Okay so I binge read all your characters from top to bottom, and fair warning, I’m going to be dangerously honest here. Also, I am only really seeing characters from their personality. Stats I don’t care about as the few instances I’ve seen where games take on fan creations, stats get thrown out the window. Some of these characters here are pretty good, I can see the effort put into them. Others are…okay a few flaws but generally okay, but then there are those that just don’t click for me.
I base what I know off a lot more time that I really should have spent on gaming and role playing in DnD and other table top games, peer review, getting ridiculed, and being teeth-grinding annoying when it comes to reading and incorporating established lore.
Some advice? I follow a small set of guidelines when making characters, for any setting. As long as I can follow it, I tend to be fine. Maybe then you can see where I come from.
1) Follow established lore. If none exists, make a best guess based off what’s available, and retcon if it does.
To elaborate, don’t assume to know, just make educated guesses based off what is established. If literally nothing is known about the race/faction they affiliate with, keep it on the backburner till more info arises, compare notes, and make the character that way.
Like for me, when I made Private Sarge, he went through several iterations, some of them he was supposed to be a human, and others an alien before I settled on robot. He changed as I learned more about the UPR and I molded him to try and fit in better.
2)Do not directly associate your character with an official ‘main’ character. Characters that play a major role, such as villain, playable character, important NPCs etc.
A lot of the characters I have problems with tend to do this. I say this because it tends to raise ‘Mary Sue’ alarms whenever it is used in other games or franchises. Delphio being related to Montana, Flora being trained by Miko, these feel like you are taking other people’s characters and warping them to what you want. If they have some involvement, make it minimal. Like Rientha, who was inspired by Phoebe.
3)Mold your character to the faction/nation/power, not the other way around.
This one can be tricky, and in some cases you nailed it. Others, not so much. If you already have a character, go off what you know about the faction. If something clashes, favor the faction first, and change your character’s backstory to match.
For example, Elesnia. Why would they experiment on humans when they aren’t human themselves? They are Jennerit(they only have 4 fingers while the known human characters have 5) Why would they have a hybridization program? Because they are uncaring? Maybe but even so it feels like a stretch. Why not have her as some sort of experimental reject of unknown origins and had been subjected to fighting for her life in the Jennerit Arena? This way you mold the character to the faction.
And finally, less of a guideline point and more just a personal recommendation, work on alien names. Some are creative, but others feel less unique, or even rushed. I recommend practicing with a fantasy name generator, there are plenty available, or taking a characteristic of the race, finding two translations of that word, and smashing them together. For example, Boomer being a dog, you could just take the word ‘wolf’ and take the Gaelic and Mongolian translations(Madadh-allaidh, and chono) and mush them together. Take out a consonant here and there, add a a vowel, and you get Machonallia, far more alien sounding and mysterious. It’s these little touches that help make a character feel so much more alive.
Anyway that’s how I feel. Take my advice, or don’t whatever you feel.