From Concept to Character Sheet; Part 1: Concept

This is the start of a new series I’ll be running, talking about creating characters from the ground up, beginning with the concept, and working my way through all of the reasons I chose the things I chose for the character. I hope it will put a voice to the subconscious decisions that all of us make when determining why it is our character has a 15 Strength and not 14.

Part One: Concept

Every character begins with a concept of what you want out of your character.

We’re starting up a Forgotten Realms game soon, and I ended up looking through my new 4e Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide and Player’s Guide to see what some of my options here. After reading up a bit on Cormyr, I found it very interesting, and decided that I wanted to play a noble knight from the Land of the Purple Dragon.

“But Mark,” you say, “there is no knight for 4e yet!” Oh, but there is.

I’ve never played a fighter before, and so I decided I’ll be playing a human fighter (yes, my xenophobic belief in Humans are the best even in worlds full of fantastical creatures still applies here). I’ll explain why the fighter and not the warlord in a future article, “Race, Class and Powers”.

Another important aspect to look at is your character name. You’re going to have NPCs shouting your name as you slay a dragon, and “Bob, Dragonslayer” just doesn’t fit well for me.

Looking over the Dragon Magazine in-depth look at Cormyr (you’ll have to forgive me, I can’t remember the exact date. All I know is that it came out before the DDI Subscription kicked in), I saw that one of the noble families names is Hawklin. Therefore, my Human Fighter’s name will be Alric Hawklin.

Tune in next time when I’ll begin showing you how I went about the deciding of Attributes.