Designing PCs for a Convention

[orcmonk220]

Hiya
I'm soon to be running an adventure for 14th Level characters at a Convention (Game '07). It will be a good ol' fashioned Dungeon Crawl (The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb), and I want 6-8 characters to choose from. It's thinking the following:

Fighter (Human)
Rogue (Dwarf)
Cleric (Human, St. Cuthbert)
Wizard (Human)
Bard (Elf)
Ranger (Elf, Archer)
Two Other Classes

Firstly, what do you think of these classes? Second, what feats/spells would you recommend, as well as magical items?
Cheers very much
Chris

 

[Mark CMG]

Pregens for conventions and gamedays are one of the reasons I designed The eConic Halfling Rogue & The eConic Human Fighter.

 

[Stormborn]

I would make the fighter a dwarf and the rogue an elf, human, or halfling. Other than that my basic MO when dealing with a oneshot is to make PCs as simple as possible. No need for the Wizard's versatility when you can just use a sorcerer, which much easier to keep track of especially if you swap the familiar for soemthing else, for the arcane caster. I would choose feats that build on one another rather than allow the PCs to do alot of different things, again to make them as easy as possible. That means for the fighter, for example, Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, and the Weapon Focus tree. A warlock might make a good choice for an addtional class.

 

[dutorn]

I'd say favored soul in case the group feels like they need a pretty good 2nd healer. Plus with the limited spell list it will be easy to play.

 

[orcmonk220]

Pregens for conventions and gamedays are one of the reasons I designed The eConic Halfling Rogue & The eConic Human Fighter.

Cheers very much. I'll look those over.

I would make the fighter a dwarf and the rogue an elf, human, or halfling. Other than that my basic MO when dealing with a oneshot is to make PCs as simple as possible. No need for the Wizard's versatility when you can just use a sorcerer, which much easier to keep track of especially if you swap the familiar for soemthing else, for the arcane caster. I would choose feats that build on one another rather than allow the PCs to do alot of different things, again to make them as easy as possible. That means for the fighter, for example, Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, and the Weapon Focus tree. A warlock might make a good choice for an addtional class.

Cheers very much. The reason I thought Rogue to be a Dwarf is because I thought Stonecutting would be an excellent asset in this dungeon. Sorcerer is also a great suggestion, in place of the Wizard. Thanks for that. Feat trees are something I was already considering.

I'd say favored soul in case the group feels like they need a pretty good 2nd healer. Plus with the limited spell list it will be easy to play.

Complete Divine is the only base Complete book I don't own

 

[AFGNCAAP]

I'd have to agree and recommend sticking with a K.I.S.S. strategy. It also depends on how many books you want to lug with you to the con.

I'd say build the characters to work well with what they do. And, possibly have the characters focus on a theme--a combat-medic cleric, a melee fighter, a ranged-combat rogue, etc. Have a nice mix of strengths possible for the party.

However, since you're running the module, you should know what the party will need to have, regardless. If it's very beneficial to have a character with the Trapfinding skill and an elf's secret door skills, then be sure to have an elf PC and a rogue PC (or even an elf rogue).

If you expect to have only pre-gens available for anyone to jump in and play (especially newcomers), then you may want to stick to core PHB stuff (it'd be less books to haul around). Find good character combos with that and work with it. And have the pre-gens overlap in some areas, to cover vital "module required" stuff (ranks in certain skills, access to certain Feats/spells/etc.), in case a pre-gen doesn't get selected, or if said pre-gen bites the dust.

 

[orcmonk220]

OK, having taken into consideration these, here are some changes:

Fighter (Human, strong melee-focus with reasonable Int. to get Climb/Swim/Spot/Listen skills at max)
Rogue (Elf, with good trapfinding a decent ranged ability. Typical sneaky-sneaky character. Also has some minor healing abilities)
Cleric (Dwarf, Moradin worshipper of decent strength so can act as support in battle)
Sorcerer (Human, general sorcerer with minor ranged skills)

Then I'll also add a Bard, a specialist Evoker, Ranger to cover archery, and probably a Monk or Paladin.

Cheers
Chris

 

[JDragon]

Well I agree with keeping things simple, I also would suggest making interesting characters that your players will have fun with.

If you can use some of the new base classes and a few PrC's.

But the biggest thing, what ever you decide to do, make sure you do them the best you can and have them fully completed and documented. Don't make the players guess at what you were thinking. If possible, type them up so they can be easily read. Also, make them characters you would want to play, give them the Full PC work up not just an NPC work up.

Issues with things I've listed above is the main reason I stay away from most games at Cons that have pre-gen'ed characters. I've just had to many games where the characters were a joke, scrawled out in chicken scratch, or the DM is writing them as I walk in to the room 10 minutes before the listed start time. :-(

JD

 

[Mark CMG]

Cheers very much. I'll look those over.

Cool. It's a form-fillable character sheet that has been filled in for each of the twenty levels. You can make changes to it to suit your game. One thing people had difficulty with, though, was not being able to save the changes (unless they had the full version of Adobe Acrobat). However, recently some third party came out with a new reader for PDFs that just happens to have the ability to save pdf forms that have been adjusted/filled -

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

You could actually use the eConic sheets for any of the PCs you create though I might suggest you get The More Better Indispensable Character Formfolio which has spell sheets for all of the spellcasting character classes as well as some other forms for notes and lists of summoned creatures, too. The basic two page character sheet I used to create the eConics is the same as the base two sheets from the formfolio.

Anyway, I hope that helps and thanks for considering my wares! FWIW, I am also extending my pledge to EN World for a while longer to have $1 from every CMG purchase go to the support of this website.

 

[orcmonk220]

Maybe I would be best playing them up here as I complete them, and ask for people's imput...