D&D General Critique My Funnel Rules for D&D5E 2024

[Fattycat]

It's been 20 years since I played any kind of D&D (or D&D derivatives), but I've recently been roped into running a few game nights for some old buddies. I thought I would short-circuit the (potentially) time-consuming process of character generation, and try a variation of the Dungeon Crawl Classics "funnel" concept.

I'm generating approx. 20 0-level characters, using the approach outlined below. Each PC is written up on an index card. Players take a card at random, and play that character until they die, or complete the scenario.

0-level character rules

1. Characters start with the standard stat block -- 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 -- randomly assigned to Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha.
2. A background is randomly applied, with higher weighting for more common backgrounds (eg, farmer).
   1. Attribute bonuses (eg, +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1) are randomly applied
   2. If the Origin feat given by a background involves making choices (eg, Skilled, or Magic Initiate), player's can make this choice
3. Species is chosen randomly, again with higher weighting for more common species (eg, depending on where the campaign starts)
   1. Species traits apply as normal. Players can choose sub-species if applicable.
   2. If the species offers a choice of abilities (eg, Humans being versatile), the player can choose
4. Hit Points start at 4 (1d4) plus any bonuses

I'm toying between having Proficiency bonus be +0, to reflect just how weak a 0-level character is, versus making it +1 so having proficiency in a particular skill actually makes a difference. 0-level characters are supposed to be weak, and plenty of character death is part of the fun of the funnel concept. That said, without a proficiency bonus, some backgrounds and species end up much weaker than others -- eg, Magic Initiate becomes quite useful, but being a scribe maybe not so much. But maybe that's ok? It'll all even out in the end.

At the end of the funnel, players get to keep the character they are currently playing. There follows a period of in-game downtime, where players can 'uplift' their characters to a 1st level class of their choice. Apply all the usual bonuses and abilities that come with being 1st level, uplift their hit points, increase proficiency, and so forth. If they are super-unhappy with the character they end up with, they can randomly choose an index card if any remain. But they can only do this once.

We all grew up playing old-school D&D, with 3d6-straight for chargen. I loved the variety you tended to get around the game table -- fighters weren't always the strongest, wizards weren't always the smartest, etc. But bad luck could be kinda brutal. And 1e/2e had pre-requisites that would cut off a lot of class options. I feel like this approach gives the variety of randomness, remains reasonably fair, and still gives players plenty of choices to make. I'm hoping it speeds up the first session, and reduces the min-maxers a bit.

Like I said, it's been 20 years since I've played any D&D. I completely skipped 3.5e, 4e, and 5e 2014. In fact, 5e 2024 is the first time I've bought any RPG books in maybe 15 years. So I'd appreciate any sage feedback.

 

[Clint_L]

I used a funnel to start a new campaign a few years ago but actually used a different game system entirely (Dread) to weed out characters during that opening session, so that aspect of the experiment is not relevant to you. But I'm certainly onboard with the funnel system IF your players are into it.

The first potential challenge that I flag in your proposal is that it seems to be very DM-driven. You are creating the characters, not the players. This is pretty antithetical to contemporary D&D and TTRPG philosophy, as reflected in the rules, which emphasizes collaboration and player ownership of their characters.

So why not have each player bring X number of cards for character concepts that THEY would like to try? You can always help them tailor their concepts to existing backgrounds and species if they don't know the new rules. I had my players play ALL of their proposed characters for the first game, and then at the end they selected a keeper from their survivors (or just kept the sole survivor). This worked great; my spouse's main character to this day is a version of the character she first tested out in that original funnel game, using Dread rules. And it gave the party a fantastic founding story.

 

[Fattycat]

The first potential challenge that I flag in your proposal is that it seems to be very DM-driven. You are creating the characters, not the players. This is pretty antithetical to contemporary D&D and TTRPG philosophy, as reflected in the rules, which emphasizes collaboration and player ownership of their characters.

The Dungeon Crawl Classic rules basically have players randomly generate stats, hit-points and occupation, which is roughly akin to a D&D background+species. Once they survive their first adventure, they get to select a class. I don't see this as being DM-driven, but rather fate-driven. I'm just trying to speed up the process by doing the bulk of the random generation ahead of time. I'm trying to get a run a small campaign over the course of a long weekend, and it was actually one of the players that suggested the funnel concept to kickstart the game quickly.

DCC does recommend that players create four characters at a time and effectively play them all at once. Whereas my idea was to let players randomly select a character after every death and only play one at a time. Apparently there's a tendency in funnels for players to deliberately protect their favourite character and use the others as fodder. Then again, in DCC stats are generated randomly using 3d6 straight down the line. So there can be a fair amount of variety. Whereas in my approach, the stats block is always the same, it just gets allocated randomly. There isn't really any such thing as "better" character, just different.

True, this is definitely different to a lot of contemporary RPGs. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I guess it's the difference between building something you love from scratch, versus taking something and making it work. The concept of pre-gens is pretty common at conventions and events, right? Is this much different?

 

[Distracted DM]

One of Arcadia magazines issues ?maybe issue 8?, had funnel rules that are worth looking at- I used them to great success. Then again more recently I ran a funnel with each player running 2-3 level 1 characters and that worked fine too.

What is say is perhaps have pregens AND let your players make a character or two. Mixem in. The player may find after the funnel is over that they want to play a character different than they thought- that happened in my lvl1 funnel.

 

[aco175]

I'm not sure I would spend time making charts for random 0-level PCs. I guess since you got roped in to DM you set the perimeters, but the players should also need to do something. I find 1st level weak enough and you can still funnel them through a death-march if you want. Spend the time on the dungeon and other elements such as maps and refreshing monster abilities and how the new spells work.