Why is it that....? 2!

[Adventus]

Why is it that in games where you roll up characters and You end up with a semi-worthless character you can't kill it no matter how hard you try? But if you roll up a good character it dies in the first couple of adventures?

5 years later you are still playing the semi worthless character. Only now, with experience he is really very :cool: and you want to keep playing him. Dies the next adventure.:weep:

[Solomon]

I hear ye. The rule of inverse survivability is a classic.

A local superstition is that transferring a character from his old, battered sheet to a new sheet will increase his chance of death.
So the story goes: you roll a worthless character, you want him to die, he survives and improves, becomes a good character, you transfer him to a new sheet... and he dies. :(

[Curufea]

I dunno, I only play games where the character is what I want - not random.

[Ghost Archer]

I have never had a semi-worthless character. Is there any such thing in Hero? Oh, wait, I have seen a number submitted to me as GM but they ALWAYS died a painful and ignominious death. Its called 'death by round file'.

"Vulnerable to Hot Mayo" my butt....

[Solomon]

I dunno, I only play games where the character is what I want - not random.

The first time I got to play Cthulhu, I rolled a lawyer whose highest skill was, of course, something like Law:55%. I wondered why the group included an antiquarian with Shotgun:85% and a politician with Thrown Dinamyte:95%. It didn't take long for me to realise how the game diverged from source material. :fear:

Also, your gaming life isn't complete until you know the thrill of rolling a Rat Catcher character in WHFRP, then you realise you're the best fighter in your group. Not to mention Stormbringer... or Traveller! Ah, the joys of random chargen! :snicker:

[BoneDaddy]

I've experienced this to such a degree that in D&D I prefer to play thieves. Their lameness can be utilized most effectively that way, and bald faced cowardice is more accepted.

Random numbers and I get along less than half the time.

[John T]

This is covered by one of Murphy's more obscure laws.

[Wombatman]

"Vulnerable to Hot Mayo" my butt....

Vulnerable to Hot mayo on the butt? Or would that be on the buns? mmmm...hamburgers.

Sorry...got distracted by the voices in my head.

[Seenar]

I have never created a lame random character because

1. I tend not to play those systems because I don't like them
2. If I don't like the results I start over
3. I cheat on the rolls.

[Badger]

DOnt play anything random. Long time ago tried a couple of times. I was promptly cursed with pitifullest succession of rolls ever seen on Earth.:(


Hmm, I wonder how you could go about a randomly rolled character in HERO?

[Labrat]

DOnt play anything random. Long time ago tried a couple of times. I was promptly cursed with pitifullest succession of rolls ever seen on Earth.:(


Hmm, I wonder how you could go about a randomly rolled character in HERO?

I believe that 'Champions II' from the 2nd Edition (???) had a random roll table for generating supers. Early morning here, no coffee yet... I'm sure some will either verify or correct me on this one. Plus there was a web-based random generator until it got vandalized. I think the author, Dana, has worked out a beta version of the generator though... last time I tried to d/l it it didn't want anything to do with me. Haven't been back to check if it's working better or not.

http://www.trimira.com/hero_stuff/hero_stuff.html

[assault]

Most random rolling games I've played in used rules to ensure substandard characters didn't happen, or at least didn't happen very often.

Mind you, after a while I started designing characters that could be plausibly rolled. That works particularly well in Traveller, where characters are relatively low-powered and combat is relatively lethal. You just have to kiss the GM's ring a lot, and deal with the possibility that the other players are using "randomly rolled" characters that are munchkined out beyond belief.

Of course, if you're the GM, things are different. ;)

[John Desmarais]

I believe that 'Champions II' from the 2nd Edition (???) had a random roll table for generating supers. Early morning here, no coffee yet... I'm sure some will either verify or correct me on this one. Plus there was a web-based random generator until it got vandalized. I think the author, Dana, has worked out a beta version of the generator though... last time I tried to d/l it it didn't want anything to do with me. Haven't been back to check if it's working better or not.

http://www.trimira.com/hero_stuff/hero_stuff.html

There's also one in the 5th edition Champions book.

[Super Squirrel]

Vulnerable to Hot mayo on the butt? Or would that be on the buns? mmmm...hamburgers.

Sorry...got distracted by the voices in my head.
I heard once about someone who was in our gaming group had once created a character with: Susceptability to Wheat.

To this, I came up with the supervillain group, "The Baker's Dozen!"

[Pogo]

I heard once about someone who was in our gaming group had once created a character with: Susceptability to Wheat.

To this, I came up with the supervillain group, "The Baker's Dozen!"

Did one of them stalk the character?

[Zeropoint]

Now, hero, you see the folly of going against the grain!

[Labrat]

Did one of them stalk the character?

Ugh. That's a-MAIZE-ingly corny.

[Matt Frisbee]

Well, I'll add a kernal or two to this harvest of wisdom -- maybe someone will reap the benefits...

I find that the initial statement is true, but that's not always a bad thing. The Ubermench in most campaigns tend to die quickly because 1) players tend to throw them into low-odds-of-survival situations with the idea that this character will somehow survive said situation because the character is just too awesome to die, and 2) Gamesmasters tend to target such characters in combat because most of us just can't stand an uppity player who has been crowing about how good his or her character is...

Not that I've ever done such a thing personally, mind you...

In my favorite of all games (Traveller), I still hold the record for number of characters in a row which died during character creation at eight. (Yeah, I wanted a scout, actually. Why do you ask?)

Matt "Not-a-killer-GM" Frisbee

[assault]

In my favorite of all games (Traveller), I still hold the record for number of characters in a row which died during character creation at eight. (Yeah, I wanted a scout, actually. Why do you ask?)

Traveller was my first and favourite too, although I haven't been paying much attention to it over the last year and a half.

There are two aspects to the character death during generation thing. (Which, for the uninitiated, was a function of the early editions, not later ones).

First, it is, in fact, a bit wonky. Yes, having a mechanism to limit players' greed for character skills and experience was a good idea. Unfortunately, the mechanism chosen was broken. That's why it was first house-ruled, and then officially modified.

So characters did actually die during chargen. I presume that is what Matt is referring to.

But there was another aspect to this. You could also use the death in chargen rules to suicide characters you didn't want to play. This was, in my experience, the main actual reason for character death. Essentially, a munchkin player would just keep rolling up characters until they ended up with one that was noticeably above average. And if that character died during chargen, then you would just keep rolling until you ended up with another superior character that didn't...

So, having at times played in games where that was more or less required for your character to be viable, I've actually gone through enormous sequences of rolling up character after character after character... Far more than just eight... After a while we just set up rules for twinking out characters in the first place, just to save time...

Of course, personally, I've always preferred pretty average characters anyway. For those who can read Traveller, my favourite character's characteristics looked like this: 567A98
OK, he's actually a little bit above average, but he's nothing like a combat monster... FWIW he was a merchant, anyway, so he couldn't shoot his way out of a wet paper bag.

[starblaze]

The interesting thing about this statement is that if the character is so lame to begin with, WHY is he surviving? Maybe, just maybe he isn't so lame after all.

[Vondy]

3. I cheat on the rolls.

I prefer to think of it as dramatic license.

[Enforcer84]

I prefer to think of it as dramatic license.
I prefer "Rallying against Fate"

[Badger]

The interesting thing about this statement is that if the character is so lame to begin with, WHY is he surviving? Maybe, just maybe he isn't so lame after all.

Or maybe he always finds the perfect hiding place during the initial stages of combat.:D

[Badger]

I prefer "Rallying against Fate"

A.K.A. Kirk vs. the Kobayashi Maru. :thumbup:

[Rapier]

A.K.A. Kirk vs. the Kobayashi Maru. :thumbup:

aka Cheating? :)

[Erkenfresh]

My favorite random character was in WHRPG. I wanted to be a tough dwarf. I rolled up as being a... shepherd. So, my unique combat ability was I knew how to use a sling. My friends played as elves and rolled up as being... militia. Dwarves are tough though right? They get 3+1d3 toughness on creation. I roll... a 1. Elves are wimpy, they only get 1+1d3 toughness on creation. My friends roll... a 3. So, my only possible advantage is randomly flushed down the toilet.

Needless to say, they kicked by behind all over the place. If I fought back they'd use their fancy dodge and deadly strike to show me my place. Fortunately, we were using Rolemaster's injury table and I ended up with a bone fragment richocheting off a neaby wall and puncturing my lung which killed me. So, I got to reroll as a medic or something which was a bit more useful.

WHRPG character creation was pretty stupid. Hopefully some GM's out there came up with some better rules for it.