Creating Off-role characters!

(Quick note; This post was suggested by joseph75army, please give him the necessary credit for the idea, and thank you for such an interesting one!)

Creating characters is probably the most fun thing in D&D for me. You get to visualise how they look, act, and their backstory. It's like creating a whole new person, without the restrictions of the real world! Most people like to make their characters somewhat min/max (where you try to make a character who is 'good' in the sense of combat, or sometimes roleplay or exploration, usually through race/class synergy), which narrows down which race/class picks are 'viable'. This guide will teach you how to create off-role characters (as I like to call them), and how to not make your game mates cringe at the site of your character sheet.

First off, why would you want to make an off-role character? Well, there are so many. First off is recreating someone from a game, book or movie (such as Gul'Dan from World of Warcraft), because they were so interesting you want to create an adventure for them in your D&D world. Or you could want to play someone who is an outcast, maybe because of their non-traditional role. But maybe the simplest reason is that you just go "Hey, sod it, let's make the silliest combo ever, and see how well it will work". Don't worry, most of us have thought that at times! (at least I have) I think that having a base idea of; why this combination of race and class? or What is this going to accomplish? Let's make up 2 examples, and see how to make these characters right. The first example is going to be trying to make Gul'Dan from World of Warcraft. The second will be a random one (made by D&D Beyond)! For Gul'Dan, the answer to the questions is obviously to make Gul'Dan as a playable character for our D&D game. For the second one, we are going to be making a rock gnome barbarian, cause we want to explore how that would play out with gnomish culture!

The second thing that you need to decide between maximum backstory or combat potential. I will cover both of these in the next 2 paragraphs.

Combat maximisation; This is often the biggest problem from a gameplay perspective, as you kind of want to kill the dragon, not the other way round... First off, let's build Gul'Dan with the aim of being combat maximised. He is going to be a Half-Orc Warlock. But, how does that work? Well, the first thing is to see if your D/GM allows the new Tasha's rules on ability score re-alignment, which completely negates any problems between the class and race! In this instance, we'll say no to that, to make this Player's Handbook friendly! Since Gul'dan is very strong and tough, the bonus to constitution and strength should be used to our advantage!We will make a Fiend pact, since that's literally his lore. Our Pact for level 3 will be Pact of the blade, to make use of the extra strength. Trying to play to strengths is better than making someone who won't do good at anything! Remember to try and make the character work at one thing in particular, and then other things will spring from that. The Half-Orc stats and traits make for a Warlock who is very tanky, and can keep their concentration on spells, which is super useful! Gul'dan is a semi-fighter who casts some super powerful spells like hex to help him!

Backstory/Roleplay Maximisation; We are going to be making our Gnome Barbarian this way! This is basically crafting a backstory, and then using class decisions to back that up. The first thing is; why are they different? What drove them to pursue a different path to the others of their community? How does this impact them as an adventurer?

Here is the backstory for the Gnome Barbarian:

Kled (as we are calling them for the sake of this) used to be a part of a Gnome clan, but have since forgotten the name. That may be why they were kicked out, but it may be the mad and obliviousness they brought to the guard watch. After wandering the human battlegrounds, they found a cowardly lizard, whom they name Skaarl. Although Kled has no fear and runs blindly into battle, Skaarl runs away far too often. Kled has said to have fought in almost every war that has happened in the kingdom, and earned every title.

That was short, but leads the way to how we can make him. He is a barbarian fuelled by his madness (not mad with rage, just mad, oblivious, crazy whatever), and so making him a Beserker makes more sense than totem. He should be played as a tankier barbarian, since he has an increase in con thanks to his subrace! Trying to find a giant lizard to ride would be fun, and could be because Skaarl ran away! The possibilities with backstory are so huge, and it can make the character really fun!

Well, I hope this helped, and thanks again to joseph75army for the idea! Please give me more ideas to help the D&D community!

-WildemounteWanderer