Thanks to all for responses! I'll expound a bit since people have asked: why? what is gained? why not complete pre-gens?
Fate. Chance. Plain and simple. None of us choose who we are, who are (biological) parents were, and so forth. We each were born with an innate measure of ability in STR, DEX, etc. as well. Now, we can certain work to change our measure of ability to a point, which is why I included the drop 2 points to raise 1 point elsewhere. This shows the work a person can do to become strong, quicker, smarter, and so forth. With ASIs later on you could continue to improve which ever ability you wanted, of course.
I liked the idea posed above about making it random, which I have also done before, and even allowing the players to roll up the races and ability scores, etc. would be ok.
- Next, "what is gained?" A couple things, IMO.
1. A sense of playing something outside of the box, which might or might not be the case depending on the random selection you pick. You at least have a bit of sense of ownership in that you have two selections and can choose between those two.
2. Making something great out of something when you have little control over what you start with.
With 5E, for instance, the
ONLY thing typically left to chance IME is starting gold--and even that is often either "choose starting equipment based on class" or "you get maximum gold, don't bother rolling." Now, I know a lot of people
DO roll ability scores instead of using point-buy or the standard array, but even then
very few stick to the old "roll in order" mentality. So, even if you roll, YOU still choose what your strong and weak points are.
- Also, people asked "why not complete pre-gens?"
Well, I felt forcing the choice of class, which IMO
should be determined by the PC during the course of their "lives", would be too much. I think most of us (hopefully) got to choose our profession, right? And I would imagine most of us choose careers/paths that we felt would benefit us the most, we would enjoy the most, or whatever.
In summary, the idea was not so much about pre-gen characters who might fit the adventure/campaign/whatever. It is more about NOT having the choices for your PC you don't, yourself, have in real life. TBH, I debated a LOT about backgrounds and whether those would be pre-determined or allowing the PC to choose, but IMO race and ability scores are things we have little control over.
As I said in the OP, I know for many players it is about playing something you really
WANT to play, and idea you've had of your own, and for many of us with (very) limited play time, I can understand why this might not have any appeal.
- Finally, how long would this last/run?
Who knows? If people enjoy it, it might run the entire campaign. If not, I would stop and let players make their own PC as usual.
