D&D 5E Character Creation- How to Apply Auction Techniques


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TwoSix

Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
A little hard to follow, but yeah, that's exactly it!
I'm participating in @el-remmen's thread with a fantasy draft, and I have to say it's really fun, enough so that I want to adapt it for my next game, but fuse it with some of the ideas from the older thread.

I'm thinking of having something like (players*7) choices. All stats start at 8. About 2/3 of the choices will be stuff like "Str 15" or "Con 12" or things like that, but the remaining third will be some different choices like "Str is 6, but you get free gauntlets of ogre strength" or "+4 to any one stat, but your Con cannot be higher than 10".
 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
The Amber Diceless Roleplay system used bidding to determine rank of the four attributes, and then any left over points could be used for other perks. In the Amber books the princes and princesses of Amber pretty much knew who was the best fighter, the one with the most stamina, etc. So you were ranked 1-4, with 4 meaning "you're in the pack". And it was bidding among the players for the various positions.

I remember playing in a group during a week long camp out where we had 9 players, so the GM changed the bidding slightly. Basically everyone bid secretly (which I think is how the game does it), but then once the top four were determined the y had a second round of bidding where they could up their bids. Though the plan of sinking one attribute and judicious bidding, I was the #1 rank in everything else.

Which as a late teen seemed cool. But to my current RP self kind of turns the stomach at how much of a spotlight hog it could turn into.

Instead of an actual bidding process, where long term I am causing distress to fellow players at my table at not being able to play what they want, I'd rather see something like the old Shadowrun priority system. I might rank ability scores #1, connections #2, gear #3 (which gets me an uncommon-max item not picked by those with ranks #1 or #2), and wealth #4. Or however I want to do them. This was I'm not denying anything to anyone else, and you still have it all on the table.
 

MGibster

Legend
The Amber Diceless Roleplay system used bidding to determine rank of the four attributes, and then any left over points could be used for other perks. In the Amber books the princes and princesses of Amber pretty much knew who was the best fighter, the one with the most stamina, etc. So you were ranked 1-4, with 4 meaning "you're in the pack". And it was bidding among the players for the various positions.
I once participated in an Amber campaign where four other players all wanted the highest Psyche and I was happy with my Zero. This resulted in me being #1 in Strength, Endurance, and Warfare. We ended up not playing that campaign after character generation.

I don't know if I'd want to bid for stats in D&D. It's kind of an interesting idea....but I don't if the benefits of such a system is worth the complexity.
 

Nikosandros

Golden Procrastinator
The Amber RPG has an auction for the 4 stats; it is a game that encourages competition between the players. It is also a dice-less game and the ranking of the stats is extremely important.
 

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