How important is aesthetic to you when creating a character?

[Minigiant]

How important is aesthetic to you when creating a character?

Personally if I can't envisage a character I won't play them anymore because of earlier experiences where I struggled to role-play characters I couldn't picture.

Mechanically I have always wanted to play a; Cavalier, Samurai, and a Ninja. However I have never been able to "unpack" the thematic baggage those classes come with into the setting in which I am playing.

I used to have the same problem with male witches but eventually I found a gothic horror angle that I liked so I know my opinion is cemented. I just haven't found that aesthetic X factor for them yet

What about you? Do you incorporate a characters aesthetic when you are designing them?

[Scott Wilhelm]

Yes.

Sometimes the character grows from the aesthetic. Sometimes the aesthetic grows onto the character as I roleplay him or her. But it's hard to roleplay a character I'm not excited about playing.

I do have a tendency to ignore the flavor text of classes and races and just go straight to the game mechanics. I build characters with the rules; I roleplay characters by roleplaying them. I have my own imagination; than you very much, and I will flavor my character to taste!

[Mark Hoover 330]

I'm in exactly the same boat as Willy the Helm there. Mechanically I build a PC to get certain bonuses, follow certain rules, but how I roleplay these is completely up to me. I've wanted for a long time to take a character that gets a Bloodline and have those Bloodline powers be like super powers from comic books - instead of being born of a bloodline of dragons, my sorcerer acquired draconic abilities after being bitten by a radioactive Pyrausta or something :)

Also, I make a point to customize my PC's gear, sometimes obsessively. Any time my GM gives me Downtime I maximize my use of it for sometimes frivolous things like having special clothing made or using Craft: Leather to make the party matching masterwork backpacks.

Like the OP, if I can't imagine the PC, I have a hard time playing the PC. I try to make my characters special, using voices, mannerisms, unique items and so on.

[Sysryke]

Pretty darn important. I'm not always super good at visualizing. Sometimes my images are a little fuzzy, like side characters in a dream. Personality quirks, hobbies, and themes come to me first. But, descriptive elements still matter.

I think I'm a bit more like the OP when it comes to the "thematic baggage" of a class. Some I can turn on their ear, others feel a bit more constrained, at least until I develop them more. Inquisitors for instance I love, but find hard to adapt to certain campaigns.

Any class where you're bound to an alignment, or worse deity, order, or code feels a bit more set, because some of the character roleplay aspects are baked into the mechanics. Not impossible, just a bit more challenging. I think some features are just a bit easier to "re-skin" than others.

[Reksew_Trebla]

Uh, OP, witch is a gender neutral term. It is only fiction that makes them out to be female only.

Source: My mom is a witch (Celtic Pagan specifically) and researches her religion and neighboring (so to speak) religions every day since she has to unlearn what Christians taught her growing up.

[Quixote]

Reksew_Trebla wrote:

Uh, OP, witch is a gender neutral term...

I feel like the OP knows that, and that their issue comes from an ingrained bias they haven't been able to shake off yet, despite actual effort.

At least, that's what I read in the subtext. Could be wrong, though. I just try to give people the benefit of the doubt and get all the facts myself before deciding whether to take up arms or not.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Yeah, RP'ing a cavalier or paladin as something other than what the book intends is tough, since you have an oath or code or alignment restriction and such. But then...

On the rare occasion I get to play a character I try and think: what job or function does the PC serve? Like, not just for the party, but for themselves? Rather than reach for a specific class, I try do dive deep into that character's functions and then get a class that gives it to them.

A paladin concept can be the Paladin class. It could also be made with a SLIGHTLY different flavor by using Inquisitor, Fighter, Cleric, Warpriest, Bard, or even Magus or Sorcerer, just to name a few. See, the paladin is a holy warrior that fights in the name of a deity, favoring good and law - that's the concept.

So, what if you picked a CHAOTIC good warrior, say, a Ranger, and made them into your paladin concept. You fight for good and worship a higher power (nature, a nature god, ancestor worship, or venerating a patron animal or something), but your powers to combat evil are vastly different than the Paladin class.

Also, never count out the reflavoring of existing class abilities. One side benefit of a round of Rage is that the character's Con increases. This amounts to enhanced health, stamina and endurance during times of rage. What if your "paladin" is a Barbarian whose rounds of Rage are actually moments of Divine Fervor - the power of the deity infusing the character with supernatural health and the strength to smite their enemies.

On the other hand, let's look at a paladin. You have to be Lawful Good - this doesn't ALWAYS mean you're Superman from DC comics. Beyond that, look at some of the powers: Detect Evil - what if you SMELL evil, or you hear dark whispers when you focus on an evil object or person? Smite Evil - personally I stole something from the movie The Crow; a paladin I played years ago would take the "pain" from fallen innocents or his own life and channel pure suffering into the evil foes he smote, fighting fire with fire.

Then there's archetypes. There are over three dozen Paizo archetypes for the Paladin class. It may be that one of these is the exact flavor of paladin you're looking for.

Even if the class you've chosen has strict flavor attached as part of the mechanics, there are always opportunities to reimagine.

[Sysryke]

With that fuller explanation, I think we are on the same page.

[gnoams]

Aesthetics are a big part of character creation for me. I often start the process with a drawing, creating an idea of who the person is before choosing what game mechanics to use to represent them. That said, I don't care what the person who wrote the class thinks that class is supposed to be. Classes are just packages of abilities, with no bearing on a characters appearance or identity. I could take any pf character I've ever made and rebuild them using any number of different combinations of classes, feats, or other options, to represent the same character.

[Sysryke]

I think my point is the corillary of yours. You can build any concept with several classes or combos, but you can't use every class for every concept. Correct tool for the job. If rogue, fighter, sorcerer, other versatile classes are screwdrivers, paladins are skill saws (roughly).

[Minigiant]

Quixote wrote:

Reksew_Trebla wrote:

Uh, OP, witch is a gender neutral term...

I feel like the OP knows that, and that their issue comes from an ingrained bias they haven't been able to shake off yet, despite actual effort.

At least, that's what I read in the subtext. Could be wrong, though. I just try to give people the benefit of the doubt and get all the facts myself before deciding whether to take up arms or not.

Yeah correct, it just took longer to find the imagery for a male witch because of preconceived notions of what a witch is.

I haven't yet found that for Ninjas and their orientalism, nor the Cavalier and their Arthurian/Medieval Knight thematics

[PCScipio]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

A paladin concept can be the Paladin class. It could also be made with a SLIGHTLY different flavor by using Inquisitor, Fighter, Cleric, Warpriest, Bard, or even Magus or Sorcerer, just to name a few. See, the paladin is a holy warrior that fights in the name of a deity, favoring good and law - that's the concept.

My "paladin" is a Dawnflower Dervish Bard. I decided I wanted to really lean in to the divine warrior aspect of the archetype. She's actually Neutral Good instead of Lawful; she has a tendency to interpret rules to what she thinks they should be.

[Heather 540]

It depends on the character for me. Sometimes I'm just looking at mechanics, but then the theme starts growing. Sometimes I'll have a theme in mind first and I look for mechanics that fit it.

For example, I have a bard that starts with a level of IB Swash. This was to help keep her alive. I also have a vigilante that dips bard. This was for theme reasons - her parents force her to take music lessons and she sneaks out to take magic lessons.

[avr]

The aesthetic may change as I'm making a character, but something matching an aesthetic I like is important.

Minigiant wrote:

I haven't yet found that for Ninjas and their orientalism, nor the Cavalier and their Arthurian/Medieval Knight thematics

I'd see a ninja as a rogue with a cause if you strip away the orientalism. Something burning inside them (ki) and an addiction to secrecy which explains the curious concealable weapons, light step etc.

The Knights of the Round Table were more diverse than later interpretations may suggest. Lancelot is a French hero, Tristan Hungarian, there's even a token character from Muslim lands (Palamedes). If you want to get away from knightly aesthetics with the cavalier tho' you need an archetype. There's several - they suggest light cavalry or a court noble or beast masters or even the Lone Ranger.

[Squiggit]

Aeshtetics matter more to me than anything else, but I still usually picture classes as a mechanical way to accomplish those aesthetics more than an aesthetic unto themselves.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

i prefer well-defined settings and cultures I can base a character off of, and mechanics sort of naturally follow once the concept is in place. Does that count as aesthetics?
Lacking that, I'll go for what is mechanically interesting and adapt it to whatever comes our way in the game. I don't have one specific interpretation of look or behavior for any given class or alignment.

[MrCharisma]

avr wrote:

The aesthetic may change as I'm making a character, but something matching an aesthetic I like is important.

Minigiant wrote:

I haven't yet found that for Ninjas and their orientalism, nor the Cavalier and their Arthurian/Medieval Knight thematics

I'd see a ninja as a rogue with a cause if you strip away the orientalism. Something burning inside them (ki) and an addiction to secrecy which explains the curious concealable weapons, light step etc.

The Knights of the Round Table were more diverse than later interpretations may suggest. Lancelot is a French hero, Tristan Hungarian, there's even a token character from Muslim lands (Palamedes). If you want to get away from knightly aesthetics with the cavalier tho' you need an archetype. There's several - they suggest light cavalry or a court noble or beast masters or even the Lone Ranger.

Yeah I recommend looking at archetypes too.

For Cavaliers I saw THIS ARCHETYPE and thought of THIS (actually THIS AECHETYPE would probably do the titular character better, but it doesn't get me any merry men). If you want something really different from the Cavalier then THIS ARCHETYPE changes the aesthetic pretty significantly.

I don't know Ninjas as well, but as avr says they're just Rogues.

[Oli Ironbar]

I am a sucker for Akira Kurosawa’s characters so I start with one of them and their dilemmas.

A lawful good doctor who tries to use his craft to overcome the horrors of extreme poverty, a true neutral bureaucrat who tries to accomplish one lasting impact on his community, a chaotic good warrior who pretends (unsuccessfully) to be of noble birth.

This has the added benefit of having the movie to reference for what the character could look and act like.

[Tim Emrick]

If by "aesthetic" you mean being able to picture the character and have a solid hook into how to roleplay them, then yes, it's important to me. I don't always start there when I start building a character, and sometimes I'm still be struggling to pin it down when I first start playing the character, but if I don't manage to find that sense of who the character is before too long, they're not going to be much fun to play and I'll get bored quickly.

Here's an example of one character that was initially inspired by a bit of crunch: When I picked up People of the Sands, the living monolith PrC intrigued me, and I started trying to work out what kind of character would take that class once they qualified. Most of my PF play is Society, so Scarab Sages seemed a natural match to the PrC's origin. An oread would let me play up the character's stone-like nature from the very beginning. The martial path for the PrC sounded more interesting than the spellcaster option, so I needed a class that worked well with it. I settled on brawler in part because I hadn't played a hybrid class before, and that seemed the most straightforward one. All of this came together into a core idea for his personality and background: Neferanu's early training was as a temple guard, so he's also a bit of a scribe and scholar in addition to being a skilled combatant. He's dedicated to recovering and protecting the treasures of his homeland, and to learning new hidden lore (from any land) that can help make him a better warrior.

With regard to visualizing characters, I have a background in art, so I tend to draw portraits of most of my PCs, regardless of system. If I don't have a good enough picture in my head to draw them, then they need more work--but I often get more insight into the character through the choices I have to make to put the image down on paper. Most recently, I couldn't decide on a gender for an Earthdawn character, so started drawing them, which helped me form an opinion about how they would present themselves--and I sorted out a few less tangible details at the same time.

[Erpa]

It's the main thing.

I'll never create a character that is a drain on the group, or impossible to role play with.

The class, the damage min maxing nonsense, all that is truly secondary for me-and most of the group. Classes are just the chassis to play the game and make numbers happen. It's not that hard at all to use your class well with the proper set of magic items and great choices.

But the aesthetics of the characters look and his personal choices? That I love.

I last played a cavalier. He was the youngest son of a noble family and avoided the seminary, so he joined a nightly order. A knight now on his own, with a noble upbringing, he had a lot of bookish preconceptions about how a knight is perceived, how he believed he should be viewed, and how the world worked.

Being that I'm 41,I can remember how the blinders of youth are taken away with real world experiences. Being a knight can mean being a butcher and a slayer. It can mean really forcing yourself to accept some hard choices. It can mean forcing yourself to make the hardest choices.

I enjoyed that as much and more in certain situations than just running a giant through with a lance. That what I want when I play.