I want faster character creation. Also, I’m a monster.

Wiseblood · Jan 17, 2019

I want faster character creation. Also, I’m a monster.

I have wanted faster character creation for years now. I’ve been trying to find the right words because, I figured out “why” I want it. I want to kill characters. That was a metric for me growing up. Good characters survived bad characters died. Effective play was rewarded. Punishment was handed out for stupidity.

When it occurred to me I wasn’t surprised. It made sense. When I honestly evaluated my motivation it started to look wrong. And that sucks.

Who wants their character to die? Killing a character should have some pros and cons right? So away I went.

cons:
-all that work for nothing
-the dream that the character would do some cool stuff has been crushed.
-here comes the new guy, how does he fit? How long till he gets here? How do we introduce him?
-it’s nice how you let my equipment continue to work for the party.
-here comes another effort at making something special with the current paradigm on creation and how long that can take.

pros:
-something new to explore

and that was all I could think of. It was all post hoc and probably just trash.

I still want faster character creation. I think the truth is because I am tired of it. I have spent a lot of time on it. Building my own, helping others grok the rules, waiting for my turn with the books, waiting to get back to playing, answering questions about minutiae for the tenth idea that gets abandoned. I kind of dread it but at the same time I look forward to it.(dreadfully) Sometimes sharing this stuff is the best way for me to get my head around something.

Is this a sentiment that you share about creation?

Immortal Sun · Jan 17, 2019

5E's character creation is about the fastest I've seen without a character creator tool. I could make a million 4E characters with the character builder (assuming level 1) in a couple minutes per.

But functionally the time sink of character creation is actually creating the non-mechanical elements (backstory, personality, so on, so forth) and trying to avoid stupid tropes. I can sink HOURS into that.

Ratskinner · Jan 17, 2019

I think there is an inherent conflict between the mechanical detail of a character as D&D works it, and the speed of character creation and play. So, if you're willing to sacrifice the mechanical detail, I'd suggest trying Dungeon World or another Powered by the Apocalypse game. Similarly, Fate has faster (YMMV) character creation and more flexibility. In all cases I've seen, you can't have all those fiddly mechanical bits with a +2 on a d20 for this and that, and fast character creation.

Prakriti · Jan 17, 2019

Wasn't there a UA with a system for quickly creating characters recently? This one's from 2016, but I thought there was a more recent one too (or maybe it was in XGE?).

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/quick-characters

ccs · Jan 17, 2019

Well....

I guess you could invest a few hours (days?) in making a character sheet for every permutation of
standard array/race/background. Ignore MC. Fill in all the #s as 1st lv, leave the name blank, & then spend a few moments adjusting based on lv as needed.
When you need a new character you just open the folder & pull out a sheet.

The Crimson Binome · Jan 17, 2019

Wiseblood said:
Is this a sentiment that you share about creation?

Yes. The game is what happens at the table, after everyone meets in the tavern. Character creation is a chore.

The solution is to get rid of unnecessary decision points. All elves are high elves. All fighters are champions (or battle masters, whatever). No feats. No multi-classing. Standardized spell acquisition. You could probably work out some system for distributing ability scores that made sense.

mortwatcher · Jan 17, 2019

I've always been an altoholic, character creation is one of the more exciting things for me and I always looks forward to making that new character and throwing them out in the world.
The fast way to make character is the pray RNGesus, just count the number of options for each step, and let the dice decide your race/class/background option and everything else. Bounded accuracy will make sure that pretty much any combination will work anyway.