Do you like character building?

[Sepulchrave II]

I love character building. Especially in 3.X.

It's like painting a picture. Or maybe translating a difficult concept into a foreign language. It can take quite a while to choose your palette, or dialect.

Marrying mechanics and concept together is intensely creative for me, and illuminates some kind of hidden process in my brain.

I find that appropriate mechanical relationships - although entirely symbolic - preserve an internal sense of verisimilitude for me which is otherwise difficult to attain. It's a personal aesthetic thing; I love the way that symbols interact generally, and I like symbolic languages because they force the brain to operate in ways it wouldn't normally.

Con is a symbol (or a sign), as is HP or AC.

When we use these terms, we are speaking a secret language to one another.

When we share how a character is built - and there is no value judgment implicit in that term - we are communicating our cleverness, our inventiveness, and our aesthetic when manipulating this symbolic system. Our mastery over its contents, or our appreciation of the nuanced ways in which the various pieces can fit together.

Well-crafted characters generate interesting plot hooks by themselves.

 

[joela]

I want to play not build characters. If I have to build a character give me a class/template with a few points to add onto it.

+1. The older I get, the less time I have, and the less patience I with building a PC especially an "optimzed" (ala for combat) one.

 

[rogueattorney]

The differences between the two perspectives basically comes down to this...

You and I each decide that we're going to pretend to be a pirate. I cup my left hand like a hook, hold a construction paper sword in my right hand, while squinting one eye, and saying "Aaaaaargh!" You go spend $100 on a fancy pirate costume.

You think I don't look anything like a pirate, while I think you wasted $100.

 

[Ariosto]

The differences between the two perspectives basically comes down to this...

That's good, except that there are more than two perspectives.

I like The Fantasy Trip and Champions, and other RPGs that involve builds.

The process is interesting in the same way as building a car for Car Wars or space ships for Trillion Credit Squadron.

It's just not the case that I want to play the same kind of game all the time. I enjoy having different games from which to choose. That some are games that don't suit me but do suit other people, I reckon on balance an increase in the sum of human happiness. I can hardly play even every game I would like!

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

The differences between the two perspectives basically comes down to this...

You and I each decide that we're going to pretend to be a pirate. I cup my left hand like a hook, hold a construction paper sword in my right hand, while squinting one eye, and saying "Aaaaaargh!" You go spend $100 on a fancy pirate costume.

You think I don't look anything like a pirate, while I think you wasted $100.

That's an extreme caricature, again.

Why are these discussions always packed to the top with absurdist false dichotomies? Maybe there's a middle ground where I have this ridiculous hat I found in a Caribbean tourist trap that simply screams "pirate" to me that I insist on digging out for such occasions. Sure, I dropped an absolutely absurd $30 on it, but it makes me happy and enhances my fun. It might even be the key I need to unlock the proper "Aaaargh!" behavior.

I don't need to piss all over the guy with the construction paper sword OR the guy with the $100 dollar costume to have fun with it. And I certainly don't need to feel superior to either of them. Heck, in a lot of games, all 3 of us could sit down and play together if we can avoid being purists or jerks about the whole thing.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't need to piss all over the guy with the construction paper sword OR the guy with the $100 dollar costume to have fun with it.

Maybe you personally don't, but that laissez faire attitude is -- pretty sensibly -- not par for the course among people who want to play a game of builds.

It is pretty much the point of the affair that everyone spends $30 each. In game terms, maybe that means you have ST 10, DX 10, IQ 10: a thoroughly average specimen. (PCs normally start with 32 points.) The guy who chose to have $100 might have ST 50, DX 20, IQ 30: a demigod! The equivalent of a "paper sword" in TFT might be ...

"Birdie? Birdie. Birdie!"

Nobody would want to play a Prootwaddle PC under normal circumstances, and especially not one prone to self-detonation at the slightest impact.

(from herogames.com forums, thread How to Build: Blowing Up Prootwaddles, or Character Self-Destruction).

 

[Diamond Cross]

I've always liked creating characters. One of my favorite sources to use for backgrounds is Central Castings' character books.

I like both random and point buy, but sometimes there's too much stuff to buy for.

As far as building goes, I dislike it from playing mmorgs such as WoW where guilds require you to have build x to dish the most damage you can to get the best gear you can. I like playing my characters my way.

There are many different ways to have fun and if all you're after is the best-est best of everything then that really tends to spoil the game, which to me is about telling a story with an interesting character.

You play your character how you want to play, not to the dictates of other players in order to be acceptable.

 

[BryonD]

To me it is very much case by case.

Certainly the "character" and narrative are the point and the mechanics are secondary. So, to that extent, no. And I've written up many many characters that consist of some "reminder notes" to myself and some quick, raw stats.

However, I'm also very much a "simulationist" and if narrative was 100% of the point I wouldn't be on an RPG site, I'd be on a fiction writing website.

If a character really strikes my imagination, the process of modeling that character can be huge fun. To use a gross analogy, it is like making a little subroutine that, as perfectly as possible, creates the illusion of a unique individual within the program that defines my fantasy setting.

I have experienced "work" on game prep, but I came up with an ingenious solution. I stopped doing it. I can spend two hours on an npc that won't hardly matter or may die in three rounds, but, on the rare event this happens, not a second was wasted. Whatever it is I'm doing, I'm enjoying it. The three rounds "action" time is just gravy.

 

[Psion]

One of the biggest feature of d20 and its descendants is an increased focus on the building of the character, at least on a mechanical level. Numerous feats, class options, and alternate spells provided via "splatbook" have added a lot of complexity to what was once as easy as rolling up six stats and choosing a class.

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?

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

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

Building a character is making a character, no? The word build seems to have a second context here which I don't think is universal. Nor do I think your condemnation or unfair conclusion of certain games is accurate: just because I want detail in chargen DOES NOT mean I want to "build" (meaning optimize) my character for success like I would a MtG deck.

I like making characters, and I like systems with detailed character designs and interesting options, and refute the notion that such is about see a character in a mechanical/gamist-optimizing context. I see it in the context that the character has interesting capabilities and ways of interacting with the setting. Ideally, I see this as only part of the process; to completely "build" a character, a player should also have a handle on aspects that don't relate directly to character survival.

Now, I will say that I see the role of character creation in a rather traditional sense and I don't buy in to the philosophy that a character's "treasure" or "magic items" are part of the build. Unfortunately, I can relate that back to an unfortunate passage in a 3e book, which I condemn.

AFAIAC, a character should formed not just by player images, but by his or her evolving role in the game. Whatever material advantage the character has may be due to happenstance, opportunity, and wiles. But it should not, IMO, be due to plotting out a path for the character to acheive some mechanical result, like "if I the sword of x and bracers of y, and have spell z from this other supplement, I can push the win button!" When that happens, AFAIAC, you have lost sight of what the game is really about.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Build is actually crpg terminology, especially in games like WoW. Somehow it got carried over to pen and paper rpgs from people who played both.

Personally I'd like to keep it out of pen and paper rpgs, because of that distinction.

And to me, it's a very negative connotation for power gaming where the only way to dish out the most damage is to take these combination of abilities and powers and equipment.