A Dwarven STRanger. Classic Hunter, uses exclusively axes.

An Elven Fey Wanderer Ranger/Echo Knight Fighter who is basically “pretty boy in plate punches things”.

A blind Human Divine Soul Sorc/Celestial Warlock who can go in one of two directions:

1. An individual who believes themselves to be the Herald of a LG god, but is unknowingly in service to an evil deity.

2. A man who lost everything, and believes he was spurned by the gods. So, he sets upon a warpath to kill the gods in revenge.

EDIT: Can’t believe I forgot about CAT. The Tabaxi Genie Warlock who was a normal cat that wandered into an antique shop and was rubbing against a bunch of random things, and eventually rubbed up against a magic lamp. A Djinni came out, and asked him what he desired. After some confused meows, the Djinni couldn’t understand him, so he turned him into a Tabaxi so they could talk to each other. The Djinni then realized his mistake, and helps the poor Tabaxi navigate life as a new humanoid.

When pre-generating, I mostly focus on the mechanical build - I tend to come up with the actual person once I know about the setting and campaign theme.

That being said:

Scout Ranger (utility archer)

Half-Elf Fey Wanderer 5 / Scout Rogue X (Sharpshooter)

Idea: Sacrifice 5 Rogue levels for Archery FS, Extra Attack, additional skills/expertise, WIS-to-CHA checks and a smattering of really useful spells like Goodberry, Pass Without Trace, Speak with Animals and Misty Step.

What’s Cool:

• eventual proficiency in 12 out of 18 skills and Expertise in 5 (later: 7) of those.
• between Cunning Action (Hide), Steady Aim + Skirmisher and Zephyr Strike, the build can reliably achieve advantage and/or mobility
• avoids the hand crossbow meta

What Sucks:

• Several core skills are locked behind both subclasses, so one would either have to go without those for long stretches or negotiate with the DM about “retraining” skills.
• Rogues wonky multiclassing rules (starts with 4 skills, but only gets 1 when MCing in) means we either start with Rogue 1, delaying Extra Attack to lvl 6, or loose out on one skill
• The build plays mostly like a standard Ranger (or slightly worse at lvl 5, if we started with Rogue) until lvl 8.

Halfling “Blademaster” Barbarian

This is a Halfling mostly because it won’t work with VHuman/CLineage (stats would be too lousy), I love the race/class combination and this is a rare Barbarian build that doesn’t run on heavy weapons. However, it needs the (fairly common) house rule that either flat-out removes the exhaustion cost from Frenzy or at least mitigates it with a (progressively harder) CON save.

Halfling Berserker Barbarian 8 / Fighter 4 / War Mage 2 (Stats: 14+2/14/13+1/13/11/8)

Idea: Stack Rage’s and Dueling FS’ damage bonus on a build with a BA attack for high & reliable damage with solid defense (GWM can’t wear a shield and is either more swingy or more vulnerable), then throw War Mage’s Arcane Deflection on top for save protection / even more defense.

What’s Cool:

• a Barbarian that doesn’t need to rely on Reckless Attack and can wear a shield will be very durable
• combining a BA attack and a flat +4 damage bonus will add up very quickly, and we don’t need to stomach a -5 to attack to do it
• we can pick up virtually any magical one handed melee weapon we find
• on-demand +4 to saves / +2 to AC is huge
• we haven’t even decided upon a Fighter Subclass yet, so there’s room for some additional goodies

What Sucks

• a limited amount of Rages that need a BA to start and will run out whenever we spend a turn not actively fighting
• our second & third ASI will be delayed by quite a bit (recommended order would be Barb 1 > Fighter 1 > Barb 5 > War Mage 2 > Barb 8 > Fighter 4)
• can’t be run without the aformentioned house rule - with how thin the stats are stretched, a PAM VHuman/CLineage just can’t afford 13 INT
• arguably, a Hoplite Hexadin would be flat-out better, with fewer downsides, smoother progression and decent spellcasting

No-House-Rule-Versions:

• Can be run with a Path of the Beast Barb if your DM agrees that you’re not “wielding” an off-hand Form of the Beast claw as long as said hand is wielding a shield, but loses out on the weapon flexibility for a fixed d6 weapon.
• Otherwise: CLineage (14+2/14/14/8/13/9 + PAM) would be relegated to a spear and be forced to replace the War Mage dip with Resilient (WIS). (Yes, technically, one could run INT 13 / WIS 9, but running with a -1 modifier to WIS saves for most of one’s career seems… unwise.)

I have a Shadow the Hedgehog meme build I really want to play. He’s a Tabaxi way of shadow monk. With unarmored movement and the mobile feat, my walking speed is 65ft at level 14. Feline agility, boots of speed and Haste (which I can get from an item or a friend) all double my speed, so I can get my walking speed up to 65x8=520ft (for a turn). On my turn I can move, dash as an action, dash as a bonus action (step of the wind), and dash as a hasted action for a total of 2080ft in 6 seconds. This is just over 380kmph, 8 kmph faster than the Formula1 record. Gotta go fast.

I’ve got a Mountain Dwarf Aberrant Mind Sorcerer that I’m really proud of: there’s a decent chance I’ll get to run it at some point, but it’ll be behind a wizard if I have the option.

The basic mechanical concept is that you can replace the Psionic Sorcery spells with any sorcerer/warlock/wizard spell on the enchantment or divination list, which means that you can put Silvery Barbs on your list. That means you can Silvery Barbs for 1 sorcery point as many times as you want without any components, allowing control of probabilities that a Divination Wizard can only dream of. And because Silvery Barbs is such a selective tool that you can use only when it’d make a difference, it’s great to have the deep sorcery point pool fueling the uses.

You also get a scattering of general-purpose spells like Arcane Eye and Synaptic Static in the Psionic Sorcery kit that let you efficiently convert spare spell slots into reliable tools, at no efficiency loss since Psionic Sorcery spells are 1 point per spell level, exactly what you spend to generate sorcery points.

The rest of the spell repertoire are general purpose, flexible spells like Invisibility, Eyebite, Bigby’s Hand, Enhance Ability, and Fireball: I went a little heavy on the concentration spells because if I’ve got too many spell slots I can just convert them into more Silvery Barbs. I also went heavy on save-or-suck spells since Silvery Barbs can efficiently impose disadvantage.

It’s fairly tanky with medium armor and plenty of ASI space for CON since once you get 14 DEX you just need to max out CHA and then you’re done.

Flavorwise, my concept is that a stereotypical dwarf miner got taken over by a mind-controlling tentacley creature, who’s polite and eloquent, and that creature is the actual player. Odd-couple effect between the crude and angry dwarf and the calm well-mannered creature, built into a single character.

my DM asked us to recreate video game characters in D&D for a level 15 one-shot, it still hasn’t happened yet and oh boy did I choose a great character to recreate

This wasn’t on a backlog but I just played a character that was actually a cursed spear possessing a dwarf. The dwarf willingly got possessed by the weapon in order to save his friend from a necromancer.

In theory I should love Druid — I always enjoy taking polymorph on my casters and I’m pretty into animals generally — but somehow I’ve never felt enough of an urge to make one when I actually sit down to create a character. I guess I haven’t quite conceptualized a Druid character I really like yet. But I do want to play one at some point!