| Zapi |
I personally feel that you can do both, most of the time. For me, I usually think of a concept and backstory, then figure out how best to make it work (since ineffective characters are no fun).
IMO, the ideal is for a player to put effort into both the story and mechanical concept of his character. I've actually found that half the time the ones who can't build effective characters are also the ones who are unable to roleplay well. At least, that was the case with my previous 2 groups at uni.
I agree with you on the first point. I always make the numbers to represent the story. Half the time, I end up making choices that are not necesarrily useful for a while, usually until the character figures out how to implement that particular ability, or an opportunity arises to show off their hidden skill. I do know a guy who builds horrible characters but is a great RPer, he playes in my regular tabletop games, heh. He's not even trying to optimize and just goes with what he thinks is cool. We have enough Player-GM trust to make his characters get by somehow, and he really adds to the game experience for everyone, even though he's lacking at the tactical aspect of the game.
Definitely role-player. Tiasar will be more utility caster than combat caster
Utility casters are my favorite type of wizard in a game (along with the guy who makes magic items, I don't trust the market), other than the mysterious magician wearing a mask, who is a plain looking average joe beneath, he just feels that being enigmatic will add to his reputation as a fabulous mage... :P
I've been roleplaying for over a year straight now, it makes up for my ability to make deep backstories when I can get into character concept kind of like an actor would. This is vocally of course, I don't type much but i'm not too bad at that either. I also think that maybe you should think about what a character can bring to the table and NOT single out anything just because there's "already a *insert class* in the group" even if certain things that were going to overlap would happen anyways, you can only have so much diversity until two people have a similar ability or skill or whatever at some point. You can totally be a good roleplayer AND an optimizer, they're slightly separate I think.
Jade, I didn't mean to single you out because you wanted to play the same class I did. I merely referred to your above comment about having more fun with your concept of a ranger than another class.
I agree that RPing and optimizing are vastly separate things, but I think that they can be and often are both present in a player. Someone who finds fun in building powerful characters withing the system can create backstories that justify their mechanical choices, and I've seen characters evolve almost entirely based on roleplaying choices into near game-breaking levels in other games.
For myself, I don't think about other characters and what they can bring to the group. Or, what my character will bring to the group. To say it bluntly, I don't care at that point. For me, bringing a new character to the game is taking that character through their life to a point, then drop them in the deep water of the campaign.
I feel that in a game that starts at zero experience, characters should be individuals drawn together for a common goal, THEN learn to complement their skills. Building a character for a party based on who they could flank with? Not something I'd do, but I'd give numbers to a cool idea of a character who worked with a partner in the past to mug others in alleys and survive on the streets of a metropolis.
Everyone's entitled to their own opinions naturally, I was merely curious about my possible fellow players and how they approached character creation and play. I know I would have more fun playing alongside characters created to find a purpose, rather than being created for a purpose.
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Long post, and there are several new ones while I typed this. Eh.
My ranger will be a two-weapon skirmisher who sucks at being a ranger for the first level at least (no nature, geograpgy or dungeoneering). He's from the planes, and not yet familiar with the region (due to me being new to the Pathfinder world). I'm RPing him as being in the final stage of learning about rangerhood though, so he will probably catch up in the necesarry skills once he gets some experience, but is resilent in that department as I haven't planned much for skill distribution. I'll put ranks where I think they're needed at the time. It's your choice if you want this info to influence your character building or not.