My First Three D&D Characters

Note: My laptop decided to stop working this morning. Yay!

     My first three Dungeons and Dragons characters that saw play were an interesting mix. They had different stats and very different outlooks. Each one had a larger presence and personality than the last.

     My first was a gnome cleric/wizard. He had a lot of hit points because, for some reason I never understood, gnomes had a constitution bonus. A small creature with illusion based magic doesn't scream health/sturdiness bonus to me, but hey, I’ll take it. He was intelligent and had a basic Neutral Good alignment.

     I still kick myself for not using that Rod of Silence. I’m certain he would have had a lengthy adventuring career, had that alarm not been raised.

     My next character was a halfling conceived as a cleric/fighter with a level of rogue to round out his abilities. Being the only rogue in the party, I wound up being roped into abandoning his original concept and advancing him exclusively with rogue levels. He was not planned for that, and he was not good at it.

     Fortunately, he was reincarnated as a satyr, which gave him enough bonuses to be slightly less embarrassing. He was curious about everything, and wanted to experience the world. He was True Neutral out of a deep belief in balance, rather than the typical true neutral character who just doesn’t much care.

     I eventually grew frustrated with him. He wasn’t effective at the one thing people expected from him, and I had trouble figuring out who else he might be. I decided if I was going to play the party’s rogue, I was going to be an impressive rogue. I pored through books for the perfect race. I read and plotted and planned to maximize his skill bonuses; I made sure he had, or would get, every possible increase to trapfinding and lockpicking. Backstory and personality fell into place; what felt missing, I fleshed out. I wanted him effective.

     And he was. He was as good with traps as our cleric was with undead. (Our cleric was a wiz against undead.) I had extra feats and was able to also make him a decent fighter; not the primary fighter, but a good addition to combat. He had a smart mouth. Where the previous character was comical, this one was serious. (Still funny - just in a different way.) He may be my favorite character ever. (We’ll have to see what happens with my current one.) And not because of his effectiveness - well, that helped - but because he had personality. He had a place.

     Look, I am a big fan of multiclassing. Huge. And adaptability is important. But when you're deciding who to be, planning and focus go a long way to determining if you’ll reach your goal. It could be that what you’re looking for is at the high level of one class, rather than spread among the lower level of several. Anyway, that’s how it worked for me with my first three D&D Characters.