Your First Character

[Riverdance]

What was your first character? DnD, Call of Cthulu, Pathfinder, WoD or whatever your first system was. Were they entirely unequipped or hopelessly munchkinly? Were they core race, or whatever monster you thought was cool? Did you try to make it yourself, or did someone else dictate?

For my first character I was convinced by another novice player, to make an 8th level hound archon ranger. On top of that I was promptly given a Vorpal Greatsword. Actual roleplaying was out of the question.

[Wyntonian]

Lared Mackenzie, human ranger. EWP Bastard sword because IRL those are decent, decided later to go Wildshape. God, that was a bad game. Barely got started before it died.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Kelb_Panthera, were-tiger cleric of no-god-in-particular. I created him as a thought experiment before I ever had a chance to play a single session. In-fact, he never saw a single session. Intuition told me I had done something wrong the first time I looked at a published adventure for a first level party. I did enjoy imagining him in little skits in my mind though.

[NotScaryBats]

Xena, a Fullplate wearing 2nd edition Human Fighter with a 2 handed sword. Later, got embarassed by her name and renamed her Crystal.

She adventured with my big brother's Cleric of Poseidon Mike Garamonde.

[Laura Eternata]

My first D&D experience was as a DM for a long lasting 3.0 game with my brother, where I DMPCed a human barbarian who I gave arbitrarily high stats because I wanted him to be cool (I know, I know...)

My first PC for a game that lasted more than one session was a human vampire paladin in a Morrowind themed game. For some reason my brother reduced the Monster Manual vampire's LA to +1, so she was on the overpowered side. The character concept was basically Angel as a woman, which I maintain is the best way to play a paladin. Sadly, that game fell apart when my brother fell out of love with Morrowind, into love with Civilization IV, and promptly made my character the new empress of Tamriel.

[Kol Korran]

1st edition, 3rd level rogue (All rogues were human then- no distinction between race and class). I build him myself (Though in 1st edition that's done in about 10 minutes. Rogues mostly needed to assign percentages to "rogue skills") died 2 sessions into the game (some sort of a mega dungeon). That game was quite lethal. (Next character was blinded in one eye and lost a leg due to poison).

But we were kids, and this was new and exciting, and so quite a lot of fun.

[Morithias]

Tamaki Suoh. Blonde hair, blue eyes, major womanizer. Very flirty and charming.

Spoiler

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And a dread necromancer

[Theoboldi]

Uskton Slek, dwarf barbarian. He ended up being a child due to me not reading the age tables correctly, and later one-shotted a party member during some inter-party conflict. After that he went insane, and was left in the dessert. Not quite what I envisioned when I made the character, but fun non the less.

[Temotei]

Xephyr Lintarias, human rogue. He was going to be a pretty boy skillmonkey with little combat prowess beyond sneak attack. Never got to play him, though, which is sad.

I guess my first-played character was...I don't remember his name. But he was a human psychic warrior. DM and everybody else didn't know much about psionics except for me, so I could read minds when they were unguarded (during sleep, etc.). That was pretty cool.

[Tridax]

I don't specifically remember, but I think it was either a human wizard with proficiency in Necromancy school named Renbour or a half-elf paladin Alnir (whom you can see on my avatar).

...When I became a DM, they turned out to be good NPC's.

I have tension to make characters based on the type of world, book, movie etc. So making a necromancer was a fine perspective, although I had to use my own homerules since we had almost nothing about D&D except a 4e handbook. When I began DMing, Renbour became one of the main bad guys in my campaign. That role suited him well. :)

[Demidos]

Err. I was at a soccer game. And we lacked any books other than the PHB. So my druid was a bit odd. But managed to beat off some gnolls!

[Krazzman]

I'm not sure either an:
Homo Sapiens Robusto (Orc) Gunsmith or Pistolero Adept or Detective...
The pregenerated SR4 Char.

I don't really know anything about the plot anymore but one of the trolls got wounded in the head... to stop it from bleeding someone put a Zippolighter in there... and one refused to come out of his car because he said his car is safer than that Steelconcreteinfused Brickwall House thing.

[JetThomasBoat]

My first character was a human fighter named Wayne that someone wrote up for me. Everyone in the group made fun of the name Wayne, though, which I picked. He was focused on greatswords, but I asked to redo the feats when in like the third adventure, I was cursed by an unlucky die and rolled nothing but threes like 90% of the time for the next six months, but happened to pick up a neato magical longsword.

I was always kind of a useless character, as all the older players were playing much better fighters than me (and one was just plain too high to remember how dwarven defenders worked, so his character was completely overpowered) and they were made even stronger by getting experience from the Deck of Many Things. Later, though, most of them dropped from the game and I had to take the place of the meat shield.

He ended up dying a couple of times, but was always brought back. And he made it to epic level, somehow.

[North_Ranger]

A barbarian warrior whose name I've forgotten, played in a game of RuneQuest when I was 11 or 12. Our GM was the same age and as much a newbie as the rest of us, so the game pretty much dissolved into the party becoming brigands and ending up having their fingers (and one other thing chopped off).

First proper character, Jaradan Storm-Eyes, priest of the Sun God in a friend's Lone Wolf-inspired homebrew. We had fun testing out his point-based magic system, and the adventures were pretty memorable.

[Driderman]

My first character (of a real game, assuming heavily modded Heroquest don't count) was an AD&D cleric named Hector. I don't think he actually had any god and we never left the tavern where the game started, in any case :)

[Jay R]

When Paladins first came out in Original D&D, I rolled one up. (Yes, I actually rolled him, on 3d6 rolled in order.)

He was named Theseus, and couldn't afford a sword, so he went out on an adventure with a mace.

Along the way, after a couple of melees, when we were down to 1-3 hit points each (in a game in which 0 HP = dead), we found a magic sword, which Theseus, of course, requested.

It was a high-ego Chaotic (= Evil) sword, which dominated him and used him to kill all the other characters. I changed his name to Darkstar.

So, yes, my first character was a Paladin who, in his first adventure, killed the entire rest of the Lawful party.

[Sith_Happens]

Shonen Seinenson (working title was "Generic Shonen Protagonist"). D&D 3.5, human warblade. As the name implies, personality-wise he was basically supposed to be a mash-up of Naruto Uzumaki and Ichigo Kurosaki, with a dash of Yusuke Yurameshi to keep things interesting. I picked the class partly because I'd done my research on the system and knew that ToB is awesome, and partly because the book's animesque qualities fit the character like a glove. In fact, I went ahead and plotted out a full 1-20 TWF Stormguard Warrior build with a side of crit-fishing and White Raven-powered charging shenanigans that would have eventually been able to carve up anything with HP in two rounds (like I said, I'd done my research). As silly as the overall design process was, though, I was prepared to roleplay the character as seriously or unseriously as the campaign demanded.

Sadly, the campaign only lasted one session.

[DigoDragon]

My first character was from AD&D 2e, the first tabletop RPG I played. She was a paladin by the name of Relm. I was told I played a good paladin, being honorable and just without being a jerk. Started at level one and made it to about level 5. She had a fondness of dogs and wanted to train one as a guard dog for when the party was camping out in the wilderness.

I don't remember the details on the artifact the party was trying to retreive, but the party didn't survive the dungeon. We got as far as getting our hands on the artifact, but then the party wizard killed my paladin in a back-stabbing move and tried to escape with the artifact, the rest of the party trying to catch him. The wizard tripped a deadly trap that would of made Grimtooth proud. TPK'd.

[Malak'ai]

Very first RPG character was a Noldor Elf Fighter called Aliriel in I.C.E's MERP (expanded with RoleMaster supplements).
He was created by the GM, who was my Intermediate School science teacher. Myself and the rest of the group (six 10-11 year olds) got to choose the character names and roll on the GM's homebrew background table.
Aliriel ended up being a (very) minor Elf Lord who was somehow related to Galadriel. Only problem was, this meant that he was known, or at least heard of, by all the really big NPC's (the likes of the Istari, Nazgul and other Elf Lords), so when the party rode up to a meeting of the White Council and he fell off his horse (doing it so badly he took an A Impact Crit in the process and then proceeded to soil himself) he not only had the party, the Istari (including the two Blue Wizards) laughing at him, but Galadriel, Caleborn, Glorfindel, Elrond and Cirdan making fun of him as well .

As for D&D, it was a level 3 Human Dual Classed Fighter/Wizard. He lasted about 5 sessions, ending up with an AC of about -3. He was eventually killed in a really pathetic way... He got hugged to death by a Cloaker (or something very similar.)

[link16]

My first character was a barbarian pilot/fighter on a small island off the coast of Harn. Our GM didn't let us have anything metal but a sword. That character still lives, but barely. That campaign has lost most if not all interest by all parties involved.

[Rallicus]

Just a plain old Legolas wannabe, AD&D 2e.

I'm not even sure he had a name. Didn't really matter though, since he lasted all of five minutes.

Next character was a Drizzt wannabe in an evil campaign, who kidnapped elves for a living. He lasted a little bit longer, about two sessions.

In my defense I was 11 years old and very stupid.

[Hyena]

When I started playing DnD first, I had two characters and I fail to remember which of one was the first, and which one was created after. So...

Merem Thistlethorn, halfling fighter/paladin. She was horribly, absolutely horribly optimized character (10 str for paladin? REALLY?), but was memorable for her reckless behaviour, that often could nearly got her killed, like attempting to kill necromancer, despite knowing there is no one to help her nearby... AND for her extreme luckiness and ability to roll two or three crits in a single encounter, dealing absurd amounts of damage. After she wised up and became paladin, she also became rather boring character, who never did anything interesting or outstanding.

Kelen the Searcher, my kobold wizard, was an improvement, so I think he was not the first of mine characters, but I really doubt about it. He had rather interesting backstory (like, his tribe was slaughtered by adventurers, and he decided to look for an answer why they did it and something, that will let it never happen again), he was sort of the face of the party (and it became sort of running gag that every city guard notes how he finds the kobold charismatic). Unfortunately, the campaign was rather short lived, and my wizard never really got his chance to shine, except the case when he converted some beggars to worshiping Kurtulmak.

[Chromascope3D]

Huh, I actually started 2 years ago. My friend convinced me to give it a try (little did I know that, despite his big talk, he was still a noob as well). So I rolled up a 3.5 death cleric, who used a scythe for his weapon. He lasted for one session before the DM (my friend) gave up.

[Topus]

My first character dates back to 1993, basic D&D, a 1st level rogue (or better, a thief, as translated in italian edition). Neutral alignment (as, you know, there was only three alignment: Good, Neutral, Evil, things where so simple back in the days... :P). He went through a lot of adventures, incidents, enemies, incredibly surviving. He was the only one who survived from the original party of three, the other two being a priest, who was beheaded, and a warrior who commited suicide suffering crushing despair in jail (that was a huge roleplaying moment). I remember our beginners first steps into this new fantastic world, mastered by a friend who already was a roleplayer. I remember our first plans, in the Wile E. Coyote style, also called "The Acme plans" by our master. After a couple of failure and being almost wiped by kobolds, we got the point. By the way we had a lot slow leveling adventures, leading us to be more confident with the game mechanics and role playing. As i remember my character at one point blew his former guild with a barrel of gunpowder, becoming a lone thief. Of course he had to survive to a couple of killers sent by the guild a few months later (it was a huge plot surprise because i was sure that no one was aware that he was the bomber). I had only two magical items, gained at around sixth level, but they were amazing: the cloack of invisibility (a must have for a rogue), and a dancing sword, that let him fight with two weapons. Good memories about that game :)

By the way I reached eight level when we stop playing Basic D&D, moving to AD&D 2Ed. We finished with a huge cliffhanger, with our party landing on Logres, with my thief being threatened by Lancelot (or Gawain, i can't remember) with a spear pointed to the throat. Poor Topus "Lockheed" Littlereds (his name), threatened since 1996 :P

[Manly Man]

I've always liked fighters myself. My first character that wasn't pre-made was Lo, who was pretty much a Regdar clone. He survived well enough, and since I was the only one who bothered with a martial class- didn't even have a rogue in the party, that was a job done by the bard- I got most of the magic weapons. Stopped playing with him by about level eight.

[Jay R]

To be fair, the paladin was merely the first character I played in a store-bought RPG. The first role I ever played was probably either Roy Rogers or Superman.

[Exediron]

Some good stories in here, a few even actually good!

The first character I ever created in any system was a dragon cleric (no type of dragon specified, but he used the figure of a green) named Disan Moro in a hybrid 1st/2nd edition game. He was horridly overpowered, as one might expect - level adjustment rules as such didn't exist in those days. He eventually ascended and became a god of chaos towards the end of our 2nd edition days.

The first character I created in MERP was a Noldo (seems to be pretty common for a first character) mage named Eldrane. He was notoriously lucky, from winning any gambling event he participated in to finding a never-ending stream of rare and fabulous minerals at his stronghold. He also took numerous 'E' criticals and never suffered worse than a broken arm in his entire career. He ended at level 11 when we abandoned that copy of Middle-Earth for being a little too screwed up.

In D20 Modern, my first ever character was a martial artist named Ken who eventually was revealed to be the son of an Oni and a war goddess. He (with the help of his group) slew the orc god Ilneval and took his divine power, ascending to become the god of Terrorism and Bank Robbery (also Bankruptcy). His high priest is now an insane robot who once adventured with him.

In World of Darkness, my first character was a horrid Nosferatu imitator named John Smith who preyed upon Chicago's Grant Part, murdering innocent girls, sucking their blood dry and then feeding them to the birds in tiny cut-up pieces. He suffered from extreme hallucinations which sometimes came true. Early in his career, a vampire broke into his room and burned one of his arms off as a message from the Prince; he was one-armed after that.

My first Pathfinder character was Isidor Shadowkiller the Sniper, a wonderfully critical man. He started out as a quite man who hated religious figures because he believed that they were trying to scam him. In the first town the party visited, he and the group's cleric (named Vahk) found themselves at a charlatan show where a mage was trying to sell an instant hair growth formula, using illusions to make it appear to work.

Vahk unmasked the charlatan with Dispel Magic, and Isidor shouted at the crowd that he was an imposter and that they must tear him apart. After starting the riot, they left. They quickly murdered the NPC contact of the party before dogging the group across the desert, finally arranging an ambush by a large sand dune. When they appeared atop the ridge, they both talked completely differently than before and were fast friends despite previously loathing each other.

The DM wouldn't let us fight other players, so oddly enough the tensions dissipated. Isidor met his death next session, when we arrived at a druid grove where an aged druid demanded a toll of us before he would escort us across an impassible stretch of desert. This led to Isidor's last words: "I won't pay your fee, you communist bastards! I would sooner die!"

The druid blinded Isidor, who then wandered the desert for a scant five minutes before going mad and clawing out his eyes. He then fell into quicksand and died horribly. Oddly enough, when Isidor died Vahk felt it and committed suicide, shouting "Noooo!" to the desert air.

--=-=--

I promise that not all of my characters are as weird as that lot.

[Sutremaine]

My first character was in a PbP here, which felt slightly awkward and ground to a halt after the first combat. The character was a second-level(?) paladin who was maybe a little too close to Lawful Neutral -- not Miko-like, just not a shining beacon of Law and Good -- and a bit of an unwarranted cynic, but I never really got to do anything with her.

My next character was five years later in a game I'm currently playing on the forum. At one point I realised I'd created a Binder who could have been created to be based on a particular anime/manga character, so I rolled with it. He's based less on the character and more of the rather odd stuff that the author may or may not have had in mind when writing the manga but which fits it pretty well ('stuff' is NWS for violence).

So far we haven't rolled initiative once and have spent more time arguing amongst ourselves than interacting with NPCs, and in fact the only violence has been the party berserker whacking the party ranger upside the head for yelling about killing the NPCs during a negotiation session. Luckily, none of them understood him, so we just smiled and nodded and rolled some Bluff checks and I carried on talking.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

I posted this a week or two back in the First Character Stories thread in D&D 3.0/3.5/D20 forum, but I'll put it here as well.

My first character was a human cleric of Corellon Larethian. The DM pulled up a list of D&D core deities, their portfolios and domains and told me to pick one whose domains looked interesting. I wanted to be in the fray more than being a healer, so I picked Corellon Larethian because he had the war and chaos domains. We had already decided I would be human, so my picking the chief god of the elves was handwaved with my backstory. My character, Tolsemir Elfchild, had been the child of a family of human lumberjacks who were killed by a band of radical elvish eco-terrorists and was given to an elvish temple to be raised. That's pretty much all I had. No reason the temple took him in rather than sending this baby off to a human settlement. Nothing about what it was like to grow up as a human among elves., just a sentence to handwave my deity.

I played Tolsemir pretty badly too, never really deciding whether I wanted to hang back and sling spells, or pull out my flaming long sword and rush into battle (often siding with the latter and doing it very badly.)

• I never really roleplayed much. Not wanting to step on any of the other players' toes, I usually hung back and went along with their ideas until a fight started, at which point I'd spend a turn casting Prayer (because +1 on attacks and damage is so worth a 3rd level spell and an action) before running off to play fighter with my sword. I still don't think I could give more than a few simple adjectives to describe my cleric's personality.
• I was far too stingy with my spell slots. It never really sank in that casting Inflict Serious Wounds (or similar) was better than my flaming long sword even though 3d8+5 (at least) as a touch should be much better than 1d8+1d6+4 rolled against full AC. After all, I might need the spell more later.
• Toward the end of the campaign, I decided I wanted to focus even more on melee and decided that taking Two-Weapon Fighting and buying a spell-storing dagger and upgrading my sword to a keen flaming-burst long sword was the correct way to do this. The game ended two or three sessions later and I don't think the dagger ever landed a single hit.
• For all my attempts at melee, I only cast Divine Might about 3 times in the campaign, even though it was a domain spell. I guess Chaos Hammer was just so appealing. (I got +1 caster level on it from my domain and it didn't have friendly fire as most of my party was chaotic.)
• I never cast spells in melee so I never really used concentration until the final battle where I got grappled by a barbed devil and it came to light I only had a +8 to concentration at level 13. I was quickly fireballed to death by the horned devil who summoned it.

Rest in peace, Tolsemir. Sorry your player was such a noob.

[Eldonauran]

Half-elven sorcerer for a 45 minute, one-shot, solo adventure (3.5e). I had fun stomping a few kobolds into the ground all by myself. Eight years ago...

I had a rapier and a spell component pouch. Thats all I needed