Pre-Generated Characters

[CombatWombat51]

As I mentioned in another thread, I'll soon be starting a campaign with 6 or 7 players, 5 of which have played 2nd edition D&D, 1 of which has never played any RPG, and the possible 7th person I have no clue about.

I think playing will go smoothly enough. However, I'm concerned about character creation. It'll take a year to make all of their characters, because there's so many options, and that's a ton of brand new players at once.

I was thinking that I could make pre-generated characters, and they could choose from them. They could draw straws (or roll dice) to see who gets first pick if there's any disputes about who gets what. I want to keep things simple by using only the 3 core books, and also only humans for races. I know most of the players could deal with races, but I'd prefer not to, and I like human campaigns I'm also going to include only a couple classes so I can keep things simple. Here's my list of characters I'll make. One, does the list look good, and two, do you think this is all a good idea?

Fighter, longsword, shield
Fighter, great axe
Fighter, dual shortswords
Cleric, mace and shield, healing and sun domains
Cleric, great sword, war and strength domains
Druid, staff
Ranger, longsword, long bow
Rogue, short sword, thief skills
Rogue, rapier, Weapon Finesse, Charisma skills
Sorcerer, general kill stuff spells
Sorcerer, enchantment type spells

I don't want barbarians, because it's hard to know when to properly use rage. Bards have too many options. Paladins infringe upon the often greedy and bad desires of newbies And sorcerers are just easier to play than wizards.

 

[diaglo]

as a one shot adventure it looks good.

if however the players have any preconceived ideas about what they want to play beforehand you may be in for some trouble.

 

[Crothian]

double post

 

[Crothian]

If you fear their choice of options, limit the options. Use the core rules only, it works for characters very welkl and doesn't overwelm people not used to it all yet.

 

[langolas]

You could also try meeting with one or two people at a time and make their characters then. Figure out the general idea of what your players want to play and meet with them before hadn to make the characters and hopefully taylor them to the players liking. It also allows the player to discuss "quirks" with you without having to do it in front of the rest of the group.

 

[Shallown]

For my first 3.0 game I had everyone come up with 12th characters and ran them througha straight dungeon crawl in Undermountain. I did it just to get use to the rules. It also helped them learn how to creat characters and also to see how to think ahead for their characters goals and what feats/skills they need to get there.

It was fun and got them pumped for the game. you could do the same thing just pregen the characters and run like 2-3 sessions and let them see what all the numbers mean then start the campaign

Worked for me.

Later

 

[MerakSpielman]

Running a one-shot with pregenerated, simple characters isn't a bad idea, especially for complete newbies. The folks who played 2nd edition will have a lot of issues to work out, too.

After the one-shot, though, I would recommend walking them through the process of creating their own characters from scratch (without computer generators). It gives a good feel of the mechanics underlying the rules they just learned.

 

[Ulik Mibut]

I might ask them if they have an idea of what they want to play and then pregen characters based upon what they said. Those that dont know/care what they play can fill in the gaps with random pregens. This can be fun for a great introductory adventure. After this, however, I would seriously consider transferring the xp gained from the adventure over to a new PC made by the player's own hand. This would help with the learning curve imho.

 

[Quickbeam]

I strongly urge you to avoid using pregen characters for a group of relatively new players about to embark on their first campaign together. Here's why:

-- IMO, the character creation process is one of (if not the) most enjoyable aspects of any RPG. Much of the bond between player and character is developed during the design phase of gaming, largely because people select classes, skills, feats, flaws, etc., that sound interesting to them. You'd lose a measure of this connectivity by distributing pregens.
-- Character creation is an excellent tool for exploring game rules and funtionality among all the players simultaneously. Our group begins every campaign by spending the entire first session going through PC creation together. It's fun and it allows everyone to share thoughts, questions and ideas among the group. Heck, even us veterans usually learn something new about a class ability or feat!
-- It's assured that players are more likely to enjoy running a PC they created, versus ones they were handed...especially rookies who have enough to deal with just learning the game system and rules. To put it another way, there's a level of buy in to the reality of each PC's personna and history you can't get with pregens. You know why Redgar the Fighter is designed with specific skills, feats and equipment, but the player may not if he/she had nothing to do with Regdar's design.

I just think that pregens are excellent for gamedays, conventions, and one-shot adventures, but otherwise character creation is vital.