Character creation

[Brain]

I enjoy making characters with lots of synergy between various sets of abilities. To get things the way I want them to be, I spend a lot of time thinking and plotting out and such. Even when I make a fairly simple character, I want the decisions that I make to be ones that I won't regret shortly thereafter.

So I generally spend a lot of time on character creation, and enjoy the process.

 

[der_kluge]

I don't see why we don't have that now.

Really, you can make a Fighter in a couple of minutes if you want - the longest part is selecting feats and skills. For skills, just choose a couple that you like and max 'em out. For feats, grab a couple of 'usuals' that you consider no-brainers and you're done.

I think more complex is the way to go, and just allow for shortcuts (like what exists in 3.5 now).

You must not be making spellcasters, or you're making completely oddball characters. Yea, I could throw a sorcerer together quickly, but it's liable to not make a lot of sense. Or I could make a cleric relatively quickly, with an oddball selection of spells. *Most* people I know of can take a good hour to put together a decent cleric or wizard of a sufficient level. I haven't seen anything throw a 15th level cleric together in 10 minutes.

 

[Burocrate]

I must really like the character creation process; I have created more characters than I could ever play. I roll up characters as a form of relaxation, endlessly assembling one party after another.
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[TerraDave]

You must not be making spellcasters, or you're making completely oddball characters. Yea, I could throw a sorcerer together quickly, but it's liable to not make a lot of sense. Or I could make a cleric relatively quickly, with an oddball selection of spells. *Most* people I know of can take a good hour to put together a decent cleric or wizard of a sufficient level. I haven't seen anything throw a 15th level cleric together in 10 minutes.

I think one of the strengths of the game is that there are certain charecter types that can be built and played in a simple way and work--great axe weilding barbarian--and ones that you can think a lot more about and work--specialist wizard. But no, not all charecter types can be made, or played that easily, but again I don't see that as a liability.

As an aside, for the sorcerer, with experience you probably do know the obvious spells and could throw one together that would be ok, if not great. And there is D&D for Dummies, which addressess this very issue.

 

[Desdichado]

IMO, one of the strengths of d20 (and some other systems too) is that much of the rules complexity is involved at character creation, but not during actual play. That's where I'd rather spend my time on rules, if I'm gonna spend time on rules.

 

[Desdichado]

You must not be making spellcasters, or you're making completely oddball characters. Yea, I could throw a sorcerer together quickly, but it's liable to not make a lot of sense. Or I could make a cleric relatively quickly, with an oddball selection of spells. *Most* people I know of can take a good hour to put together a decent cleric or wizard of a sufficient level. I haven't seen anything throw a 15th level cleric together in 10 minutes.

And yes, I freely admit that I hardly ever play spellcasters. I don't like spellcasters, or spellcasting at all, for that matter, in D&D.

 

[jmucchiello]

You must not be making spellcasters, or you're making completely oddball characters. Yea, I could throw a sorcerer together quickly, but it's liable to not make a lot of sense. Or I could make a cleric relatively quickly, with an oddball selection of spells. *Most* people I know of can take a good hour to put together a decent cleric or wizard of a sufficient level. I haven't seen anything throw a 15th level cleric together in 10 minutes.

Other than a sorcerer, picking spells for a spellcaster is not character creation but game play. What spells a wizard or cleric has prepared depends on where he woke up that morning and the circumstances he expects to encounter the rest of the day. Only a fresh built sorcerer must choose his spells before game play. (Arguably the content of a wizard's spellbooks should be given to him by the DM and that too is a game play issue.)

The cleric is complete in 15 minutes. What spells he prepares for the next adventure depends on where he was last night and what happens between then and when he reprepares his spells. Now, a useful thing to put on a character sheet is a set of prepared spells for common occasions (resting in town, travelling by horse, going to dungeon, etc) but that is not character prep.

 

[stevelabny]

Taking forever to make a character to play is fun. Searching for the perfect feats and combination of skill points and spells to know. Plus you only have to add one level at a time.

For a DM, its irritating to make high level characters all at once.

 

[jmucchiello]

Changing the focus of the thread a bit, do you think there's a way to create a happy medium in RPGs? Do you think there is any RPG system out there that will allow you to quickly create a character, and to create a character with a lot of detail that takes a lot longer?

Is there a way to balance complex character creation with a simplified ruleset?

Discuss.

First I think you have to define what is complex character creation. No two people have the same set of rules neediness. I can play in complete narrativist games with no written rules and I can play GURPS. I can play the same character in both styled systems and not bat an eyelash that in one system I have to role a die to remember something and in the other I don't.

Skills (and to a lesser extent feats) in D20 make it difficult to create a complete characters on the fly. The point of a class-based RPG is that saying "I'm a fighter" conveys meaning about your abilities. Layering a point system and an attribute system on top of the class system reduces the power of that statement of your abilities. This is complexity and apparently it sells.

Personally, I think there should either be no classes, just feats (the basis of my Dungeon Crawl game) or there should be many more classes with fixed abilities and a multiclassing system that works better. With more classes, you could distinguish between I'm a swordsman and I'm an archer by having classes (or talent trees if you like D20 Modern) that provide those archtypical features. With just feats, you just have sword or archer feats and someone looking at the feats can see what you specialize in.

Heck, just add a quirk system (see GURPS) to D20 and you can have a fighter who specializes in Babylonian myth without needing a skill system to back it up.

And to those who complained about my handwaving: rules are just a collection of agreed upon gestures in the handwaving of RPGs. At some level, it's all handwaving. Hitting someone with a sword has nothing to do with rolling an icosahedron.

 

[Arnwyn]

You must not be making spellcasters, or you're making completely oddball characters. Yea, I could throw a sorcerer together quickly, but it's liable to not make a lot of sense. Or I could make a cleric relatively quickly, with an oddball selection of spells. *Most* people I know of can take a good hour to put together a decent cleric or wizard of a sufficient level. I haven't seen anything throw a 15th level cleric together in 10 minutes.

Well, I have no idea what you mean by "oddball", so I can't really make a meaningful response. There are some pretty basic no-brainer spells that most low level spellcasters can take, so that's taken care of nice 'n' quick too.

I do agree that one can't throw a 15th level cleric together in 10 minutes. But who's talking about 15th level characters, and why did you bring that up? Really - who expects it to take the same amount of time to create a low level character compared to a high level one? (Maybe I'm showing my bias in that, as a player, I only actually "create" low-level characters, which are fast to make.)

But, otherwise I do agree - making high level characters in D&D/d20 is brutally painful. As a DM, it's the worst part of the game. I hate making NPCs.