You owe it to yourself to play a bad character.
I don’t mean evil, or conniving, or any other adjectives that would make a Paladin faint.
And I don’t mean “bad” in terms of quality, either.
- See also:
I mean make a bad character by making a character who is bad at doing things.
Make a character who has a -1 in Charisma, or who is weaker than the average villager.
Make an orphan boy who has the social intelligence of a hedgehog, because he only ever spoke to the local rats.
Make a weak, old crone who never even realized that the healing rituals she did for the locals were innately magical.
Make a bad character who never had a clue that greatness was something that could be on their horizons, who thought that adventuring was just for the strong, or the young, or the talented.
Make yourself a character who embodies and amplifies the deepest, darkest faults you may feel you have about your in-real-life self.
Make them cowardly, or hateful, or unsure of themselves.
Make a character who no one would ever have given a second thought to. Who the party first finds beat up, downtrodden, and entirely out of luck.
Make a bad character because those are the ones who, eventually, make the greatest adventurers.
Because they had to earn it.
Turn them into someone who is great, and strong, and confident, and bold, and witty, and courageous, and self-sacrificing, and all the other things that most players start their characters as.
Make that transition slowly, one session at a time. One fight at a time. One conversation at a time.
Until they either become a legend, or go out in a blaze of glory.
Make yourself a bad character so that they have the room to grow into the hero you want them to be.
…
…Or just min/max the hell out of it off the get-go so that you can do ridiculous amounts of damage per turn because all character choices are valid (so long as they don’t ruin the enjoyment of others at the table.)