Character Creation Bonus?

[King Nate]

As a DM, do you give out, or allow, additional bonuses for the PC characters during character creation to help flesh out a character? If so, what kind of things do you allow? Some of the ones I have seen or have used in the past have been...

An extra feat (from list)
An extra feat (of choice)
An Animal Companion based off the DMG2 rules
A sidekick such as a goblin, kobold, or Halfling
Extra starting cash
Magic weapon or implement
Piece of land/small house/small boat
An extra 1st level encounter power
An additional +1 to two ability scores (of choice)
An additional +1 to two ability scores (at random)

 

[marelion]

At CharGen the only goodiie I throw to my players is a free Adventurer`s Kit.
Throwing out extra feats would be a big no-go for me, for an extra feat at first level screws up the balancing pretty badly.

I am perfectly fine with letting a player choose any skill as a class skill though, if it fits the concept. This generaly helps since in our group we ruled out themes and limited background benefits to one benefit per char.

And I guess I could be persuaded to grant an extra skill, especially if the group is small(i.e. there are less han 4 players). But an extra feat? Nope, sir.

As far as magical items are concerned as a DM I am a lot more restrictive than the CB as well. i will give out magic items as per the official guidelines as far as levels are oncerned but do not expect me to give away frost/radiant weapons for frostcheese/radaiant mafia. In fact, the Lasting FrostWintertouched-combo is banned at my table for being too cheesy.

There may be further restrictions, butr these generally depend on the group. For example, in my current group I have a warlord in my party so I will not allow Bracers of Mighty Striking until the party hits Paragon. The two strenght-based melee characters are giving my monsters a hard time anyway weith their warlord support, so my group is nowhere near missing the extra damage these bracers could offer. i don`t like to play 4E as a variant of the Cold War where both sides of the game try to bring as many nukes to the party as possible.

Giving out bonusses to ability scores helps some classes while the benefits to other builds are quite limited. If i had a party solely consisting of MAD classes then maybe I might give this try for a high-power-approach. But generally i would be careful with this as well.

BTW: Why the interest? Are you planning to beef up a party of experienced players who want to advance more quickly? Or is this just some experiment to take a closer lok at the math and the feeling involved?

 

[underfoot007ct]

As a DM, do you give out, or allow, additional bonuses for the PC characters during character creation to help flesh out a character? If so, what kind of things do you allow? Some of the ones I have seen or have used in the past have been...

Is see NO need to give players MORE at creation, let them earn them as they play

An extra feat (from list)
An extra feat (of choice)

Extra feats would just be power-gaming at it's worst

An Animal Companion based off the DMG2 rules

Several classes get animal companion, why make those classes weaker

A sidekick such as a goblin, kobold, or Halfling
Extra starting cash
Magic weapon or implement
Piece of land/small house/small boat

In most worlds land is very special and should be reserved for high level rewards

An extra 1st level encounter power
An additional +1 to two ability scores (of choice)
An additional +1 to two ability scores (at random)

Making players more powerful means giving them much hgher level monsters to challenge them.

4E has the most powerful First level character, why the need to make them super men ?

I could see swapping skills that make more sense for a char concept, but NO need to give out extra powers & feats were none are needed.

 

[keterys]

I like giving out a +1 feat bonus to attack, damage, fortitude, reflex, and will (per tier).

Which mostly frees people up to pick up more interesting feats for the first several levels (in effect doing what you're asking, by having people get more flavorful options), and I can cope with any balance differences on my end with ease (in truth, it ends up a lot less difference than you'd think, because they were going to get those bonuses anyways)

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I recently (this year) started a viking-themed game where I gave all the characters a rune reading and assigned bonuses based on that.

I associated each rune with a stat, then had the players all draw 3 runes. The first rune gave a bonus to a stat associated with the rune. The second rune gave training or focus in a skiil. The third rune was tied to their fate - for which I gave a miscellaneous bonus, often with a drawback.

Yes, it upped the power level, but still manageable. If I had to do it over again, I would probably have done it differently, maybe toned it down a bit, especially the stat boost. Characters are still dying though, so it's not too gross an advantage. The players seemed to enjoy the flavour of it.

 

[the Jester]

I give each starting pc one set of poor quality clothes for free.

 

[delericho]

In a level-based system if you want more powerful characters the best way to do it is generally to play at a higher level. By making that one change, and nothing else, you get the more powerful characters you want and don't need to make changes to the rest of the system to compensate. (And don't worry about feeling like it's 'cheating' - we'll promise not to let WotC know! )

If, instead, you give bonuses to ability scores, extra feats, free magic items, or whatever, then you'll adjust the power level somewhat, and have to compensate. That's fine, and can be done... but it's much easier just to up the level and leave everything else as-is.

(Of course, that's a truth that even WotC have failed to learn - 4e characters are more powerful now, at any given level, than they were when 4e was first released. And the same was true over the lifespan of both 3.0e and 3.5e, too. It's almost certainly true of Pathfinder, too. This has meant that new monsters have also had to be more powerful than old ones, and has even meant that the entirety of the 4e monster math has needed to be revised!)

 

[Dice4Hire]

My group used to give a lot of bonuses at character creation, and now we only give one:

One trained skill can be any skill you like.

This lets us cover a critical skill with any class, and has worked out quite well for us.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I like giving out a +1 feat bonus to attack, damage, fortitude, reflex, and will (per tier).

A math fix and inherent bonuses are the only "free" things I give away. No backgrounds or themes either. As if the game's eleven jillion races, classes, powers, and feats aren't enough!

I have essentially thrown class skills out the window though, which gives players a lot of conceptual wiggle room.

 

[S'mon]

My group used to give a lot of bonuses at character creation, and now we only give one:

One trained skill can be any skill you like.

This lets us cover a critical skill with any class, and has worked out quite well for us.

I like that, though Backgrounds basically do that already. Or even give every PC 1 bonus trained skill of their choice, I think some classes are a bit under-skilled and that would help.