How to guide power selection with role play

[sleepykid]

Whenever I play some good ol' D&D I've chosen feats, skills, etc., based on what would be most useful at the time. All rogues get weapon finesse, and so on. But that seemed kind of metagamey, designating their abilities to the whims of what I'd like rather than what the character, as him or herself, would get good at.

I know the question is kind of obfuscated by the nebulous quality of what, exactly, happens when one acquires a level. Still I wonder if any one had any tips to share on what to do when you're not sure how to marry role play and character progression. I mean, there's some obvious choices sure. Like a kleptomaniac would probably put a lot of points into sleight of hand, but other than that I'm clueless. Any tips?

 

[Tallim]

This is pure preplanning. Decide ahead of time what you want and stick to it, resist the urge to chop and change because something might be immediatly more appealing or useful.

Or the method I used to do, was play the game doing whatever comes naturally/necessary early levels. If you find your character does something alot, then find feats abilities that add to that particular activity. That way it becomes more like a learning experience for your character rather than him picking up feats from nowhere despite not having been in situations yet that would lead to that sort of skill.

Try playing a rogue more thuglike for once, intimidation and force rather than the standard stealthy smooth talking lot. Most problems like this come from allways playing a stereotype of your character class.

Hope this helped a little, or gives you something to think about

 

[dariuskyne]

i usually come up with a concept of a character before choosing feats, and only choose feats that reflect the concept.

An example: my 13th lvel spy actually doesn't have weapon finesse, but he does have skill focus, and feats that help his stealth and disguise abilities, he might not be the best person to have in a dungeon crawl, but he's not a typical thief either, and to make up for the loss of weapon finesse i took feats that give bonuses to sneak attack, coupled with boots of striding (expiditious retreat) he would backstab and if they survived, move quickly to a hiding spot before the mark could put up a decent counterattack, and well if the mark was dumb enough to follow, he got backstabbed again.

another example of untypical charaters was a player of mine made a fighter, and took perform:dancing as a cross class skill, she used veils and shawls to distract and lure others into provoking attacks of opportunity, she developed it to a point that she used the shawl as a whip to bind, and make trip attacks. she killed more npc's/creatures using attacks of opportunity than actual base attacks (i kept track 34 to 12). and in a situation where the entire party could take attacks of opportunity (party consisted of fighter (her), a rogue and cleric and a ranged specialized ranger), her abilities to provoke such attacks were deadly. not to say it worked all the time, but it worked enough to be darn effective.

basically i would say, defiantely come up with a concept first, second, realize you don't have to make a character that's all about damage dealing, yeah the fights get done faster, but in the end you might as well just make a stealth based fighter, aka ranger. if your dm only awards exp based on amount of creatures killed, that dm is doing it wrong. and you don't have to "kill" to "win" an encounter. make the creature flee or back down, knock it out, etc. those count as "defeat" for that creature, have fun, make a good aligned thief that believes that killing is wrong, and specializes in non-lethal combat. having fun with the character and the world around the character should be the main idea behind the adventure, not the coin counting and scalps removed.