How to give your DnD character personality
Are you stoked on character creation but left wondering how to give your DnD character personality?
Giving your D&D character personality can be an exciting and enriching experience. To help get you started, here are some D&D character personality ideas on how to create a personality for your DnD character.
Brainstorm For Inspiration
Start by jotting down some ideas about your character's background, goals, values, and relationships. What kind of childhood did they have? What are their motivations? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
One helpful strategy is to focus on one specific area of your character’s life and brainstorm as much as you can around that before moving on to other areas. Don’t filter yourself - let the ideas flow out before going back later and editing.
Here are some more ideas to get you started.
Give Your Character a Voice
Think about how your character would talk. Would they be eloquent or brash? Would they be sarcastic or witty?
Consider giving your character a signature catchphrase or quirk that could help you stay in character during the game.
If you aren’t comfortable doing character voices yet, changing the speed and pitch of your voice can still help add personality to your character.
Use your character’s background, morals, ideals, and flaws to create filters on what they would say and why they would say it.
Establish Relationships
No character exists in a vacuum, so take some time to think about how your character interacts with the other characters in the game. Are they friendly or hostile towards them? Do they have a mentor or rival?
A helpful tool to establish relationships is to create and sharpen “knives” that represent important aspects of your character’s background.
These metaphorical knives can be people, places, or things related to your character the DM can use in-game. Check out Mark’s excellent post on Knife Theory to learn more.
Choose Traits & Abilities That Make Sense
Once you have a better understanding of your character's personality, you can start to choose traits and abilities that reflect who your character is.
Think about which skills and spells would help your character reach their goals and how they would use them, even if they aren’t the most optimized option.
As we’ve evolved on our roleplaying journey, we’ve found that best option is the one that facilitates great roleplaying.
Work with your DM to figure out what makes sense for your character, especially if you’re having trouble building the character you want with the options given.
By taking the time to craft a dynamic and well-rounded character, you will be able to bring them to life and enjoy your Dungeons & Dragons game even more.
Good luck, and have fun!