Making - Cloud Strife in 5E

So I have a quirky habit in that when I get a chance to play in a TTRPG, I tend to not be that original when first making my character. I think it stems from pouring all of that into when I am game mastering to try and make original cool NPCs for players to interact with. So when I am making a character to be a player I tend to base their look and in game mechanics on an existing character. Whether it be from video games, anime, books, movies, etc... I enjoy trying to figure out ways to make these characters work in a system. I also see quite a few threads on Reddit by people asking for help trying to do the same thing with various characters. So I thought I would make this an ongoing series of posts about the characters I have come up with. By no means am I saying that the way I make the character is the definitive way, its just the approach I took.

"Stay where you belong; in my memories!" - Cloud Strife

So to kick things off I wanted to do one of my favorite characters. from one of my favorite RPG's. So we are making Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7. So to me he seems a fairly obvious candidate for a Great Weapon Fighter. The other 2 things I need to decide are background and race.

Race
Lets start with race so Cloud is obviously pretty strong to be able to lug around the huge Buster Sword, but he is also pretty acrobatic so I want him to have a decent dexterity score as well. So to get some versatility with our Stat Scores I am going to go half- sun elf. The Sword Coast Adventurers guide introduced making your half-elf be a specific type, and we are going to do that to swap the skill versatility for the free cantrip from sun-elf. For the cantrip I am going with firebolt, to have a nice long distance ranged attack.

Choice: Half-Sun Elf , free cantrip = firebolt.


Background
I tend to do the background selection before I fill out what you get from your class that way when you pick your skill proficiency your not picking ones your getting for free from your background. For background it is pretty straight forward here to take Soldier. In the game Cloud is from a military organization called SOLDIER. However two honorable mentions here are the Inheritor background and you could make the item you receive the Buster Sword.

 Choice: Soldier  Honorable Mention: Inheritor


Class
So for class Cloud is pretty archetypal of the Fighter class, and is pretty straight forward to build. So when building these characters I am going to use the standard array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. If you play in a group that rolls stats you might be able to make some other cool things work.

Choice: Fighter

So I am going to place those number as follows: 
STR: 15 DEX: 14 CON:12 INT: 13 WIS: 10 CHA:8

We are going to then apply are two +1 to stats to STR and INT and then we get the +2 to CHA it then looks like this.

Stats: STR: 16 DEX: 14 CON:12 INT: 14 WIS: 10 CHA:10


For skills we are getting athletics and intimidation from the Soldier background. So were going to take acrobatics for all the flips, and the second was tough and I think any of them is a decent choice but went with investigation since your trying to track down the bad guy and figure out their plans.

Skills: Acrobatics & Investigation Honorable Mention: any of the other choices


For equipment we are going to take the following.

Equipment: Chainmail
                     Greatsword & a Rapier (no reason for the Rapier, so pick what you like)
                     2 Handaxes
                     Explorers Pack

Fighting Style: Great Weapon Fighting using a great sword you will get a lot of use out of this since your damage dice are 2d6. 

That is it for the level one choices, so from here I will just list out things of note for subsequent levels I will typically not list out all the way to level 20 since most campaigns end before then, so we want to achieve the main part of our build long before that.

Level 2: Nothing here except for Action Surge this will serve as our "Limit Break" so when you describe what you are doing flavor it up and make it sound cool!

Level 3: So I debated on the Martial Archetype a bit between Champion and Eldritch Knight, but ended up falling on the Champion side of the fence. Since in the film Advent Children he doesn't use a lot of magic also most of their magic comes from materia they place in their weapons and armor. So I think just getting magic weapons and armor fills that role nicely. So I went with Champion because Cloud is a heavy hitter and improved critical will hopefully help us crit more often.

                Martial Archetype - Champion


Level 4: This is your first Ability Score Improvement of ASI. However we are going to take our first feat here instead! Taking Great Weapon Master will help you start to mow through the lower AC fluff that get thrown into fights, and you will quickly be starting to buff your + to attack to help offset the -5.

              Feat: Great Weapon Master

Level 5: Extra Attack you will really be able to start laying the hurt down in a fight with the two attacks, and you get the bump in proficiency bonus.


Level 6: The cool thing about fighter is you get way more ASI levels, so now we are going to bump up strength to 18, for a +4. 

             ASI: +2 STR

Level 7: Remarkable Athlete from Champion

Level 8: Another ASI we are going to put 2 more into STR to get us to the max of 20 for the +5.

               ASI: +2 STR

Level 9: Indomitable and an increase in proficiency bonus. Should be at a +9 to hit now with out any magical bonuses, so still at least a +4 when making a Great Weapon Master Strike.

Level 10: You get to take another fighting style my thought here is to take defense to increase your AC by 1 as AC is always hard to come by. However if you want to maybe move into some dual wielding occasionally to mimic Clouds Fusion Sword fighting style two weapon fighitng is also an okay option.

             Fighting Style: Defense Honorable Mention: Two Weapon Fighting

From here on out its however you want to flavor your character from here. You could continue to buff your stats and take more feats as fighter. Magic Initiate can be good for some more magic options, as well as Heavy Armor Master to help mitigate a little bit of damage.

You could also multi-class here a bit Paladin for Divine Smite to add some more punch when you hit, or critical which you should be hopefully doing a lot with improved critical. A 3 level dip in Barbarian is also good if you want to forgo armor, and the Rage/Reckless Attack/Action Surge can make your "Limit Breaks really pack a punch" and the Bear Totem path offers alot of damage reduction as well.

Well I hope you enjoyed the build, and if you didn't totally agree with it that's okay make it your own. Hopefully it at least gets your gears turning to do your own!