Race wise I always try to pick a character that kind of looks like me; male, human, slightly dark or olive skin tone and bald when possible. As for class or playstyle I always try for what I call the Stealth Tank. I like to get the thickest, heaviest armor and the most powerful sword available. If dual wielding is an option then I also get the 2nd most powerful sword I can find. Then I spend most of the game sneaking around in the shadows and sniping enemies with my bow and arrows. When possible I also like to lay down traps at my sniping position. I loose a few arrows then run away when the enemies spot me, they run to where I was and right into my booby traps. Sometimes I even setup several positions ahead of time and run from one to the other. When I finally do get caught and surrounded by my adversaries they learn the hard way that I'm a better swordsman than archer. I also avoid all use of magic as I find spells to be incredibly boring, at most I will invest just enough into alchemy to gather plants and make healing potions only.

I prefer to include as many races and classes as possible in my parties, unless they are truly worthless like Gnomes and Halflings in the Gold Box games.

In single character games like TES I like to try widely different characters.

Never could understand why some people play the same standard character every time...well, fighters maybe, because they are generally the easist class to learn and play.

Human Rogue is one of the more overpowered classes/race combos in neverwinter nights (with a couple levels of fighter and finally shadowdancer for prestige). Get the use dex in place of strength for attack trait, crank up the dex and int, and there aren't many situations that cause a problem. That was my build for neverwinter (with duel rapiers, didn't focus on critical but did focus on sneak attack). For the OC I backed it up with the bard, and then for the expansions Deeken.

I was sad to learn that the human thief equivalent in BG wasn't anywhere near as powerful.

Planescape Torment is it's own beast. The combat is terrible, and there are game reasons to choose stats that fit in with a mage. Otherwise I wouldn't go magic for my primary PC because I like them to have lowly upbringings. Often times it fits better with the game story for the character to have been a nobody up until that point, and a nobody doesn't have the background to suddenly learn some spells in most fantasy worlds. Also I find characters without divine powers more relateable.

In Ultima 4+ I played the shepherd for similar reasons.

I think that with the versatility of the leveling system, it was pretty inevitable that there would be several extremely powerful leveling paths, like the [url=http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Power_Builds]power builds from nwn2[/url], in which several classes form the base for an overpowered character.

For the OC I too went for a rogue with twin rapiers, and managed to get my crit chance up to close to 50%. I was pretty much unstoppable, except of course when it came to those monsters with crit immunity. Even then they weren't much of a threat, just a bit of a nuisance to fight.
For the 1st expansion I again tried to go for a rogue, but this time one specializing in sneak attack and multiclassed as a monk to get the speed required to move around quickly while stealthed. Unfortunately that was a bit of a disaster because an even greater proportion of enemies in the expansion has crit&sneak attack immunity (those damn undead in the desert) :P

Also, yay for Deeken!

Welcome to the club! ;o)

In games where I play a single character, I also mostly play as the human fighter...closely followed by human rangers/thiefs (I like to sneak and/or kill from a distance).

I don't like playing as mages, etc. in single character games.

In games where I play as a group, I choose a healthy mix of close combat and ranged combat characters, definitely joined by at least one healer and a mage.

It's funny, but in groups I don't mind playing with clerics and mages - those buggers are pretty handy, if it comes to keep my fighters alive. ;)

Sometimes I get creative, sometimes I try to create someone that kind of resembles me, but usually I look at my pets and try to imagine each of them as an RPG character and which class and race might fit them.

Oh, and in single-character games, I usually do default to the standard fighter class, at least on the first run through the game. Later on, I'll mix it up and play as different classes.

I'm a bit all over the place. Many years ago I leaned slightly heavy on mage but even my first Baldur's Gate character was a multiclass fighter / mage.

As an example, I'm playing Pillars of Eternity and I rolled up a Hobbit Druid with a heavy focus on melee (I laughed my ass off the first time I realized that my shapeshift wolf was actually a f@$%ing bipedal werewolf and not a four-legged woodland creature).

I think the last RPG I played with a heavy focus on character creation was Shadowrun - here I went with a human "doctor" type character with strong "face" skills that was essentially a multiclass Drone Guy (forgot the name of the class) and Decker.

Try different races on The Elder Scrolls series. I think you would surprise with a new gameplay style, and its background story / lore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_of_The_Elder_Scrolls

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Race

This thread reminds me of being a thief mob puller in Final Fantasy 11, now that was a nail biting job pulling enemies 7 times your strength through scary ass jungles, dodging other high level enemies. No loading. Level down exp loss death. I'm a really good thief though.

Personally, I prefer games where reaction time is a non-factor when choosing spells, either because the game is turn-based or you can select your spell easily from a menu that pauses the game.

Yes exactly. I do OK with casting in turn-based games like Blackguards where there's no time limit.
In games where there is a limit, like Dark Souls, I'm simply not quick enough.