So I recently finished reading the Player’s Strategy Guide which is written by Andy Collins and Eytan Beernstein and published by Wizards of the Coast. What is the Player’s Strategy Guide you ask? Well its’ kind of a guide to help players in creating and managing the raddest character they can while highlighting their role in helping craft rewarding and fantastic game experiences through battle tactics, party composition, player etiquette, and story crafting. Why did I buy it you ask? Well I am a bit of a compulsive shopper and it had cosmo-style quizzes that promised tell me all about who I am as a D&D nerd (you can never go wrong praying on my narcissism).
The quizzes revealed that I am a Story Teller and Thinker when it comes to my role-playing style or gamer motivation. This essentially tells me that I gravitate towards the narrative aspects of gaming and immersion into the fantasy of the story that is being told and developed (AKA as a fantasy nerd who has read too many novels and engages in escapism) while also enjoying plotting out how to build a pimp character that can open a malt liquor size can of whoop-ass all over the bad guys (a polite way of saying that I am bit a min-maxer). I also apparently prefer to play Human or Half-Elf characters that are either wizards or warlords and who are generally of good alignment. I also apparently have a high Sex IQ, can never tell when a guy is into me, and am an over-sharer.
The majority of the book is about building mechanically sound characters through things such as matching racial stat bonuses with optimal character classes to feat and power choices and combinations that enhance the particular role of your character. (On aside note I am hopeful that eventually they will retcon the pre-PHB3 races into allowing more flexibility with ability stat bonuses to allow you to create whatever class/race combinations your heart desires without worrying about them sucking balls) I found this section only marginally helpful, as previously mentioned I am a bit of a min-maxer and find the “optimization threads” in the various online forums allow for a more in depth tutelage in this area. However, for people who are not as neurotic or consumed with such things, I think that this section offers a nice way to make sense of the mechanics of building an effective character in 4th Edition when particularly faced with the veritable plethora of choices and options available that can make things a little confusing.
The sections on strategy and tactics and building a party were pretty cool, particularly the sample parties that they provided. I think these sections are really helpful in educating how combat works in the game and how the particular class roles were designed to function independently and as a whole. It also provides helpful tips on how to organize and manage your character to help prevent the deer in headlights look when their name is called in the initiative order. For those either coming from other game systems or older editions of D&D, the combat system in the 4th edition is sufficiently different that it can be a little perplexing. For example it took a while for my players to understand why their fighters and paladins were always doing less damage than the rogues and warlocks that were in the party. If that had been clearer during character creation we probably would have had a very different party composition, more like 4 strikers and 1 leader (I forced the newb into playing the cleric in a hazing/paying your dues move).
The last section of the book emphasis the players’ responsibility in creating a good game, through being invested in the game and being an active participant in helping the DM craft stories and adventures around their characters. Peppered throughout the book were little sections where different people within the industry and entertainment world would describe their characters with cool back stories and other ways that they bring them to life within the game world. This was by far my favorite aspect of this book and well worth the purchase and read.
Overall, I liked this book but I can see it wouldn’t be right for everyone. I think for those new to the system and maybe struggling with the overwhelming number of character choices from feats, powers and skills and how they relate to character role and fit into your overall vision of the character then this book might be helpful. It can also be helpful for those who are struggling tactically in combat and are unsure why they keep getting smacked around. I can’t say I learned a lot in terms of character building or tactics, but I enjoyed the read and it helped reinforce not just mechanics but the importance of creating a character with a vivid personality and identifiable motivations which interact with and help shape the world that the DM provides.
Building a memorable character (that is not completely annoying) is a very hard thing to do. To be honest, it’s the one thing that my friends and I STILL have trouble doing, and we’ve been doing it for years.
Sure, our characters can have good and interesting backstories, we have interesting motivations and goals (which can be interesting), but not very memorable. And I think being a memorable character is probably the most important aspect. I’d rather have a memorable character that everyone remembered than a backstory or motivations.
I can make memorable villains for some reason… maybe it’s because I do accents and change my speech.
The only time we’ve had memorable characters is if they have a specific memorable power or they look a specific way. Mostly when we played Marvel Superheroes, for some reason those characters were memorable. I’ve had memorable characters
So tell me, in a nutshell, how do you make a memorable character?
How to make a memorable character that isn’t too annoying? Hmm well I guess that might depend on what one considers too annoying. In my mind my characters are nothing but delightful, engaging, and captivating, but alas not everyone probably finds me as charming as I imagine myself and my characters to be. It’s a good thing I mostly play with friends. I agree that this is can be a very difficult thing to do.
In a recent post “A Character with Character” briefly outlines how I approach adding life to a character. Generally I draw from an archetype or character that catches my fancy in either literature or entertainment then add to it. I stay away from uber dark or brooding characters because personally I think it’s a bit of a drag, unless I am the straight man in a PC comedy duo. I tend to add some humor when I can, and sometimes at my character’s expense, depending on the character. For example, I have played versions of Silk from Eddings books, leogalas, Achilles from Homer, Wolverine in both fantasy and superhero campaigns , Conan, and Adam Warlock. One of my favorites was a mock Doc Sampson character in a Champions game. I played him as super vain and into his looks and newly found muscle while having a Frazier Crane vibe in his private practice and interactions. I don’t play “in” character 24-7 as that is really more LARP’ng, but try to develop some good soliloquies. I never let any of my antics seriously jam up the party or other players i.e. getting us killed, unless it would fit with the story.
In the end, who knows if I make and play memorable characters, as it is probably fairly subjective, but I enjoy playing them none the less and my core group have always had good fun. Oh and awesome sauce with the cool villains and voices.
It’s interesting that no one has mentioned that the actions of a character makes them memorable… If you think about all the stories that players regale each other with, people always remember which character did/said what.
your right Joyce. I will share one of mine. I played an Achilles type character transported to a different land (a way to have me play a couple of sessions when I was home from school within an ongoing campaign) we were playing Runequest which has a crazy list to roll on when you made a critical fumble (100 on d100) when attacking. so i fumble and roll and the result was hit nearest ally doing maximum damage which had me impale my friend killing him then with my second attack I killed the bad guy in front of me, so I sort of swung my great spear back to make an attack I impaled my friend then followed through with him still on my spear and killed the guy in front of me. then so distraught by the death of my comrade, I in my ancient Greek way cut off my hair, refused to move on until I had observed the rite of the dead, and dragged him behind my chariot and cut pieces of him off, not realizing the magic of this world allowed for resurrection.
your turn to show an tell
yeesh, there are a whole lot of stories to choose from. Most of them involve my evil aligned characters (not surprisingly, I suppose.)
…
The first campaign setting I ever played in was Ravenloft. There was a module whose story resembled “Island of Dr. Moreau”. In the end, the party was failing the objective (which is not so uncommon in Ravenloft) and was simply trying to run away. We were being chased by a mass of animated body parts, followed quickly by the main villain. In a last ditch effort to buy us more time to get off the island, my character turned around to face the approaching body parts, declared a called shot to the nuts, kicked a decapitated head, and rolled a 20. woohoo! the party survived!
(well…. one character caught lycanthropy, another grew claws similar to wolverine’s, and my character grew bat wings from that session… but hey, we were alive)
Actually, I take that back. We have had a lot of memorable characters, but memorable for what they did, not for any particular quote they had.
If you don’t have memorable characters, chances are you don’t have any stories, and I have lots of stories.
I find that “Big Trouble in Little China” has been a good source for quotes for my characters over the years. so give us an example of one of your memorable characters.
Well, character stories are often boring but here we go.
There was a campaign where we were survivors in a land where it was perpetually winter and there was no escape from it. Our party was together… but we hated each other, because of racial problems (and the fact the elves didn’t like that I had a necklace made from elf ears). I played a half-ogre and there were some sessions where we spent 1/2 the session chasing each other around the dungeon we were supposed to get out of, until we got tired enough we decided to cooperate again. I went around saying “Elfie, I want your ears little Elfie”. Never did get too far in that campaign but we had funny characters and roleplaying moments.
I played a cleric of Ilmater and I basically wouldn’t let any enemy die if it meant just a little effort to save them. That annoyed everyone to no end. And I’d almost always try to parlay first as well.
I played a paladin that had a really bad temper and was kind of a vigilante. I was playing a chaotic good paladin (throwback to 1E alternate paladin rules and I guess 4E now has paladins of every alignment).
I played a thief where me and my buddy who also played a thief would often just run ahead in the adventure and finish it, leaving everyone else behind (they were too slow). That worked out pretty well until they got pissed and killed us for pilfering loot.
I had a player that wasn’t didn’t always think and his characters were always did funny things that made him memorable, like casting Detect Magic when we’re hiding and there was an entire tribe huddled around a pile of magic items (“All That Glitters” module). When he was beaten and asked to surrender, he also changed his mind numerous times (while laying face first on the ground, he’d always last minute “go for his dagger”) and got stomped by whatever stomped him in the first place. I guess he never gave up and that’s a good thing, kind of.
your characters sound pretty cool I can almost imagine being the party with that cleric or the one with that would change his mind, he and my character Drax would have gotten along well. I never find hearing about characters or campaigns boring, it’s like why I read fantasy novels stories and personalities.