Here's an updated draft, taking into account as many comments and changes since the first revision that I can think of. If I've forgotten anything, speak up; I'm intending this draft, or a near relative, to be enacted shortly.
[D]----[/D]
Living 4th Edition Character Creation Guide
L4W characters sheets are stored in the
L4W Wiki. To create a new character, first go to the
Character Sandbox page. Edit the page, and at the bottom of the page, add a new link to your character. If your EN World login was "covaithe" and your character's name was Bilbo Baggins and you were making a halfling rogue, the code for your link would look like:
Code:
[[L4W:PC:Bilbo Baggins (covaithe)|Bilbo Baggins (covaithe)]], Halfling Rogue 1
Save the page. Now click on your new link, which will take you to a blank page edit screen. Open up the
L4W Character Template in another window, and copy the code from the white section marked "Copy from below this line" and paste it into the edit window for your character sheet page. Save the new character sheet, to create a baseline to fall back on in case you mess up, and edit it again to fill in the details of your new character.
L4W characters are created at level 1, using any material from the PHB, and the races from the section at the back of the MM. Ability scores are created using the point buy rules from pages 17-18 of the PHB, except that we use 25 points instead of 22. Here are some sample ability arrays that are possible with this method:
Code:
18 16 10 10 10 8
18 14 13 11 10 8
18 13 13 13 10 8
18 12 12 12 12 9
16 16 15 10 10 8
16 15 15 12 10 8
16 14 14 14 11 8
16 14 14 12 12 10
16 14 13 12 12 12
16 13 13 13 13 12
You can of course create your own starting array. There is a basic 4e point buy calculator online
here, which may help.
You may optionally choose a region for your character from the
regions list. Each region provides small benefits to characters originating there.
Todo: insert better description of the regional "philosophies".
When you feel that your character sheet is ready for submission, send an email to the L4W judge account,
l4w.judges@gmail.com, with the subject line "L4W character submission: Bilbo Baggins", replacing Bilbo Baggins with your character's name. The judges will review your character sheet as soon as they can, but if you don't hear from them for a week or two, it would be wise to send them a reminder. The judges will edit a section at the bottom of your character sheet, either with details of any changes that are needed, or with a comment indicating approval. In either case, the judges will email you to notify you of the result. The second judge to approve your character will add a link to the approved revision of your character to the official list of approved characters below. You can continue to edit your character sheet after it has been approved, to add notes or details of your current status, but the changes will have no official effect until you level up and submit your character for approval again. DMs should be aware that the approved version of a character sheet is the one linked to from this post, and that there may be later edits.
You can join adventures before you are fully approved, with the DM's permission, but you cannot earn experience without having approval from two judges.
When you gain enough experience to level up, edit your character sheet and email the character judges again. The approval process is the same as for the initial character submission.
