Tuesday May 04, 2004

How We Make a Player Character:

I’ve never heard of a DM who followed the core rules exactly when it comes to character generation, though I’m sure some exist who do.  DMs and players are generally too imaginative (or power hungry) to be limited by those rules.  I suppose I’m no exception, though the alterations I’ve established for Lorenvale are merely personally tweaked methods employed by the various DMs who brought me up in the game.  I believe these alterations add an interesting variety to the standard set of races and character classes, and greatly color the make-up of the PCs.

I have loosely outlined the steps of rolling up a character, and these steps generally take place in the order given.  On rare occasions, the dice rolls will indicate truly strange or unacceptable characters, and as DM I will sometimes modify these to something more suitable.  But, the players are encouraged to accept the roll of the dice in character generation just as they would accept the dice result during combat.  There are plenty of articles addressing how to play a character with inferior stats, and I strongly encourage such horizon-broadening in my campaign.  Important to remember, I do not purposefully take advantage of a character’s weakness; rather, I typically reward good role-playing that embraces (or even uses) those weaknesses with memorable effect.

Percentile Rolls

This is probably the single greatest tradition among my circle of D&D buddies, and one that I was loathe to relinquish when I began the Lorenvale campaign.  There are six d% rolls to make before anything else is done, each of which might determine something unique about the PC being generated.  These six rolls are Special Race, Special Class, Handedness, Social Status, Natural Psionics, and Miscellaneous.  These six percentile rolls may be made in any order, but the player must make clear which he is rolling before tossing the dice.

Region of Birth

The player and/or DM now choose from a map of the Flanaess (soon to be here) where the character was born and raised.  (The two are assumed to occur in the same region unless a Miscellaneous roll indicates otherwise.)  Various circumstances of birth, such as number of siblings, order and legitimacy of birth, etc. are developed as the player wishes, or the player can dice for all the various elements of a PC’s background according to the Hero Builder’s Guidebook.  (This is NOT required.)

The region of birth determines various regional feats, regional skills, regional languages, and starting equipment packages that the player may choose from to benefit his character at the start of the game.  (This idea came from The Forgotten Realms handbook and Wheel of Time RPG.)  The various regions are listed in the Greyhawk Gazetteer and are fairly visible on the map included in that book.  For a complete summary of the benefits of each region for the Lorenvale campaign, click here.  I have it from a good source, though, that WotC will soon be providing regional bennies for the Greyhawk setting, so I might be scrapping mine for theirs sometime in the future.  Depends on how much work it'll require of me.

Race & Sub-race

Unless the percentile roll for Special Race is greater than 80, the player has only the standard races to choose from.  Each has a sub-race, and this must be selected as well.  The sub-races of human are as given in the Greyhawk campaign setting: Baklunish, Flan, Oeridian, Olman, Rhennee, and Suloise, and each of these grants a +1 bonus to one ability score…just for grins.  The sub-races of half-orc are derived from Brian Hawthorne's system of orcish sub-races: Black, Blue, Green, Red, & White, and each of these grants a +1 bonus to one saving throw plus small bonuses to a few select skills.  The sub-races of the other standard races are as given in the PH, the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG), the MM, and the Forgotten Realms setting.  Sub-races of elf include aquatic, avariel, gray, high, moon, sun, wild, and wood.  (Half-elves have the same sub-races.)  Sub-races of dwarf include deep, gold, hill, mountain, and shield.  Sub-races of gnome include forest, rock and svirfneblin.  Sub-races of halfling include deep, ghostwise, lightfoot, strongheart, and tallfellow.  Each sub-race yields certain advantages and disadvantages to the character, making for quite varied play.

Fleshing out the Character

The player now chooses the sex, hair color, eye color, skin tones, alignment, deific affiliation, and personalities for the character.  (The entire pantheon of deities in the Living Greyhawk sourcebook is fully available for use in the Lorenvale campaign, a summary of which is given here.)  Height, weight, and age are rolled “by the book,” unless the player requests to play something different, like unusually thin or fat, tall or short, young or old.  These requests might be considered and discussed, but the player should realize that the results of the dice normally stand without modification.  All requests for outlandish traits (like green skin or purple hair) typically will be rejected.  This campaign is not a freak show.

Aging effects in the Player’s Handbook are replaced by a more realistic and progressive system that affects each ability score separately and affects males & females differently.  See this chart for details.

Finally, a birthday is chosen randomly by rolling a d12.  If a “12” results, the character was born during one of the four festival weeks (as shown in the Greyhawk Gazetteer), which one being determined by rolling a d4.  If not a “12” on that first dice, roll the d12 a second time to determine in which of the twelve months the character was born, then roll a d4 to indicate which of the four weeks in a month.  In either case, a final d8 is tossed (ignoring the “8”) to determine on which day of the week the character was born.  Quite a deal to write out, but this process really takes only about 20 seconds.  So, why do I write it out?  Because I'm masochistic.

Ability Scores

The Lorenvale campaign creates a separation of each ability score into two distinct halves, viewing this separation much like the two sides of a gold piece.  Each “half” of the seven abilities affects certain game mechanics, and in some cases, the average of the two parts is used to determine modifiers.  When miscellaneous ability checks are necessary during the game, the average score’s modifier will be used unless there is compelling reason to use the modifier for either half.  When ability damage occurs or when potions or magic items adjust ability scores, and when the scores are improved every 4^th level, the change applies equally to both halves.

We roll 4d6 to determine the scores, ignoring the lowest die of the four.  This is done for each half of the seven abilities, in order of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, & Comeliness.  (We maintain the Comeliness score as a holdover from 1^st-Edition’s Unearthed Arcana.)  The player has only one shot at a set of scores (with two halves), but should the sum of the modifiers for all averaged scores be less than 3, or should the highest averaged score be less than 14, both sets may be scrapped and rolled anew.  (This is probably the ONLY time we allow the dice to be ignored.)  Alternately, if the sum of all scores for one set (including Comeliness) is less than 85, the entire set may be re-rolled.  Any of these methods may be employed to assure that the set of scores is reasonable...beyond that, forget it.

Finally, when the two reasonable sets of seven scores have been rolled, the player IS allowed to switch any two scores within each set (not across sets), except for Comeliness, which must remain as rolled.

For additional information on the seven ability scores and how they affect game mechanics in the Lorenvale campaign, click here.  Keep in mind that adjusting for all this is relatively easy with my automated character sheet.

Class

If the Special Class percentile roll is above a 80, the player may select from the special classes available according to his social status, if he wants.  Otherwise, any of the standard classes may be chosen, except the specialist wizard, which is replaced with the several truly “specialist wizards,” all of which are special classes.  In the Lorenvale campaign, a player may multi-class (with the rules for multi-classing abiding), but he may do so only once.  Although the core rules allow for multi-classing several times, I have deemed it improbable that a character will pursue training in very many classes.  I have cut it off at two classes partly for reasonableness, partly for the player’s sake in maintaining a PC with such varied abilities, and partly because my incredibly wonderful computerized Character Sheet isn’t able to handle three or more classes at once…and I haven't changed it yet.

Equipment

The last thing to do is spending the starting gold to buy everything the character needs to make his adventures successful, including weaponry, armor/shield, backpack and all the stuff that goes in it, horse/donkey/dog and gear…whatever he needs.  Any bonus starting equipment chosen from the list corresponding to the PC’s region of birth is additive to these purchases and does not need to be paid for out of his starting gold.  Further, the Miscellaneous d% may indicate additional items, or may limit the type of items that the PC will own.  The character begins his adventuring days with only the clothing on his back…unless the player gets some more stuff for him.  For a tweaked version of the "Great Net Equipment List" (which will give you more equipment to buy than you can shake a stick at), click here.  Note: this list has NOT been converted to 3rd-Edition, and is admittedly full of errors.  And the formatting has much to be desired.  But...it makes a good shopping list.

One standing rule concerning equipment:  If it ain’t on your character sheet, the PC ain’t got it!  Occasionally, for players either new to the game or new to the Lorenvale campaign, the DM may show mercy, but generally speaking, there is little tolerance for the sudden appearance of the perfect tool because “my character really would have bought that.”  No, if the player really didn’t write it down, the PC really didn’t buy it.

An assumption concerning equipment is that it all comes off when the PC lies down for the night, whether in an inn or outside.  Random encounters while the PCs sleep will catch the sleepers without armor, unless they specifically state that they will leave it on…and suffer the penalties for sleeping in armor (or other equipment).  This assumption is also made when the PC is wandering about town, such as visiting the library, attending temple services, shopping, dining, going to social events, etc.  No one, including adventurers, casually trips about town in full gear.  If weapons are desired, one (or a matched pair, etc) may be worn, and a few smaller items might be on their person, but certainly the entire character sheet’s worth of stuff is not toted about town all the time.  Pah-leese!

Another assumption generally made is that all bulky items—this certainly might include the backpack!—are shucked during combat.  The player must make a fairly good case why his character would maintain possession of all that stuff and not suffer some sort of penalty to his attack rolls.