Character creation as playing D&D

[kevtar]

My son and I recently conned my wife and daughter into playing D&D. My son wanted to play 1st edition because he wanted to see D&D from my perspective (someone who's played through all the iterations of D&D since 1981). We all sat down together and started making characters, and at that point, we were all playing D&D. Much of the focus of the polls, discussions, articles and playtests have been on the gaming aspect of playing D&D - the actual game session, but I posit that character creation is also "playing D&D" and that it needs to be equally rewarding and fun.

I can honestly say I've enjoyed all editions of D&D. Each edition has pros/cons, and while I may have a preference for one edition over another (and that preference is dynamic), I've never played an edition and said, "I hated that" as a whole. There have been variations in some of the key aspects of D&D that affect my preference, and of those in particular is character creation.

Our recent return to 1st edition reminded me of the joy (and pain) of rolling attributes. We used the roll 4d6 drop one method and while I ended up with a cleric with an 15, 9, 18, 11, 10, 12 in the first roll, the other members of my family had to re-roll to get stats above 12 and 13 (and that was ok). I compared this to my experiences playing 3.5 and 4e and using point-buy, and I found that I enjoyed using point buy as well - but I feel like there was a distinctive shift in determining and allocating stats in 4e.

From my experience, the combination of point buy and 4e class design made the character building process more bland, while rolling attributes made things a little too "swingy." I'm not instigating an edition war here, because I also felt that rolling attributes in earlier editions was far too "swingy." However, that "swinginess" seemed to be an assumed aspect of the game on behalf of the designers and players, so it didn't seem entirely out of place, and if worse came to worst, you could always petition the DM for a re-roll and hope that your next set had something less "swingy."

However, in 4e there is something about the class design that strongly suggests point buy, and by extension, there exists a strong suggestion to "optimize" (oh how I hate using that word) your build. We all optimize, but to varying degrees. For me, optimization is using stats to get the character I want. So if I want to play a dumb rogue and I dump an 8 into his Intelligence, I have optimized my concept of a dumb rogue. However, in the sentence above I'm using optimized as a term describing the best set of stats for that character taking into consideration stats and race - and that seems to be the position the designers for 4e hold.

So, what I'm saying is I want 5e to accommodate point buy and rolling methods for character creation because character creation is playing D&D. When we think about playing D&D, let's also think about creating characters. If you do it in a group, think about the discussions/debates that you have with your friends - its fun! When you do it alone, think about the satisfaction of creating just the right character. Those experiences need to be given room in the next iteration of D&D. While having fun and engaging gameplay at the table is important, let's not forget about the gameplay that must take place in order for the "other" gameplay to take place.

That said, I'm wondering, how can designers accommodate multiple approaches to character design? or How can designers ensure good game design and/or balance (assuming balance = good game design) without asserting a particular preference or bias to determining and applying stats?

Thoughts?

 

[Mattachine]

Your story brings back memories of rolling for stats in my AD&D groups over the years. We started with 4d6, but so often, a player simply wouldn't make a PC with stats that weren't good enough. Initially, I would say, "Too bad, that's the rules." Soon enough, that PC would be dead, intentionally, and the player would try again. After that happened a few times, I allowed rerolls, then changed the rolls to make higher stats easier, and then, in the end, simply offered a stat array for all PCs (with some horse-trading to get a 17 or 18 in a stat). In a sense, I came to point buy on my own . . .


Anyway, I think that your experiences with optimization, for character concept or for min/max power, happen no matter how stats are determined. Ask people how they made characters for the Baldur's Gate computer games. For everyone that thinks die rolling is best for one preferred style, another person will say point buy can do the same thing, and vice versa.

 

[KesselZero]

I love the idea that making your PC is a part of the game. I just ran a 4e game for four totally new players last week, so I made pregens for them, thinking they'd be super bored by rolling up characters (and also preferring to teach by doing, so I just tossed them into combat). At the end of the session they excitedly asked me if we could spend the next session making characters. Well... sure!

Conversely, I had to create a level 8 PC for a 4e game I'm joining soon. The combined factors of it being a class I'd never played before (paladin, which has a lot of moving parts) and wanting to make the best PC possible led to hours upon hours of work, trying different builds then scrapping them, reading over the CharOp stuff on the WotC forums, etc. etc. It was agonizing, honestly, and eventually I just really wanted it to be over with. I hope 5e makes rolling up high-level PCs easier and faster.

 

[am181d]

I sort of disagree. Elsewhere, I've called character creation a "mini-game." It has its own set of rules and presents its own set of virtues and pitfalls.

Moreover: as fun as character creation can be, it's something that takes up 5% of the total game or less. I want character creation to be fun, but it HAS to be exist in a secondary position to "core" game play (e.g. roleplay and roll-play). Character creation can't be a barrier to the rest of the game.

Rolling 4d6 and dropping the lowest, rolling hit points, choosing your alignment, etc. These are all arguably iconic parts of the game. BUUUUUUT I also think there could be a value in streamlining process and blending character creation more into the rest of gameplay.

(Note: this is one of my pet ideas that is ultimately probably a poor fit for 5e "grand unification theory" approach.)

That said: I just got finished playing Skyrim, and I was impressed with the way the game advanced your character for you based on actions you completed in play.

Is you character a magic-user? Well, have you tried casting a spell?

I know this is much easier to do in a computer game, but I think there's a nugget of a good idea here that someone with more time on their hands might be able to tease out.

 

[Sunseeker]

I never used point-buy and only rolled stats in both the 4e games I played and ran. I've always felt there was a strong incentive to optimize, but that might be the groups I've played around.

My second-favorite system has always been an "array", they usually offer good scores and do a good job representing how you conceptualize your character with various strengths and weaknesses. On that note, I would love it if there was some way to work "weaknesses" into the game. Either by giving you more points to spend, extra feats, utility powers, something small but still useful and flavorful. Encourage players to make well-rounded characters and I think we'd see a move away from min-maxing and optimization as the norm. Not that a well-rounded, flavorful character can't also be optimized, but still.

 

[Lanefan]

For many many years in 1e we've used 5d6 instead of 4d6 to roll stats. It is rare to get something that doesn't have at least one 14 or better; and quite unusual to get more than one single-digit stat. in a 6-stat roll.

That said, though you might expect some god-like characters to arise they too have been few and far between, and history tells us clearly they die just as well and just as fast as all the rest.

For the math-minded, the average roll on 3d6 is 10.5 while the average result of 5d6-drop-2 is about 12.

Lan-"wisdom 9 for 28 years and counting; that's the character's age, not the player"-efan

 

[Kynn]

For the math-minded, the average roll on 3d6 is 10.5 while the average result of 5d6-drop-2 is about 12.

Actually, the average for 4d6 drop 1 is 12.24, while the average for 5d6 drop 2 is 13.43.

 

[delericho]

As with so many things, different people will want different things, and indeed the same person may well want different things at different times.

If I'm kicking off a new campaign for experienced players, I'm probably okay with dedicating an entire 3-hour game session to creating characters. And those experienced players probably want to take that time, so they can carefully tailor and customise their character just so.

On the other hand, if I'm running a game for newbie players, we probably want to get into the 'real' game as soon as possible. Plus, they don't need a super-detailed character - "Dwarf Fighter" is probably good enough to be starting with... and may be all they ever need.

Finally, if a PC falls during the campaign, and Bob has to create a new one, he may well want to get his new character up and running ASAP, to get back into the action. But he probably would also prefer that his new character is just a "rough draft", so he can go back and flesh out the details a lot more after the session.

Actually, that suggests to me that a modular approach may be best. At the most detailed level, you turn character creation into something like in "Mutants & Masterminds" - characters can be customised in a hundred different ways, to get them just how you want. However, on top of this you put in a more 'chunky' design, where you choose your race and/or class, and that basically assigns all the other options. (And, of course, there's no reason that the simple/complex decision should be a binary one - you could have several different levels of complexity between the two extremes.)

But doing something like that might be too radical at this point (since the underlying math is basically point-buy char gen).

 

[kevtar]

Perhaps my biggest concern is that character creation (whether it's 10 minutes or 3 hours) is treated as more than simply a means to an end - more than simply a gateway to the actual gaming experience and is, instead, recognized as the part of the gaming experience. It has many of the same components: strategy, resource management, RP (at least in designing how one might want to roleplay, i.e. character development) and, if you're with a group, interaction.

 

[kevtar]

That said, though you might expect some god-like characters to arise they too have been few and far between, and history tells us clearly they die just as well and just as fast as all the rest.

That's certainly trued, although I hope no one expects god-like characters with 4d6-1d6. I certainly lucked out with my initial roll, but my son's first roll didn't have a stat over 13. It was something like 7, 9, 11, 11, 10, 13 - and although I've played PCs like that in my day, it took a special attitude towards the PC to keep it fun