or area that he's considered an Outsider. Be it, a Wizard from several continents away, or a Barbarian from the Feywilds, or a Cleric who travelled the high seas with his pirate crew before they got got and he got away.
I made a Kobold Forge Cleric of Moradin and my original idea was for her to find lost forges and techniques. What ended up happening was she became a Twice-Baroned (held two Baronies) Noble with her own estate where she set up a forge that was powered by a Fire Elemental. In her epilogue she married a Dragonborn Noble and lived a happy life so that was fun.
I have someone in my group who can't help but make the "antagonistic character". It didn't matter how much prep we did in session 0, we even tried stating "Your characters all need to get along, the conflict will be with NPCs, environment etc" for some people it's just part of their personality
My favorite character I've ever played was 99% fleshed out at the table. I decided to make a character who was "just some guy", both parents still alive, wholesome relationship with them, didn't get into trouble in his youth, etc. Literally just a random dude. I did this specifically to make it easier to figure it out at the table, and crucially I also told the DM to do whatever he wanted with my character story wise (the other players had a pretty good idea of what they wanted for their characters) and the DM didn't just take that and run with it, he SPRINTED. He ended up filling that "fish out of water" trope by being the only non-magical member of the party and that was a ton of fun. His backstory ended up being WILD because of my decision to let the DM do whatever and it was so much fun to play. I miss good old Reginald Shoemaker, that campaign has been on hiatus for like 3 years
Playing a human, noble bard in OotA. Didn’t make sense for the setting until my DM and I bounced ideas around about how to fit me in and came to the idea that I didn’t want anyone to know of my nobility. He’s now loosely based on Bean from Disenchantment. Bored of riches, and ran away to play music and sell poetry. One of the other PCs is a hired agent from my family to keep me safe. (My PC doesn’t know). He’s a Dragonborn samurai (played by my son). It’s a great interaction for us, especially since only us 2 and the DM know our true backstory, and I’m able to play it off.
OotA is Out of the Abyss right? How can there be a character that doesn't make sense for that setting, as long as you aren't a shut-in noble who never leaves his castle, there's plenty of opportunities to get kidnapped. My understanding of the setting was that everyone was kidnapped either in the underdark or by a surface raiding party.
One thing to help shape character's back story is to use the background as the means to contain the story. The background tends to be hand-waved through as just the means to get a few more skills but it is a great way to grow a character without going overboard. You have a base path that can be widened where it possibly could but still restrictive enough to keep story in a nice package. Backgrounds need to be used more than just as more skills.
Could you guys do a video on a Campaign Sales Pitch? How to quickly and efficiently get the points and ideas of a campaign into words and to the players so that even before the session 0, they can start ruminating on ideas that help everyone?
I had a group that had one of our pcs do a short campaign between acts of a larger campaign, giving the other DM a break. For the short campaign it was a Sea based campaign and I played a Water Genasi Druid sailor who's family ran a struggling shipping business. After we finished the big campaign we continued the story of our short campaign but three years later where my character, because of the fame and fortune from his famous adventure, had taken over the family business and grown it to be come moderately successful. It is fun to have the small campaign arc be only part of his fuller character arc. Some of the returning players chose to make new characters for this next campaign while others kept their old characters, so it was still a different dynamic.
I tend to make "local" characters. They live / work locally within the campaign setting, sometimes even within the cluster of villages or city the DM starts or has the action in. My last one was really affected by what triggered the campaign. It was the conquering of the city and the takeover of his place of work. He had a personal stake in the campaign events (and he had buttons the DM could push). Since I was playing with my wife, our characters were acquaintances who were forced by circumstance (had to flee the city) to stay together. While we were both academics, we've both done some "field work" and had some experience in the rough (campaign started at level 3). The other characters were members of the opposing force / resistance, friends of my character's boss, and another refugee of circumstance. They gelled VERY well and while they had different motivations, the direction was pointed about the same. Another campaign I played in the characters were acquainted with at least one other character and sometimes have heard of each other. When there was a call for adventurers for hire to investigate something, they grouped as one due to these mutual acquaintance as they preferred to work with each other as opposed to complete strangers. They were all frequent travelers that criss crossed the area of the campaign.
Witch bolt is an absolute blast in BG3. It upcasts very well by adding d12's. Can be destructive wrathed, can be twincasted, and lightning vulnerability is very easy to give. It can also be crit on it.
13:02 every time I've tried to get that conversation going everyone clams up 😭 The only thing I've ever gotten ANYONE to agree on before the game was I and another pc both having devil's sight for us to see through my character's darkness and we came up with a narrative reason we both had it (that being doing the same back-alley deal with some low-end devils. We also came up with some defective parts about it that we used at the start).
Shame, interweaving backstories is a lot of fun and helps explain why the party is a party. As a DM, I MUCH prefer a group of characters who all already know each other. A session 0 tool I and many others use is "No one is a stranger. You don't have to be from the same orphanage or anything, be creative, but please come up with a solid reason you know at least ONE of the other characters here."
One of my players is becoming difficult to DM for because the guy wrote a backstory that he just doesn't engage with. It's like he was trying to skip the cutscenes and just fight stuff. I tried to talk to him about it and get more of an idea of what his character wants, why they're adventuring, etc. and his reasoning came down to (direct quote), "He wants to get stronger and beat the final boss." And...there is no 'final boss' at this point. They've been going on episodic adventures; reoccurring NPCs, etc. In fact I told them from the get go that the plan was this format because the source material I'm using was built to support a 'new adventure every week' kind of framework; the group travels looking for clues about new strange happenings and helps solve them. His character never plays the same twice and when I asked him about it he said that he plays his character based on how he feels that day, so all his characters are going to be bipolar. I basically HAVE to railroad this guy because he just never wants to follow plot hooks or take actions in character. Example: this last session started with one of the players being kidnapped. This was part of a plan where they put tracking magic on them, got them kidnapped, and he was going to follow the magic trail to find the culprit of this multiple kidnapping problem. The tracking magic was his idea. The session kicks off and I describe the trail and the bread crumbs and he does EVERYTHING he can to try to do anything other than that. He wanted to go shopping or find completely unrelated NPCs. Then when he finds the culprit he suddenly decides his character is going to lick the guy's face and bite his finger off; he has, at no point prior, ever played this character like some psychopath. They aren't playing an evil campaign, no one took his finger and it's revenge; there was no rhyme or reason for it. I didn't allow it, straight up. I think he's bored because they haven't had a combat encounter in several sessions but the only reason this is taking so damn long to get anywhere is because he's refusing to engage with anything that will drive events forward. Super frustrating.
If a player is only there for combat and you haven't had a combat in several sessions, then that is a failure as a DM. Whatever your plan for the campaign is, you do have to at least try to give the players what they want.
The worst character creation mistakes made? Holding off creating a spellcaster waiting for your 2nd level spell guide! Your cantrip and 1st level spell guides were so well received.…any plans for the 2nd level guide in the pipeline? we know it’s a big investment of your time, however your insights are so valuable to the community. 👏🏻
I'm actually starting a Drakkenheim campaign later today and I've rewritten my backstory a few times after talking with my DM to see what fits better. I'm playing an Arcane Hand Monk named Jason Hawke and he is a survivor of the meteor strike. He was on the edge of the city when the meteor hit and he was raised by his grandfather from his dad's side, (and as I write this comment my DM had to cancel on today) and was trained by a monk by him. His little brother was in the Amethyst Academy, his dad (who left the family) is a Paladin of the Silver Flame and his grandfather is a former Paladin that left the order. I left all other details open for the DM to play with a determine for himself.
A great 'heroic' background, especially for a lower level start (1-5 or so) is to be a local hero, not by saving the realm from Tiamat, but just exceeding there expectations of their abilities. Maybe the one who bravely fought off a half dozen kobolds single handed and saved a family's cow! Or maybe saving the mayor of the hamlet from an assassin or a thief (maybe just by being in the right place at the right time). This could be a great start for an adventurer. Maybe the character is a reluctant hero who doesn't want that fame (which is why they leave).
As a DM I ask my players to do a max of 4 sentences for back story. Answering 2 questions. Why they left their cozy past life to adventure? What they hope to achieve by adventuring? Everything else is either going to be answered by their traits / lineage or in game as they figure out their character.
Nice. I love how succinct it is. No reams of notes to remember in order to stay cannon. Personally, I think backstory is just a constraint. It's way easier to think "what would a chaotic good character do in this scenario" than it is to factor in the thought processes and potential ramifications of a decision made by disgraced former general Abdominus Maximus who is suffering from PTSD and type 2 diabetes while also being cursed by a level 8 demon with a lazy eye and gastroenteritis to the miserable fate of veganism, irritable bowel syndrome and the clap (at least, that's what he tells us) while falling from the back of an elder red dragon into a disused swimming pool, dislocating his little finger and spraining an eyebrow leaving him with a permanently quizzical facial expression and unrivalled tea drinking etiquette. Seriously, What is that guy going to have for breakfast?
@@bryand7667 Mmm, true enough I guess. For instance, the PTSD from being cursed with veganism, IBS and gonorrhoea all at the same time as falling from the back of a dragon into a body of water and being permanently disfigured may effect in game choices to the point that only that character would react in that way. Or maybe they aren't reacting at all and it's the facial disfigurement that makes it look as though they are interested? Deep stuff.
@@mattrickard3716 not sure if you are taking a piss here or not... But ill bite. So funnily enough i made a character that is a version of what you are describing. He fell into a bog and got covered in shit and now has a fear of filth. It absolutely affected his in game choices in a way that alignment and backstory didnt account for. He let the other pcs down because he chickened out of a situation. It added some flavour and shit for him to overcome.
The first game I ever played in myself and one of the other players talked with each other and the DM about connecting our characters. I was playing a Kenku, Arcane Trickster and he was playing a Half-orc, Trickery Cleric. My Character: Jackal. other PC: Keth. Keth's late wife was a Kenku and was Jackal's aunt. When Jackal was a kid, he and his parents robbed a house that Keth was staying in. after being caught in the act, the organization that Keth worked for at the time realized the family connection and could no longer trust Keth's wife, so they had her killed. Years later, when Jackal and Keth ended up in the same party they didn't recognize each other until one night when they were on watch together talking about their pasts. They then decided to fully help each other in their mutual goals (Until Jackal died)
Still can’t wait to do me and my friend’s sorcerer/cleric(maybe Paladin) combo. He’s an aristocrat Dragonborn sorcerer and I’m a variant human butler(cleric or Paladin). We’ve already determined my drink tray is going to double as my shield and a lot of my spells are going to be butler flavored I thought about Paladin because it gives me good offense when I need it but unsure cause it’s definitely less of a support than your average cleric. The flavor is there either way just not sure what kind of mechanics we want yet cause the idea of a slightly cowardly sorcerer buffing his jacked butler with haste before the butler unleashes several divine smites is hilarious. However the party may also benefit from another full caster like a life domain or peace domain butler dishing spells out in the form of hand shaken drinks.
Ooh, that's a tough decision to make for sure. Two biggest factors I can see are: what is the starting level (for multiclass potential), and what is the total party comp (what does the group need most, Support, DPS, or Tank.)
I find that stacked parties (I’m the healer, you are the fighter, they are the thief, etc.) tend to have less dynamics. Almost like an assembly line campaign. Great advice, guys!
6:30 I've done this twice, and once it worked out, once it didn't. I made one character that really fit the setting, but didn't fit the playstyle at all, it was an all in skill monkey with absurd social skills, and while it worked great like 5% of the time, the campaign was so combat heavy that other players ran laps around me. I filled a niche that wasn't actually needed. Another character I made ended up as the "Fish out of water/New life in new horizons" type where she was a pirate in a very much not pirate setting, but it translated to having an unorthodox outlook and method of problem solving for the area that ended up really being what the team needed, offering teamwork and coordination (Ships don't run themselves) while also having the rough and tumble that comes with being a pirate, acting as bodyguard for the squishier team while suggesting the tougher decisions. What made her work was her willingness to change and a desire to leave the pirate lifestyle behind, put away the dread and terror, pick up mercy. It reflected in her swapping to monk to self reflect and develop.
That's why I have so many characters whose backstory ends with "and then they fell into the malfunctioning portal and found themselves in an unfamiliar realm" or "and then they travelled for over a year to escape their home which had become a hellscape". Setting a player's backstory in a far off realm/kingdom gives multiple benefits, first being that you can still incorporate those background elements that might not fit with the campaign setting. Also this gives you the opportunity to play the "fish out of water" character who is unfamiliar with the norms and customs of the campaign land. Finally this gives an opening to the DM to create enemies who might have followed you from your old life.
Yeaaaaah, my wife, best friend, and I had fully fleshed out backstories from childhood to the present, along with how our individual characters all met. It 100% clashed with the DM’s plan. We ended up not being able to start a campaign with that DM for entirely unrelated reasons, but the point stands, our elaborate stories weren’t going to fit for a beginner’s campaign. Well, not just noob campaigns, but that’s specifically what we’re looking for, so that’s what I wrote.
Lesson to be learned: always do session 0 so the DM can explain the campaign and help players make characters that fit the campaign, and the players can make characters that fit as a group.
One character I had was an insane Hexblood Conman who was a Witch Doctor (cleric). One of his big traits is that he was selfish (always went for gold). Sure, he stayed the same generally speaking in the campaign, but he did start to care about his party members more. Eventually, before a big fight, he gave his Aegis Amulet (basically wards off death once) to the Fighter, as the fighter had a family to return to, unlike my character. That was probably the first unselfish thing he had done, honestly. Then, my character died during this fight… I’d say the character arc ended before its time (he had unresolved issues with his hag “mother”), but that’s what makes a death more tragic.
Bro did ONE thing for another person and was immediately destroyed for it, ain't that just how it goes. But if the fighter lived in to make the world a better place for at least a few... What your guy did happened and it mattered.
@ Ok, the fighter died… Forgot to use the amulet… 💀 Then, the party (my new character is an Orc Chef, who was once in a tribe, and appreciates strength, though that’s a story for later…) went to Hell, and found my old character (Avon) there, unconscious (he was in Hell because technically, one of his family members is a demon? Hag relations get complicated…). We got him back to the mortal realm, his soul within the body of his imp familiar. Sufficed to say, Avon was pissed when he found out the fighter died… But yeah, it had been months before we got him back to this small extent, may be longer before he’s actually returned… But yeah, thanks for the comment! And yeah, that fighter did live for a time to save a few more people.
Devil's Advocate: All the players have been given the prophecy that they are the chosen one and come together to realize they are only the chosen ones when they are together. They must now work together to fulfill their respective prophecies.
Contrarian: your a prophesied child from a village in the middle of nowhere by a fake seer who doesn't know Jack and you and your whole village believe it but it's 100% false
6:57 Honestly, a great character idea is to have that overly detailed background, but then say that's what your character's older sibling did and your character became an adventurer because they were tired of their parents constantly comparing you to them.
I haven’t watched your videos in a while, been too busy, but when I clicked on your video, I had a rush of nostalga to when I first started playing. Your channel was probably my favorite when I first started really learning the rules and I binged all of your videos Heard y’all got an Emmy Award for Dragons of Drakkenhiem campaign, congrats!
I avoid writing a rich backstory for my character until at least a few sessions in. One big reason is to see if the character will survive long enough to even warrant a backstory, and the other big reason is to get a feel for the campaign. Even then, I try to limit my backstories to a few paragraphs at most, that way I don’t overload the GM or fellow players with a novel of information.
My mistake for my most recent campaign was creating two characters (so at least one would fit the party comp) and writing backstories for both. I love both characters, but at least I won't be too sad if I die now.
I once got my entire group to play siblings, all because my buddy was having trouble coming up with a reason why his gnome was a sorcerer, so we gave him six older brothers
I have played in a Pathfinder campaign where we started at level 3. We had 2 session 0s, since it took a lot of time to come up with all the backstory and the story hooks the GM was satisfied with. We were playing on a custom campaign setting made by the GM. I was playing a "Knight" (Cavalier class in Pathfinder which it is similar to a fighter but mainly focused on mounted combat). The adventures so far were mainly land based (both urban and countryside) and there were many outdoor encounters which worked well with mounted combat. He was the 4th son of a baronet, who while being noble born was not in line to be the heir and was sent to the kings guard as a squire to serve a Viscount. The kings guard was the GMs idea, which gave him an inside man to keep the party "railroaded" on the adventure - this was discussed at the session 0 and everyone was ok with it. My backstory and story hooks summarized (remember we started at level 3): - my character had a tense relation with his family, due to an embarrassing incident between the first born and him (quest hook for later - we set him up as a Foil for my character) - there was an arranged marriage with a lady from a noble family - but due to circumstance and also in defiance to his fathers wishes the marriage never took place and was canceled. This damaged both families honor that angered the patriarchs (quest hook for later - both families wants some sort of revenge) - since he has the Viscounts support the scorned noble families could not retaliate yet (quest hook for later - there was a duel already) - the character had a small house near Kingsport - one of the major cities in the setting - where he was posted as a knight - he was allowed to marry a "common" girl - this was a reward for his earlier services (normally nobles should only marry other nobles in the setting), Note: we have created this NPC because of 2 reasons - first there are some flirts in the group who did irritated the GM in the previous game trying to roleplay flirting and bonding in game and I wanted to shut this down early by making my character married and the wife will be a quest hook for later - his wife is a merfolk (in pathfinder merfolk looks more like a mermaid from older D&D editions, not that blue ugly thing that is the 5e) - relations between humans and merfolk are tense and almost hostile in the setting and most merfolk use magic to disguise their features, they also like to cast the Fins to Feet spell while on land (this is a 3rd level spell that can also be taken as a racial feature. It allows the merfolk to exchange their fins to feet allowing them to walk on land for 1hour/level) - he met the merfolk woman during an escort quest where the Viscount's carriage was attacked by bandits. The bandits were defeated and after interrogating the survivors they exposed the location of their camp. By the order of the Viscount the knights raided the camp and found many slaves in cages set up to be transported and sold abroad. There was a heavily wounded woman, who my character rescued and fell for (this is the merfolk under the effect of the Fins to Feet spell - disguised as a human). - the GM restricted healing magic in the setting (it is not common and healing spells require high cost components), so I have used this as an excuse to set up why my character has a merfolk wife. To cut it short - while tending to her wounds the Fins to Feet spell expired and my character had a choice - give up the merfolk (who is an enemy of the kingdom) or hide her and tend to her wounds. He obviously choose the latter and she has fallen in love with my character. (Or did she? hook for later - she is a merfolk spy and some great drama options could come from this. who will she choose - the merfolk nation or the knight who was helping her and took her in? Sadly we did not get that far yet, so...) - my character has a relatively good reputation in the kings guard and is looked at as a young aspiring knight who has a promising future ahead of him (if he is not killed by his family or the other hostile nobles). To help him, we created 6 other cavalier supporting characters - that can be used by the GM as contacts, NPC companions, hirelings or quest hooks for later. This might look like a lot of background stuff, but please note that the other players came up with lot's of quest hooks and background info as well. Our adventure started by getting the team together and my character arrived with a senior knight from the kings guard - who was giving us the first quest and my job was to accompany the party as well as represent the kingdoms interest on the journey as a knight. I have pledged my lance and sidearm to the leader - a very serious looking pony-tailed redhead woman (at least that is what her character looked like), who was a Magus (a hybrid gish class that uses both magic and sword) - and our adventures began. Basically my character was the NPC that usually comes with the party as a supporting character, but this time it was played by a player - me. At first things were going well but as time progressed by the 5th session there were some issues. As the other people found out more and more about my background, like - the trouble with the two noble families - the arranged marriage stuff (this was especially liked by the girl players for some reason) - we even had a duel when we were passing through the territory of the family whose daughter my character should have been marrying - then the fact that my character was married the other players started to become more and more engaged with this stuff, which hurt the main story and also messed up some of the GMs plans for my quest hooks as well, since they were not yet fully developed and he had to improvise. For example when we returned to Kingsport the other party members wanted to visit my home and meet the wife which was a WTF Really guys? moment for both me and the GM, since it was never planned. The other problem was that I felt the focus was shifting too much on my character, which is ironic since both I and the GM designed this guy as a sort of grey, uninteresting NPC-like character who goes along with the party, helps them, and because of his past causes some problems during the adventure - which the party has to help him deal with. What can I do to shift this back to the background a little. The others are asking me a lot of questions about my character even outside of game. They even got the info that the wife is a merfolk - from looking at my notes and this has increased their interest even more. I thought that my character fit the setting, fit the adventure, had many story hooks and there was no mismatch with the group. What went wrong?
It’s interesting that you mention a Menzoberranzan drow in a setting without Menzoberranzan, because that’s my exact situation with one of my games. The setting is homebrewed, and there was drow, but no Menzo, no Lolth etc.. but after talking about it the DM liked the idea and added it.. but the city was destroyed and my character is one of the few who remember it. We both had a great time coming up with ways to meld both the world and the character. Both of us being open to changing our ideas worked and were having a great time
That's why you should keep a library of hundreds of developed characters you wish to play one day, ranging from an evil duergar cleric who wishes to cleanse the world with fire to a kenku bard who found an mp3 teleported from Earth and communicates only with quotes from Nickelback songs. Live your life that way and no campaign will ever surprise you.
Great advice in this one My favourite character I have played is Lupes a happy go lucky Halfling who became a warlock accidentally just before the campaign started. As he adventures he became more and more obsessed with his patron. Even though at times he would try to rid himself of this, he eventually couldn’t resist his patrons influence and his madness had him make an attempt on the life of a friendly NPC. He was horrified by this and fled the party. He is now in the hands of the DM and I am playing a himbo triton paladin. Was such a fun character, who I didn’t know much about when I started. I’m very excited to see how the dm brings him back into the campaign.
I think my newish player party member made a significant mistake when he made an Eldritch Knight/Barbarian multi-class in our new campaign (started at level 10).
It could be fine depending on how they build as there is a very build. At eldritch knight 7 pick pyrotechnics along the blind fighting style (we do do need 2 lvls in rogue {with maybe a fire resistant race} for a bonus action hide or we could use goblin and a barbarian subclass that gives resistance to fire damage and make sure to set yourself on fire with alchemists fire before combat if there are no other fire sources for your pyrotechnics to target) or you could use this opportunity to homebrew a ⅓ spellcasting barbarian. To give you a headstart for a good idea (i.e. I haven't found any other features I really like for the higher lvl stuff) at lvl 3 your barbarian can cast spells using their hp. 1hp for casting cantrips 2d8 piercing/slashing/bludgeoning damage per spell lvl. Whenever you enter a rage you can cast any of your action based cantrip as part of entering your rage. Whenever you take the attack action you can cast any action based cantrip as a bonus action. (Since they could also just use their action to cast a spell) As for the flavor (I call it the M.A.D rager {Magic Adrenaline Driven rager}), you are a barbarian that has been experimented on (un/voluntarilly decide in the backstory) and the experimenters have implanted a powerfull, but very deadly artifact into your chest. The artifact is what cast and concentrates on the spell, the barbarian is still the same dumb/uncultured incapable of casting spells brute. The artifact requires the damages the barbarian takes that as a part of the experiment gets converted into magical power to power the spells it cast. (Makes you want to give it a reaction spell damage option. Take X amount of damage and they automatically take damage as well. Something like giving them Hellish rebuke and when they take X amount of damage this spell is automatically cast without costing extra hp to cast it.) Let me know if you like it.😊
My favorite character that was really shaped by the world was Kre'al the half-orc druid. My brother was running a campaign for my cousins, their wives and some friends; all of them first time players. He brought me in to help with explaining rules and such. Before I came in, I had ZERO idea of what character I wanted to play, so I talked with my brother about things that had happened. In one of his early encounters that was explicitly to teach the players that Murder-Hobo is not the way, the level 1 party fought and killed a wolverine that had been snarling at them from near a bush. In a hole near the root of that bush were 3 baby wolverines. Instantly, my character was made. "Along the road, you see a large figure trudging towards the town. Cradled in his arms are 3 small furry beings." Hugh, Jack, and Logan eventually became my animal companions, through a Pathfinder druid variant that allows the druid have as many companions as they want, but the total level of them cannot exceed the druid level.
It's ok, we've all been there ^^ I'm pretty sure I've made all of them *multiple times* in my 15 years of gaming xD The important thing is to have fun ^^
I was at one point going to play in a Final Fantasy campaign, where I wanted to make a character that played heavily into the tropes of JRPG party members. I made this character who was from the “Big Evil JRPG Church”, raised to be a living conduit of one of FF’s summon creatures, now on the run to get out of being ritually sacrificed by her corrupt, zealous family. The DM wanted to build the world of the campaign around our backstories, and apparently mine was markedly more grand than what the other players had written for their characters, as whatever we knew about the campaign and its direction seemed to be more heavily hinged on my character and her backstory than the other players’. While at the time I liked feeling important, over time as I realized the game wasn’t going to happen I felt kinda bad about the unintentional main character status I had seemingly written myself into. I will say, I still love the character. I think she’s great, and I’m proud of her as far as character creation goes.
To be fair, that is on the DM for leaning into your backstory the most, giving you that "main character vibe". Honestly, as long as he keeps the other player backstories in play, that would make your backstory more of a focal point than main character. Granted it depends what the DM does with it. If the entire plotline is dealing with the cabal that raised you, then that's definitely MC issues, but if its just one of a few major plotpoints from the campaign, its just a more important subplot imo
I love this advice so much. I recently started a campaign with a character in mind for which I had built a fairly robust backstory. I felt the need to do this because it’s an odd build; a low intelligence (9) wizard that relies on the few spells they get to enhance their physical abilities. As we got closer to the start of the game, another player asked if they could play an elderly character, which we all said sounded great. This led to group deciding to do an Oops, All Old Fucks campaign and I needed to completely rework my backstory to fit the new age of my character. Ultimately, this character turned out so much better than I had originally conceptualized. Now I have an old harengon with a cursed spellbook that limits their memory to 15 days, they take constant notes to stay on top of things, and they’re spellbook contains two sets of spells to prepare depending on the needs for the day with a large amount of rituals to round things out. Depending on what I prepare, he either is in sleuth mode or assassin mode. It’s incredibly fun. For context, our DM runs this campaign like a heroic sitcom. Like Golden Girls meets John Wick.
I find this often happens with new players specifically because they're so excited to play their first game and first character that they go all out with their backstory
0:15 "don't dump your constitution stat" What should I do then for an old monk character where the point is that their health isn't what it used to be? The class relies on a high dexterity stat, so should I dump strength then to get the idea across?
You can always let it come out in the roleplay and flavor of what you do instead of the mechanics. Instead of a situation where the monk backflips off a building and lands unharmed, maybe they just grab a tree branch, and the tree bends enough to take them to the ground. When athletes get older, they have to rely on technique more than brute force or speed, bear that in mind. Alternatively, they could take their action and then immediately complain about their back or joints and throw in an "I'm getting to old for this".
@@trombaritone86 Thanks. Incidentally, I had already thought of that with stuff like their unarmed strikes being things like palm strikes rather than punches to keep from damaging their hands too much, and they frequently complain about "rust" when they use a weapon (the rust being a metaphor for them being older and out-of-practice). The fact remains though that I would need a dump stat, and part of their backstory is that they used to be the leader of a small group, so I don't want them to be dumb or uncharismatic.
@@trombaritone86 Thanks. Yeah; they don't really need strength if they're a monk; do they? They use dexterity + wisdom for their AC and they don't wear armour, and they can use dexterity for armed and unarmed attacks, right?
I once played a Rock Gnome who was an Armorer Artificer who worked for an adventurers guild making armor. I worked with my DM ahead of time to homebrew a unique armor to replace the Guardian and Infiltrator options. We developed the blueprint and determined ahead of time what components would be necessary to complete the armor. The rest of the party were members of the same guild that I had previously done work for. We started the campaign with me seeking out the other party members and hiring them to help me get the component. I agreed to let them split the rest of the loot however they wanted, and I agreed to make them each a unique item (Approved by the DM of course) along the way as well. This worked quite well. Each character had some small tie to each other from previous jobs as part of their backstory. It made for some interesting campfire conversation in our short and long rests. The armor components became the main campaign quest, but going to all the different places to get them lead to some crazy stories that we all laugh at today.
When joining a campaign I ask the DM 1) What campaign world are you using? 2) If the party is recruiting a new member what class would they be trying to recruit (what gaps are they trying to fill)? 3) What classes and sub-classes are not allowed? 4) What level are the characters in this campaign? 5) Is this a good/evil and or urban/outdoor campaign? Then I create a character and backstory that fits. I have my class preferences but sometimes its fun going outside your comfort zone and being something different.
Here's an interesting experience: I'm the Mark of Healing Halfling Shepard Druid of the party (Healer as primary role), a god kills me. My party mates kill the god, then stuff my corpse into the bag of holding to take back to the temple for resurrection. Before they leave the god's lair they loot it, my friend who is playing the Barbarian turns to me and asks me to keep a tally of the loot they took...I'm DEAD! Yes, I'm in the bag of holding, but still dead...lol
In our last campaign I played a Trickster cleric. Nobody played a rogue this time so Hanna, with her smuggler background, slowly developed some of the skills of a rogue. She worshipped a deity that had once been a thief risen to godhood, and was herself quite greedy. Her faith refused to allow her to destroy any treasure (imagine finding The One Ring). She was a halfling and our group liked using her sneakiness a lot. The lizardfolk barbarian took a shine to her, which caused a lot of havoc and made for some wonderful heroics in the game. The DM even awarded her gloves of thievery on a lucky roll of the dice.
Creates a character whose back story says he killed a dragon. Spends half the adventure bragging about it. The party encounters their first dragon of the campaign. PC: "Wait! WTF is that? That's a dragon? It's so huge!!!! WTF did I kill?" Turns out that having never seen a real dragon before the PC fought and killed a Dog sized lizard and thought it was a dragon.
The best case of unintended background I've had happen to me was when both another player and I picked the Bounty Hunter background and the GM pointed it out so we decided to be partners. The characters actually complimented each other very well, he was a Barbarian and I was a Warlock.
I convinced a fairly new DM to let me play an evil character. I promised not to play stupid evil and jeopardize the party by stealing or try to kill party members. My character was a Warlock of the Old One. Basically crazy with PTSD from a war where he saw his friend die. Then had to hide in the pit where his body and may others were tossed. So when his friends severed head started talking to him he responded. His friends skull became his focus and he sought other NPC's that had a screw loose trying to establish a cult. Ironically he was the twisted moral voice that questioned the parties actions when sent out on jobs like find this evil necromancer and bring him to justice. When he was nearly dead I telepathically told him to surrender and I would advocate for him, telling the party to stand down. Most of the party desperately wanted to kill him but I reminded them they told use to bring him to justice, which means bringing him to the authorities. If we kill him after he surrendered then we are no better than him, murderers. Truth was I made a secret deal with him that I would try to get his life spared so I could learn necromancy. Remember my character had a fascination with death. I loved getting the party to debate sparing the life of a mass murderer just so my character could learn some forbidden knowledge.
Just had to comment for the Dino Riders shirt. Favorite show when I was a kid. For my group that formed 4 years ago, I was the only one with experience so I had to roll the spell caster (Druid) and constantly save the group with control spells and healing.
My main mistake was not preparing a Backstory for my character beyond "My character has a tragic event that happened, a mentor helped her to try and get over it(and failed), and suggested that taking the opportunity to adventure was for the best." My DM helped me work out what that tragedy was(twin brother's death that she blamed herself over), the how, where, and why it happened, and the inciting incident for how she wound up with the characters we played as. It gave us a nice side-quest to do and had a nice piece of custom loot designed specifically for it.
For my current campaign, we all created our characters at session zero. Some of us had ideas already, but the DM was able to give us tidbits into the world that helped us all feel deeply ingrained, with connections to the setting and each other.
My DnD group was just having a similar discussion about this yesterday! We were talking about how initial concepts and backstories can shift or change from what they may be originally both in discussions with the group and through initial gameplay, even if you go in with a more loose concept. For instance, my half-fey bladesinger was supposed to be pretty judgemental and know it all (very mean girl, that 8 charisma does her no good) but I realized pretty quickly that it worked better in the group dynamic to shift away from that and make her more naive, awkward and occasionally blunt. But having that flexibility really helps for that change, and also imo makes it easier to allow for character growth if you already have that mindset of change at the beginning.
My dudes I hear you when it comes to the backstory. I tell my characters that a backstory is more about giving their character life, but the story I present, mostly pre fabricated ones, I won’t be making major changes for a backstory. My characters that I make are always open end, so they always easily fit in. Also, awesome shirts!
One thing I do first is I get the setting info from the DM, then I come up with a character concept that I allow the dm to have major input into suggestions for the background facts. I give the rough idea and the dm gives me the equivalency in my ideas in his/her setting. I hash it out together with my DM so it melds with their setting and I can use elements in my backstory that are already included in the overall story, lastly I get a rough poll of the other player characters rolls/behaviour, classes and rough personality types. If you’re married to a character you’ve come up with on your own more often then not I’ve seen it not work in the story or with the other characters in the setting simply because a player is not included or factoring in the other characters and settings. I’d much prefer a new unique character that works incredibly well in the story than something I’ve come up with on my own that ends up not working in the setting or party. It’s also important to factor in how you want to run your character personality, if you wanna play a smarty pants character or low intelligence character it can be problematic if other player characters tried to implement the same character personality you’re going for so always try to get some inclination of what the other players are thinking to give yourself a good chance at putting a unique spin on your character personality!
Well my group just finished up a campaign! I played as a Leonin, Rune Knight Fighter. To get to the point without give you just PARAGRAPHS to read, he is the “classic second child” in his family where he’s proud of his race and its might and is very egotistical on his own current abilities. Gets banished from homeland and told he can’t return without proving to be a good(characteristic) warrior, so he decides that only through constant 1v1 combats can he most swiftly achieve his goal. By the end of the campaign he only slightly favored his race over the others and found greater fulfillment in conquering a foe with the help and team work of his companions. Still greatly enjoys duels just doesn’t feel the need to seek them out “all the time”.
Had a friend where it was his first time playing d&d and didn’t really want to write a backstory, so I helped him with it. He was a rogue who had had a really tragic backstory, but had had his memory wiped so he was working with issues of amnesia. He also made a connection with a character who he had gambled with and owed them money, but didn’t remember. Seemed solid to work with as a DM. He turned up roleplaying this as a character who started PVP fights with PC’s, would never help move the story forward, and eventually killed a beloved NPC in a town right in front of most the town and got beaten to death by the town members. It was a bad first experience for him. All in all, my advice: let your characters write their backstory.
You can have a starting character that has met gods, demon lords, and ancient dragons...if you take the Entertainer background and have them be parts of plays your character was in.
Backed the Kickstarter but having trouble with the Ghostfire website to order other things... hoping to pick up a couple Drakkenheim things while I wait for Monsters of Drakkenheim! Hoping Sebastian Crowe's Guide ends up on D&D beyond someday, too.
4:30 I'm kinda the opposite. First game ever was in Forgotten Realms, and well I've read like 40+ FR novels so I actually know more about the setting the my DM. I didn't really know 5e rules, as I had 3e and 3.5e Rulebooks (fun reading) but never actually played so I made a Paladin of Torm, not knowing Paladins didn't have to be Lawful Good anymore and had an Oath rather than a Deity. But I did the "rolls" for backstory and came up with an idea and my DM was impressed with it. Noble family from Waterdeep but who grew up in Silverymoon and has sworn to Service Torm via the Oath of the Ancients and doesn't' value wealth with an interesting secret.
I often run into the issue where everyone is dead set on what class they want to play, and they don't think about party composition and balance. So I always have to change my character that I wanted to play to ensure the party is balanced. I was the first one during my most recent session 0 to say that I wanted to play a monk, and then everyone else picked front line classes (paladin, fighter, rogue melee build) and I had to change to a warlock. I love playing a warlock but I was really excited about trying something new
A sorceror child of wild magic, unknown as to how their powers existed was shunned from their village and sent into semi captivity at a School for Wizards. Here they made friends as they grew up. After being sent off as an adult to put their natural talents to use, they ended up meeting a supportive group of adventurers. Things went well and relationships were made until coming across a Leyline. At the Leyline the wild magic sorceror lost all control and nearly killed their companions. After that they swore off of magic, and started taking fighter levels to rely on strength of arm over wild power. It was only when they returned to the school and found a summer home they’d frequented burned down and destroyed that the anger superseded the desire to hold back, and the wild magic came back. Started off as a ‘im a wild magic sorceror who’s trying to figure things out’ ended up with a very deep character and a complex relationship with their magic.
Had a guy want to play a dampire, gm ended up making him a dead ringer for his vampire father, the big bad. He loved the problems this created, and at one point convinced an army to turn on itself with an amazing deception roll. Wore a face wrap most of the time.
Y'all need to start posting links (and maybe get some kick-back cash!) for those shirts! Both of you always have awesome shirts, but Monty's shirt is particularly awesome today!
Most epic example of pre-established character relationships I've seen so far in a live play was in EXU: Calamity, where two of the players made the legendary decision to play bitter divorcees who still had to work together and stay civil around their mutual friend group (the other PCs).
Cleric/Paladin protip! If they're dead set on a mythological god not in the pantheon, let them worship them as a Saint or archangel in service to a god that fits. So Example, Thor is a saint to Kord, aphrodite is in service to Sune. Also a fun promotion to give your pious character at high levels.
I had a player hand me a 20 page backstory with her character's entire family, love interest, rival, and nemesis, relating her to the imperial line of a significant nation we were going to visit, and a plotted out climax, plot twists and final boss fight including the ending and resolution. Thing is, I already had my own plans for all of the above, and the campaign ended before we got there.
Hey Dudes! I would LOVE to see you guys make videos for a couple of "rough around the edges" scenarios. Firstly being ship combat! It would also be cool to see a video for chase scenes/tailing! I have noticed over the years that these two situations can be a little odd at the table and oftentimes managed poorly. I believe that the community would greatly appreciate and enjoy a discussion on how you guys approach these scenarios to make them fun and exciting for everyone at the table 🤘🏻
My most recent wizard, does hail from the town of Luskan, yes. We haven't even had confirmation that this campaign takes place on Abeir-Toril, let alone anywhere near the Sword Coast. Which, doesn't actually matter, because after his Master died under mysterious circumstances, my Necromancer stole his stash of scrolls of Plane Shift, and went on a casual stroll through just about every plane he wished to see, from the Abyss and the 9 Hells to the various Elemental Planes, Shadow Plane, the various Celestial Planes, Astral Plane, before, on his last scroll, travelling to *a* Material Plane. He, has no idea if it's even the same Material Plane he initially left from, nor does he care. He is free. And that's all that matters now.
Do you think you guys could do an episode on Mounts, Mounted Combat and the likes. Rules as written seems a bit underdeveloped and would love to hear your thoughts on it. Additionally what are your thoughts on a Fighter Cavalier using a Wildshaped Moon Druid as a mount? What kind of odd rules and regulations would you have to put in? Thanks for your time and consideration. Much love and keep up the good work!
I think these ideas would even be good for the two types of games I have started to run so my players can change up what characters they are running. Both of them are based around Ling campaigns one in Star Wars and one in a fantasy world, both have long term goals but based around short campaigns where they choose the character for that missions they want to play, characters are only removed completely if they die.
I had a very fun character, he was a Triton who had slain a kraken as part of his backstory. What he left out when telling the tale was that he was part of an army sent to kill the beast, he just happened to get a killing blow in, breaking formation and getting his squad killed as a consequence. I played him as a self absorbed and arrogant, thinking he could handle everything himself. As the campaign went on, he learned to rely on teammates and grew beyond his vain need for glory. The story came full circle when he was willing to sacrifice himself to allow the rest of the party to escape a group of rival adventurers.
I love how Monty points out the payoff that comes from being open to allowing your PC to be influenced by the campaign, instead of trying to steer the character to a preconceived end state. For over a year in a playthrough of LMoP, DoIP, and Beyond DoIP, I've been playing a half-drow who wanted to be a cleric or, at least, a bard because of her hero worship of a few particular sisters from the Forgotten Realms. Instead, she's ended up being a hedge mage who must scrounge magical knowledge from the occasional spell scroll she finds or by slaying evil wizards and claiming their spellbooks. Having claimed a Staff of Defense early in the campaign, it changed how I played her and curtailed all hope of successfully pursuing the gish playstyle I imagined for her. Now, instead, she mostly prepares defensive spells, control spells, and a few ranged attack spells, and just stays in the backline swearing in frustration as performs her magic. She's certainly not the heroine she hoped to be when she took up the mantle of an adventurer, but on the rare occasions she does triple digit damage on a turn, she's probably pretty pleased with herself.
i went with a Ranger (later multi classed into bard {get yer head outa the gutter}) basic backstory was he part of a roving band of warriors protecting the roads in and around the sword hills. his parents are dead, killed by (a yet to be named Orc warlarod). hes a bit of a loaner but knows when to work with others. but is reserved at first. ive enjoyed playing him and seeing his growth.
I very much agree, backstory is vague so that it can be adjusted to the setting, but gives an idea for who the character is. Also, if you're me you have 10 characters that are very different and you can pick one that fits the setting and party best when joining a campaign.
I have a player who offered no backstory. But like 6 or 7 sessions in, his character started looking for members of the thieves guild that he used to be a part of…thing is, that was news to me…and the homebrewed world didn’t even have a thieves guild! I ended up making one and we decided it would be a side quest for him to get back in… And we haven’t mentioned it again in a year.
My group's last long-term D&D campaign was in the Birthright setting, and we were all supposed to play people of importance in the royal court. I was tossing up between "crazy desert witch" and "scheming princess" as my character concept, and my friend wanted to play a pious and noble prince. We decided that my crazy desert witch HAD been a scheming princess, and had at one point tried to kill his prince character in order to rise in the order of succession. Her involvement was never confirmed, and she subsequently had a spiritual awakening and fled into the desert, forswearing the inheritance she'd been prepared to kill for. One of the other player characters was sent to track down rumours of her whereabout a decade later (when the campaign started) and came back to court with this sun-baked feral lunatic. Only the ruler and the other PCs knew who she was, she refused to publicly confirm her identity. She'd long ago run out of patience for politics and didn't contest her brother being confirmed as heir. During his reign she supported him by using wildshape to spy on his enemies and conjured entire herds of goats in the offices of his more troublesome viziers. Playing a character who was rekindling relationships after so long with people who had known her as a very different person was really fun, often touching, and frequently hilarious.
Something that can cause a mismatch that isn't always the players' fault is when the DM presents either a specific campaign vision and then changes it, or presents too vague/open a remit for creation. An example I can easily think of is my first proper campaign as a player (rather than a DM) where I ended up creating a hexblade with a storied past for the level 12 homebrew campaign we were going to be in. Then the DM kept bringing the starting level back down and I had to keep reconsidering my backstory in light of this, and eventually (once I was too married to the concept to play something else) the campaign ended up being Hoard of the Dragon Queen and we were starting at level 1. All the work on the character's backstory (especially mapping out their homeland, family tree, motivations and relevant NPCs) was essentially thrown out the window, and without the context the character looked like a kinda tropey one-dimensional edgelord who didn't have as much reason to be where he was. I eventually enjoyed playing that character, but it took time to be seen as the charismatic nobleman with a knack for finding something to love in each of the other party members, and not the emo hexblade who just wanted vengeance - and that was largely down to the DM sacrificing any attempt to integrate the characters more into the world before we played.
I played in an epic with that warrior/hype man pair! Still stands out as one of the most memorable public games I was part of. I was the one playing the dragonborn with the bagpipes he blew his fire breath through.
That "Dino Riders" shirt is most definitely not a mistake. Im currently running a Fighter / Articifer. Fighter was a Prerequisite. The only part that I was interested in was the Articifer part and playing more of an ambiguous support player to branch out from the usual PC's I have portrayed in the past. It's working out. I did come to the table with 3 other characters but probably would've passed on the campaign altogether. Had there been any pushback on Character 1. Session Zero is the most important part of a campaign, but I don't know if I would deliberate with other players about my player. And it's not something that I encourage (or ban) at my table whenever I am in the other Chair. Not knowing your party members roles and stuff adds a tremendous amount of realism to the equation to discover in game each others traits. I have also been known to pepper in higher CR Levels in areas where large crowds are gathered. B/c the story is not about the party , it's about the world, and then the PC's become the focal point. Start a fight with a randomly rolled up arch mage, and you're simply going to be in for it.
I feel like there's a story behind that smile and laugh when mentioning thinking that Witchbolt is a good spell. At first glance the description sounds good, so it is understandable. As for the topic of fully fleshed out backstories for new characters, that was always something that really struck me with Baldur's Gate 3. The backstories would be beyond ridiculous if a player brought them to the table for their level 1 characters. Having a minor misadventure or two in the backstory is good though.
My first character ever was a Dragonborn barbarian with a +3 to charisma and a 14 as AC. He found a noble purpose towards the end of the campaign and multi classed into a Paladin, then eventually left the campaign to become a guardian of dragons in a tower. I finished the last 6 months of the campaign (at level 17) with a new character!
I backed the kickstarter just in time today! New mosters and especially new lairs are really exciting. I've been running a few of the Flee, Mortals lairs and they've been a blast. I have no doubt these will be great too
The character I played that was able to fully come to life was a Dwarf Fighter in 3rd ed. My friend was playing a Wood Elf Druid. My Dwarf's dump stat was Charisma but I didn't play him as disgusting or disheveled oaf. He was just always very blunt and honest which led to some incredibly hilarious situations that created fun in game tension, especially as my friend's elf was a representative of the Druids trying to build alliances in the surrounding kingdoms. My Dwarf offended a Queen by pointing out that compared to the majority of her citizens she was rather obese, insulted a hag due to seeing through her glamour when no one else made the save, they all thought I was just being cruel, not realizing I was just seeing the truth. Also unintentionally instigated several brawls with mercenaries or military of the kingdoms but after the fights made fast friends once the humble Druid explained his gruff friend's inability to tell a lie even if it is the polite thing to do.
One thing I should have added, for brand new players, don't pick what class you are going to play, let the dice decide. Roll the stats in order, and play what they tell you fits those stats. If they are truly awful, roll again, but no switching. Then, only pick frm the basic classes and races, in 5e, players handbook only, page 45 for classes. It is the best way to learn the game, Go Basic. I ran a one shot for experienced players, using this method and they enjoyed it so much, it became a campaign.
My character from a dnd campaign that ended a few months ago in tier 4 The rest of the group had ended up in prison so I had to come up with a character that was in a mine in chult as a forced laborer. I ended up with Finnan Tealeaf. A human anthropologist in love with halfling culture. A friendly scholar that had been talked into adventuring. Chult being chult everything had gone wrong for the meek scholar. When the group meet him in prison he was feared in prison as being brutal and crazy. He was a Devil warlock, but instead of a devil he worked for Cegilune, goddess of night hags. As a matter of fact he was struggling with himself all the time. Shifting between his meek, kind and scared persona and a cruel vindictive side. As a matter of fact I was allowed to use the transformation rules from Grim Hollow. As part of his deal with the hag he was turning into a Yugoloth. He was actively selling deals to NPCs the characters liked behind their backs but also helped rebuild a temple to Tyr as part of the group. Was a lot of fun. Later on in the campaign our characters met one of the baras. Semi divine servants of Ubtao and my character managed to break free from his pact with the hag and instead pledged fealty to ubtao. He turned way less crazy, and overcame his cowardice. He changed from becoming a demon into becoming an elemental. Turned much more serious and into a objectively better person. Later on It became a running gag that they missed the old fun Finnan. 😂
One of the best character backstories I ever did as a player (and it was TOTALLY derivative!) but I always thought was great because it could be ported to almost any campaign... but alas the DM at the time did absolutely nothing with it. Sheridan, a swashbuckler and a bit of a dandy. He had run away from his mother (Hyacinth, a social climber who had her eye on some day having a title.) and father (Richard, a long suffering, mid-level bureaucrat). He had two aunts Daisy and Rose who took care of his ageing and infirm grandfather who was the duke of a small backwater province renowned for it's pork production. A third aunt, Violet, had married well and lived in a small castle but would have nothing to do with the rest of the family... unless she needed some of Hyacinth's old clothes for her husband. Sheridan lived in abject terror of receiving an invitation to a candle lit dinner at his mother's home.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
I had someone who hit me with a big "epic monster hunter, hundreds of dragons" and I was looking at the proficiencies. No survival or animal handling or anything that screamed folk hero. Just the fisherman background... But they did have deception.. Last sentence in teh backstory "They're killed over 1000 town-ending monsters.. at least, that's what they claim."
Need more characters like that.
That's actually so funny XD
Captain Usopp
Gildroy Lockhart will be my next DnD character… thanks for this
Its pretty easy to counter that type of player. Just make it canon that the player spread this information to the team. And only prove or disprove the stories based on situations that happen within the game.
@@helmenhjelmen1955 I don’t even think this type of player needs to be “countered” just talk about it above table and make it clear how the player wants their character to be portrayed and then let the game handle the rest, I think this is an awesome character idea
I better not see my "Dolly Parton as a pirate" gnome warrior on this list.
Only if I can play a Tiefling Warlock named Jolene.
@@RLKmedic0315 OK, but you'd better pull your weight Working 9 to 5.
Tumble out of cabin
And stumble over the ship's dog
Pour myself a cup of grog
And yawn and stretch and try to come to life
Jump on the deck
And the cannons starts firin'
Down in the hold, the bard is still lyrin'
Makes me long for a simple life of 9-5.
@@Nymaz I would "super like" this if I could.
Looting nine to fiveeee!
One of my first major campaign with my current dnd group. I don't even think it was session 0 proper, it was just chatting before the campaign started. "Hey, you're playing a Half Elf. This guy is playing a Half Elf. Do you two want to be brothers?" We both said sure. And my god, did we bounce of each other super well and the dynamic came almost naturally, and it really did help draw me into the story even more. Alistair will always have his bear trap and the largest wheel of cheese.
I played a half elf, and my friend a half-orc. We were half siblings, and it was so much fun. my dad was cruel to him, so we ran off to go adventure where my stuck up elf dad didn't have power over us. We ended up forming a Merry Men style bandit group, doing our part to take down the evil king of the neighboring kingdom.
One thing I always recommend for every player, new and old, is to write a "Character Pitch" to your DM. Before you pick a race, before you pick a class, come up with a character concept is only a few sentences long and pitch it to your DM. As an example, here is one I pitched to a DM for my last campaign:
A marine that is presumed dead after a mission went horribly wrong. He works as an adventurer to raise money for the families of his fellow marines that didn’t survive that fateful mission. To him, scars on the front of his body are a symbol of pride as it shows he did not allow those behind him to come to harm
This simple pitch explores a lot of things (Most significant event in their life, their purpose for going on an adventure, and a rough idea of their Ideals and Flaws). This also gives lots of room for you flesh out a backstory with the DM so that the character fits within the world.
Yep, I was going to suggest just making a character from scratch that fit my DMs homebrew world for my first character, but I mentioned that I had had an idea for an interesting character.
My DM asked me to essentially "Character Pitch" it to him. He is a young monk who was exiled from the temple he grew up in because he delusionally started believing he was a god, or some type of deity. Basically a character who with every success gets more delusional, and with every defeat has to face his delusions.
He liked the idea and added a monastery into his already built world. He even suggested making him an actual Aasimar, which I loved and suggested he wouldn't actually believe he was an Aasimar, since if he acknowledges he is an Aasimar that's all he can be, and he thinks he's even bigger.
A good DM can really make the best of your Character Pitch is the jist of this story I guess.
This is a cool approach. Thanks
Good approach. That's partially pitch that helped me build an interesting PC once. Pitch 1: Magical Girl. GM: That won't fly in this setting. Pitch 2: what if the rainbows were hallucinations? Veteran with delusions problems. GM: I can work with that.
I tend to make, somewhat descriptive but also pretty vague backstories, that can throw in a location name swap or two, or, some extra planar fuckery that my character is borderline isekai but, came from a similar but just different enough realm or area that he's considered an Outsider. Be it, a Wizard from several continents away, or a Barbarian from the Feywilds, or a Cleric who travelled the high seas with his pirate crew before they got got and he got away.
I made a Kobold Forge Cleric of Moradin and my original idea was for her to find lost forges and techniques. What ended up happening was she became a Twice-Baroned (held two Baronies) Noble with her own estate where she set up a forge that was powered by a Fire Elemental. In her epilogue she married a Dragonborn Noble and lived a happy life so that was fun.
I have someone in my group who can't help but make the "antagonistic character". It didn't matter how much prep we did in session 0, we even tried stating "Your characters all need to get along, the conflict will be with NPCs, environment etc" for some people it's just part of their personality
My favorite character I've ever played was 99% fleshed out at the table. I decided to make a character who was "just some guy", both parents still alive, wholesome relationship with them, didn't get into trouble in his youth, etc. Literally just a random dude. I did this specifically to make it easier to figure it out at the table, and crucially I also told the DM to do whatever he wanted with my character story wise (the other players had a pretty good idea of what they wanted for their characters) and the DM didn't just take that and run with it, he SPRINTED. He ended up filling that "fish out of water" trope by being the only non-magical member of the party and that was a ton of fun. His backstory ended up being WILD because of my decision to let the DM do whatever and it was so much fun to play. I miss good old Reginald Shoemaker, that campaign has been on hiatus for like 3 years
Playing a human, noble bard in OotA. Didn’t make sense for the setting until my DM and I bounced ideas around about how to fit me in and came to the idea that I didn’t want anyone to know of my nobility. He’s now loosely based on Bean from Disenchantment. Bored of riches, and ran away to play music and sell poetry. One of the other PCs is a hired agent from my family to keep me safe. (My PC doesn’t know). He’s a Dragonborn samurai (played by my son). It’s a great interaction for us, especially since only us 2 and the DM know our true backstory, and I’m able to play it off.
OotA is Out of the Abyss right? How can there be a character that doesn't make sense for that setting, as long as you aren't a shut-in noble who never leaves his castle, there's plenty of opportunities to get kidnapped. My understanding of the setting was that everyone was kidnapped either in the underdark or by a surface raiding party.
One thing to help shape character's back story is to use the background as the means to contain the story. The background tends to be hand-waved through as just the means to get a few more skills but it is a great way to grow a character without going overboard. You have a base path that can be widened where it possibly could but still restrictive enough to keep story in a nice package. Backgrounds need to be used more than just as more skills.
Could you guys do a video on a Campaign Sales Pitch? How to quickly and efficiently get the points and ideas of a campaign into words and to the players so that even before the session 0, they can start ruminating on ideas that help everyone?
I had a group that had one of our pcs do a short campaign between acts of a larger campaign, giving the other DM a break. For the short campaign it was a Sea based campaign and I played a Water Genasi Druid sailor who's family ran a struggling shipping business.
After we finished the big campaign we continued the story of our short campaign but three years later where my character, because of the fame and fortune from his famous adventure, had taken over the family business and grown it to be come moderately successful. It is fun to have the small campaign arc be only part of his fuller character arc. Some of the returning players chose to make new characters for this next campaign while others kept their old characters, so it was still a different dynamic.
I tend to make "local" characters. They live / work locally within the campaign setting, sometimes even within the cluster of villages or city the DM starts or has the action in. My last one was really affected by what triggered the campaign. It was the conquering of the city and the takeover of his place of work. He had a personal stake in the campaign events (and he had buttons the DM could push).
Since I was playing with my wife, our characters were acquaintances who were forced by circumstance (had to flee the city) to stay together. While we were both academics, we've both done some "field work" and had some experience in the rough (campaign started at level 3). The other characters were members of the opposing force / resistance, friends of my character's boss, and another refugee of circumstance. They gelled VERY well and while they had different motivations, the direction was pointed about the same.
Another campaign I played in the characters were acquainted with at least one other character and sometimes have heard of each other. When there was a call for adventurers for hire to investigate something, they grouped as one due to these mutual acquaintance as they preferred to work with each other as opposed to complete strangers. They were all frequent travelers that criss crossed the area of the campaign.
Witch bolt is an absolute blast in BG3. It upcasts very well by adding d12's. Can be destructive wrathed, can be twincasted, and lightning vulnerability is very easy to give. It can also be crit on it.
13:02 every time I've tried to get that conversation going everyone clams up 😭
The only thing I've ever gotten ANYONE to agree on before the game was I and another pc both having devil's sight for us to see through my character's darkness and we came up with a narrative reason we both had it (that being doing the same back-alley deal with some low-end devils. We also came up with some defective parts about it that we used at the start).
Shame, interweaving backstories is a lot of fun and helps explain why the party is a party.
As a DM, I MUCH prefer a group of characters who all already know each other. A session 0 tool I and many others use is "No one is a stranger. You don't have to be from the same orphanage or anything, be creative, but please come up with a solid reason you know at least ONE of the other characters here."
One of my players is becoming difficult to DM for because the guy wrote a backstory that he just doesn't engage with. It's like he was trying to skip the cutscenes and just fight stuff.
I tried to talk to him about it and get more of an idea of what his character wants, why they're adventuring, etc. and his reasoning came down to (direct quote), "He wants to get stronger and beat the final boss." And...there is no 'final boss' at this point. They've been going on episodic adventures; reoccurring NPCs, etc. In fact I told them from the get go that the plan was this format because the source material I'm using was built to support a 'new adventure every week' kind of framework; the group travels looking for clues about new strange happenings and helps solve them.
His character never plays the same twice and when I asked him about it he said that he plays his character based on how he feels that day, so all his characters are going to be bipolar.
I basically HAVE to railroad this guy because he just never wants to follow plot hooks or take actions in character. Example: this last session started with one of the players being kidnapped. This was part of a plan where they put tracking magic on them, got them kidnapped, and he was going to follow the magic trail to find the culprit of this multiple kidnapping problem.
The tracking magic was his idea. The session kicks off and I describe the trail and the bread crumbs and he does EVERYTHING he can to try to do anything other than that. He wanted to go shopping or find completely unrelated NPCs.
Then when he finds the culprit he suddenly decides his character is going to lick the guy's face and bite his finger off; he has, at no point prior, ever played this character like some psychopath. They aren't playing an evil campaign, no one took his finger and it's revenge; there was no rhyme or reason for it. I didn't allow it, straight up.
I think he's bored because they haven't had a combat encounter in several sessions but the only reason this is taking so damn long to get anywhere is because he's refusing to engage with anything that will drive events forward.
Super frustrating.
I wouldn't even play with someone like that. That sounds abysmal. Kick ASAP if you want a stranger's opinion.
Frustration is never good. There's no reason you should have to put up with that.
That requires at minimum a frank conversation with said player honestly...
Man, if you've already talked to him and he hasn't changed, that's probably a kick
If a player is only there for combat and you haven't had a combat in several sessions, then that is a failure as a DM. Whatever your plan for the campaign is, you do have to at least try to give the players what they want.
The worst character creation mistakes made? Holding off creating a spellcaster waiting for your 2nd level spell guide!
Your cantrip and 1st level spell guides were so well received.…any plans for the 2nd level guide in the pipeline? we know it’s a big investment of your time, however your insights are so valuable to the community. 👏🏻
Im pretty sure in 1 of them they said they were gonna rank all of thye spells
I'm actually starting a Drakkenheim campaign later today and I've rewritten my backstory a few times after talking with my DM to see what fits better. I'm playing an Arcane Hand Monk named Jason Hawke and he is a survivor of the meteor strike. He was on the edge of the city when the meteor hit and he was raised by his grandfather from his dad's side, (and as I write this comment my DM had to cancel on today) and was trained by a monk by him. His little brother was in the Amethyst Academy, his dad (who left the family) is a Paladin of the Silver Flame and his grandfather is a former Paladin that left the order. I left all other details open for the DM to play with a determine for himself.
A great 'heroic' background, especially for a lower level start (1-5 or so) is to be a local hero, not by saving the realm from Tiamat, but just exceeding there expectations of their abilities. Maybe the one who bravely fought off a half dozen kobolds single handed and saved a family's cow! Or maybe saving the mayor of the hamlet from an assassin or a thief (maybe just by being in the right place at the right time). This could be a great start for an adventurer. Maybe the character is a reluctant hero who doesn't want that fame (which is why they leave).
I love seeing d&d content that isn't just tier lists, it always seems much more helpful
how about a tier list of mistakes
As a DM I ask my players to do a max of 4 sentences for back story. Answering 2 questions. Why they left their cozy past life to adventure? What they hope to achieve by adventuring? Everything else is either going to be answered by their traits / lineage or in game as they figure out their character.
Nice. I love how succinct it is. No reams of notes to remember in order to stay cannon. Personally, I think backstory is just a constraint. It's way easier to think "what would a chaotic good character do in this scenario" than it is to factor in the thought processes and potential ramifications of a decision made by disgraced former general Abdominus Maximus who is suffering from PTSD and type 2 diabetes while also being cursed by a level 8 demon with a lazy eye and gastroenteritis to the miserable fate of veganism, irritable bowel syndrome and the clap (at least, that's what he tells us) while falling from the back of an elder red dragon into a disused swimming pool, dislocating his little finger and spraining an eyebrow leaving him with a permanently quizzical facial expression and unrivalled tea drinking etiquette. Seriously, What is that guy going to have for breakfast?
But some players (like me) need to craft an elaborate backstory to understand the character.
@@bryand7667 Mmm, true enough I guess. For instance, the PTSD from being cursed with veganism, IBS and gonorrhoea all at the same time as falling from the back of a dragon into a body of water and being permanently disfigured may effect in game choices to the point that only that character would react in that way. Or maybe they aren't reacting at all and it's the facial disfigurement that makes it look as though they are interested? Deep stuff.
@@mattrickard3716 not sure if you are taking a piss here or not... But ill bite. So funnily enough i made a character that is a version of what you are describing. He fell into a bog and got covered in shit and now has a fear of filth. It absolutely affected his in game choices in a way that alignment and backstory didnt account for. He let the other pcs down because he chickened out of a situation. It added some flavour and shit for him to overcome.
The first game I ever played in myself and one of the other players talked with each other and the DM about connecting our characters. I was playing a Kenku, Arcane Trickster and he was playing a Half-orc, Trickery Cleric.
My Character: Jackal.
other PC: Keth.
Keth's late wife was a Kenku and was Jackal's aunt. When Jackal was a kid, he and his parents robbed a house that Keth was staying in. after being caught in the act, the organization that Keth worked for at the time realized the family connection and could no longer trust Keth's wife, so they had her killed.
Years later, when Jackal and Keth ended up in the same party they didn't recognize each other until one night when they were on watch together talking about their pasts. They then decided to fully help each other in their mutual goals (Until Jackal died)
Still can’t wait to do me and my friend’s sorcerer/cleric(maybe Paladin) combo. He’s an aristocrat Dragonborn sorcerer and I’m a variant human butler(cleric or Paladin). We’ve already determined my drink tray is going to double as my shield and a lot of my spells are going to be butler flavored I thought about Paladin because it gives me good offense when I need it but unsure cause it’s definitely less of a support than your average cleric. The flavor is there either way just not sure what kind of mechanics we want yet cause the idea of a slightly cowardly sorcerer buffing his jacked butler with haste before the butler unleashes several divine smites is hilarious. However the party may also benefit from another full caster like a life domain or peace domain butler dishing spells out in the form of hand shaken drinks.
Ooh, that's a tough decision to make for sure.
Two biggest factors I can see are: what is the starting level (for multiclass potential), and what is the total party comp (what does the group need most, Support, DPS, or Tank.)
I made a Goliath barbarian named Take. She wasn’t married.
She was a big Miss Take.
I find that stacked parties (I’m the healer, you are the fighter, they are the thief, etc.) tend to have less dynamics. Almost like an assembly line campaign. Great advice, guys!
6:30 I've done this twice, and once it worked out, once it didn't.
I made one character that really fit the setting, but didn't fit the playstyle at all, it was an all in skill monkey with absurd social skills, and while it worked great like 5% of the time, the campaign was so combat heavy that other players ran laps around me. I filled a niche that wasn't actually needed.
Another character I made ended up as the "Fish out of water/New life in new horizons" type where she was a pirate in a very much not pirate setting, but it translated to having an unorthodox outlook and method of problem solving for the area that ended up really being what the team needed, offering teamwork and coordination (Ships don't run themselves) while also having the rough and tumble that comes with being a pirate, acting as bodyguard for the squishier team while suggesting the tougher decisions.
What made her work was her willingness to change and a desire to leave the pirate lifestyle behind, put away the dread and terror, pick up mercy. It reflected in her swapping to monk to self reflect and develop.
That's why I have so many characters whose backstory ends with "and then they fell into the malfunctioning portal and found themselves in an unfamiliar realm" or "and then they travelled for over a year to escape their home which had become a hellscape".
Setting a player's backstory in a far off realm/kingdom gives multiple benefits, first being that you can still incorporate those background elements that might not fit with the campaign setting. Also this gives you the opportunity to play the "fish out of water" character who is unfamiliar with the norms and customs of the campaign land. Finally this gives an opening to the DM to create enemies who might have followed you from your old life.
Yeaaaaah, my wife, best friend, and I had fully fleshed out backstories from childhood to the present, along with how our individual characters all met.
It 100% clashed with the DM’s plan.
We ended up not being able to start a campaign with that DM for entirely unrelated reasons, but the point stands, our elaborate stories weren’t going to fit for a beginner’s campaign. Well, not just noob campaigns, but that’s specifically what we’re looking for, so that’s what I wrote.
Lesson to be learned: always do session 0 so the DM can explain the campaign and help players make characters that fit the campaign, and the players can make characters that fit as a group.
@Mastikator Also WAIT UNTIL SESSION 0 to finish building your character. Especially given that Session 0 is when homebrew rules are introduced.
One character I had was an insane Hexblood Conman who was a Witch Doctor (cleric). One of his big traits is that he was selfish (always went for gold).
Sure, he stayed the same generally speaking in the campaign, but he did start to care about his party members more.
Eventually, before a big fight, he gave his Aegis Amulet (basically wards off death once) to the Fighter, as the fighter had a family to return to, unlike my character. That was probably the first unselfish thing he had done, honestly.
Then, my character died during this fight… I’d say the character arc ended before its time (he had unresolved issues with his hag “mother”), but that’s what makes a death more tragic.
Bro did ONE thing for another person and was immediately destroyed for it, ain't that just how it goes.
But if the fighter lived in to make the world a better place for at least a few...
What your guy did happened and it mattered.
@ Ok, the fighter died… Forgot to use the amulet… 💀
Then, the party (my new character is an Orc Chef, who was once in a tribe, and appreciates strength, though that’s a story for later…) went to Hell, and found my old character (Avon) there, unconscious (he was in Hell because technically, one of his family members is a demon? Hag relations get complicated…). We got him back to the mortal realm, his soul within the body of his imp familiar. Sufficed to say, Avon was pissed when he found out the fighter died… But yeah, it had been months before we got him back to this small extent, may be longer before he’s actually returned…
But yeah, thanks for the comment! And yeah, that fighter did live for a time to save a few more people.
@@crazy36069
How did the fighter get an imp familiar? Just cool DM?
@@kjj26k No, that’d be Avon’s familiar.
@@crazy36069
Oh, right. That is what the words you typed say. :P
Devil's Advocate: All the players have been given the prophecy that they are the chosen one and come together to realize they are only the chosen ones when they are together. They must now work together to fulfill their respective prophecies.
Contrarian: your a prophesied child from a village in the middle of nowhere by a fake seer who doesn't know Jack and you and your whole village believe it but it's 100% false
6:57 Honestly, a great character idea is to have that overly detailed background, but then say that's what your character's older sibling did and your character became an adventurer because they were tired of their parents constantly comparing you to them.
Congrats on the "Fully" funded kickstarter fellas!
I haven’t watched your videos in a while, been too busy, but when I clicked on your video, I had a rush of nostalga to when I first started playing.
Your channel was probably my favorite when I first started really learning the rules and I binged all of your videos
Heard y’all got an Emmy Award for Dragons of Drakkenhiem campaign, congrats!
I avoid writing a rich backstory for my character until at least a few sessions in. One big reason is to see if the character will survive long enough to even warrant a backstory, and the other big reason is to get a feel for the campaign. Even then, I try to limit my backstories to a few paragraphs at most, that way I don’t overload the GM or fellow players with a novel of information.
My mistake for my most recent campaign was creating two characters (so at least one would fit the party comp) and writing backstories for both. I love both characters, but at least I won't be too sad if I die now.
I once got my entire group to play siblings, all because my buddy was having trouble coming up with a reason why his gnome was a sorcerer, so we gave him six older brothers
I have played in a Pathfinder campaign where we started at level 3. We had 2 session 0s, since it took a lot of time to come up with all the backstory and the story hooks the GM was satisfied with. We were playing on a custom campaign setting made by the GM.
I was playing a "Knight" (Cavalier class in Pathfinder which it is similar to a fighter but mainly focused on mounted combat).
The adventures so far were mainly land based (both urban and countryside) and there were many outdoor encounters which worked well with mounted combat.
He was the 4th son of a baronet, who while being noble born was not in line to be the heir and was sent to the kings guard as a squire to serve a Viscount. The kings guard was the GMs idea, which gave him an inside man to keep the party "railroaded" on the adventure - this was discussed at the session 0 and everyone was ok with it.
My backstory and story hooks summarized (remember we started at level 3):
- my character had a tense relation with his family, due to an embarrassing incident between the first born and him (quest hook for later - we set him up as a Foil for my character)
- there was an arranged marriage with a lady from a noble family - but due to circumstance and also in defiance to his fathers wishes the marriage never took place and was canceled. This damaged both families honor that angered the patriarchs (quest hook for later - both families wants some sort of revenge)
- since he has the Viscounts support the scorned noble families could not retaliate yet (quest hook for later - there was a duel already)
- the character had a small house near Kingsport - one of the major cities in the setting - where he was posted as a knight
- he was allowed to marry a "common" girl - this was a reward for his earlier services (normally nobles should only marry other nobles in the setting), Note: we have created this NPC because of 2 reasons - first there are some flirts in the group who did irritated the GM in the previous game trying to roleplay flirting and bonding in game and I wanted to shut this down early by making my character married and the wife will be a quest hook for later
- his wife is a merfolk (in pathfinder merfolk looks more like a mermaid from older D&D editions, not that blue ugly thing that is the 5e)
- relations between humans and merfolk are tense and almost hostile in the setting and most merfolk use magic to disguise their features, they also like to cast the Fins to Feet spell while on land (this is a 3rd level spell that can also be taken as a racial feature. It allows the merfolk to exchange their fins to feet allowing them to walk on land for 1hour/level)
- he met the merfolk woman during an escort quest where the Viscount's carriage was attacked by bandits. The bandits were defeated and after interrogating the survivors they exposed the location of their camp. By the order of the Viscount the knights raided the camp and found many slaves in cages set up to be transported and sold abroad. There was a heavily wounded woman, who my character rescued and fell for (this is the merfolk under the effect of the Fins to Feet spell - disguised as a human).
- the GM restricted healing magic in the setting (it is not common and healing spells require high cost components), so I have used this as an excuse to set up why my character has a merfolk wife. To cut it short - while tending to her wounds the Fins to Feet spell expired and my character had a choice - give up the merfolk (who is an enemy of the kingdom) or hide her and tend to her wounds. He obviously choose the latter and she has fallen in love with my character. (Or did she? hook for later - she is a merfolk spy and some great drama options could come from this. who will she choose - the merfolk nation or the knight who was helping her and took her in? Sadly we did not get that far yet, so...)
- my character has a relatively good reputation in the kings guard and is looked at as a young aspiring knight who has a promising future ahead of him (if he is not killed by his family or the other hostile nobles). To help him, we created 6 other cavalier supporting characters - that can be used by the GM as contacts, NPC companions, hirelings or quest hooks for later.
This might look like a lot of background stuff, but please note that the other players came up with lot's of quest hooks and background info as well.
Our adventure started by getting the team together and my character arrived with a senior knight from the kings guard - who was giving us the first quest and my job was to accompany the party as well as represent the kingdoms interest on the journey as a knight. I have pledged my lance and sidearm to the leader - a very serious looking pony-tailed redhead woman (at least that is what her character looked like), who was a Magus (a hybrid gish class that uses both magic and sword) - and our adventures began.
Basically my character was the NPC that usually comes with the party as a supporting character, but this time it was played by a player - me.
At first things were going well but as time progressed by the 5th session there were some issues. As the other people found out more and more about my background, like
- the trouble with the two noble families
- the arranged marriage stuff (this was especially liked by the girl players for some reason) - we even had a duel when we were passing through the territory of the family whose daughter my character should have been marrying
- then the fact that my character was married
the other players started to become more and more engaged with this stuff, which hurt the main story and also messed up some of the GMs plans for my quest hooks as well, since they were not yet fully developed and he had to improvise. For example when we returned to Kingsport the other party members wanted to visit my home and meet the wife which was a WTF Really guys? moment for both me and the GM, since it was never planned.
The other problem was that I felt the focus was shifting too much on my character, which is ironic since both I and the GM designed this guy as a sort of grey, uninteresting NPC-like character who goes along with the party, helps them, and because of his past causes some problems during the adventure - which the party has to help him deal with.
What can I do to shift this back to the background a little. The others are asking me a lot of questions about my character even outside of game. They even got the info that the wife is a merfolk - from looking at my notes and this has increased their interest even more.
I thought that my character fit the setting, fit the adventure, had many story hooks and there was no mismatch with the group.
What went wrong?
It’s interesting that you mention a Menzoberranzan drow in a setting without Menzoberranzan, because that’s my exact situation with one of my games. The setting is homebrewed, and there was drow, but no Menzo, no Lolth etc.. but after talking about it the DM liked the idea and added it.. but the city was destroyed and my character is one of the few who remember it. We both had a great time coming up with ways to meld both the world and the character. Both of us being open to changing our ideas worked and were having a great time
That's why you should keep a library of hundreds of developed characters you wish to play one day, ranging from an evil duergar cleric who wishes to cleanse the world with fire to a kenku bard who found an mp3 teleported from Earth and communicates only with quotes from Nickelback songs. Live your life that way and no campaign will ever surprise you.
I swear lol
People think I'm joking when I say I'll happily fill ANY role 😂
Great advice in this one
My favourite character I have played is Lupes a happy go lucky Halfling who became a warlock accidentally just before the campaign started.
As he adventures he became more and more obsessed with his patron. Even though at times he would try to rid himself of this, he eventually couldn’t resist his patrons influence and his madness had him make an attempt on the life of a friendly NPC. He was horrified by this and fled the party.
He is now in the hands of the DM and I am playing a himbo triton paladin.
Was such a fun character, who I didn’t know much about when I started.
I’m very excited to see how the dm brings him back into the campaign.
I think my newish player party member made a significant mistake when he made an Eldritch Knight/Barbarian multi-class in our new campaign (started at level 10).
It could be fine depending on how they build as there is a very build. At eldritch knight 7 pick pyrotechnics along the blind fighting style (we do do need 2 lvls in rogue {with maybe a fire resistant race} for a bonus action hide or we could use goblin and a barbarian subclass that gives resistance to fire damage and make sure to set yourself on fire with alchemists fire before combat if there are no other fire sources for your pyrotechnics to target) or you could use this opportunity to homebrew a ⅓ spellcasting barbarian. To give you a headstart for a good idea (i.e. I haven't found any other features I really like for the higher lvl stuff) at lvl 3 your barbarian can cast spells using their hp. 1hp for casting cantrips 2d8 piercing/slashing/bludgeoning damage per spell lvl. Whenever you enter a rage you can cast any of your action based cantrip as part of entering your rage. Whenever you take the attack action you can cast any action based cantrip as a bonus action. (Since they could also just use their action to cast a spell)
As for the flavor (I call it the M.A.D rager {Magic Adrenaline Driven rager}), you are a barbarian that has been experimented on (un/voluntarilly decide in the backstory) and the experimenters have implanted a powerfull, but very deadly artifact into your chest. The artifact is what cast and concentrates on the spell, the barbarian is still the same dumb/uncultured incapable of casting spells brute. The artifact requires the damages the barbarian takes that as a part of the experiment gets converted into magical power to power the spells it cast. (Makes you want to give it a reaction spell damage option. Take X amount of damage and they automatically take damage as well. Something like giving them Hellish rebuke and when they take X amount of damage this spell is automatically cast without costing extra hp to cast it.)
Let me know if you like it.😊
My favorite character that was really shaped by the world was Kre'al the half-orc druid. My brother was running a campaign for my cousins, their wives and some friends; all of them first time players. He brought me in to help with explaining rules and such.
Before I came in, I had ZERO idea of what character I wanted to play, so I talked with my brother about things that had happened. In one of his early encounters that was explicitly to teach the players that Murder-Hobo is not the way, the level 1 party fought and killed a wolverine that had been snarling at them from near a bush. In a hole near the root of that bush were 3 baby wolverines. Instantly, my character was made.
"Along the road, you see a large figure trudging towards the town. Cradled in his arms are 3 small furry beings." Hugh, Jack, and Logan eventually became my animal companions, through a Pathfinder druid variant that allows the druid have as many companions as they want, but the total level of them cannot exceed the druid level.
Really embarrassed to admit I made more than one of the most common mistakes my first time playing lol
It's ok, we've all been there ^^ I'm pretty sure I've made all of them *multiple times* in my 15 years of gaming xD
The important thing is to have fun ^^
I was at one point going to play in a Final Fantasy campaign, where I wanted to make a character that played heavily into the tropes of JRPG party members. I made this character who was from the “Big Evil JRPG Church”, raised to be a living conduit of one of FF’s summon creatures, now on the run to get out of being ritually sacrificed by her corrupt, zealous family.
The DM wanted to build the world of the campaign around our backstories, and apparently mine was markedly more grand than what the other players had written for their characters, as whatever we knew about the campaign and its direction seemed to be more heavily hinged on my character and her backstory than the other players’. While at the time I liked feeling important, over time as I realized the game wasn’t going to happen I felt kinda bad about the unintentional main character status I had seemingly written myself into.
I will say, I still love the character. I think she’s great, and I’m proud of her as far as character creation goes.
To be fair, that is on the DM for leaning into your backstory the most, giving you that "main character vibe". Honestly, as long as he keeps the other player backstories in play, that would make your backstory more of a focal point than main character. Granted it depends what the DM does with it. If the entire plotline is dealing with the cabal that raised you, then that's definitely MC issues, but if its just one of a few major plotpoints from the campaign, its just a more important subplot imo
I love this advice so much. I recently started a campaign with a character in mind for which I had built a fairly robust backstory. I felt the need to do this because it’s an odd build; a low intelligence (9) wizard that relies on the few spells they get to enhance their physical abilities. As we got closer to the start of the game, another player asked if they could play an elderly character, which we all said sounded great. This led to group deciding to do an Oops, All Old Fucks campaign and I needed to completely rework my backstory to fit the new age of my character. Ultimately, this character turned out so much better than I had originally conceptualized. Now I have an old harengon with a cursed spellbook that limits their memory to 15 days, they take constant notes to stay on top of things, and they’re spellbook contains two sets of spells to prepare depending on the needs for the day with a large amount of rituals to round things out. Depending on what I prepare, he either is in sleuth mode or assassin mode. It’s incredibly fun. For context, our DM runs this campaign like a heroic sitcom. Like Golden Girls meets John Wick.
I find this often happens with new players specifically because they're so excited to play their first game and first character that they go all out with their backstory
0:15 "don't dump your constitution stat" What should I do then for an old monk character where the point is that their health isn't what it used to be? The class relies on a high dexterity stat, so should I dump strength then to get the idea across?
You can always let it come out in the roleplay and flavor of what you do instead of the mechanics. Instead of a situation where the monk backflips off a building and lands unharmed, maybe they just grab a tree branch, and the tree bends enough to take them to the ground. When athletes get older, they have to rely on technique more than brute force or speed, bear that in mind.
Alternatively, they could take their action and then immediately complain about their back or joints and throw in an "I'm getting to old for this".
@@trombaritone86 Thanks. Incidentally, I had already thought of that with stuff like their unarmed strikes being things like palm strikes rather than punches to keep from damaging their hands too much, and they frequently complain about "rust" when they use a weapon (the rust being a metaphor for them being older and out-of-practice).
The fact remains though that I would need a dump stat, and part of their backstory is that they used to be the leader of a small group, so I don't want them to be dumb or uncharismatic.
@matthewmuir8884 that makes sense. Strength makes sense to me in that case
@@trombaritone86 Thanks. Yeah; they don't really need strength if they're a monk; do they? They use dexterity + wisdom for their AC and they don't wear armour, and they can use dexterity for armed and unarmed attacks, right?
I once played a Rock Gnome who was an Armorer Artificer who worked for an adventurers guild making armor. I worked with my DM ahead of time to homebrew a unique armor to replace the Guardian and Infiltrator options. We developed the blueprint and determined ahead of time what components would be necessary to complete the armor. The rest of the party were members of the same guild that I had previously done work for. We started the campaign with me seeking out the other party members and hiring them to help me get the component. I agreed to let them split the rest of the loot however they wanted, and I agreed to make them each a unique item (Approved by the DM of course) along the way as well. This worked quite well. Each character had some small tie to each other from previous jobs as part of their backstory. It made for some interesting campfire conversation in our short and long rests. The armor components became the main campaign quest, but going to all the different places to get them lead to some crazy stories that we all laugh at today.
When joining a campaign I ask the DM 1) What campaign world are you using? 2) If the party is recruiting a new member what class would they be trying to recruit (what gaps are they trying to fill)? 3) What classes and sub-classes are not allowed? 4) What level are the characters in this campaign? 5) Is this a good/evil and or urban/outdoor campaign? Then I create a character and backstory that fits. I have my class preferences but sometimes its fun going outside your comfort zone and being something different.
Here's an interesting experience: I'm the Mark of Healing Halfling Shepard Druid of the party (Healer as primary role), a god kills me. My party mates kill the god, then stuff my corpse into the bag of holding to take back to the temple for resurrection. Before they leave the god's lair they loot it, my friend who is playing the Barbarian turns to me and asks me to keep a tally of the loot they took...I'm DEAD! Yes, I'm in the bag of holding, but still dead...lol
In our last campaign I played a Trickster cleric. Nobody played a rogue this time so Hanna, with her smuggler background, slowly developed some of the skills of a rogue. She worshipped a deity that had once been a thief risen to godhood, and was herself quite greedy. Her faith refused to allow her to destroy any treasure (imagine finding The One Ring). She was a halfling and our group liked using her sneakiness a lot. The lizardfolk barbarian took a shine to her, which caused a lot of havoc and made for some wonderful heroics in the game. The DM even awarded her gloves of thievery on a lucky roll of the dice.
Creates a character whose back story says he killed a dragon.
Spends half the adventure bragging about it.
The party encounters their first dragon of the campaign.
PC: "Wait! WTF is that? That's a dragon? It's so huge!!!! WTF did I kill?"
Turns out that having never seen a real dragon before the PC fought and killed a Dog sized lizard and thought it was a dragon.
Omg! Another awesome T-shirt. I love Dino Riders. Man that would be a fun game to run too! Anyway, great video and wonderful tips guys.
The best case of unintended background I've had happen to me was when both another player and I picked the Bounty Hunter background and the GM pointed it out so we decided to be partners. The characters actually complimented each other very well, he was a Barbarian and I was a Warlock.
I convinced a fairly new DM to let me play an evil character. I promised not to play stupid evil and jeopardize the party by stealing or try to kill party members. My character was a Warlock of the Old One. Basically crazy with PTSD from a war where he saw his friend die. Then had to hide in the pit where his body and may others were tossed. So when his friends severed head started talking to him he responded. His friends skull became his focus and he sought other NPC's that had a screw loose trying to establish a cult. Ironically he was the twisted moral voice that questioned the parties actions when sent out on jobs like find this evil necromancer and bring him to justice. When he was nearly dead I telepathically told him to surrender and I would advocate for him, telling the party to stand down. Most of the party desperately wanted to kill him but I reminded them they told use to bring him to justice, which means bringing him to the authorities. If we kill him after he surrendered then we are no better than him, murderers. Truth was I made a secret deal with him that I would try to get his life spared so I could learn necromancy. Remember my character had a fascination with death. I loved getting the party to debate sparing the life of a mass murderer just so my character could learn some forbidden knowledge.
Just had to comment for the Dino Riders shirt. Favorite show when I was a kid.
For my group that formed 4 years ago, I was the only one with experience so I had to roll the spell caster (Druid) and constantly save the group with control spells and healing.
My main mistake was not preparing a Backstory for my character beyond "My character has a tragic event that happened, a mentor helped her to try and get over it(and failed), and suggested that taking the opportunity to adventure was for the best." My DM helped me work out what that tragedy was(twin brother's death that she blamed herself over), the how, where, and why it happened, and the inciting incident for how she wound up with the characters we played as. It gave us a nice side-quest to do and had a nice piece of custom loot designed specifically for it.
For my current campaign, we all created our characters at session zero. Some of us had ideas already, but the DM was able to give us tidbits into the world that helped us all feel deeply ingrained, with connections to the setting and each other.
My DnD group was just having a similar discussion about this yesterday! We were talking about how initial concepts and backstories can shift or change from what they may be originally both in discussions with the group and through initial gameplay, even if you go in with a more loose concept. For instance, my half-fey bladesinger was supposed to be pretty judgemental and know it all (very mean girl, that 8 charisma does her no good) but I realized pretty quickly that it worked better in the group dynamic to shift away from that and make her more naive, awkward and occasionally blunt. But having that flexibility really helps for that change, and also imo makes it easier to allow for character growth if you already have that mindset of change at the beginning.
My dudes I hear you when it comes to the backstory. I tell my characters that a backstory is more about giving their character life, but the story I present, mostly pre fabricated ones, I won’t be making major changes for a backstory. My characters that I make are always open end, so they always easily fit in. Also, awesome shirts!
One thing I do first is I get the setting info from the DM, then I come up with a character concept that I allow the dm to have major input into suggestions for the background facts. I give the rough idea and the dm gives me the equivalency in my ideas in his/her setting. I hash it out together with my DM so it melds with their setting and I can use elements in my backstory that are already included in the overall story, lastly I get a rough poll of the other player characters rolls/behaviour, classes and rough personality types. If you’re married to a character you’ve come up with on your own more often then not I’ve seen it not work in the story or with the other characters in the setting simply because a player is not included or factoring in the other characters and settings. I’d much prefer a new unique character that works incredibly well in the story than something I’ve come up with on my own that ends up not working in the setting or party. It’s also important to factor in how you want to run your character personality, if you wanna play a smarty pants character or low intelligence character it can be problematic if other player characters tried to implement the same character personality you’re going for so always try to get some inclination of what the other players are thinking to give yourself a good chance at putting a unique spin on your character personality!
Well my group just finished up a campaign! I played as a Leonin, Rune Knight Fighter. To get to the point without give you just PARAGRAPHS to read, he is the “classic second child” in his family where he’s proud of his race and its might and is very egotistical on his own current abilities. Gets banished from homeland and told he can’t return without proving to be a good(characteristic) warrior, so he decides that only through constant 1v1 combats can he most swiftly achieve his goal. By the end of the campaign he only slightly favored his race over the others and found greater fulfillment in conquering a foe with the help and team work of his companions. Still greatly enjoys duels just doesn’t feel the need to seek them out “all the time”.
I have really been getting into these worst/best/what to do/what not do videos lately. Nice job!
Had a friend where it was his first time playing d&d and didn’t really want to write a backstory, so I helped him with it. He was a rogue who had had a really tragic backstory, but had had his memory wiped so he was working with issues of amnesia. He also made a connection with a character who he had gambled with and owed them money, but didn’t remember. Seemed solid to work with as a DM.
He turned up roleplaying this as a character who started PVP fights with PC’s, would never help move the story forward, and eventually killed a beloved NPC in a town right in front of most the town and got beaten to death by the town members. It was a bad first experience for him.
All in all, my advice: let your characters write their backstory.
Love the Dino Riders shirt Kelly! I had the T-rex as a kid, loved that thing!
You can have a starting character that has met gods, demon lords, and ancient dragons...if you take the Entertainer background and have them be parts of plays your character was in.
Or the Charlatan background...and have them part of your act to get people to buy useless junk--I mean legendary wonders--from you.
My first character was an 80yr old wood elf who ran away from home to be a hero. He promptly got lost in the woods for a couple decades.
Backed the Kickstarter but having trouble with the Ghostfire website to order other things... hoping to pick up a couple Drakkenheim things while I wait for Monsters of Drakkenheim! Hoping Sebastian Crowe's Guide ends up on D&D beyond someday, too.
4:30 I'm kinda the opposite. First game ever was in Forgotten Realms, and well I've read like 40+ FR novels so I actually know more about the setting the my DM. I didn't really know 5e rules, as I had 3e and 3.5e Rulebooks (fun reading) but never actually played so I made a Paladin of Torm, not knowing Paladins didn't have to be Lawful Good anymore and had an Oath rather than a Deity.
But I did the "rolls" for backstory and came up with an idea and my DM was impressed with it. Noble family from Waterdeep but who grew up in Silverymoon and has sworn to Service Torm via the Oath of the Ancients and doesn't' value wealth with an interesting secret.
I often run into the issue where everyone is dead set on what class they want to play, and they don't think about party composition and balance. So I always have to change my character that I wanted to play to ensure the party is balanced. I was the first one during my most recent session 0 to say that I wanted to play a monk, and then everyone else picked front line classes (paladin, fighter, rogue melee build) and I had to change to a warlock. I love playing a warlock but I was really excited about trying something new
A sorceror child of wild magic, unknown as to how their powers existed was shunned from their village and sent into semi captivity at a School for Wizards. Here they made friends as they grew up.
After being sent off as an adult to put their natural talents to use, they ended up meeting a supportive group of adventurers. Things went well and relationships were made until coming across a Leyline. At the Leyline the wild magic sorceror lost all control and nearly killed their companions. After that they swore off of magic, and started taking fighter levels to rely on strength of arm over wild power.
It was only when they returned to the school and found a summer home they’d frequented burned down and destroyed that the anger superseded the desire to hold back, and the wild magic came back.
Started off as a ‘im a wild magic sorceror who’s trying to figure things out’ ended up with a very deep character and a complex relationship with their magic.
Had a guy want to play a dampire, gm ended up making him a dead ringer for his vampire father, the big bad. He loved the problems this created, and at one point convinced an army to turn on itself with an amazing deception roll. Wore a face wrap most of the time.
Y'all need to start posting links (and maybe get some kick-back cash!) for those shirts! Both of you always have awesome shirts, but Monty's shirt is particularly awesome today!
Most epic example of pre-established character relationships I've seen so far in a live play was in EXU: Calamity, where two of the players made the legendary decision to play bitter divorcees who still had to work together and stay civil around their mutual friend group (the other PCs).
Cleric/Paladin protip!
If they're dead set on a mythological god not in the pantheon, let them worship them as a Saint or archangel in service to a god that fits. So Example, Thor is a saint to Kord, aphrodite is in service to Sune. Also a fun promotion to give your pious character at high levels.
I had a player hand me a 20 page backstory with her character's entire family, love interest, rival, and nemesis, relating her to the imperial line of a significant nation we were going to visit, and a plotted out climax, plot twists and final boss fight including the ending and resolution.
Thing is, I already had my own plans for all of the above, and the campaign ended before we got there.
Hey Dudes! I would LOVE to see you guys make videos for a couple of "rough around the edges" scenarios. Firstly being ship combat! It would also be cool to see a video for chase scenes/tailing! I have noticed over the years that these two situations can be a little odd at the table and oftentimes managed poorly. I believe that the community would greatly appreciate and enjoy a discussion on how you guys approach these scenarios to make them fun and exciting for everyone at the table 🤘🏻
My most recent wizard, does hail from the town of Luskan, yes. We haven't even had confirmation that this campaign takes place on Abeir-Toril, let alone anywhere near the Sword Coast. Which, doesn't actually matter, because after his Master died under mysterious circumstances, my Necromancer stole his stash of scrolls of Plane Shift, and went on a casual stroll through just about every plane he wished to see, from the Abyss and the 9 Hells to the various Elemental Planes, Shadow Plane, the various Celestial Planes, Astral Plane, before, on his last scroll, travelling to *a* Material Plane. He, has no idea if it's even the same Material Plane he initially left from, nor does he care. He is free. And that's all that matters now.
Do you think you guys could do an episode on Mounts, Mounted Combat and the likes. Rules as written seems a bit underdeveloped and would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Additionally what are your thoughts on a Fighter Cavalier using a Wildshaped Moon Druid as a mount? What kind of odd rules and regulations would you have to put in? Thanks for your time and consideration. Much love and keep up the good work!
I think these ideas would even be good for the two types of games I have started to run so my players can change up what characters they are running. Both of them are based around Ling campaigns one in Star Wars and one in a fantasy world, both have long term goals but based around short campaigns where they choose the character for that missions they want to play, characters are only removed completely if they die.
OMG Dino Riders! Absolute legend Kelly. Had to comment on the T-shirt before I even started the video
I had a very fun character, he was a Triton who had slain a kraken as part of his backstory. What he left out when telling the tale was that he was part of an army sent to kill the beast, he just happened to get a killing blow in, breaking formation and getting his squad killed as a consequence. I played him as a self absorbed and arrogant, thinking he could handle everything himself. As the campaign went on, he learned to rely on teammates and grew beyond his vain need for glory. The story came full circle when he was willing to sacrifice himself to allow the rest of the party to escape a group of rival adventurers.
Level 1 characters with level 20 backstories need to stop.
I love how Monty points out the payoff that comes from being open to allowing your PC to be influenced by the campaign, instead of trying to steer the character to a preconceived end state. For over a year in a playthrough of LMoP, DoIP, and Beyond DoIP, I've been playing a half-drow who wanted to be a cleric or, at least, a bard because of her hero worship of a few particular sisters from the Forgotten Realms. Instead, she's ended up being a hedge mage who must scrounge magical knowledge from the occasional spell scroll she finds or by slaying evil wizards and claiming their spellbooks. Having claimed a Staff of Defense early in the campaign, it changed how I played her and curtailed all hope of successfully pursuing the gish playstyle I imagined for her. Now, instead, she mostly prepares defensive spells, control spells, and a few ranged attack spells, and just stays in the backline swearing in frustration as performs her magic. She's certainly not the heroine she hoped to be when she took up the mantle of an adventurer, but on the rare occasions she does triple digit damage on a turn, she's probably pretty pleased with herself.
i went with a Ranger (later multi classed into bard {get yer head outa the gutter}) basic backstory was he part of a roving band of warriors protecting the roads in and around the sword hills. his parents are dead, killed by (a yet to be named Orc warlarod). hes a bit of a loaner but knows when to work with others. but is reserved at first. ive enjoyed playing him and seeing his growth.
I very much agree, backstory is vague so that it can be adjusted to the setting, but gives an idea for who the character is. Also, if you're me you have 10 characters that are very different and you can pick one that fits the setting and party best when joining a campaign.
I have a player who offered no backstory. But like 6 or 7 sessions in, his character started looking for members of the thieves guild that he used to be a part of…thing is, that was news to me…and the homebrewed world didn’t even have a thieves guild! I ended up making one and we decided it would be a side quest for him to get back in… And we haven’t mentioned it again in a year.
My group's last long-term D&D campaign was in the Birthright setting, and we were all supposed to play people of importance in the royal court. I was tossing up between "crazy desert witch" and "scheming princess" as my character concept, and my friend wanted to play a pious and noble prince. We decided that my crazy desert witch HAD been a scheming princess, and had at one point tried to kill his prince character in order to rise in the order of succession. Her involvement was never confirmed, and she subsequently had a spiritual awakening and fled into the desert, forswearing the inheritance she'd been prepared to kill for.
One of the other player characters was sent to track down rumours of her whereabout a decade later (when the campaign started) and came back to court with this sun-baked feral lunatic. Only the ruler and the other PCs knew who she was, she refused to publicly confirm her identity. She'd long ago run out of patience for politics and didn't contest her brother being confirmed as heir. During his reign she supported him by using wildshape to spy on his enemies and conjured entire herds of goats in the offices of his more troublesome viziers. Playing a character who was rekindling relationships after so long with people who had known her as a very different person was really fun, often touching, and frequently hilarious.
Something that can cause a mismatch that isn't always the players' fault is when the DM presents either a specific campaign vision and then changes it, or presents too vague/open a remit for creation.
An example I can easily think of is my first proper campaign as a player (rather than a DM) where I ended up creating a hexblade with a storied past for the level 12 homebrew campaign we were going to be in. Then the DM kept bringing the starting level back down and I had to keep reconsidering my backstory in light of this, and eventually (once I was too married to the concept to play something else) the campaign ended up being Hoard of the Dragon Queen and we were starting at level 1. All the work on the character's backstory (especially mapping out their homeland, family tree, motivations and relevant NPCs) was essentially thrown out the window, and without the context the character looked like a kinda tropey one-dimensional edgelord who didn't have as much reason to be where he was. I eventually enjoyed playing that character, but it took time to be seen as the charismatic nobleman with a knack for finding something to love in each of the other party members, and not the emo hexblade who just wanted vengeance - and that was largely down to the DM sacrificing any attempt to integrate the characters more into the world before we played.
The “big hero guy” and “ Rogue agent guy” sounds like Kelly playing Pluto Jackson and Monty playing Blackjack Mell. I just hope Monty used that voice
I played in an epic with that warrior/hype man pair! Still stands out as one of the most memorable public games I was part of. I was the one playing the dragonborn with the bagpipes he blew his fire breath through.
That "Dino Riders" shirt is most definitely not a mistake.
Im currently running a Fighter / Articifer.
Fighter was a Prerequisite.
The only part that I was interested in was the Articifer part and playing more of an ambiguous support player to branch out from the usual PC's I have portrayed in the past.
It's working out.
I did come to the table with 3 other characters but probably would've passed on the campaign altogether.
Had there been any pushback on Character 1.
Session Zero is the most important part of a campaign, but I don't know if I would deliberate with other players about my player.
And it's not something that I encourage (or ban) at my table whenever I am in the other Chair.
Not knowing your party members roles and stuff adds a tremendous amount of realism to the equation to discover in game each others traits.
I have also been known to pepper in higher CR Levels in areas where large crowds are gathered.
B/c the story is not about the party , it's about the world, and then the PC's become the focal point.
Start a fight with a randomly rolled up arch mage, and you're simply going to be in for it.
I feel like there's a story behind that smile and laugh when mentioning thinking that Witchbolt is a good spell. At first glance the description sounds good, so it is understandable. As for the topic of fully fleshed out backstories for new characters, that was always something that really struck me with Baldur's Gate 3. The backstories would be beyond ridiculous if a player brought them to the table for their level 1 characters. Having a minor misadventure or two in the backstory is good though.
My first character ever was a Dragonborn barbarian with a +3 to charisma and a 14 as AC. He found a noble purpose towards the end of the campaign and multi classed into a Paladin, then eventually left the campaign to become a guardian of dragons in a tower. I finished the last 6 months of the campaign (at level 17) with a new character!
Y'all inspired an idea in me; character who isn't the chosen one, but is the sibling of the chosen one!
I backed the kickstarter just in time today! New mosters and especially new lairs are really exciting. I've been running a few of the Flee, Mortals lairs and they've been a blast. I have no doubt these will be great too
The character I played that was able to fully come to life was a Dwarf Fighter in 3rd ed. My friend was playing a Wood Elf Druid. My Dwarf's dump stat was Charisma but I didn't play him as disgusting or disheveled oaf. He was just always very blunt and honest which led to some incredibly hilarious situations that created fun in game tension, especially as my friend's elf was a representative of the Druids trying to build alliances in the surrounding kingdoms. My Dwarf offended a Queen by pointing out that compared to the majority of her citizens she was rather obese, insulted a hag due to seeing through her glamour when no one else made the save, they all thought I was just being cruel, not realizing I was just seeing the truth. Also unintentionally instigated several brawls with mercenaries or military of the kingdoms but after the fights made fast friends once the humble Druid explained his gruff friend's inability to tell a lie even if it is the polite thing to do.
One thing I should have added, for brand new players, don't pick what class you are going to play, let the dice decide. Roll the stats in order, and play what they tell you fits those stats. If they are truly awful, roll again, but no switching. Then, only pick frm the basic classes and races, in 5e, players handbook only, page 45 for classes. It is the best way to learn the game, Go Basic. I ran a one shot for experienced players, using this method and they enjoyed it so much, it became a campaign.
If you were playing in 1983, sure
Kickstarter backed! Me: Indiana Jonesing under the door and just having time to retrieve my hat.
So excited to see your book. Thanks guys!
My character from a dnd campaign that ended a few months ago in tier 4
The rest of the group had ended up in prison so I had to come up with a character that was in a mine in chult as a forced laborer. I ended up with Finnan Tealeaf. A human anthropologist in love with halfling culture. A friendly scholar that had been talked into adventuring. Chult being chult everything had gone wrong for the meek scholar. When the group meet him in prison he was feared in prison as being brutal and crazy. He was a Devil warlock, but instead of a devil he worked for Cegilune, goddess of night hags. As a matter of fact he was struggling with himself all the time. Shifting between his meek, kind and scared persona and a cruel vindictive side. As a matter of fact I was allowed to use the transformation rules from Grim Hollow. As part of his deal with the hag he was turning into a Yugoloth. He was actively selling deals to NPCs the characters liked behind their backs but also helped rebuild a temple to Tyr as part of the group. Was a lot of fun. Later on in the campaign our characters met one of the baras. Semi divine servants of Ubtao and my character managed to break free from his pact with the hag and instead pledged fealty to ubtao. He turned way less crazy, and overcame his cowardice. He changed from becoming a demon into becoming an elemental. Turned much more serious and into a objectively better person. Later on It became a running gag that they missed the old fun Finnan. 😂
Great video! You guys should tier list all of the eldritch invocations
One of the best character backstories I ever did as a player (and it was TOTALLY derivative!) but I always thought was great because it could be ported to almost any campaign... but alas the DM at the time did absolutely nothing with it.
Sheridan, a swashbuckler and a bit of a dandy. He had run away from his mother (Hyacinth, a social climber who had her eye on some day having a title.) and father (Richard, a long suffering, mid-level bureaucrat). He had two aunts Daisy and Rose who took care of his ageing and infirm grandfather who was the duke of a small backwater province renowned for it's pork production. A third aunt, Violet, had married well and lived in a small castle but would have nothing to do with the rest of the family... unless she needed some of Hyacinth's old clothes for her husband.
Sheridan lived in abject terror of receiving an invitation to a candle lit dinner at his mother's home.