Modern d20 RPG

[Christopher Lambert]

D20M is decent, but I wouldn't be that bold -- unless you mean d20 products only.

I meant D20 only.

The RPGO generator will randomly allocate skill ranks if you want it to, for fast n' furious chargen on the fly.

And, of course, for NPCs, you can just say "has skills appropriate to being a haberdasher, generally at +5" if you want to keep the game rolling along.

I will have to try that out but, honestly, IMO, I don't see it doing what I want. Unless I can clikc on the "detective" button or something, I'll have to waste scrap paper putting those characters together.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Heh. Myself, I cheat. Skills do take quite a bit of time to point out, so for NPCs I just use a little system when a skill check comes up:

Great At It: Level + 3
Good At It: Level
Okay At It: 1/2 Level
Bad At It: 1/4 Level

This usually works more than well enough for my needs. I limit NPCs to Hit Points, Defense, Attack Bonus, Damage, Interesting Note and fudge the skills like so. Nobody's really noticed. I'll build NPCs I have time to build, but mostly so I know my major stats, skills are always left blank and secondary until a roll comes up.

--fje

 

[Christopher Lambert]

Heh. Myself, I cheat. Skills do take quite a bit of time to point out, so for NPCs I just use a little system when a skill check comes up:

Great At It: Level + 3
Good At It: Level
Okay At It: 1/2 Level
Bad At It: 1/4 Level

This usually works more than well enough for my needs. I limit NPCs to Hit Points, Defense, Attack Bonus, Damage, Interesting Note and fudge the skills like so. Nobody's really noticed. I'll build NPCs I have time to build, but mostly so I know my major stats, skills are always left blank and secondary until a roll comes up.

--fje

Hey, neat. I need lots of NPCs with very high Spot checks, due to the ease of using Sleight of Hand. (Shrug.)

 

[buzz]

I will have to try that out but, honestly, IMO, I don't see it doing what I want. Unless I can clikc on the "detective" button or something, I'll have to waste scrap paper putting those characters together.

Well, you can use it to make ordinaires for free; only making heroes costs the $10. Chekc it out and see if it works for you. (FYI: I am not affiliated with RPGO in any way. Juat a fan of their stuff.) Having a button for "detective" (or other professions) to weight automatic skill rank distribution might be a good suggestion to make to them, though.

 

[kingpaul]

Alas, what works for one person doesn't work for another. Picking skills is IME the single longest part of creating a D20 Modern character, and there is no character generator that can do that for me - not without an AI program, which is a bit much for 2005.

Alright, I'm a bit biased, but have you looked at PCGen? It has the MSRD in it. If you have, and didn't like how it did skills, could you say what you didn't like about it? Thanks.

 

[Christopher Lambert]

Dedicated Ordinary 3/Tough Ordinary 3 CR 6; Medium-size humanoid; HD 3d6+3 plus 3d10+3; HP 34; Mas 13; Init +1; Spd 30 ft; Defense 15, touch 15, flatfooted 14 (+0 size, +1 Dex, +4 class); BAB +4; Grap +3; Atk +3 melee (1d6+-1, weapon), or +5 ranged (1d6+0, weapon); FS 5 ft by 5 ft; Reach 5 ft; SQ ; AL none; SV Fort +5, Ref +3, Will +5; AP 3; Rep +2; Str 8, Dex 12, Con 13, Int 15, Wis 15, Cha 10.
Occupation: Investigative (Gather Information, Search)
Skills: Concentration +2, Craft (mechanical) +3, Craft (pharmaceutical) +4, Decipher Script +4, Diplomacy +2, Gather Information +5, Hide +3, Investigate +4, Knowledge (Arcane Lore) +4, Knowledge (Behavioral Sciences) +6, Knowledge (Business) +4, Knowledge (Civics) +6, Knowledge (Current Events) +4, Knowledge (Earth and Life Sciences) +4, Knowledge (Physical Sciences) +3, Knowledge (Popular Culture) +3, Knowledge (Streetwise) +5, Knowledge (Tactics) +4, Knowledge (Technology) +3, Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) +3, Listen +3, Move Silently +3, Profession +4, Read/Write Language +2 (), Research +4, Ride +4, Search +4, Sense Motive +4, Speak Language +1 (), Spot +9, Survival +4, Treat Injury +3
Feats: Armor Proficiency (light), Personal Firearms Proficiency, Stealthy, Studious, Trustworthy
Talents (Dedicated Ordinary):
Talents (Tough Ordinary):
Possessions: weapon, weapon; Wealth +7

I don't blame the generator for not doing equipment - I skipped it since that part was easy anyway.

The 2nd longest part of creating a Modern character (especially an NPC who is past 1st-level) is choosing classes. This was easy, being based mainly on the private eye from the core rulebook, but obviously isn't so easy for ever character concept. (I once had a Dedicated 2/Fast 2 bounty hunter "morph" into a Charismatic character on my page while trying to develop them. I once had a ganster character completely transform itself while working on it, too. Funny that way.) I guess it's too much to expect a chargen to do that, though. Even so, I haven't seen a chargen that's very "pleasant" when it comes to removing class levels (especially if you need to trade out the first one!) - if I do that, I have to write out the skills I have (with approximated ranks) and start out from scratch. Either that, or gain some ranks in Computer Use and find the "deep edit" button

The longest part is doing skills. For myself, I have a small piece of paper with all the core skills written on it and little notations (eg I for Smart or S for Strong) over skills so I know which class they belong to. The back of the same piece of paper has the feats, listed in the same order as the chart in the core rulebook.

Looking at the skills above, they're not too bad. However, Craft (mechanical), Craft (pharmaceutical), Knowledge (arcane lore) and a few other of the skills aren't appropriate for a detective.

Why such weird skills? I chose the "random" skill point option because figuring out which skills I want while using the chargen takes precisely as long as it would if I were to do it on paper. The computer doesn't somehow make me smarter, more imaginative, faster, or anything along those lines. In short, it didn't save me any time. I thought that was the purpose of the chargen.

Again, the chargen isn't at fault. How could it know I wanted a detective? But there's the problem. There's no way for the chargen to know what I wanted. Short of an AI, the only other solution would be to load up "standard character concepts" into the chargen (making it much bigger and much more expensive) and then, of course, you'll never get them all. You'll probably never get enough to satisfy a large segment of the population (and if they're really into this they'll complain the same way people like me complain about the ranger still not "being right").

Also, not too fond of it not having feat requirements stated (not important for this character, since none of the feats he took had any prerequisites) but that's pretty minor.

Please don't take this as a bash on this character generator. Every character generator made in 21st century has the same things going against this.

 

[Von Ether]

For skills, I have a little system.

I whip up the total number of skill points for a character, and then I divide that by the max allowed ranks for character level. Then I fill in any skill levels needed for AdC and PrCs and the rest go into class skills that tweak the class to my concept. I found this make character creation quicker and makes the character effiecient for his class.

 

[Von Ether]

Heh. Myself, I cheat. Skills do take quite a bit of time to point out, so for NPCs I just use a little system when a skill check comes up:

Great At It: Level + 3
Good At It: Level
Okay At It: 1/2 Level
Bad At It: 1/4 Level

This usually works more than well enough for my needs. I limit NPCs to Hit Points, Defense, Attack Bonus, Damage, Interesting Note and fudge the skills like so. Nobody's really noticed. I'll build NPCs I have time to build, but mostly so I know my major stats, skills are always left blank and secondary until a roll comes up.

--fje

For NPC, this is great "short hand." Great minds ...

 

[buzz]

Alright, I'm a bit biased, but have you looked at PCGen? It has the MSRD in it. If you have, and didn't like how it did skills, could you say what you didn't like about it? Thanks.

The last time I tried PCGen for modern characters (it was a beta version more current than the production release, iirc), it didn't handle occupations properly. Occupations got lumped in with the list of feats, so choosing an occupation burned a feat slot. I'm not sure if the various options for the occupations were tweakable either. Has this been fixed? This makes PCGen pretty unusable for d20M otherwise.

 

[kingpaul]

The last time I tried PCGen for modern characters (it was a beta version more current than the production release, iirc), it didn't handle occupations properly. Occupations got lumped in with the list of feats, so choosing an occupation burned a feat slot. I'm not sure if the various options for the occupations were tweakable either. Has this been fixed? This makes PCGen pretty unusable for d20M otherwise.

Occupations are still treated as feats in PCGen, but they no longer burn a feat slot. You select skills you want (getting a new class skill or a +1 depending) and any bonus feats allowed by the occupation.

What do you mean by 'various options for the occupations were tweakable'?