Character creation time

[Razz0putin]

mechanically I can make the stats for a character in 5 to 10 minutes add an extra 5-10 for every two levels. conceptwise it takes a while for it to grok but I think that's just because back in the day we just wanted to play we didn't need a "motivation"

 

[diaglo]

Using some of the available software, I can create a character in less time than in takes me to type this sentence.

but that's only b/c you type with your nose.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

It takes me about 30-45 minutes to stat up a high level (13th+) NPC. 1st level NPC I can do in about 5 minutes. This is , of course, assuming I use all the skill points and don't use spells/feats outside of the PHB.

 

[JoeBlank]

but that's only b/c you type with your nose.

I thoth it wath becauth he has to conthentwate or he typthes with a lipthp.

 

[Kalendraf]

The people I game with usually take the longest time trying to come up with the name of the character. I agree the name is a very important aspect of a character, but when it starts taking someone over an hour during the game session just to come up with their character's name alone, then we have a problem...especially when after all that time, they still wind up with some rather mundane name like "Fred". "You just wasted a precious hour of our game time to come up with THAT!" In order to avoid this, I now insist that players have to come to the 1st game session with the character name already figured out.

Otherwise, in 3e/3.5, it usually takes only 30 minutes or less to create a character. Slightly longer than earlier editions, but not by much. A lot of the work can be greatly sped up thru the use of various computer-assistance. There are numerous character sheets available (xls, pdf, etc) that can do many of the calculations automatically which is a great aid when it comes to things like skills.

 

[Darkness]

The biggest effort for me is equipment. (For characters > level 1, obviously, but we almost never create level 1 characters these days, so...) I can usually do everything else in a few minutes, high-level character or not. (Assuming it's not a weird class I'm not really familiar with.)
Equipment is huge, though.

 

[Dakkareth]

Not having much previous experience it took me a full hour to make up a new psion character at level three. Long enough. Using unfamiliar additions (Black Company CS) I spent more than four hours on the mechanical part of a 17th level character - and as magic items are Rare with capital 'r' in this setting that wasn't even something to consider. The biggest part was the skills due to the skill based magic and crafting system. Of course it gets much easier once you don't have to look up everything anymore ...

 

[Wombat]

In the current campaign, we have people who are able to quickly come up with characters and people who are rather slower.

Myself, I can put together a 1st level character in about 5 minutes, assuming I know the general type of character I am trying to make.
Player 1 is an Old D&D hand. He is also very creative. He whips together characters in anywhere from 5-20 minutes.
Player 2 is also an Old D&D hand, but he is terribly indecisive and looks not for what is optimal necessarily, but for what best represents his character. As such it can take him an hour or more to put a character together.
Player 3 is more of a White Wolf person, but he can put together a character in under 30 minutes -- again, the time is more due to taking the "right" mix of skills and feats, rather than necessarily the optimal ones.
Player 4 is an Old D&D hand, but is also something of a min-maxer. He takes about 40 minutes to put a character together, as he tries to metagame the character into submission.
Player 5 is new to rpg'ing. She comes up with fairly simple, straightforward characters, but double checks a lot to make sure she has gotten the rules right. She can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, mainly out of hesitation.
Player 6 is another White Wolf person and sometimes gets huffy that she can't make the "right" character (e.g. "I could make the character I want if were were playing Werewolf!"). This tends to slow down the process quite a bit, as she is still "fighting the system". Character creation time, about 45 minutes.

 

[Ottergame]

I can do a character, even a high level one, in 10 to 15 minutes. The only exception being the equipment of a character higher then about 10th level, in which case it can take a little longer, depending on what I feel like I need to buy.

I can't fathom how people take an hour to roll up a character when they already have a solid plan for what they want to play. If you're in a group who's all creating characters at the same time, you all build them to compliment each other, then you go out for dinner, and then have to go to the bathroom a few times, THEN I can see it taking maybe an hour.

 

[D+1]

If I had to I could do it in 20-30 minutes. A spellcaster might take longer than other characters but I've played enough characters in almost 30 years of gaming to not NEED to read up on spells if time is short. Of course, if time is not a problem I can take 20 minutes or it could be 2 hours to create a character.

I do keep character ideas in the back of my mind and sometimes write them down or actually work them up to one degree or another, writing a bit of background, planning out feat selections over the course of 10 levels or whatever. At least that way I'm never really stuck for an idea of where to START and that can be half the battle.

It DOES take rather significantly longer than it did back in the day... but then back in the day we could whip them up on a sheet of plain wide-ruled notebook paper in about 5 minutes start to finish. There were no skills to pick, few calculations to make, and a much more limited number of things that actually NEEDED to be recorded before you could throw a PC into the fray.