Creating your Character vs. Meeting your Character

[Dice4Hire]

I was talking to a friend and he had a really mean idea for dealing with people that twink the hell out of characters. Tell every one of your players to make the strongest character they can possibly manage all sources of rules allowed. Once they have done this you take the sheets put them to the side and tell them to roll up a batch of level 1's with standard array and inform them that a group of high level adventurers have gone rogue and it will be their job to stop them. Forcing them to fight their own twinked creations is pure delicious evil haha.

Yeah, something like that is pretty mean, but fun.

 

[Desdichado]

For a one-shot or short campaign, I might be convinced. For a potentially long-term campaign, I would be so against the notion that if it prevailed, I might seriously consider sitting that campaign out and finding another group.

 

[Evenglare]

I actually use a similar method.

I use 3d6 rolled in order. I let them roll 2 times, and pick one of the arrays. It symbolizes the 2 paths a character could have taken in life... it seems to work well for our group.

 

[ComradeGnull]

I was thinking of using this for a 1-3 session campaign. More of a break the mold type of thing (we have 1 player that will play a bard unless we berate them endlessly to pick something else).

I don't think I would want to use the natural rolling as our go to method because as you guys mentioned part of the fun of the game is getting to play new and fantastic things and having your stats chosen for you could result as you mentioned in 'oh yay I get to be a figher'.

I think random gen is great for something like this- a short term, possibly high lethality campaign run in an old-school style. If someone gets a set of stats/class/whatever they hate, they probably aren't stuck with it long, and if a 'bad' character survives against the odds for a number of sessions it can actually turn into a favorite.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

I've done the second method twice. It resulted in horrible results for me and decent ones for the rest of the party both times (3d6 6 times in order is a harsh mistress).

My waifish cleric, born of the fey, and my plucky bard, prone to bad decisions were both the most fragile characters I've ever seen, and were outright useless outside of their specialty areas (healing, and ally support via performance respectively). The cleric managed to have a good run as a PC though, and ended up being surprisingly important to the overall plot of the campaign she was in.

...The bard died young.

 

[Li Shenron]

I would like to give natural stats a try where you roll each stat in turn and then pick your race and class based on what stats you ended up getting.

Has anyone used the second method and found it to be fun? My hope is that it will encourage my group to break from their regular routine and create new class/race combos rather than playing the same character type every time because it is what they are comfortable with.

I was required to use the "meeting" method the very first time I played D&D in the 90s. I totally hated it, because I rolled poorly and could not meet the requirements for any of the classes allowed, at which point I just had to ask the DM if he was going to let me play at all... IIRC he winged the scores so that I could qualify for a class, the one which I was least interested into. I complained but I still played and I still had enough fun that I soon became the biggest fan of RPG in my group of friends.

A few years later I started RPGing more regularly, and in my first 3ed game as a player I practically let the dice decide my fate... not with stats (I did rearrange them) but by letting everybody else at the table choose their class & race before I made my choice. I was just so anxious to play the new edition that I wanted to try all classes and races, so who cared which one first?

I think the "meeting" method can be a lot of fun for mature gamers, but I would strongly discourage inexperienced gamers to do it. Beginners should start with freedom of choice (although maybe with some limitations on the usable material so that they are not overwhelmed, but that's a completely separate issue) and should never be forced into a character concept they don't like. But once you are experienced, the "meeting" method can be refreshing, causes you to think out-of-the-box, and provide more challenge (of course you must be willing to get that).

An additional potential problem is ending up with a poorly assorted group of PCs, such as all charismatic weaklings or all rogues or all fighters etc. But this is an additional challenge for the experienced groups. And keep in mind that you cannot avoid the same problem when you let everybody choose their characters: if they all come up with similar PCs and you don't accept that, you still have to force them to play something else.

Bottom line: never impose this on players like they did on me... Murphy's law will make sure that those who don't like the idea will be the most punished by using it. Always make sure that everyone understands that they may end up with a bad PC and willing to play such character, otherwise avoid the idea altogether

 

[Li Shenron]

I was thinking of using this for a 1-3 session campaign.

It's going to be fine, 3 sessions is nothing to worry about. Certainly, the longer the campaign, the higher the risk that someone stuck with an unsatisfying PC gets frustrated.

Instead of rolling stats in order and then think what class/race would fit, you can also roll class/race (and why not something else? even feats and spells) randomly, and then assign the stats with point-buy to make the combination viable. This alternative keeps the randomness of the character type but removes the possibility of a "gimp".

Also, just to clarify, I wouldn't suggest to always use the "meeting" method. It's best used to shuffle things a bit, particularly if your players have already played several PCs each, but making too random characters in a row could actually even result that some players get a streak of characters similar to each other as in "oh no, another fighter here..." which kinds of defeat the purpose.

 

[GeorgeFields]

3d6 in order is the method the new HackMaster uses. You can switch them around if you like; but if you leave them in the order rolled, you get 50 bonus building points. Also, can can swap two of the scores around and receive 25 bonus points.

A 'shopkeeper' rule exists for really bad stats. If you do not have any scores of 13 or above, you can name the character and turn it in to the GM as a shopkeeper. This also applies if you roll two stats of 5 or less.

 

[FreeXenon]

I have used the "Everyone is Screwed Equally" rule.

Basically have everyone roll up a set of stats (4d6, drop the lowest), and vote on which set to use, and then everyone uses the same set of stats (arranged in any order).

This way no one will necessarily have a stat advantage or can complain of subpar or really crappy stats as compared to the rest, it levels the playing field for all, and everyone had a say in the choice of stats.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

1E D&D used to have char gen like that. 3d6 in order, pl;ay what you rolled.

Actually not. SECOND Edition AD&D had that as a formal option. 1E did not.

I wasn't a big fan of that model.

It is particularly obnoxious when you realized that by not being able to arrange as desired you are MORE likely to end up with penalties (in EITHER 1E or 2E) than with bonuses.

In some campaigns, we specifically assign classes or races, just to force some mixing it up. But those are "special" campaigns where everybody accepts that loss of chargen control.

The method of character generation can have a significant effect upon how players even approach the campaign. The effect can be good or bad and vary from one player to another, one character to another. Everybody SHOULD use the same method IMO, but then that has implications for certain classes and play styles. Random rolls is not always best, but neither is a point-buy system always best. It depends on the version of the game rules being used, the characters the players want, the type of game the players want to play, and the type of game the DM actually wants to run.

Character generation methods is a subject that has always been only superficially analyzed and discussed by the rules. If there is a "default" method it needs to be explained (at least to the DM) WHY it is the default and what the implications are in using different methods.