You've Created A Bad Character. How, why and whose fault is it?

[Richards]

Is there a reason that would have been a bad design?

No, I only mentioned him because of his 6 Int. Some people would find him a bad character just because of that, but I had a blast playing him.

Johnathan

 

[Thomas Shey]

No, I only mentioned him because of his 6 Int. Some people would find him a bad character just because of that, but I had a blast playing him.

Johnathan

I'd be more likely to expect people to find investing Int in a fighter/barbarian to be the bad design, given how often its a dump stat, especially in the D&D sphere.

 

[John Dallman]

What I really want is the players to work together to create A GROUP, rather than a collection of PCs. It only happens rarely.

Something even cooler is when a group of disparate characters, generated separately, evolve into a team and become far more than the sum of their parts. It isn't common, and takes quite a lot of play, but it's great when it happens.

No, I only mentioned him because of his 6 Int. Some people would find him a bad character just because of that, but I had a blast playing him.

I fondly remember Hoyyou the Barbarian. INT 3, WIS 17. He could hardly talk, and had no ability to plan at all, but he had great instincts and rarely did silly things. If he had a proper name, we never learned it: Hoyyou was just a contraction of "Hey, you!"

I'll add one more cause of bad characters: player delusion. I know a chap who is convinced that running Champions characters in any and every version of D&D makes sense, and improves the game for everyone. He has fun if allowed to do this, but it's a prime nuisance for everyone else. He's also fixated on the "incredibly naïve" style of superhero, which makes it worse. The last time I started a lasting campaign with him in it, I had to be pretty firm to get him to generate a conventional character, but that was a requirement for being part of the campaign.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'll add one more cause of bad characters: player delusion. I know a chap who is convinced that running Champions characters in any and every version of D&D makes sense, and improves the game for everyone. He has fun if allowed to do this, but it's a prime nuisance for everyone else. He's also fixated on the "incredibly naïve" style of superhero, which makes it worse. The last time I started a lasting campaign with him in it, I had to be pretty firm to get him to generate a conventional character, but that was a requirement for being part of the campaign.

While I'm pretty tolerant of approximate types and even pseudo-duplicates of prior characters in games (for those people who just have to keep playing their sniper-rogue type in every game), mis-toned characters are a far, far bigger problem and some people are really prone to them.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I know a chap who is convinced that running Champions characters in any and every version of D&D makes sense, and improves the game for everyone. He has fun if allowed to do this, but it's a prime nuisance for everyone else. He's also fixated on the "incredibly naïve" style of superhero, which makes it worse. The last time I started a lasting campaign with him in it, I had to be pretty firm to get him to generate a conventional character, but that was a requirement for being part of the campaign.

? So what, like the Roach from Cerebus only played straight? I'm having a hard time envisioning this idea. Which might be for the best.

 

[John Dallman]

I'm having a hard time envisioning this idea. Which might be for the best.

Trying to, quite literally, play a Hero system character, using Hero system mechanics, in a D&D game. Or if prevented from doing that, making up a weird ancestry/background that makes his character special in strange ways. The setting is part of a meta-campaign that allows for a lot of post-modern strangeness, but he always wants to take it to ridiculous levels, not out of munchkinism, but in the apparently sincere belief that it improves the game for everyone playing.

 

[James Gasik]

Hm. A big guy in blue armor running around fighting orcs saying "Spoon!".

Not the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

 

[MNblockhead]

Hm. A big guy in blue armor running around fighting orcs saying "Spoon!".

Not the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

Agree.

 

[Reynard]

Trying to, quite literally, play a Hero system character, using Hero system mechanics, in a D&D game. Or if prevented from doing that, making up a weird ancestry/background that makes his character special in strange ways. The setting is part of a meta-campaign that allows for a lot of post-modern strangeness, but he always wants to take it to ridiculous levels, not out of munchkinism, but in the apparently sincere belief that it improves the game for everyone playing.

I mean, if you give people enough rope, it's weird to over worry that they are intent upon hanging themselves.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'll add one more cause of bad characters: player delusion. I know a chap who is convinced that running Champions characters in any and every version of D&D makes sense, and improves the game for everyone. He has fun if allowed to do this, but it's a prime nuisance for everyone else. He's also fixated on the "incredibly naïve" style of superhero, which makes it worse. The last time I started a lasting campaign with him in it, I had to be pretty firm to get him to generate a conventional character, but that was a requirement for being part of the campaign.

I have used HERO to run a fantasy campaign in which you could play whatever version of a D&D race/class combo from whatever edition you wanted.

I also use HERO as my “Rosetta Stone” to modeling characters across systems. As in, I might create the PC in HERO, and then approximate it in the other system.

But this seems…odd.