Character Generation

Which (if any) of the optional Combat Options from the DMG are you implementing, Keleth?
*Climb onto a bigger creature
*Disarm
*Mark
*Overrun
*Shove aside
*Cleaving through creatures
*Tumble

I may have forgotten a couple of other things.

I am equally ok with all, some, or none of the above being in play. It's your game. I just want to know how you intend to run things. In the past I made the mistake of creating a character based on a certain concept and it got approved but in the end the character felt blah because of having been limited by the rules (which I hadn't thought to ask about in the beginning) he couldn't do many of the things I had envisioned him doing.

I have to look up the specifics for each of these, but honestly, they all sound find from the broad strokes.

Reading through them all, seems like they're all rules I would have made up if someone had asked to do one of those things. And generally, when fighting hordes or minor minions, You'll kill more than one based on how well you roll anyway.

So if you have a character concept that would utilize one of those, I'm open to hearing it.

Should we even pick a background from the PHB? If not, what should we do about the extra skills it grants? And do we start with all of the listed equipment?

I forgot about backgrounds. Go ahead and pick one as appropriate. You'll end up RPing it as an inherent part of yourself... A charlatan is, by personality, a con artist, not by profession.

You don't start with any items at all.

I'm feeling like I don't want to play any kind of spellcaster so I'm probably abandoning the idea I mentioned before. Riffing off of the amnesia angle I'm feeling like a warrior who vaguely remembers he has an oath to fulfill but can't remember what it is. Not necessarily a paladin, but a sworn warrior for sure. Not decided on race yet. If I come across an interesting homebrew race I'll run it by Keleth. :-)

When you say, warrior with an oath, my mind immediately jumped to ninjas or samurai, so I looked up some stuff. Not too happy with what I've found in terms of Ninja, and if something like that is appealing, I'd be open to actually creating a rogue archetype, but here are some interesting links:

Ninja Archetype
Samurai Archetype

This isn't really related, but I thought was just neat (kind of in line with what you're interested in Naatkinson):
Arcane Warrior

So far I'm seeing kinda honed in:

Animated armor wizard artificer (PhantomNimbus)
Human fighter (Naatkinson)

Wolfren or Elf Ranger or Druid (depending on the needs of the party, Scotash)
Barbarian (fernymerk)
Oathed warrior (Jabes.plays.RPG)

I ended up dropping our last and bringing in CancerMan. Again, not forcing anyone in any direction, but not seeing much in the way of divine magic or stealth/skirmish. Scotash will end up filling one of those two roles it seems though.

I would try one of those roles, but I'm already playing a cleric and a rogue in different campaigns so I wanna try something different :)

Like I said, no pressure at all! A barbarian character is fine. I'll be perfectly honest... if you have an idea you want to try that isn't in the main books, and you can't find a great archetype for, I'll work with you to design/find one.

I'll go with the Elf Druid. Not sure what circle to take yet and being a Wolfen that can turn into a wolf seems odd.

Can we choose spells from Elemental Evil?

Those links are interesting (I particularly like the Samurai stances), but to make a samurai I would actually just create a Paladin or a Battle Master and just RP it.

I download every Unearthed Arcana pdf that WoTC releases but somehow I didn't come across Gothic Heroes til yesterday. In that article is presented the Revenant subrace. How about if my samurai was a human revenant?!! He would be consumed by a need to fulfill an oath and complete an unfinished task before he can finally rest. The problem is, he can't remember what the oath was! Now he must figure it out. Obviously I'll have to work with Keleth so my character gradually remembers or discovers his mission. What do you think? :-)

A revenant doesn't have to be evil, does it? And is it undead for the purpose of game mechanics?

Of course, it would be just as fun to play this as an automaton: An warforged fighter was given a Prime Directive or mission when it was created. But something has happened and it can't remember what its Prime Directive is. So it tries to piece its memory back together.

Up to what level can we expect to play?

Not sure about odd, but definitely sounds weird :p
I'd need to approve the spell, but yes.
I like the concept of the revenant, a passionate oath, but the subrace it wouldn't work great with the story in mind. Congrads, you've found one of the few races I don't think would work :p
This sounds more workable than the revenant.
I will run this as long as you guys (either all or some of you) want to keep playing. After the first two quests, if someone drops out, we can get replacements, but the main story will be less interesting for new players (or based on how the story goes, maybe I can find new ways to introduce them). The main story has 2 key points to discover, I expect you'll learn the first one after 2 quests, and you'll learn the second one two after. So probably be about lvl 5 when you learn the big reveal? Maybe? Then you actually have to resolve the reveal :D

The Spells that I am considering are Absorb Elements and Ice Knife. Both 1st level spells

As I don't have the book, can you just broad strokes tell me what they do?

Absorb elements is a reaction spell. It gives the user resistance to lightning, fire, cold, acid, thunder (maybe a few more) if they are hit with a typed attack. Then on the users next turn, if they make a meter attack the attack does an extra 1d6 of that type of damage

I've knife: The user throws a shard of ice at an enemy. If it hits it does 1d6 of cold damage. If it hits or misses it then explodes and deals damage to all creatures within 5ft of the original target. Maybe the target as well

I'm on my phone so don't have the pdf's in front of me but that is basically what they do

Official link to Elemental Evil Player's Companion (PDF)

Through all this discussion, I wanna say one thing: just cuz I'm allowing weird races/classes, don't fall into the trap and think you have to :p

Looking over the spells, they look kinda powerful, but as official WotC stuff, I'm gonna assume it's balanced and say sure.