Character building and role-playing games

[Brian G Turner]

On the general issue of role-playing - something a lot of people don't realise is how much fun can be had by having flawed characters.

For example, one DM I tried adventuring with insisted that everyone rolled and re-rolled until all their attributes - STR, INT, WIS, CON, DEX, CHA - were all 15+. We never finished his adventure (heck it took a whole afternoon to simply kill one zombie!).

The better games we had characters that sometimes had strengths, but also weaknesses - the method of rolling 6 sets of 4 die, and applying the results across our characteristics. Any 4's were re-rolled. That results in characters who usually have one or more strengths - pretty important if your characters are going to succeed. But it also means they can have slight flaws - below average wisdom for lack of common sense, low charisma can create real personality, and so on, to create characters with important strengths but also excellent pontential for character building.

At the end of the day, role-playing characters shouldn't simply be a set of numbers - or simple fantasy projections - but a set of real personalities with real quirks you can play on. If your characters have no colour, then how will your adventuers have any?

General 2c.

 

[Lacedaemonian]

I never got to play D&D the trend had passed me by, and none of my mates were interested in it.

 

[Morning Star]

Flawed characters are excellent. I feel it adds so much depth to the game. Although I do not have the character sheet with me...I have created a character - an alien- who has strength and fighting abilities most would only dream of. However, being a former member of a suicide squad (who were dropped into combat with repulsors to slow their fall and whose object was to destroy everything they could see.) He knows nothing else aside from fighting. Wisdom is average (tactics, first aid knowledge) but he can be confounded by puzzles and shocked by displays of magic. Also with an extremely low charisma, upon entering a new town, most folks avoid him completely or immediately start suspecting him of any recent (or future) violent crimes.

He has already caused the party to run out of a new town after beating someone to a pulp in an alleyway.

 

[aftermath]

It seems when I play, my character is always flawed somehow. For example, last night I created a druid. my highest stat being my char with a 16 and everything else 11 or 12. mind you i've had worse, but this was pretty bad. my hp suked-3 out of 8. never finished the adventure cause it was 11:30 pm when we started. But he was turning out to be quite the cocky bugger.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The ones with personality really stand out.

It's also interesting how characters can change as well - with one starter group in AD&D the cleric of the group was the only one who actually managed to excel in combat, the two warriors in the group being pretty feeble - as most 1st level characters are. Later on, as the warriors grew in strength and became particularly blood-thirsty, the cleric abandoned arms and became an avowed pacifist (though he would use the spell FireStorm to defend his flock from marauders. ).

Ah - and the mage with poor wisdom, who failed to appreciate the common-sense necessity of *not* using Fireballs and Lightening Bolts in enclosed spaces! He once found a wand that cast spells at random, and it was great to play the dmi-witted character personality experimenting with that wand - though the other characters suffered for it.

 

[scalem X]

Most depends on the alignment, those things should be respected. My last character was a cleric and after gaining a level I multi-classed in fighter since we were only two players; me and a sorcerer and a druid that died because he didn't like DnD). It was a true evil priest of Nerull and I managed to steal most of the money because I was the only one that was able to search things thanx to my armor. I respected my alignment so much that I got myself into trouble because of stealing so much. It is stupid to let people to reroll untill their abilities are super high, your DM should have let you people start at level 4 or 6.
Usually however people are able to change what they roll for which ability and trade points. For example rolling 16-12-11-7-10-17 and being a sorcerer you will never keep that first for strength, and you can change the 17 and 11 to 18 and 10 to get higher modifiers. 10-11 are modifiers +O but 17's mod is +3 and 18's +4.