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

[Lanefan]

Dandy. Your experiences are very different than those of many people, myself included. People did and still do cook up characters in advance and in isolation for various reasons, not least of which being testing the chargen system out or making a pool of NPCs. There were also plenty of groups (especially in the 70s and early 80s) where showing up to a game as a new player without a ready character was very bad form because it was seen as wasting everyone's time. Same went for replacing fatalities if you lost a PC and the GM allowed you to start a new one mid-session - they weren't going to stop the game for you to make one, so having backups was pretty common in some circles.

The game doesn't have to stop while a player rolls up a new character, other than a few brief interruptions where the DM has to answer questions (and those opportunities will happen anyway).

And yes, you did see people show with absurdly implausible characters that they'd rolled up at home, "honest" - and sometimes they had, although they'd never mention it took them dozens or even hundreds of tries to do so. I knew one guy who was notorious for having 300 page spiral notebooks filled with potential PCs, one to a page, all made at home and as they died he'd rip out a page and go on to the next ASAP. Most people wouldn't play with him.

Show up to my game with a pre-rolled character and my response will be something like "That's nice. Here's the dice. Start over."

Because even today some groups see it as wasting valuable play time. Other times GMs will want finished character sheets before they even meet the first time because they plan to include character-specific hooks in teh game from before word one.

The GM in that case can always pass a note to the rolling-up player asking for the relevant info to be passed along as soon as it's generated. If the campaign's just starting, a GM like that would (I would think) have roll-up night one week but not actually drop the puck until the next session, during which time she could come up with those hooks etc.

Lots of folks do their chargen via email exchanges along with other session zero stuff even when they plan to play in person. Making characters at home is not the same as making them in isolation with modern tech, which is a big part of the argument for collaborating with your whole table when character building - and world building, for that matter.

Also some folks just get their jollies making characters whether they have an immediate use for them or not.

Sure, and no problem with that!

But you're still rolling up from scratch at the table.

Maybe they wind up as NPCs, maybe they find a PC role someday, maybe they just collect dust, for some folks the process is reward unto itself. And that's not some Ye Olden Days thing that died with the Reagan presidency, people do it even today, as proven by the countless "character build" discussions online - with many builds projected to absurd levels of advancement the character will probably never reach in play.

That "character build" aspect is something I really wish would Go Away, but it seems that ship has already sailed.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Okay, I'm not engaging with this any further.

 

[Emberashh]

I'll go as far as to say that if you're going to play a pacifist in almost any action-adventure game, you might want to think whether you're going to have anything useful to do in combat, because that's probably going to be a fairly big part of what goes on in the game, even if there's non-trivial social or intellectual elements in the system/campaign.

There absolutely can be games where that's not true, but they're either usually games where the inverse is true (i.e. leaning into being a combatant is probably counter-indicated) or where the system is set up so that its easy for characters to each do their own thing without taking up much time. I don't think either of those is the routine RPG.

I like to relate the story of Desmond Doss.

Private Doss didn't get to play with the big guns he could have.

Private Doss didn't want to, and he got hazed to hell for it. And nobody can say he doesn't deserve his Medal of Honor despite not being the standard GI Joe, as what he did on the ridge goes beyond just being cool or the most vital person in that battle.

If Doss wasn't there, its unlikely that battle would have gone all that much differently. But way more Americans would have died if he didn't drag them all off the ridge.

In another way, I liken people who play support types in games to be like Bass or Drum Players. They're almost always the actually cool people, compared to the guitarist or the singer.

 

[James Gasik]

Yes, but as it was right in front of you it was fully legit.

I've seen the same: 18-18-17-17-15-15 rolled up right in front of me (and no, the dice weren't loaded!). And in case it matters, that character didn't survive its second combat.

So the funny part is, the guy who did it, we just finished a long adventure and the campaign went on hiatus, going from 1st to 9th level, where he's consistently had the worst dice luck I've ever seen. He rolls up this fairly godly set of stats and he stops, he stares at the array, and he says "these numbers are too good, I don't know what to make now!".

Session 1 is in two weeks, I don't think he's figured it out yet. I would have liked to have everyone build their characters by talking to one another, but I've been DMing games since 1989, and I've yet to actually have a real session zero happen. I still remember the first time I gathered my group together at Denny's to talk about optimizing the party, and after two hours...we figured out who was playing the Cleric.

I don't know why everyone has to go off in secret to build their characters so it's always a surprise to see what they show up with for session 1, but I've given up trying to make it happen. I keep getting blank stares with every group I've run for.

I think it's right up there with "oh you were going to be a Fighter? Now I can't be a Fighter!" Me: "Uh, guys, you realize that there's more than one way to build a Fighter..."

In unison: "No, we can't be the same!"

 

[Thomas Shey]

In one of our generally hack'n'slash D&D campaigns some time ago, a player intentionally tried playing a pacifist PC just to see if she could pull it off. The character was a healer, and in combat she'd use her spells to prevent harm and bloodshed by separating or entangling combatants, or by scaring some of them off, or similar means; otherwise she'd just cure the injured. If memory serves she eschewed proficiency in or use of any weapon.

The character worked out great for the couple of adventures its career lasted, until real life reared its head and the player had to bow out.

That's an example of the "anything useful" I was referring to. Its a pretty short list, though.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hey in my pre-session I had an absurdly implausible character rolled right up in front of me, with one ability score below 15!

Years ago, I was rolling up a character for use in my friend's non-Gloranthan RQ game. While not all the attributes were 3D6 based, five out of the seven were. I believe the lowest roll I had was a 16.

 

[James Gasik]

Years ago, I was rolling up a character for use in my friend's non-Gloranthan RQ game. While not all the attributes were 3D6 based, five out of the seven were. I believe the lowest roll I had was a 16.

The few times I've had a really good stat line, I squandered it on either:

A campaign that never happened.
A campaign that was tragically short.
A ridiculous and inherently flawed character concept.

I once wasted a perfectly good 18 on a 3.5 Druid simply because I really like skill points, lol, and that +Human meant I could max out every useful Druid skill!

 

[hawkeyefan]

The game doesn't have to stop while a player rolls up a new character, other than a few brief interruptions where the DM has to answer questions (and those opportunities will happen anyway).

Show up to my game with a pre-rolled character and my response will be something like "That's nice. Here's the dice. Start over."

The GM in that case can always pass a note to the rolling-up player asking for the relevant info to be passed along as soon as it's generated. If the campaign's just starting, a GM like that would (I would think) have roll-up night one week but not actually drop the puck until the next session, during which time she could come up with those hooks etc.

Sure, and no problem with that!

But you're still rolling up from scratch at the table.

That "character build" aspect is something I really wish would Go Away, but it seems that ship has already sailed.

Don’t you play your own, highly house-ruled version of D&D? If so, then what’s the problem with people in other games making characters ahead of time? Or with having build in mind for their characters?

Wanting all that to go away even though it doesn't impact your game? That’s really odd.

 

[James Gasik]

Also, I would say the concept of character builds dates back to at least 1e thanks to dual-classing and the Bard, since there's not much chance of stumbling into that particular path. I guess you could add multiclassing to that as well, since you have to decide on which classes to combine and pick a race that supports that concept, but with that option, you're "locked in" for the rest of your career.

Then 2e comes along with Kits, new options for weapon proficiencies, along with new non-weapon proficiencies, and crazier stuff (like the Feats in the Celts book) that you most likely have to work towards.

Now if you mean the culture of having a guide or seeking advice to figure out if your idea is going to work, at what level it becomes functional, and what the best path forward is, sure, I'll grant that really only started once we had electronic message boards where increasingly larger amounts of people could share information and work out what works and what doesn't.

But even then, that only really works in a vacuum- in an actual game, between house rules, tactics, allowed options, what sorts of encounters the DM has, what the rest of your party looks like, and so on, a build might not be the best way to go. Heck, even magic items can heavily impact what a chaacter might do: my first 5e character started as a Fighter but took a swerve into Rogue once he got his grubby little paws on a Robe of Eyes (Expertise in Perception? Yes please!). Not to mention the paradigm shift of having a Broom of Flying!

And of course, all of that pales next to events that occur in game. Like when my Cleric got branded a heretic after he received a vision from his deity and a jealous bishop excommunicated him, and events made him turn to Wizardry!

 

[Richards]

In my current D&D 3.5 campaign, my son decided to play D&D in "hard mode" and rolled up a half-orc cleric/paladin who purposefully refuses to wield a weapon, knowing he already looks fearsome enough as it is and is usually mistrusted because of his looks. However, he has no qualms against using his shield as a weapon if all else fails, and he's not against using damaging spells on enemies. So he's not a true pacifist, just a combatant who won't wield a (standard) weapon. This came up recently when he tried rescuing a bound captive and didn't have any kind of blade on him to cut through her ropes.

BTW, he's made it all the way to 15th level thus far, in a campaign that will be going to 20th. (We have 29 more game session scheduled.)

Johnathan