Friends and I were talking on Facebook recently about the types of characters we tend to play, and I can sum it up very easily (at least in 4th Ed. D&D):

Leaders.

Not “hey guys follow me come here do this!” but the very specific healer/buffer role in a party. My goal is to have one of every leader class, but oy. I only have so much time. Here are my current incarnations, both in LFR (Living Forgotten Realms) and a home game:

Faral – lvl 16 Valorous half-elf bard. Roleplay-wise, she desperately wants to be a trophy wife. She’s gorgeous, avaricious, neutral, urban. She has no interest in woodlands and wilderness; she just desperately wants to be a noble. I tend to play her more in home games / online than at cons, since I downplay her roleplay considerably in a con setting. One or two instances of “duh, what other sort of woman IS there” asshattery made me “meh” about setting free my inner farcical money-grubber.

Laela – lvl 11 healy mchealerbot elf cleric. She’s the emotional successor to Laelin, the elven cleric and Melora-worshiper I played in a home game for a couple of years. Laela is the LFR version, with a bow and a darker side, so she worships Sehanie, waxes rhapsodic about the moon, and shoots a silvery bow rather than diplomacize with everyone she meets.

Ensa – lvl 9 Inspiring tiefling warlock. I love tieflings. I love them so. Ensa is (due to an early module she played) an assistant professor of Tiefling Studies at a posh Cormyr boarding school. She teaches the young nobles of the land tiefling cultural awareness and basic “do not automatically kill X race because it is X race.” After the events of the Battle Interactive, she opened a Tiefling Cultural Center in Elturel.

Gurdis – lvl 5 healy mchealerson dwarf shaman. She’s loud and drunken and likes the more raucous spirits. She’s entered into courting negotiations with a much more upright/proper dwarf; who knows if they’ll EVER be married. Her spirit animal is the spirit of her deceased werebear uncle. They’re very close.

Mary – lvl 5 healy mchealberry changeling ardent. Ardent, I’ll admit, is boring the bejesus out of me, even though it’s effective. Mary grew up at the fringes of Aglarond, in a family of changelings who have appeared as elves for generations. Her fondest wish, and greatest hope, is to become a Real Elf someday.

Callie – lvl 3 shadowydeathdeath halfling assassin. My one striker! She’s a dance-hall girl on a riverboat; she wears nothing but pink and white, has blonde ringlets, and an infectious giggle. She also gave part of herself to Shadow in exchange for escaping from her powerful Amn-based halfling thief clan. She’s really not that unhappy about the Shadow thing. She carries a whip everywhere.

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And in my home game! Lily, the lvl 11 longtooth shifter runepriest, is a feral, snuggly, Melora-worshiping, buff-granting, gorge-jumping, tree-climbing beast. I’m loving it.