D&D General Do you transfer characters between campaigns?

[Ralif Redhammer]

Outside of organized play, no.

I remember when I was a young teenager and I invited a new player to our group. He asked if he could bring the character he'd been playing in. He showed up with a high-level paladin with a holy avenger and 18s in every stat. Now, as an adult, I can see that the right thing to do would to simply say that he has to make a new character instead. As a kid, I ran an adventure with a bunch of level-draining foes and more or less engineered the character loosing his paladin status. He later admitted that he had made that character up entirely and had never actually played him in a game before.

 

[ezo]

He later admitted that he had made that character up entirely and had never actually played him in a game before.

Ah... the crazy things we do as kids...

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ah... the crazy things we do as kids...

The big thing I remember in middle school were the staggering number of characters with an attribute spread of: STR 18, DEX 18, CON 18, WIS 18, INT 18, CHR 17

We had amazing dice skills. Strictly 3d6 straight down the line. I was so much better at rolling dice in my youth

 

[ezo]

The big thing I remember in middle school were the staggering number of characters with an attribute spread of: STR 18, DEX 18, CON 18, WIS 18, INT 18, CHR 17

See, we never had a lot of this going on. Sure, nearly everyone had an 18 somewhere, but then it really was fairly honest dice rolling. Frankly, with all the methods it wasn't hard to get something like 18,17,16.... for PC, but in AD&D you needed 15's or better for any bonus at all generally. If your scores all ranged from 8-14 in AD&D, you didn't really get any benefit or hinderance from any of them.

We had amazing dice skills. Strictly 3d6 straight down the line. I was so much better at rolling dice in my youth

LOL of course we did, we spent a lot more of our free time rolling dice. If I had those skills today, I'd live in Vegas, baby.

 

[Bedrockgames]

See, we never had a lot of this going on. Sure, nearly everyone had an 18 somewhere, but then it really was fairly honest dice rolling. Frankly, with all the methods it wasn't hard to get something like 18,17,16.... for PC, but in AD&D you needed 15's or better for any bonus at all generally. If your scores all ranged from 8-14 in AD&D, you didn't really get any benefit or hinderance from any of them.

Lol. I may be exaggerating slightly for comedic effect, but it wouldn't surprise me if there is an old nearly all 18s character sheet somewhere in my basement. Keep in mind though this was the 2E era, where 3d6 down the line was the default, so it was pretty incredulous if people were getting lots of 18s, 17s, and 16s using that method

 

[ezo]

Lol. I may be exaggerating slightly for comedic effect, but it wouldn't surprise me if there is an old nearly all 18s character sheet somewhere in my basement. Keep in mind though this was the 2E era, where 3d6 down the line was the default, so it was pretty incredulous if people were getting lots of 18s, 17s, and 16s using that method

Yeah, but outside of B/X; BECMI, who actually used 3d6 down the line? IME, no one ever did (at least not as the "default" by any means).

4d6dL has been the standard pretty much forever once people started using it.

Of course, the problem also was as kids we had hours free so would roll up dozens and dozens of sets of ability scores, until we got one we wanted to play.

 

[James Gasik]

It's funny how that used to be the standard- someone runs an adventure, you bring your best character. Somewhere along the line, however, I stopped when I realized some DM's will treat your characters better than others, actually caring about backstories and making your character feel like a part of their campaign world- at which point, you were better off keeping the character right where they were!

Some years ago, a friend of mine and I were waxing nostalgic about two characters of ours who were partners in crime, and around that same time, a new game was starting up. The game was starting at level 5, so even though it meant we would be weaker, we worked with the DM to explain our presence with our backstories more or less intact, and tried to rebuild our 3.5 characters as 5e characters, doing our best to capture the feel of what they were about.

Unfortunately, the fact that we had an established working relationship, trust in one another, and set tactics seemed to somewhat intimidate the other players, and we ended up basically being in charge of the party.

Worse yet, after a few sessions, the DM admitted he felt like his campaign's story was being overshadowed by that of our characters. He wasn't able to express what he meant very well (or I failed to understand him) but when his game went on permanent hiatus, I decided maybe trying to port over old characters wasn't something I should try again.

 

[Incenjucar]

I will reuse PCs as NPCs or in other contexts (recreating them in MMOs, etc.), but I have too many thousands of things to try to carry about the same character from table to table.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, but outside of B/X; BECMI, who actually used 3d6 down the line? IME, no one ever did (at least not as the "default" by any means).

4d6dL has been the standard pretty much forever once people started using it.

Of course, the problem also was as kids we had hours free so would roll up dozens and dozens of sets of ability scores, until we got one we wanted to play.

We used it all the time. In the 2E PHB that is the official default. So we went by that because while most of us started playing with 1E, we all really started Gming with the 2E book. In 1E 4d6 drop the lowest was the standard but not in 2E

 

[ezo]

We used it all the time. In the 2E PHB that is the official default. So we went by that because while most of us started playing with 1E, we all really started Gming with the 2E book. In 1E 4d6 drop the lowest was the standard but not in 2E

I'm not talking about the "default" or "standard" according to the books. I'm talking about what people actually used. And, as I mentioend, outside of B/X or BECMI, 3d6 (especially in order) was not common by any means IME. YMMV, of crouse.