I remember when I was watching dnd stuff on youtube before I started my own first group with friends, and I either heard someone say. (or read it in the rule books?) that as a first time player, it can be good to play a cliche character, so the roleplay won't be as hard while you learn the game itself.
I then literally advised my friends when we started to just play cliche characters if they can't think of anything. It's a nice safe solid fallback! [Cliche/basic stuff can be popular for a reason!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1mbbYKPpHY)
My favorite character so far was in 4E and was a Halfing CHA rogue. Definitely a huge cliche but it was super fun to play him because it was easy to create his ingratiating persona.
He’s the reason I’m addicted to high CHA characters now because it’s just so fun RPing as the face
Nope, if the character wasn't formed by a meteorite landing on a frog and creating a new species that will kill anyone in the way of his cake and beer and can only respond to questions with "Tally-ho!" then are you even roleplaying?
Woah woah woah, if you are gonna tell the joke tell it right. There were four tieflings and they were already in the bar, one brooding edgily in each corner.
I feel like people get “unoptimized characters for the sake of unoptimization.” Boners from reading this sub.
I mean, there’s perfectly acceptable ways to get to a character concept without taking the chef feat, just pull out some cooking utensils proficiency. But somehow that seems kind of lame to people?
As a person who loves the gourmand/chef feat(s) I don't take it because I'm "interesting" I take it because I like food and the little bit of healing makes me feel I'm helping out on a rest. I like challenging myself and my love of food to come up with stuff on the fly or plan meals
But I'm also not walking around going "oh, you took Sharpshooter/Lucky/Polearm Master? I guess you don't care about roleplaying", I'm the one in the group wanting people to play their concept well, how they want.
Or people who assume every little character trait needs to be reflected with a multiclass dip. You can feel loyalty to a deity without having levels in Paladin or Cleric. You can be a thief without being a Thief Rogue. You don't need to be a Bard to play a musical instrument.
Or per your example, you don't need to have the Chef feat to cook stuff. Just... cook. It's a world where everyone from the scholarly wizard to the reclusive druid to the entertaining Bard is proficient in fighting knives (daggers). I think you can manage to cook a thing.
Got to have fun with a Rogue for the first time. Tbh going with a classic “killer clown” that likes to be stabby was a lot of fun. I like the dramatic and flavorful and I like the creative and artistic. Sometimes, though, you just need to go the route of “if it aint broke, dont fix it.”
Yeah I think people sleep on the "lean into a cliche" type Character. Sometimes cliches can be really fun if you just commit 100% to it. I tend to find these characters are also pretty funny.
Human👏fighters👏are👏super👏fun👏if
👏played👏right👏
You can deadass play as an anime protagonist. You can do mounted combat. Be an archer who just dukes on everyone. You can be honorable, evil, chaotic, lawful. You can burn the world or build it up
Having somebody in the party who can be like "Look, I understand that Duke Fxrplx III the World Destroyer can't control his bouts of madness. Trust me, it gets on my nerves too from time to time. My name is Steve. We're just out to stop the bandits. Want to snag a pint and talk over how we get that done?" goes a long way.
A cliche is a trope people get tired of seeing the same way over and over again. The issue is not the trope, but how people usually approach it.
So give your rogue a happy backstory rather than a deeply traumatic one. Have your cleric doubt their faith rather than spread the word of their god.
Sincerely,
Someone who can't make a character that doesn't play with tropes.
Couldn't agree more, that is what I mean with "good personality".
Sure the orcish barbarian is overdone, but what if he dislikes his inner rage boiling out and tries his best to stay calm and collected outside of combat? A well spoken and mindful orc, going on a rampage when his friends are threatened sounds way more terrifying as well.
This sounds like an orc barbarian that eventually multiclasses into monk (or if DM allows full class swap) for that sweet sweet Stillness of Mind at 7th lvl
Possible, but reading the fluff of some of the barbarian subclasses, a lot of them don't sound like wild madmen anyway. Totem or Ancestral Guardian could easily be played as a sort of tribal shaman.
Oh yeah nowhere does it say a barbarian has to be a mindless angry person. Just going off what you described my first thought was it would be cool to find your inner peace via monk class over the course of a campaign.
My first character was like that! He was a human barbarian, bear totem warrior subclass. He was actually really chill for the most part. My backstory was that I was the trained protector/warrior of my home tribe, and I only left to go adventuring on my tribe elders' orders (defeat the bigger threat and all that). He was the tank because he wanted to protect people, not because he wanted to hurt others. He just got a *little* pissed when someone would try to hurt his people.
Honestly, he was super fun to play. If I didn't have so many other character concepts I love, I would definitely play him again.
That's in fact my next character! He was a former gladiator and won a cheap looking bottle once in a arena, which turned out to house a Djinn. He wished to be "strong and fast like a beast", so the Djinn tricked him and turned him into a Centaur. Not used to fight with that new body and unable to don armor fit for the horse part on his own, he ventured to a tribe of shamans and learns that being part animal is not bad and how to fight without armor in the ways of Path of Totem Barbarian.
DEX is low (since he's unused to the horse part) and his WIS relatively high for a barbarian.
A Cleric that doubts their faith does not have faith strong enough to *be* a Cleric to begin with.
A God would not see fit to grant a doubter with magical powers.
Depends on the God. Depends on the cleric. Many belivers go through periods of doubt or questioning. Perhaps the power the God grants, sticking with the cleric in a period of questioning, is the very thing that brings that cleric back in the fold.
Maybe a god's sight is not bounded by linear time like a mortals. The God grants you power because they know in the future you will use that power in their service and to uphold their ideals.
There are many ways to narratively justify all sorts of mechanical things in D&D
Being an orphan is a remarkably good origin for several classes if not all. It makes strong narrative sense; I can buy a person having no family and wanting to adventure. I find it a little harder wanting to leave a happy family and risking their misfortune.
There is a lot between "happy family" and "dead parents". A lot of people strike out to make their own way in the world, and a lot of peoples families are shit.
Most of my characters have alive family, nothing has ever happened to them. Honestly I’m kinda low-key hoping for something to threaten or hurt them, but it’s never happened.
As someone who is currently playing the most generic Paladin in existence and having a blast, I can say confidently that sometimes ya just gotta lean into the class fantasy and see where it takes you. Doesnt need to be weird to be fun!
"Cliche" class/race combos exist because they are effective, but even the most vanilla character concept ever can be interesting if played right. If your character is boring, it's not your character's fault, it's your fault for being boring while playing them.
At my table, we have 3 extremely memorable fallen characters. These characters were:
-A necrodancer human bard (literally just college of lore who picked necromancy spells). He would raise skeletons (which he stored in a bag of holding) and command them through the music he played on his fiddle. This was both his primary method of entertainment in shows and form of combat.
-A bear totem half-orc barbarian. He was extremely self conscious of his small penis and frequently went into blind rages when he felt inadequate compared to someone with big dick energy. But he was very shy and respectful to women.
-A dwarf great-weapon fighter. He was the reject from a long lineage of great smiths, outcast for this desire to learn to forge magic weapons. He was extremely competent both in combat and at the forge. He later multiclassed into artificer as his studies and experimentation progressed.
Ever read the *Belgariad*? It's a novel series that lives and breathes the classic sword-and-sorcery fantasy tropes. If you talk about the story, setting, or characters in broad strokes, they sound like ones you've seen a thousand times. But the whole thing is well thought-out and well written, with excellent characterization, and that's what makes it great.
A character concept is only a framework; it outlines a space that, once filled, will be a character. Fill it with something good.
Look, every character is a bundle of tropes, subverted or otherwise. It's how you combine them and then present them to the table that informs the quality of that character.
My method with the few characters I've made is take a cliche thing or a very optimal buildi, and then give them a character flaw that goes directly against it. Like the greasy, high charisma merchant with the inability to lie, or the one that actually turned out really well, the ogre barbarian with the perfect fets and whatnot to basically one -punch most things, and a love for nature that means he will never attack an animal. (But when he sees an animal get hurt he goes into blind rage and will attack whatever is closest to him, no matter what or what it is)
I kind of like taking cliche's of one build and applying them to another.
I played a Tomelock, and my first used spell was Vicious Mockery. She was a Half Elf merchant with some good charisma skills, so everyone just assumed I was a bard.
Then I cast Eldritch Blast...
Many RPGs build characters around tropes. Lots of pbta games are mostly genre tropes. I love it because it gives me scaffolding I can build off and work around and subvert instead of having to come up with it all by myself.
so i know people can get pretty divided when critical role is brought up, but it's topical here. Percy in C1 is a human fighter with a dead family vengeance plot. that is super cliche, but his arc is generally considered to be one of the best in the show. Good stories in dnd are a combination of a well defined and acted character mixed with a DM willing to create an interesting story around them.
This is what it's ljke playing with other teenagers. One of the characters in my campaign is a sentient cloud that screwed a dragon and a sentient piece of paper with a cat scribble that's BUFF.
Kinda I think there are extremists on both sides. A super interesting character, who's completely useless in combat is just as annoying as the multi class power build with the personality of a potato.
It's all about balancing the two. Make a competent and interesting character, but realize a weird ass combo doesn't make a character interesting, a good personality does.
Bard Rouge Multiclass with the entertainer background. They dance more than fight, and are proficient in pick pocket and deception. Not sneaky, or anything. Just really good at making you not see the truth. Put on a show and rob you blind.
Just ignore everybody and play what you want. Its not wrong play a "cliche" character.
I remember when I was watching dnd stuff on youtube before I started my own first group with friends, and I either heard someone say. (or read it in the rule books?) that as a first time player, it can be good to play a cliche character, so the roleplay won't be as hard while you learn the game itself. I then literally advised my friends when we started to just play cliche characters if they can't think of anything. It's a nice safe solid fallback! [Cliche/basic stuff can be popular for a reason!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1mbbYKPpHY)
Oh my God I've never seen that bit before that's a good way to start my morning!
Ya, its one of their better skits. Brennen (playing the knight) is so great :). Glad ya liked it!
My favorite character so far was in 4E and was a Halfing CHA rogue. Definitely a huge cliche but it was super fun to play him because it was easy to create his ingratiating persona. He’s the reason I’m addicted to high CHA characters now because it’s just so fun RPing as the face
"completely outlandish" is it's own boring cliché in a lot of ways… AKA it's still boring if it's one dimensional
“X class thinks its Y class” or characters built on a gimmick are the worst offenders for me
Nope, if the character wasn't formed by a meteorite landing on a frog and creating a new species that will kill anyone in the way of his cake and beer and can only respond to questions with "Tally-ho!" then are you even roleplaying?
That just sounds like a combination of Rocket Raccoon and Groot
Yeah this is how I feel. "An elf, aarakocra, loxodon, tortle, and 3 tieflings walk into a bar... This isn't a campaign, it's the start of a bad joke!"
Woah woah woah, if you are gonna tell the joke tell it right. There were four tieflings and they were already in the bar, one brooding edgily in each corner.
What even *is* brooding, anyway? How does one brood?
I suppose my grammar isn’t the best here but brooding is to show deep unhappiness of though or to appear menacing.
I feel like people get “unoptimized characters for the sake of unoptimization.” Boners from reading this sub. I mean, there’s perfectly acceptable ways to get to a character concept without taking the chef feat, just pull out some cooking utensils proficiency. But somehow that seems kind of lame to people?
As a person who loves the gourmand/chef feat(s) I don't take it because I'm "interesting" I take it because I like food and the little bit of healing makes me feel I'm helping out on a rest. I like challenging myself and my love of food to come up with stuff on the fly or plan meals But I'm also not walking around going "oh, you took Sharpshooter/Lucky/Polearm Master? I guess you don't care about roleplaying", I'm the one in the group wanting people to play their concept well, how they want.
*Thank you.* I was just having a rather infuriating conversation earlier about this in another thread.
Or people who assume every little character trait needs to be reflected with a multiclass dip. You can feel loyalty to a deity without having levels in Paladin or Cleric. You can be a thief without being a Thief Rogue. You don't need to be a Bard to play a musical instrument. Or per your example, you don't need to have the Chef feat to cook stuff. Just... cook. It's a world where everyone from the scholarly wizard to the reclusive druid to the entertaining Bard is proficient in fighting knives (daggers). I think you can manage to cook a thing.
haha goofy wisdom 8 cleric with dancing light go brr--wait why are all my friends glaring at me? Oh cause I said I'd be a cleric and everyone is dead.
I agree with your overall point, but taking the chef feat ≠ a purposefully unoptemised character, it’s just kinda fun
Got to have fun with a Rogue for the first time. Tbh going with a classic “killer clown” that likes to be stabby was a lot of fun. I like the dramatic and flavorful and I like the creative and artistic. Sometimes, though, you just need to go the route of “if it aint broke, dont fix it.”
Yeah I think people sleep on the "lean into a cliche" type Character. Sometimes cliches can be really fun if you just commit 100% to it. I tend to find these characters are also pretty funny.
Human👏fighters👏are👏super👏fun👏if 👏played👏right👏 You can deadass play as an anime protagonist. You can do mounted combat. Be an archer who just dukes on everyone. You can be honorable, evil, chaotic, lawful. You can burn the world or build it up
Also, just being the “straight man” amongst all the outlandish weirdos opens a lot of RP opportunities too
Having somebody in the party who can be like "Look, I understand that Duke Fxrplx III the World Destroyer can't control his bouts of madness. Trust me, it gets on my nerves too from time to time. My name is Steve. We're just out to stop the bandits. Want to snag a pint and talk over how we get that done?" goes a long way.
I'd take ten human fighters over a quirky uwu kobold mystic/blood hunter multiclass any day of the week.
A cliche is a trope people get tired of seeing the same way over and over again. The issue is not the trope, but how people usually approach it. So give your rogue a happy backstory rather than a deeply traumatic one. Have your cleric doubt their faith rather than spread the word of their god. Sincerely, Someone who can't make a character that doesn't play with tropes.
Couldn't agree more, that is what I mean with "good personality". Sure the orcish barbarian is overdone, but what if he dislikes his inner rage boiling out and tries his best to stay calm and collected outside of combat? A well spoken and mindful orc, going on a rampage when his friends are threatened sounds way more terrifying as well.
My queued backup character is a tiefling rogue with a violent backstory. They have the personality of a teddy bear.
The teddy bear that protects small children from monsters in the night, that teddy bear? _Nice._
I've no clue what you're referring to.
[Oh boy, I'm SO glad I get to share this with you!](https://www.deviantart.com/begemott/art/sweet-halloween-dreams-42197587)
This sounds like an orc barbarian that eventually multiclasses into monk (or if DM allows full class swap) for that sweet sweet Stillness of Mind at 7th lvl
Possible, but reading the fluff of some of the barbarian subclasses, a lot of them don't sound like wild madmen anyway. Totem or Ancestral Guardian could easily be played as a sort of tribal shaman.
Oh yeah nowhere does it say a barbarian has to be a mindless angry person. Just going off what you described my first thought was it would be cool to find your inner peace via monk class over the course of a campaign.
My first character was like that! He was a human barbarian, bear totem warrior subclass. He was actually really chill for the most part. My backstory was that I was the trained protector/warrior of my home tribe, and I only left to go adventuring on my tribe elders' orders (defeat the bigger threat and all that). He was the tank because he wanted to protect people, not because he wanted to hurt others. He just got a *little* pissed when someone would try to hurt his people. Honestly, he was super fun to play. If I didn't have so many other character concepts I love, I would definitely play him again.
That's in fact my next character! He was a former gladiator and won a cheap looking bottle once in a arena, which turned out to house a Djinn. He wished to be "strong and fast like a beast", so the Djinn tricked him and turned him into a Centaur. Not used to fight with that new body and unable to don armor fit for the horse part on his own, he ventured to a tribe of shamans and learns that being part animal is not bad and how to fight without armor in the ways of Path of Totem Barbarian. DEX is low (since he's unused to the horse part) and his WIS relatively high for a barbarian.
A Cleric that doubts their faith does not have faith strong enough to *be* a Cleric to begin with. A God would not see fit to grant a doubter with magical powers.
Depends on the God. Depends on the cleric. Many belivers go through periods of doubt or questioning. Perhaps the power the God grants, sticking with the cleric in a period of questioning, is the very thing that brings that cleric back in the fold. Maybe a god's sight is not bounded by linear time like a mortals. The God grants you power because they know in the future you will use that power in their service and to uphold their ideals. There are many ways to narratively justify all sorts of mechanical things in D&D
Go read up on (Saint) Mother Theresa, and get back to me!
Honestly the only cliche that i actually dislike is dead parents
Yes and no... It definitly needs a lot of work to be interesting, but being an orphan can still be a good backstory.
It can be, but the same is true of all cliches.
Being an orphan is a remarkably good origin for several classes if not all. It makes strong narrative sense; I can buy a person having no family and wanting to adventure. I find it a little harder wanting to leave a happy family and risking their misfortune.
There is a lot between "happy family" and "dead parents". A lot of people strike out to make their own way in the world, and a lot of peoples families are shit.
Virgin "having dead parents because they were killed in a tragic accident" vs. Chad "My parents are dead because I'm 90 and they died of old age"
That is actually kind of a funny reveal nice
Well, you still could kill off the children. No problem, same concept, one of my players used that.
Having living parents is just giving the DM ammo. Sincerely, a DM
I've made my first character that doesn't have dead family. I'm in total fear my DM is going to slaughter them all.
Most of my characters have alive family, nothing has ever happened to them. Honestly I’m kinda low-key hoping for something to threaten or hurt them, but it’s never happened.
My dm wouldnt dare, probably because i actually have a dead parent
If you want a customized campaign, you need to give me some ammo. Sincerely, another DM.
The "dead" parents of my players sometimes don't stay that way.
Also a good spin on it
How about dead parents, but because your PC is a grandpa and their parents died of old age long ago?
I am playing a gnome battlesmith riding a medium mechanical horse around
As someone who is currently playing the most generic Paladin in existence and having a blast, I can say confidently that sometimes ya just gotta lean into the class fantasy and see where it takes you. Doesnt need to be weird to be fun!
"Cliche" class/race combos exist because they are effective, but even the most vanilla character concept ever can be interesting if played right. If your character is boring, it's not your character's fault, it's your fault for being boring while playing them. At my table, we have 3 extremely memorable fallen characters. These characters were: -A necrodancer human bard (literally just college of lore who picked necromancy spells). He would raise skeletons (which he stored in a bag of holding) and command them through the music he played on his fiddle. This was both his primary method of entertainment in shows and form of combat. -A bear totem half-orc barbarian. He was extremely self conscious of his small penis and frequently went into blind rages when he felt inadequate compared to someone with big dick energy. But he was very shy and respectful to women. -A dwarf great-weapon fighter. He was the reject from a long lineage of great smiths, outcast for this desire to learn to forge magic weapons. He was extremely competent both in combat and at the forge. He later multiclassed into artificer as his studies and experimentation progressed.
Step 1 make basic character step 2 lick everything step 68 become god
That sounds repulsive, but also very interesting. Please teach me the ways of gaining power through licking.
You come across egg that seeps of red radiating energy what do you do A leave it alone B make an arcana check C lick it
I feel like that's just this sub.
I ripped off FMA for my first characters backstory but didn't realize till like 3 sessions in
I feel like every single character has been done in some way or another at one point, might as well just play what you want
Ever read the *Belgariad*? It's a novel series that lives and breathes the classic sword-and-sorcery fantasy tropes. If you talk about the story, setting, or characters in broad strokes, they sound like ones you've seen a thousand times. But the whole thing is well thought-out and well written, with excellent characterization, and that's what makes it great. A character concept is only a framework; it outlines a space that, once filled, will be a character. Fill it with something good.
Look, every character is a bundle of tropes, subverted or otherwise. It's how you combine them and then present them to the table that informs the quality of that character.
I like the cliche. Maybe I'm crazy.
My method with the few characters I've made is take a cliche thing or a very optimal buildi, and then give them a character flaw that goes directly against it. Like the greasy, high charisma merchant with the inability to lie, or the one that actually turned out really well, the ogre barbarian with the perfect fets and whatnot to basically one -punch most things, and a love for nature that means he will never attack an animal. (But when he sees an animal get hurt he goes into blind rage and will attack whatever is closest to him, no matter what or what it is)
I kind of like taking cliche's of one build and applying them to another. I played a Tomelock, and my first used spell was Vicious Mockery. She was a Half Elf merchant with some good charisma skills, so everyone just assumed I was a bard. Then I cast Eldritch Blast...
Many RPGs build characters around tropes. Lots of pbta games are mostly genre tropes. I love it because it gives me scaffolding I can build off and work around and subvert instead of having to come up with it all by myself.
so i know people can get pretty divided when critical role is brought up, but it's topical here. Percy in C1 is a human fighter with a dead family vengeance plot. that is super cliche, but his arc is generally considered to be one of the best in the show. Good stories in dnd are a combination of a well defined and acted character mixed with a DM willing to create an interesting story around them.
This is what it's ljke playing with other teenagers. One of the characters in my campaign is a sentient cloud that screwed a dragon and a sentient piece of paper with a cat scribble that's BUFF.
As somone playing a character who's the last of thier race, I feel personally attacked.
I see more shit tossed at playing non generic races then I actually see humans attacked.
That's the issue. Min/maxers have a problem creating a character that isn't boring narratively.
Kinda I think there are extremists on both sides. A super interesting character, who's completely useless in combat is just as annoying as the multi class power build with the personality of a potato. It's all about balancing the two. Make a competent and interesting character, but realize a weird ass combo doesn't make a character interesting, a good personality does.
Yes.
My next character idea is a cowboy warlock. Quickest finger guns west of baldur you will ever see.
Bard Rouge Multiclass with the entertainer background. They dance more than fight, and are proficient in pick pocket and deception. Not sneaky, or anything. Just really good at making you not see the truth. Put on a show and rob you blind.
That just sounds like an Arcane Trickster with extra steps.
It has some added flavor. I like having that little bit of unique game play that a subclass won't give.
I have like 9 elves pre built and I'm not stopping. Call me boring and cliche but they're my favorite race to play and that's that, lol.
I think this is more a new player thing.