Your Very First Character

[Iffritstorm]

Thanks to a father who loves gaming, I had the luxury of playing my first DnD character at a very young age - but I still remember him. It was an Elan Soulknife who dual wielded psi-blades. I remember thinking it was one of the coolest characters I could possibly imagine.

Strange that now I'd only think about how he'd be terribly underpowered. Sometimes I wish I could get that childlike wonder and awe at a game. Maybe it means I focus too much on mechanics, and not enough on the flavor? Food for thought, anyway.

[BirdoBirdson]

I'd say I have two "firsts"; my first 3.5 character, and my first 5th Edition character.

My first 3.5 character was a human Fighter named Cael. I was really young and stupid at the time, so I immediately wanted to have him dual-wield longswords. The more experienced players had to explain why that's a bad idea. That campaign actually never went past the first session, where we ended by killing a bunch of spiders with swords for legs. I don't remember a whole lot of it, other than that I ended up riding one of them.

Meanwhile, my first 5e character was Anders, Constable of Conyberry!
... he was another human fighter, with a greatsword this time. Points for consistency, I guess. I played him in the Adventurer's League that my local game store hosted, on the Elemental Evil module, and ended up usually playing with this one really amazing bard, who ended up being partners in totally-legal crime with Anders. In the very first combat encounter for our party, a random encounter on the road, we fought a couple of bugbears... one of whom immediately hit Anders with a crit, killing him instantly and beheading him.

He got better, though, and went on to pacify a cult of hostile air nomads with soup. Soup that was infused with some kind of magic by the sheer, raw power of rolling a 20 on a cooking check, and became supernaturally delicious. Delicious enough that the bard managed to convince the cult to start worshipping him as a god of partying instead.

That was a good campaign.

[Silk]

Wow, some of these story's are great! Realizing it will take me a while to get through them all I decided to come to the end and add my first character.

I had DM'ed AD&D and 2.0? games for a year or two before I got my chance to play a character and for the life of me, I can not remember his name. His name being 13 syllable's long might have something to do with me not being able to remember it. But I can tell you it was a proper Gnomish Tinkerer name

He was an evocation specialist as even back then I didn't like canned characters and he didn't have any Illusion spells like a proper Gnome and I didn't know what the heck a Tinkerer was at that time so none of that.

Anyway, my DM of the time liked giving out powerful specialized magical item's. I hope he learned not to do that to often but he moved away so I don't really know if he learned his lesson. The staff had several property's. My favorite was to recharge the staff you had to read the entire history of the Gnomish people which was written in very tiny words all along the staff. When you did so, you were compelled to read it as loud as possible and anyone within 5' was compelled to listen. Used it once to make someone reveal some information the party wanted. The guy didn't last ten minutes before he was blabbing everything.

The staff could also do several different effects like lighting bolt, fireball, wall of force and the like and the command words had to be shouted too. Now this would be good but I had this problem where I kept catching my own party members in the blast of the effects. I guess I didn't have good spatial awareness for grids at the time Anyway, the command word for the Fireball was "By the Nads of the Great Tinkerer!" That is important as I had hit the party with a fireball so many times that when I just said, "By the Nads" as a proper Gnomish curse when we were stopped by a group of Barbarians, everyone at the table screamed, "Hit the deck!" or some variant of that. Even the Paladin said he was diving into the ditch. It made that moment very awkward roleplay wise and even more awkward later when hostility's started and while using the staff to lightning bolt the three leaders of the Barbarians(for near max damage) I also managed to hit the Monk who failed his save and he ended up two hit points shy from dying.

While my Gnome never managed to kill any of the party members, everyone came close to dying multiple times. He even blew himself into unconsciousness a couple time too

Edit: Played him until he was level 9 when the game ended. And even with his friendly pyrotechnics, no one died the entire campaign....I think.

[Retry]

I remember my first character because it was the only time I got to be a player instead of DM.


It was back in the early 2000's and my best buddy got the 4th edition starter box and brought it over. We didn't have many friends in our area of town so it was just him, my little sister, and me. They wanted to be adventurers so I decided to take up the mantle of DM and proceeded to lead them through a few trial missions as we learned the game.

After about two-three sessions my 8yr old little sister, asked if she could be dungeon master. I was all for it since I wanted my chance at being an adventurer. I created a basic Elven Ranger named "Elas" and my buddy made a new Halfling Barbarian for laughs.
She had us embark on a simple goblin extermination mission that went over fairly well until we made it to their den and barely scraped by thanks to some bad dice roles. But we survived!...barely. I was really bad off and my buddy was at 1hp.

Before we left we decided to check the den for loot. It was then she told us under a pile of rags and bones was a cellar door that we had not noticed before. We opened it up and crawled down into what appeared to be a shrine built around a large wooden statue of an unicorn. There was no one in there but it had appeared as the goblins have been worshiping this unicorn for some reason.

We checked the unicorn statue and found a latch on the side of what would be its ribs - it was a locker! The halfling ran up to open it up and find what was inside and this is where things went south...


My little sister told us as soon as he undid the latch and tried to open it the statue seemed to bend over towards him, the now open latch bearing teeth and grabbing him and consuming him whole. It was a mimic!
Seeing his comrade get consumed by a giant wooden unicorn statue my ranger shot at it hit it but not for much.
I still remember what she said to this day...

Originally Posted by 8yr old DM

The whole statue turns towards you as the mouth burbs out (halfing's names) bones and roars "I AM SCHTEVE!" and now it lunges at you with its wooden horn! (rolls really high) AND JUST IMPALES YOU!

And that is how my first (and only) character I ever played was gored by a wooden unicorn mimic named Schteve...

We most definitely played the game incorrectly but my little sister and I still joke about "Schteve" even now.

[The Prototype]

This is my first character: https://www.rpgcrossing.com/profiler/view.php?id=78096
I haven't played with it yet but I hope I can't wait too much. It name is from for latin that significate "stong".

[Marshmallow]

In the first genuine D&D5E game I played, I was playing a Halfling Rogue called Garret Thorngage, who was an angry alcoholic with a pickled eye collection. Alignment-wise he was Neutral, but realistically he should've been Neutral-Evil or just straight up one of the big E's, he did some pretty nasty stuff, he even killed a yackperson kid thinking they were a yack person. 'Course with this being Garret, he had to pickle the eyes, too.

The GM (for some reason) let Garret multiclass into Warlock - Hexblade (despite him only having, like, 11 Charisma), which lead to a blind-drunk halfling signing a deal with some sentient dagger. Of course, the dagger wouldn't shut up, so he kept tying it to arrows and firing it at enemies.

At the end of the campaign (Storm King's Thunder) Garret tried to seduce a lovely Storm Giant woman.
It worked.

[NinjaTeeHart]

My first character was Stumbleduck the gnome. Or to the ranger in our party, Lord Stumbleduck as he was a very proficient deciever and teller of tales he had convinced our ranger that he was in fact nobility and that the ranger owed his allegiance to him, our ranger was even knighted after killing a group of wolves that the party encountered so Lord Stumbleduck and Sir Robin Wolfsbane became very close friends. Eventually I had to move and Stumbleduck was put into retirement, but my friends from the group bought me a small gnome figure as a remembrance of Stumbleduck.

Haven't been able to play a rogue since, as it almost feels like I'm cheating on someone very special to me haha

[auntmousie]

Playing "red box" D&D, I remember rolling up several characters before I actually played one. The first character I remember actually playing was a fighter named Peter - I'm sure he was named for a fictional character but I couldn't say who to save my life. My brother ran a dungeon that he specifically said he had designed to beat my character. (In hindsight, this seems improbable, as killing a first-level fighter is Just Not That Freakin Hard - but at the time I believed it.) I was allowed to bring two things into the dungeon with me. I chose to bring my two friends, a pair of first-level elves (one was named Skywise, and the other one I am sad to say I do not remember). So maybe the fact that I was bringing three characters to a dungeon "balanced" to beat just one had something to do with it.

The only part of the dungeon I actually remember is that the last room was featureless, except for a chest containing a vial of purple dye. Anything drawn with the purple dye became real. It took some trial and error to figure it out, but once I did, I left the dungeon by drawing an exit door.

It was 1981, and I was seven years old.

I've been hooked ever since.

[Laz]

My first character was a rogue while playing Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder campaign, he was a bit of a psychopath that wore a mask he found made from people skin. It's been a while but I do remember sneaking out of the inn at night and killing random townsfolk sort of like Jack the Ripper except no one was safe. That character got killed by some haunted house that threw him out of a top floor window, I remember rolling lots one 1's in a row leading to his death. It was fun getting to play such a dark, violent character.

[spankthetank]

ive yet to make my first character, but seeing all these reply's makes me exited to start one.

[Dreamer]

What a fun thread! Let's see...

My first D&D character is the one I'm playing in a campaign now. Kerra, a Dragonborn artist bard. Her story is not yet over, but some highlights were her first kill which was a spider and earned her the nickname of 'bugzapper' in the party. And recently, she sold a painting to a museum for 10,000 gold. <3

But my first ever character was a World of Darkness werewolf; a Lupus born, Get of Fenris, Ahroun whom everyone just called Krazyklaws. (Which then became my internet handle for years!) She was fun...your pretty basic 'stupid but good at killing things' type, but with her mate, who was basically her opposite, clever and thoughtful in action, they retired as elders with their son who was 'the chosen one' or the story.

[Drunken Desperado]

A human sorcerer...granted I didn't know much about 3.5 when I started so let say ended up running, more than actually doing anything else.

[SnoweyShadow]

I can remember my first character in bits and pieces. My uncle tried to teach me D&D with his old AD&D (2e) set and I created a Cleric to go alongside my friend's Barbarian. The session itself didn't take too long, mostly an introduction before we started to run our own campaigns, but I do remember my friend's Barbarian taking a 15 foot charge through a door simply because it was locked.

[Tom the Bombadil]

I was six years old when I made my first character. I think it in was AD&D, and his name was Sir Bedevere. Totally original.

He was a lawful good human fighter, and he traveled far from his homeland to battle evil spellcasters and their minions.

After hitting like 5th level, I think he fell in love and returned to his home to retire. It was a deadly campaign for his npc friends, so he called it quits while he still could.

He may not have been my best character, but through him, I fell in love with roleplaying.

[smalltooth744]

My first DnD character was a savage human ranger named "Eko". He was/is chaotic neutral with a pet wolf and wields a huge spiked club and a sling. After a night in a tavern wherein we all met up; our DM had us protecting some sort of camp from marauders. We never got to finish the campaign unfortunately, but I've been itching to play in some form or fashion ever since!