Take toughness at level 1... that way you might soak 1 more hit before dying.. that would be really usefull
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Just because you disagree with the rogues viability doesn't mean it is not a worthy concept. Outside of pathfinder rogues can be extraordinarily formidable. Within pathfinder they can be any number of things as well, though I will refrain from stating what those things are due to the weighted opinions on the matter. The op did say 'any' RPG. Not just pathfinder. As such, a rogue is completely fine and worth taking incredibly seriously as we do not know what game we are referencing when making the comparisons.
Rogue as a character does NOT mean you have to use the rogue class.
*Every Single Time
(no comma needed)
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1) take a concept you think sounds fun.
2) have fun playing it.
3) make sure everyone else is having fun.
Done. Building it doesn't matter as much as enjoying the actual game with your friends.
Some of the best characters we've had wre fun because things went wrong for them.
Some of the most boring characters played were the over optimised ones.
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There's an awful lot of hate for this, and it's actually a pretty good post. Don't be distracted by the rogue picture, because while it's true that the rogue is in the lowest tier for effective classes, one can make a rogue effective enough to contribute to her party by following the advice that the writer gives.
The least effective characters are those that get distracted by the wealth of options this game has.
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1) take a concept you think sounds fun.
2) have fun playing it.
3) make sure everyone else is having fun.Done. Building it doesn't matter as much as enjoying the actual game with your friends.
Some of the best characters we've had wre fun because things went wrong for them.
Some of the most boring characters played were the over optimised ones.
The post is entitled "effective", not "optimized". Similar meaning, but not exactly.
I can build an optimized fighter, and in that case I'm choosing the most optimal options at all times. No room for the lesser feats in a 100% optimized build. To contrast, an effective fighter is going to be effective at whatever fighting style I like. If I'm choosing crossbow, it's certainly not OPTIMAL, but I can definitely contribute and be EFFECTIVE.
I personally don't see the fun in building an ineffective character, especially one who is ineffective at fulfilling the role I want him to fill.
1) take a concept you think sounds fun.
2) have fun playing it.
3) make sure everyone else is having fun.Done. Building it doesn't matter as much as enjoying the actual game with your friends.
Some of the best characters we've had wre fun because things went wrong for them.
Some of the most boring characters played were the over optimised ones.
Wrath, I fully agree with you. I've been playing and DM'ing D&D for over 20 years, now Playing Pathfinder also, and the best groups are the ones that aren't perfect, but somehow bumble their way to get the job done. It makes for good IC banter when a party is, well, imperfect. The IC stories are much more interesting
It would be good to add a section on party synergy and dynamics. You don't always know what you will get, but it can help form the group a lot better.
You should probably give some advice to think about how the character will deal with certain situations. What does it do with long range combat, short range combat, melee, natural hazards, etc. Have they got a way to capture someone alive? Are they the 'take no prisoners' type?
Since you aren't making it for a single system, probably want to include a section on healing. In most game systems there is some sort of first aid that anyone can be moderately skilled at -- enough to stop bleeding. Pathfinder actually makes this more difficult than other systems.
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Jeebus cripes, this guy can't even link a blog post without people being <insert derogatory term of preference> about it. This is one of the reasons I have intentionally left my body of literary work unavailable to this community: Negative Nancy owns this place.
Neal, keep doing what you're doing. There are people out there who, whether they benefit from a particular blog or not, do appreciate your efforts and won't derail or otherwise attack them over something like say, a relevant image. I am sure you sort of expect this from the community here, though, as I know you have posted for a while. Still, I guess there are more people helped than those who heckle and harass and possibly there are more who respond with neutral to positive or hell- even constructive remarks than those who reply with hellbent goals to portray chaotic evil.
So there's that.
For what it is worth, you picked an excellent subject. I commend you on that as both a gamer and a writer. I'm actually jealous I did not think of it first.
Building an effective character is always a challenge. For those looking for a simple guide though this 5-question character building solution will help you build a more effective character in ANY RPG.
Nice article. Neal's Iron Man PF variant is one of my favorite.
-MD
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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1) take a concept you think sounds fun.
2) have fun playing it.
3) make sure everyone else is having fun.Done. Building it doesn't matter as much as enjoying the actual game with your friends.
Some of the best characters we've had wre fun because things went wrong for them.
Some of the most boring characters played were the over optimised ones.
You list step 2 as "have fun playing it". What are the steps to do that?
To me, having fun playing a given concept tends to require roleplaying it well. Good roleplaying, in turn, requires that the character's actual type and degree of capability matches that of the persona that I'm presenting at the table.
That is, if I build a wizard who does all his fighting with spells but then try to roleplay being a magic-hating swordsman (or vice-versa), that's bad roleplaying.
Or if I want to play a coward and a liar who wants to learn to be a brave warrior but is currently pretty weak and is natural tendency is to bluff his way out of conflict, but then I build a powerhouse character who has a -2 Bluff skill; that's also bad roleplaying.
Or if I want to roleplay a strong hero whose name the legions of hell will learn to fear, but build a PC who barely manages to escape with his life in even the smallest encounter; that too is bad roleplaying.
And I don't have fun with bad roleplaying.
So unless you either (A) have fun with bad roleplaying, or (B) never want to play a concept that includes being strong/powerful/etc, then even your own suggestion shows the merits of having the skill to make an effective character.
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I'm not sure this advice does much to help character building in an RPG like PF. If you handed this advice to a brand new player, they wouldn't be much closer to playing, although they'd be less prone to a few common mistakes.
PF demands an impressive level of system mastery just to play as a beginner or else it demands experienced players helping you along. Compare it to Settlers of Katan, which a new player is ready to play in 15 minutes.
Pathfinder is a party game that forces players to be numerical failures at some things so other players can succeed. Knowing what your party can do together is more important than knowing what you can do.
Pathfinder is a game with tons of insider knowledge you need. You have to know about critical imbalances to succeed (i.e. Dex/Con vs. others) unless you're being carried.
You can play a session of pathfinder lite by putting steps 1 and 5 on index cards and rolling with it, but you won't really get what's going on, how experience works, or what you have to look forward to.
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Building an effective character is always a challenge. For those looking for a simple guide though this 5-question character building solution will help you build a more effective character in ANY RPG.
Your controversial rogue motivational is actually perfectly valid, but at the same time it underscores the central flaw of your guide.
Your hypothetical Rogue is a master of escaping bonds, evading traps and opening doors. You mention "pick any lock" as a valid design goal for a player character in step one.
All of these thing are sideshows. Minor abilities. Skills. Hobbies. First step should be deciding what your character does, in terms of things that will let you participate in the game.
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Easy to see that Pupsocket did not read the article...
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Easy to see that Pupsocket did not read the article...
Some good examples of specific goals are I want a character who can pick any lock she comes across, or I want to be so strong I can grapple opponents who are bigger than I am. Those are goals we can work with.
That was in the article.
I agree with most of the points of the article. I just feel that pupsocket is right in that the examples are poor and detract from the purpose of the article, which is building a character that is effective.
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its a personal choice. to me a fun character almost has to be complex. but that is my preference. i like prcs, archetypes, alternatives, and combinations. playing a level 20 vanilla wizard would be ok but give me a dip of fighter and a 10 level stint as an EK and now you have a character begining i can enjoy. but then again i recently started playing gestalt so complexity is easy to achieve and rewards the characters nicely.
I find you really have to go out of your way to make an ineffective character. You are much more likely to fail in optimizing unless you follow the guidance you find on this site or know all the options yourself. Failing at optimizing can lead to an ineffective character. I find optimizing does that quite often for few level till you get that key level that unlocks potential.
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Building an effective character is always a challenge. For those looking for a simple guide though this 5-question character building solution will help you build a more effective character in ANY RPG.
Sorry, I stopped reading when it said roleplaying was just as important as mechanics. We obviously have different views so I doubt there's much in it for me.
I understand that common sense is not all that common and perhaps I have just been playing for so long that the behaviours you describe in your guide are simply reflexive to me these days because I can't help but wonder how else a player would create a character? Flip the pages and point at random things?
Your guide, while well written and definitely well intentioned, seems comparable to instructions on how to fill and drink a glass of water or something else so plainly obvious that it requires no instructions whatsoever.
To clarify, I'm not criticizing for having made this guide, just saying I was disappointed to find nothing personally useful to me. The title was so promising...
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Do you enjoy playing dead characters?1) take a concept you think sounds fun.
2) have fun playing it.
3) make sure everyone else is having fun.Done. Building it doesn't matter as much as enjoying the actual game with your friends.
Some of the best characters we've had wre fun because things went wrong for them.
Some of the most boring characters played were the over optimised ones.
I played five sessions with a dead character using the ghost walk setting rules from 3.5. It was great fun. Then he got to go back to his corporeal body when they found someone to res him.
This is DnD, dead is a set back.
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Sorry, I stopped reading when it said roleplaying was just as important as mechanics. We obviously have different views so I doubt there's much in it for me.Building an effective character is always a challenge. For those looking for a simple guide though this 5-question character building solution will help you build a more effective character in ANY RPG.
Why is that? I'm not going to make an assumption, but I'd like to know where you fall on the argument.
Some players like to pick a mechanic (for instance, cracking out Aid Another or being able to always take advantage of the surprise round) and try to build a character around that mechanic. Once you know the thing that character is good at you fill in the personality and background that led to this person mastering X thing.
Alternatively you start with roleplay and back it up with numbers. You might have decided that your character is Lord Blackmoor, a commoner who has won a title through success in tourney fighting and serving in his Majesty's army. All right, what abilities are needed to back that up? Is the lord a melee fighter, preferring a mace and shield? Is he a jousting champion and horseman who's led cavalry in the field? Is he instead a cunning opportunist whose vicious fighting style leads him to victory through means others would consider dishonorable?
Both are good starting points. The process for designing the character is the same, but it starts on opposite ends of the journey.
Neal, I enjoyed your article, and i usually build my characters how they fit into my backstory. there's enough resoureces out there to build a character to your liking and fit your story very nicely as well. i'm currently playign an Oracle, and I took the Clouded vision curse, which my group wasn't a big fan of, but i felt fit my character's backstory. now we just have fun with it as a group. He's a good healbot, and his curse actually adds a ton of RP fun to the game. Min/Maxing is overrated. If I wanted to do that, i'd go play Memory, cause all you're doing is cookie cuttering this feat to that to make OP Toon. No fun in that, for DM's or other players.
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1) take a concept you think sounds fun.
2) have fun playing it.
3) make sure everyone else is having fun.Done. Building it doesn't matter as much as enjoying the actual game with your friends.
Some of the best characters we've had wre fun because things went wrong for them.
Some of the most boring characters played were the over optimised ones.
You list step 2 as "have fun playing it". What are the steps to do that?
To me, having fun playing a given concept tends to require roleplaying it well. Good roleplaying, in turn, requires that the character's actual type and degree of capability matches that of the persona that I'm presenting at the table.
That is, if I build a wizard who does all his fighting with spells but then try to roleplay being a magic-hating swordsman (or vice-versa), that's bad roleplaying.
Or if I want to play a coward and a liar who wants to learn to be a brave warrior but is currently pretty weak and is natural tendency is to bluff his way out of conflict, but then I build a powerhouse character who has a -2 Bluff skill; that's also bad roleplaying.
Or if I want to roleplay a strong hero whose name the legions of hell will learn to fear, but build a PC who barely manages to escape with his life in even the smallest encounter; that too is bad roleplaying.
And I don't have fun with bad roleplaying.
So unless you either (A) have fun with bad roleplaying, or (B) never want to play a concept that includes being strong/powerful/etc, then even your own suggestion shows the merits of having the skill to make an effective character.
I grew up playing systems where you rolled for everything and got what you were given. We played Warhammer fantasy roleplay, first edition. Everything was random, even your starting class.
When we played AdnD, it was random stats, taken in the order you rolled them, best of luck to you.
We learned to play and enjoy whatever we had available to us. We developed strategies to compensate for the lack of ability, realising that guy who's landed in the proverbial doesn't always have a choice for being there, but he's gonna try real hard to survive anyway.
So, unfortunately Jiggy, I guess I wrote my steps the wrong way around.
Get your character, have fun with it and develop him as he goes is probably better reflective of what we do. If we make mistakes in a build that doesn't reflect our concept, we actually make that part of the characters bumbling ineptness.
I liked the article the guy linked, it was well written and pretty informative for newer players. Good stuff for this community in general. My original post was more directed at the guy who threw in the wizard build concept as the only effective build. I should have replied to his specifically.
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Sorry, I stopped reading when it said roleplaying was just as important as mechanics. We obviously have different views so I doubt there's much in it for me.Building an effective character is always a challenge. For those looking for a simple guide though this 5-question character building solution will help you build a more effective character in ANY RPG.
Why is that? I'm not going to make an assumption, but I'd like to know where you fall on the argument.
Some players like to pick a mechanic (for instance, cracking out Aid Another or being able to always take advantage of the surprise round) and try to build a character around that mechanic. Once you know the thing that character is good at you fill in the personality and background that led to this person mastering X thing.
Alternatively you start with roleplay and back it up with numbers. You might have decided that your character is Lord Blackmoor, a commoner who has won a title through success in tourney fighting and serving in his Majesty's army. All right, what abilities are needed to back that up? Is the lord a melee fighter, preferring a mace and shield? Is he a jousting champion and horseman who's led cavalry in the field? Is he instead a cunning opportunist whose vicious fighting style leads him to victory through means others would consider dishonorable?
Both are good starting points. The process for designing the character is the same, but it starts on opposite ends of the journey.
I don't have a good imagination. I play more for the dice and the mechanics. I enjoy sitting in and hearing the story everyone else at the table comes up with, but my backstories (if that character has one yet) always feel forced and contrived. I build my characters based off of interesting mechanics or with a specific purpose/goal in mind and they don't have much story beyond that.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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@Wrath — Ah, I see. Yes, your post makes more sense in the context of playing a randomly-generated character. As for my post, lots of us enjoy creating a person (i.e., come up with a backstory and personality) and matching a build to it prior to the first gameplay session. In that context, a degree of skill in character building is required in order to play any concept other than "plucky underdog" or "farm boy who had an adventure dropped in his lap". Not that there's anything wrong with those concepts, but what about my third character? If I want that one to be any sort of competence-based concept, I'm going to need at least some degree of character-building skill. That's what I was getting at.
As for the guy you were apparently replying to, I think that was just a slightly-inaccurate-for-the-sake-of-brevity commentary on how much easier it is to build a powerful character if you cast spells than if you don't. (Which is frustrating for many of us, because that makes it hard to play out certain concepts.) I don't think he was saying you can't have fun with other characters, just that spellcasting is more powerful than non-spellcasting.
A big thing to building an effective character is the GM playing style.
I play in a game where at time no weapon leave it sheath and no spell is cast so your ultimate combat monster would spend his time bored with no reason to splat anything and as such they are not effective characters in the games Im in. Knowledge skills in our game are required if you dont want to sit around doing nothing while in other games they are a waste of points.
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@Wrath — Ah, I see. Yes, your post makes more sense in the context of playing a randomly-generated character. As for my post, lots of us enjoy creating a person (i.e., come up with a backstory and personality) and matching a build to it prior to the first gameplay session. In that context, a degree of skill in character building is required in order to play any concept other than "plucky underdog" or "farm boy who had an adventure dropped in his lap". Not that there's anything wrong with those concepts, but what about my third character? If I want that one to be any sort of competence-based concept, I'm going to need at least some degree of character-building skill. That's what I was getting at.
As for the guy you were apparently replying to, I think that was just a slightly-inaccurate-for-the-sake-of-brevity commentary on how much easier it is to build a powerful character if you cast spells than if you don't. (Which is frustrating for many of us, because that makes it hard to play out certain concepts.) I don't think he was saying you can't have fun with other characters, just that spellcasting is more powerful than non-spellcasting.
Yeah, I seem to be making posts lately that aren't written well to get my point across. Then I have to come back and explain my intent. I must work on that.
And yes, some of us do build characters exactly as you say. In which case this article has some really good advice.
As for the spell caster thing, my groups have found it almost completely the opposite. But that's just gameplay experiences differing really. I certainly get your point.
I think articles like the one written here really need to come back into these boards. They're not definitive, but they are great advice.
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Here's my own method for building an effective character (which I've posted to these forums multiple times before). Bear in mind that this only refers to making a character who will be useful mechanically, and has no bearing whatsoever on the personality or back story.
1. Pick a specialty in combat.
2. Have something else you can do in combat when #1 isn't an option.
3. Pick a specialty out of combat.
Now make your character good at those 3 things. Aim for great in either #1 or #3 as your character's primary specialty. But never shoot for mega-awesome-best-in-the-world at anything, because that usually requires putting too many resources (stat points, feats, traits, money spent on equipment, etc) into one thing, and not leaving enough for the other two.
Don't try to have a 4th thing your PC can do well, because you'll spread yourself too thin. Occasionally you'll have a character build that just naturally has more things they're good at (bards and rogues tend to be good at multiple things outside of combat, for instance), so you can just go with it, but don't try too hard to be good at all of those things if they require any investment of resources.
Examples from my own PFS PCs:
Barbarian
1. Melee monster (obvious stuff like high strength, high con, Power Attack, rage powers for more melee power, etc).
2. Composite longbow and alchemist's fires
3. Diplomacy, believe it or not. I took a trait to make it a class skill, and kept it maxed out. I was rarely the main party face, but I was able to contribute in most conversations and aid another for the main face consistently.
Tattooed Fey Sorcerer
1. Enchantment spells, boosted by the bloodline's +2 bonus on compulsion spells, knowing some of those spells, and eventual Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus.
2. Evocation, boosted by the Varisian Tattoo, and I took Magic Missile from level 1, with more damage spells later. This way, I have offense against things without minds.
3. Social skills (obvious choice for a charisma based caster).
Gnome Prankster Bard
1. Debuff things with minds using intimidation, Mock bardic performance, and debuff spells.
2. Inspire Courage, Wand of Cure Light Wounds, crossbow. Coming up with what this guy can do in battle against mindless enemies was tougher than building most of my other characters. Still picking up the occasional spell here and there that will give me something else useful to do in battle against mindless foes.
3. Skill monkey, especially on face skills and bardic knowledge, but also has others.
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One thing missing from the guide is to design your character in the context of the campaign world.
If you build The Best Gunfighter In The World but firearms don't exist, then your roleplay experience may differ from what you were expecting.
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While I do agree with you that this is an important point, I want to believe that a DM will talk with players before the game starts and let them know what is and what isn't allowed according to world/theme.
But part of the problem is that a lot of the issues with character effectiveness are related to the game system, not to the world.
Since this is a Pathfinder board, I'll draw some examples from Pathfinder.
* It's hard to make a character focused on combat maneuvers, because the rules themselves are very complex, and there are a lot of hard or soft limits, like the size of the creature you can trip. While you can sometimes get around these limitations with sufficient mastery, you don't necessarily even know about them up-front.
* There are some paths to building characters that are outright traps, because the mechanics as written don't support what they want. The Rogue is an obvious choice, as is the Titan Mauler barbarian (because you can't actually wield a super-sized weapon, because Massive Weapons and Jotungrip don't do what you think they do). If I want to build the Grey Mouser, I build him as a bard, not a rogue.
* An enchanter mage sounds very powerful until you realize how many monsters are outright immune to being enchanted. I mean, there's a dominate monster spell --- why the hell can't I dominate a golem? Isn't a golem a monster?
* I want to build a wizard with time-based spells, so I can do all sorts of cool leaving-notes-to-myself from the future tricks so that I'm always prepared. How do I do this in Pathfinder?
* On a similar note, someone wants to play a dragon, because they want to be big and be able to fly. How do you fit a dragon into a low-level party? (What does "low-level" mean?)
So in addition to the Shiny Red Ball problem, there's also the Imaginary Red Ball problem, where the rules literally don't support the kind of character you wanted and you didn't realize it at the time.
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Character creation for me is so messy. These guidelines are refreshing to read in comparison to whatever it is that I do. Honestly, making a character usually takes weeks, requires an entire table designed to comfortably seat 6, 30-100 different tabs, and a lot of wasted paper.
I don't know exactly where I begin. In one case, I made a character in order to shut people up on the forums up about 'you can only tank effectively through damage'. I grew so incredibly irritated that I built something that literally dealt no damage and still walked into melee and tanked. In another case, I got sick of seeing what struck me as truly inaccurate and unfaithful builds for popular superheroes so I tossed together my version which felt like it at least nodded in the direction of the heroes they were based on. Sometimes, for me, it is about a mechanic. Maybe I feel overrun is just too rarely used and I feel that the thing exists for a reason so gosh darnit- it's time to make an overrun character. Other times, it's a prestige class, a multiclass combo that is bizarre or which I feel is irritatingly stupid but suddenly I realize it has an awesome or hidden interaction nobody has noticed. And yeah, sometimes I am inspired by a theme or general concept and want to explore its permutations until I find one I like via a mechanic or personality or class or feat and then I build around that.
I enjoy character creation a lot. However, I doubt I am the right person to ask for on advice on how to do it. There is so much going on in my head, coming from so many angles that if I attempted to say what I was thinking, I am sure that a garbled mess of baby banter would gaga-googoo from my mouth instead.
