D&D 4th Edition Character Primer
Getting Started
Okay guys and gals, this primer is designed with a few things in mind, first, dispelling nasty habits for tenured players and second, helping those that are new to D&D and 4th edition understand how to create a character. The goal here is to put story telling back into joint position between the Dungeon Master and the Players. In order for that to happen the players really have to come through on their side of the DM’s screen and give the DM something to work with. The steps laid out within this primer serve as a springboard to help players contribute to their side of the storytelling. In the first few phases players should just jot down some of their ides before finally fully writing a background using the template included at the end.
Races
The first step in designing a character doesn’t start with the old cliché of “I want to play a fighter!” No, those days are gone my friends. Good story telling starts with imagination and that just isn’t very imaginative! Start somewhere else. Try to picture what you character is in life. Where he or she comes from, what they did for a living prior to their adventuring careers, or even what got them into adventuring. Think about their families and whether or not they have one, where that family is. What role will this family play in your character’s life? Are they important to him or her? Are they alive or dead? What race are they? What race are you? Is your race the same as theirs? And yes, that last questions is important and shouldn’t just automatically be assumed. One of my most interesting characters was the victim of a violent rape. Obviously this crosses some racial boundaries and makes for interesting role-playing later on. Once you have answered some of these questions you can move on to the next phase.
Character Role
Now that you know what your characters race will be and maybe a little about where he or she comes from you can decide where you want him or her to go. If in your decision making process before you thought that your character hailed from the woods and live amongst a tribe of secluded humans, elves, gnomes etc., you could take that a step further to say that perhaps this seclusion also led them to be great hunters. You can expand on this idea or concept in anyway you see fit but the key to understand is to develop an idea first and then choose a role and class that fits your idea second. Never choose a class first! This just kills the concept of imagination and story! With that in mind here is what is known about the 4 types of roles within 4th edition D&D and the classes within each type.
Leader: Leaders excel at battlefield manipulation. think of them as the characters that inspire their allies and direct the flow of events in combat. Examples of Leaders are Cleric, Warlord, Bard, Shaman, Ardent, Runepriest, and Artificer.
Defender: Defenders have the highest defenses in the game and close-up offense. They are the party’s front-line combatants: wherever they’re standing, that’s where the action is. Defenders have abilities and powers that make it difficult for enemies to move past them or ignore them in battle. Example defenders are Fighter, Paladin, Warden, Battlemind, and Swordmage.
Striker: Strikers are characters that want to stay on the move and hit a single foe large amounts of damage then move on again. Strikers are often times very skilled characters as well. Example Strikers are Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, Avenger, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Monk, and Assassin.
Controller: Controllers get their names honestly. They control the battlefield because the keep enemies honest. Laying down powers that deal damage to multiple foes at once, controllers can quickly even the odds or turn the tide in the parties favor. Controllers typically tend to be rather clever and ingenious sorts of characters too as the powers that they deal with tend to take years of study and concentration. Examples of controllers are Wizard, Druid, Invoker, Psion, and Seeker.
Skills
Skills! Skills!! Skills!!! There cannot be enough said about skills! Skills will play a major part in any story. Every bit as major a role as your characters powers do so don’t over looked them. Learn what they do and how they do it. Make mention of them in your background just as you would any major power.
Background Template
The template listed below is where you put all the ideas and concepts that you have developed above into story form. Take those loose bits of information and work your magic into a short and brief story that brings your character to life. Believe me when I say that this extra bit of creativity and effort on your part will be both rewarding for you, the DM, and every other gamer at the table when the story points that turn up in game later on as a result of your efforts come out. Any DM worth his salt is going to have a field day with such creativity because it paves helps tell them what it is you see you character doing, what is important to your character, and better yet, how to antagonize them!
• Background: A brief story telling your character’s upbringing, recent exploits, or family heritage. Be as detailed as you like because the more you create the more that can be exploited!
• Description: A detailed description of your characters appearance.
• Flaw: For story purposes only with no in game mechanical value. Maybe your character is flirtatious or hot headed.
• Motivation: The reason your character adventures. What drives or motivates him or her to keep going.
• Influence: The person or persons that have had a profound effect on your characters life. These persons may have shaped your characters values and morals or gave you your motivations for adventuring.
• Important Figure: This should be someone along the lines of a relative or dear friend. Someone you love or did love once.
• Important possession: Something that your character cares for dearly. They may even be willing to kill for it. Doesn’t have to be a magic item or anything of real monetary value. Could be as simple as a book of poetry given to the character by a now deceased sibling.
Hope you find this primer helpful for your gaming! Let me know what you think!
Comments
Great information! Being new to the world of gaming and character creation, this is a simple template that breaks it all down in an easy to use, understandable and concise fashion. I especially enjoyed the background template- you covered many aspects I had never considered when creating a character. Thanks! I plan to reference this in the future.
I'm glad you found the information useful. Being new to gaming can be quite intimidating and when creating characters for the first the are many things to consider. When fleshing out your first character, new players often times over look the importance of a well thought out background story for their characters. It is these stories that truly bring your characters to life in your DM's world. So, take the time to consider who and what your character is before worrying about what class your character is and you'll find the game much more rewarding!
I ahve been playing D&D on and off since I was 18 yrs old. I am now 34 and I must say, this is the type of imaginitive creativity that first peaked my interest in the game in the first place. The chance to truly create a character, to breathe life into something that came from my own imagination. I agree with Mr. Johnson in saying that this has been lost through the times, and I am hugely excited that this has become a primary focus once again. It is a element of the game, the experience of the game that has been put on the back burner for some modern day gamers. I feel that this thought process and creative thinking is what make D&D...D&D Thanks for the info Steve. It is truly appreciated and marked in my farvorites for furture use in my gaming info, and sessions. TY
Thanks dude this is really helpful, I'm working on mine now.
Thanks for the feed back guys. Keep your eyes open for future Player Advice articles were the focus will always be on what the players can do to progress story content within the games. Also, check out this weeks Player Advice article to see an example of the above primer put to use. That example can be found here: http://www.examiner.com/rpg-in-louisville/player-advice-sample-background
Now of course I get to be the butthead in adding in my two cents...
I agree these tips are useful primarily for 1st time players and DM's in my eyes, those of us with more than a few years experience under our belts get that way from having either bad experiences or bad DM's who want story and flow to go a certain way. While it is easier to follow the current of a river it's the ones who jump from the water fighting the current like spawning salmon who make better footnotes that either add or detract from the game. It's up to the DM to control the situation by letting those footnotes go or reigning them in. Some times things aren't perfect, life isn't that way and so everything you play can't be that way either. You have to allow for both the unexpected and the prepared or the world and the players get to feel locked into something already ordained from the start and that's sort of like cheating by skipping to the last chapter of a good book and reading the end.
Now on the subject of character building there was some good in this post, it lays out a basis for most new players to go on in a way that will provide the DM with tidbits that he can later use or keep using from the start. The only downside to this is a good DM can't run these facts about his players past into the ground. I'm reminded of an Anime. "They have our Guyver unit!, Kidnap the Segowa children!" Eventually you'll stop caring about the impact if they are used too much.
I didn't like the psuedo-classifications of the classes either, what if you're a fighter with a low Con score or you're physically smaller than your opponent who can easily bull rush you? There are variables that don't allow for this kind of lumping in a generalization, as an example I'm reminded of an Artificer who didn't control anything and died from a single attack. Or the war-forged who could NEVER get healed and went through multiple combats at less than half their strength. These are things that need consideration because generalizing your players will make you forget about their weaknesses when they should be strong enough to hold off a frost wrym but you forgot last game they were at 20 hit points and you steam roll them in a single round. Just food for thought...
Hello Kube and thanks for your input. While I do value everyones input I have to say that I'm not sure I follow what you were trying to say. Maybe some further clarification would help. The point in my article is that is both the responsibility of the DM and the players to make a roleplaying game a roleplaying game. Through time it has been my experience that most players have stepped out on their side of the deal in favor of the old cliche of just playing a "Fighter" or a "Wizard" as opposed to Riedrick the Bold. Its intent is to help players come back around to thinking about who their characters are and not just what class they are. This alone is the biggest and most important story element a player can contribute to the roleplaying game. Beyond that, I agree with you, it is up to the DM to roll with it. However, now he has some idea of how the players view their characters and where they see their characters going.
This is important for many reasons. The first and probably most important reasons is that no player wants to take the time to create a character and spend hours developing a character through a campaign if he feels that the DM doesn't see the character as important or worthwhile to the story. Why are the characters here if the NPC's are the center pieces of the game? Why are we even bothering to help this story along if the DM is only concerned with his own creations, heck, is as if he's already told the story to himself in his head and we're just riding down the railroad tracks! I don't know about anyone else, but from my perspective this would kill the game for me.
The second reason why its important is because it gives the characters more life for the player and the DM. At the start of the campaign it is so much easier to decide how to bring a party together if you know where they came from. It's less work for the DM because the players took the time to work out some of the details for you. It's also easier to customize the campaign to make each player feel like they have a real significance in the telling of the story. Why? Because you can take pieces of their background story and weave it into your plots. How awesome it is when two stories come together and it makes the player feel like what they took the time to create was appreciate and rewarded!
Now, as for what you were saying about scores, mechanics, and other bits about flaws and such. If you take a look back on what I wrote you'll see that everything here is 100% story related. Nothing in this primer is intended to have in in game mechanical value. That includes That pieces at the end about flaws, motivations, and such. All, character scores, sizes, abilities to heal, and so on are something I don't wish to touch on in this article as they would detract from the essence of what this article is about.
Steve,
I think your advice is sound, but it seems paradoxical to me that you are playing 4th edition D&D if your goal is to focus on storytelling. D&D, especially, ESPECIALLY 4th edition, is not a very good system for storytelling.
I'm not saying that 4th edition is bad. Every game system has its strengths and weaknesses, or rather, each system is trying to achieve something different. 4th edition is good at tactical combat and problem solving. It is well suited to dungeon-crawling and other quest-type scenarios. But interpersonal drama is not its strong suit. In my opinion, using 4th edition to achieve good narrative storytelling is like trying to drive a limousine in a NASCAR race. Limousines are valuable cars and they are good at what they do, but NASCAR ain't it.
The fundamental structure of 4th edition is biased against storytelling. This includes the incentive system, the time required for combat, and the level progression, and the hit point system, among other things.
The experience system rewards characters for killing monsters and completing quests. Even if you are enjoying some spicy intrigue back at the palace, sooner or later you feel obligated to throw in a combat encounter so that the PCs can grind their way to the next ding. I'm using MMO jargon on purpose, because 4th edition was obviously influenced by massive multiplayer computer games. It is good at providing that kind of play experience (only a little more social since you are face to face). There aren't any incentives for storytelling. Other games such as FATE or even Savage Worlds will reward players for acting in character. In FATE, if you create a character who is an alcoholic, you get a FATE point when the character gets drunk, not just at the tavern between adventures, but when it will actually hurt the group's mission. That's right, you get rewarded for hurting the group's mission. Why? Because the focus of the FATE system is storytelling. Personal flaws and self-destructive behavior make for a better story.
Combat takes longer to resolve in 4th edition, so it is going to take a disproportionate amount of time in the game. There are a lot of tactical options. Monsters have a lot more hit points than in old D&D, so it takes longer to grind them down. Second winds and healing surges prolong the combat. You may think it seems faster, because lots of little things happen briskly in the battle, but use a watch and add up how much time it really takes. The more time you spend on combat, the less time you can spend on story. Some other games are able to resolve combat a lot faster. But the truth is, most 4th ed players enjoy combat and they don't want to just get it over with. That's fine, but it's not going to help storytelling.
In 4th edition you have a steep level progression. Not as bad as 3.5, but still pretty bad. This means that brand new characters can't adventure alongside experienced heroes. Everybody knows you can't take a first level character on a 15th level adventure. But if you read heroic fantasy novels, that kind of thing happens all the time. Take for instance the Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander. The young Taran adventures alongside the epic hero Gwydion. Those kind of storytelling options are not available in D&D. You could start Taran the PC out at a higher level, but that defeats the purpose. Now he's not a green kid anymore. The other problem with the level system is that you have to wait artificially to gain levels before you can take on certain villains. "Your sweetheart has been captured by the Big Bad!" "Then I go to rescue her!" "No way, you are only third level, so you can't possibly beat the Big Bad and his minions until you are at least 12th. You need to go grind until you ding 9 more times first." If the hero has to find a certain item, or search for the Big Bad, or seek allies or something, those are good reasons to delay the story climax. But making villains off-limits until a certain xp level seems artificial and takes away from the story.
The hit point system in 4th ed is also bad for story-telling, because you heal up all your damage overnight. What kind of story is that? How many fantasy novels have you read where everyone magically is fully healed overnight? No need to nurse anyone back to health. No need to recover and limb back to town. The 4th edition hit point system is a total gamism convenience that detracts from a good story.
There are other systems that are better for storytelling: I mentioned FATE earlier. Savage Worlds is a fun system, but it is more story-oriented than D&D. Pendragon, Ars Magica, Burning Wheel, and Houses of the Blooded are just some of the games that are better suited for plot and character driven roleplaying. I'm not saying they are better games. For a beer-and-pretzels fun night of semi-boardgaming fun, 4th edition beats them.
It just seems to me like you are trying to trick out your limousine for a NASCAR race. Sure you can make it go faster, but it would be a whole lot easier to trade it in for a racing car.
Hey Andy, thanks for the comment. I do agree with a lot of what you have to say but as I pointed out to Kube above, I feel it is the responsibility of both the players and the DM to see to it that there is a story to be told. Now, 4th edition may not be the worlds greatest storytelling game, and true enough, 3.5 wasn't either, but most of us got along pretty well with it too. The focus of the article was more about how players in general have not been fulfilling their obligations within the game.
It is my belief that roleplaying comes from within and not from a system. A good comes from the story's designers (which should include the players) and not from the game system. Advancement up through the levels should coincide with that story as naturally as possible. i very much agree with you that combat is very cumbersome in 4th edition and has been a bit of a load for me at times. However, there are just too many other things about 4th that I find to be far superior to 3.5 to turn back now. Perhaps you could take some of your thoughts over to my article on whether 3.5 is still worth playing located here: http://www.examiner.com/rpg-in-louisville/3-5-talk-is-it-still-worth-pla...
Steve,
I think 4th ed is better than 3.5 in some ways, and worse in other ways. However, when I'm arguing against 4th ed, I'm not arguing in favor of 3.5. I'm arguing against both. I'm arguing against D&D altogether when your purpose is storytelling.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!