Keeping a character

[gnomersy]

Is it strange that I sort of want my character in our campaign to die so that I can play around with new character ideas? It makes sense to me in the strange bassackwards way where I derive half of the enjoyment in a character during the planning stages in trying to figure out how to make my idea come to life and work.

Does anyone else have this sort of problem?

If so how do you keep your interest from waning over time?

And what if any is your most ridiculous story of getting rid of an old character because you wanted to play a new one?

[Maxximilius]

Everyone changes characters at some time, if only because they are bored of one, or the character could not bring any interesting drama in comparison to another idea you have in mind.

[Adamantine Dragon]

I enjoy making new characters. But I also put a lot of investment in a character's backstory, personality and long term goals, so it's rare that I want to stop playing a character.

It does happen though. I fell in love with the "spellthief" concept back in 3.5 and built out what I thought was a great concept for a dagger-throwing spellthief.

But dagger throwers are already non-optimal and the spellthief itself was a very poorly designed class that was severely underpowered itself, so I ended up with a great concept but a very weak character.

After working with the GM to try to "fix" the problems it was clear that the only way to fix him was to provide crazy GM fiat things like extra feats, hugely expensive magic items or massive attribute bonuses.

In the end I decided to "retire" him, so the GM and I conspired to have him go out in a blaze of glory.

In other cases where I've wanted to play another character, I've just basically played the "daddy called, the farm is in trouble and I have to go save the family" card. No need to kill a character, just put them on the shelf.

[gnomersy]

Ah I suppose that's always an option but for some reason I have a cinematic death scene going on in my head where he's lying bleeding his weapons destroyed and the corpse of his foe before him as he utters his dying words, "I did not do this for my country *hack* but for the shiny *cough* shiny ... go ... ld *die*" I suppose I just like the idea of dying with some pizzazz too.