Do you like character building?

[WHW4]

I've played games where Character Gen is somewhat handsoff (Classic Traveller with it's random events) and where it's 100% character driven (M&M 2nd) and I have to say I LOVE building characters both ways.

I find when character gen is simple I just end up making a boatload of "backups" that will never see the light of day and I ultimately don't really care about; and when it's a longer process I tend to really dig into the mechanics my character uses and wrap my head around how the character looks/acts/talks WHILE I'm putting mechanics together (really referencing M&M here since that's been my first introduction to a "here's some effects; now build a hero" game.)

I love feats/skills and picking out the points/doodas and equating that with a general idea of proficiency and power. I HATE to use something prebuilt from a book for a PC; it just feels lame to me, like I didn't really put any effort into the character so I end up caring very little for the character's well-being. To me character building is where the character comes from. Attaching numbers and doohickies to the name and background of a character is what really puts the Spark of Life into it for me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I LOVE designing new PCs. I have over a hundred in my PDA alone, for 5 different systems (3 versions of D&D, HERO, and M&M).

There is something to the idea of constructing a new personality...getting inside the PC's head...sussing out his motivations and the like that just turns me on.

Some PCs come together in just a few minutes- complete from concept to fruition in an hour or less. Others I'll spend more than a week tweeking and adjusting some aspect or another.

Oh yeah- and for the record, I am NOT an optimizer. Many of my PCs "throw away" build points (depending upon the system) on things like learning an instrument (for non-Bards) and other non-combat elements that round them out into more realistic personalities. Others are built inefficiently even in combat, like my 3.5Ed scale mail wearing, maul using standard sorcerer.

 

[Verdande]

I'm entitled to an opinion, too, right?

I dislike in-depth character building. In case you couldn't guess. Mutants and Masterminds' character building was a tempestuous serpent of optimization and complexity- none of our players were satisfied with the options presented in the book, so we all took our time making characters. Good god, it took us forever, worrying about whether or not this would fit in our concept, or whether it was worth it to take seven ranks of Flight or ten ranks of Blast or whatever. We were competent on the rules, but none of us were happy with how long it took to turn our ideas into characters.

Then again, I'm a devout fan of B/X and BECMI D&D (and recently, Labyrinth Lord) where it really is roll six stats and off you go. Character creation shouldn't take more than ten minutes of time, even for somebody who's unfamiliar with the rules. Twenty minutes max, if the player is seriously waffling.

 

[Verdande]

<double post>

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Choosing mechanics is indistinguishable from building the personality for me.

Sometimes it's a matter of finding mechanics to hang on a pre-existing character idea, and sometimes an interesting mechanic begs for character hooks/personality traits/etc to go with it.

I've built many characters in multiple systems that I've never played, just to kill some time. I go through fits of it where it fills downtime frequently for a week or so, and then some other shiny thing distracts me.

 

[Mallus]

Mutants and Masterminds' character building was a tempestuous serpent of optimization and complexity- none of our players were satisfied with the options presented in the book, so we all took our time making characters.

No, you are not entitled to this opinion!

 

[Doug McCrae]

Do you play a game with a focus on character building such as 3.x or 4th edition D&D, d20 Modern, Exalted, and the like?

Yes.

If you do, do you like character building? Why or why not?

I'm ambivalent about it. Massive freedom in the char gen process can lead to big power disparities between the PCs in games such as D&D 3e and M&M. This is not the case in 4e however, partly because there's less freedom. 4e lies somewhere between 3e and BD&D in this respect.

I like the ability to precisely represent a character mechanically but very often this takes more time than it should due to the necessity to shave points and min-max. My thinking these days is I'd like a very free-form, but still numerical, system, mechanically as complex as it needs to be to represent a particular char. Could be a lot, could be a little, depending on the char. For balance, forget the point totals, they always lie anyway, just look at the end result.

 

[Herschel]

I like it from the standpoint of creating an actual character, not from the standpoint of creating a build. This was one of my big turn-offs in 3E and why I went back to running a 1E/2E hybrid campaign as most of my players got to that point too. I don't like infantile traps, gotchas and having to spend egregious amounts of time trying to make a build that works and creates the character I want. 4E works great for this with retraining and far more transparency in class builds so it's currently my favorite even though I at times miss the 1E/2E style of actually rolling and not caring a whole lot about stat allocation.

 

[Verdande]

Yes.

I'm ambivalent about it. Massive freedom in the char gen process can lead to big power disparities between the PCs in games such as D&D 3e and M&M. This is not the case in 4e however, partly because there's less freedom. 4e lies somewhere between 3e and BD&D in this respect.

That's one of the reasons I like 4e much better than 3.x, actually. You don't have to worry about building your character "wrong", since it's harder to do so within the framework of the rules.

It's hard to have an exceptionally poor fighter and an exceptionally good one, assuming the same spread of stats.

 

[knightofround]

I love character building. In my opinion, designing a strong character mechanics-wise is a fun intellectual challenge.

In addition, it also makes for a fantastic roleplaying challenge. It's easy to think up an interesting character first, and then pick classes/powers/feats after. It's much more challenging to go in reverse and still end up with deep, believable character.

To me, it's like having the best of both worlds: I get the roleplay challenge as if the character were random-stat, and I get the mechanics challenge as if the character were prebuilt.

It doesn't hurt that character building is also a great way to keep "in shape" with overall game mechanics. And its a great way to brainstorm NPCs for when you DM. Pretty much all of my best NPCs were originally statted up as a character I wanted to PC someday.