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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Afrodyte" data-source="post: 1445287" data-attributes="member: 8713">sorry for lengthI neglected to mention another selling point of pregens: you can plan around the PCs' abilities.  By this I don't mean you get to hose them and railroad them until they're halfway across the continent, but you can plan for contingencies a lot better and keep things going a lot smoother than if you had no idea what people were playing.  If you want to give the players more options than what creating their characters whole-cloth would give, you can create basic stats (class, level, skills, feats, ability scores) but leave the race and other descriptive stuff up to the players.  In addition, I feel it is always important to have too many pregens ready, just in case.  If some players show up that you hadn't seen before, you're prepared.  If not, you have more options for the players that are there.  A rule of thumb I'd use is to have one character for each player, plus at least half the number of the total group.  So, for a 4-member party, 6 pregens is good.  The best thing is to know your group well enough to know what types of pregens they'll gravitate to.  However, if you are running a standard D&D game, chances are you'll want to stay as close to the iconic party as possible.  You don't need to specifically have 1 meatshield, 1 band-aid, 1 thief, and 1 pointy hat to have your bases covered.  You just need a warrior, a skill expert, and a spellcaster.  For small parties, using the more versatile classes is probably best, since you can cover a few more areas without needing more characters.  I love bards, rangers, and rogues because they are so versatile.  Parties that need a spellcaster and a skill expert can't go wrong with a bard.  Those that need a warrior and a skill expert may find a ranger invaluable.  Rogues are versatile enough to be the skill expert for any party.  For large parties, specialization is not such a big deal.  Of course, you don't even need to follow that pattern, depending on the nature of the game you'll be running.  If you are running a low magic game or one where magic is not integral to success, you may find that you don't need many options for spellcasters, whether divine or arcane.  If you are running a game of political intrigue, you won't need many options for combat-oriented classes (except for the paladin).  Likewise, if you know the characters will spend lots of time in the wilderness, you'll probably want barbarians, druids, and rangers as options.  For a homebrew setting with non-standard elements (especially magic), it's simple just to remove them from the available options for pre-gens rather than trying to explain a lot of rules changes and differences.While DMing in a familiar world would save some headaches, if you are using a one-shot to playtest a homebrew, I strongly suggest that you are well-versed on information the players should know, and try to keep things simple.  A rule of thumb I have is that if it can't fit on the front end of a 4 x 6 index card without microscopic writing, it's probably too complicated.  Index cards are wonderful for reference (house rules, races, etc) because they're more mobile than books, so the group isn't held up by one player looking up one part.</blockquote>

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