Character Creation

[ShadowRaptor]

I was wondering what kinds of steps the many of you take when you decide to make a character. Do you guys write down your backgrounds first, or just work with the points and do the background first, or something else?

I ask because I am new with the system still, its a lot to digest and a lot to get used to, and the one character i made took over 3 hours to make. It was okay, but not that great in my opinion, so I am just curious what you all do and how long it takes you to do it.

Perhaps I will pick up some pointers that will help me out more.

[Lucius]

You are bound to get a lot of responses.

I would say, start with the background. Or if not with "background" then with something you know you want your character to do or be. Then start reflecting that character conception in the system. For a beginner it is very hard to get started without a little guidance from whoever is running the game - if your conception doesn't include a lot of weapon skill and you think a DEX 14 and one level with sword is just enough to hold your own with a goblin or bandit while the other players do the bulk of the fighting, and then you find the average goblin has a DEX of 8 and no levels, and tends to go down with one or two blows of your shortsword, you have failed to embody your character conception (and discovered you could have put those points elsewhere.) If you think a Riding skill of 14 or less makes you a Master Horseman, you will be disappointed if every knight in the tournament has that much.

More experienced players may "start with points" and think out their characters largely in terms of what points are spent where, but that is not necessarily a BETTER way. The character you really love is going to be the one based on one or more really cool ideas.

I encourage people, especially new players, to always "save" a few points back. That way if you suddenly realize that your ninja didn't take climbing, or your barbarian didn't take tracking, you have the points to cover it.

A novel approach might be to start with disadvantages. What kind of drawbacks might you WANT for a character? Hunted by whom and why? If he is compulsively truthful, what kind of trouble has that gotten him into in the past?

Don't worry that it took three hours to make a character - even an experienced player might possibly take that long for a complex enough character. It will get easier as you get more familiar with the system.

Lucius Alexander

Palindromedary Enterprises

[Markdoc]

There are several timesavers.

The first is simply experience - as you make more characters and get used to the system, you find you need the rulebook less and less. If you have to check the costs of things, you spend a lotof time flipping through the rulesbook.

The second is as you build up more and more NPCs/PCs, it becomes possible to "bolt characters together" out of bits. I do this all the time, and none of my players have ever complained that my characters are same-y.

The third timesaver is to use all the rich treasures that lie all around you. You can steal - er, borrow concepts from - characters published on the web. There are plenty of sites with Hero system characters around - you can use mine:
http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo as a starting point, but there are plenty of others. I have a random Fantasy Hero Character generator on my site that lets you pick and choose, or roll your way through a character creation process.

Even easier, there is the fantastic random character generator at:
http://www.trimira.com/hero_stuff/fa...ro_random.html
that does it all for you.

Finally, you can loot other game systems: once you have concept clear in your head, it's usually not that hard to conert it to Hero system: the trick is to be clear on what you want.

Here's an example of how I work. For a recent game, I wanted a big martial arts tournament. For that I needed about 60 participants - plus the players.

Oy! Make up 60 unique martial artists? Well, first off, I rapidly decided that 30 were going to be fodder. If the fodder got matched up against a named character, then they would get beaten. So I didn't make sheets for them but just wrote a two paragraph description of physical appearance and fighting style. That still left 30.

For them, I started with generic descriptions - this guy is going to be like the Ubermonk from "the Blade". This guy is a thief, not a martial artist. This guy is an old wizened master. And so on.

To take one example in detail - the old wizened guy. Most martial arts campiagns have a few, so the basic template is straightforward enough - the trick is making him "different". I usually start with either a signature schtick or a distinctive personality - or both. This old wizened guy got both.

For personality I made him talkative, self important, but morally upright - a teacher of the classics. He liked to lecture players on their responsibilities and correct behaviour, but if they were good, he would help them out. Secondly, his signature schtick - I decided to make him hard to hit and hard to evade, but weak.

So I took another aged master's chracter sheet, decreased the STR, increased the DEX, gave him some KS:'s related to chinese classics and politics as well as the standard martial arts stuff and then added in a fairly standard parcel of "soft" martial arts maneuvers. Then the signature schtick: I gave him a high find weakness skill, so his puny blows could still do damage and also Invisibility to sight, sound and combat sense, with the limitation "only to obscure exact position" and the advantage "totally invisible". What that did was inflict the standard penalties for invisibility on his opponents in combat. Unless you had some mystical combat sense, he was never *exactly* where you thought he would be when you attacked.

The result - a distinctive NPC, that I got 4 good evenings use out of, for about 20 minutes work. This is what I mean by bolting a character together out of parts.

cheers, Mark

[Mavnn]

Mark, I love the idea of the 'visible invis' - I'm so going to have to steal that.

Anyway, character generation.

Normally, what I do is start with a very general concept, either a one sentence background, or a particular ability I want to play/see in the campaign. Cyris (the example Final Fantasy esque character I posted elsewhere on the site) is a good example of this - I wanted a character who was devastating with a sword.

Now, armed with my one sentence description ('Devastating with a sword') I moved over to Hero Designer. I generally start with stats - so, I flick over to the stats tag and start looking through them. (I do this on paper, too, btw - I generally write down the stats first). He's a fighter, so I'm looking at the physical stats first. Immediately, I have to make a decision on my mental image of this guy - do I see him as the huge lumbering brute, or the thin agile duelist? The answer is somewhere inbetween, which is where experience with the system comes in. I know, from experience how many points I can thump into these attributes and still have some left over for powers and skills (well, within a little bit of 'fine tuning').

I then move onto the mental stats, again, being forced to make decisions about my mental image of this guy - does he need to be perceptive and quick witted? (Yes, but not extremely - moderate INT) Does he need to be strong willed? (Yes, he's a hero - but he's fairly young and inexperienced... assign him a slightly above average value in EGO). And so on, down the list. Again, the thing which makes this much faster is I have a good idea from experience of what these stats mean in game terms - which means I can pick values to support my mental image easily.

Skills are where the character really gets defined - I ask similar questions as to when I'm assigning stats, but about the characters background rather than my image of him. Generally I go through, adding every skill he could have as part of the concept and then go back and trim (either completely or down to fams - remember, in HERO a full blown 3pt skill is a fairly indepth knowledge/ability). This is one of the reason HD makes character gen much quicker for me! At each skill I decide a) whether I want it, and b) how he could have acquired it. The skills I keep need both, and this builds most of the background for me.

Power are the funky bits, and generally I just brainstorm on them, although by this stage I normally have a theme in mind (especially with superheroes, where the power theme is often my 'one sentence description').

I then move onto disadvantages, building on the background ideas I've come up with while assigning skills. A lot of disads will come straight from that, or from my 'mental image' (which normally adds a couple of distinctive features or physical lims).

And then I spend some time tweeking - making sure those last few points match up, and adding in any last minute ideas. The other thing I check at this point as that the character has the stats he needs to survive - does he have either a high DCV or resistant defenses? If he's non-combat based, does he have reasons for other characters to defend him? Can he actually do what the original one sentence said he should be able to? Finally - is he interesting?

Whew! I've never really looked through my character generation methods like this before, so it's kind of interesting for me too. Obviously, I don't generate all characters like this - sometimes I will have a very complete background in mind, sometimes I'll think 'I feel like playing Conan today' and sometimes I want an excuse to play with a rules effect or clever idea (I came in to RPing through wargames ). So, for example, I'll probably be writing up a martial artist this weekend using Markdoc's idea above . Hope some of this helps trigger ideas (or at least somebody finds it interesting).

That's all for now,
Michael

[EvilGM]

You know, Michael, the method you use is pretty much what I follow myself when creating a character for the games I run. I usually have in mind the character's background and a concept (or schtick or specific purpose) before I do anything else.

I then do the stats first, then I jump to either skills or powers, depending on the nature of the character. Once I have the basic framework for what the character can do, I do the disads.

However, if I'm doing up a character for someone else's game, I fully develop the concept first before I even think about spending points. I find it's a lot easier that way, when the GM knows what I'm trying to do before I hand him a character sheet with the points all spent.

[Arthur]

Start with a simple abstract concept. Something you can describe in a sentence or two. Then build a first draft, using published characters as a guideline to approximate stats. Then add up the points and start adjusting.

Another very common thing I do even today is to design a character who is a knock-off of a literary character ("literature" is broadly defined here: comics, movies, anime, whatever). There's nothing wrong with that - just put a twist on it to make it your own character.

It was 20 years ago I built my first character, but I don't remember it being that hard. I was a big fan of Remo Williams (The Destroyer). He was a super-martial artist, fast enough to dodge gunfire.*

The thing I recall was I had decided to make the character excel in one aspect. So I designed him with a DEX of 38. The rest fell into place pretty quickly:

STR 30 : Based on his mastery of Ki

DEX 38: Nobody can come close to matching him here.

CON 20: As for STR.

BOD 12: A little above average.

INT 13 : ditto.

EGO 15: strong-willed.

PRE 15: Not incredibly impressive.

COM 20: Women went for him.

PD 10: Just like Crusader.

ED 10: Likewise.

SPD 6: As Crusader.

Other stats as figured. A quick scan showed that few sample characters bought these up and it was obvious that it was better to buy up Primaries.

Total points on characteristics: 172. At the time, Martial Arts was a flat 20 point skill (IIRC, there is still a package for "comic book martial arts"). Some other skills, Regen, a few extra DC, extra Running, etc. As I learned the system, I think I added an HKA to represent deadly hands.

It was a lot easier back then. The system was a lot less comprehensive. However, there is no reason you still can't use that approach: just stick to the basics. As you gain experience (you, not the character), start incorporating the more advanced stuff.

A "Hero Lite" would be a blessing from finodh for introducing new players. I doubt that I would crack open the HERO book if I were a new player, and I like challenges (I am using Linux now). Is there a Hero Lite in the works?


* When I talk about my martial arts training, sometimes people ask me if I can dodge bullets. The answer is: yes, I can. I am dead serious. I can actually dodge bullets. I've done it. Just toss them at me REAL slow....

[Arthur]

Oops. I did my last post and forgot I was on the Fantasy board. Doh!

Heck, that was even easier. I just took a couple of my characters from other systems and ported them over. I started with a high-STR martial artist (gladiator training). Again, I used sample characters as a guide.

[Old Man]

I'll usually start with a character concept first, and then flesh out the background after running it through kind of a survivability filter to make sure it'll last a little while. It's a process that goes back and forth a number of times, rather than just three or four steps.

For example, I recently had an urge to play a spellcaster, but something unusual, not the stereotypical wizard. I poked around on the net for ideas and came across the supernatural powers associated with Hindu mysticism and yoga. Perfect! I could whip up a style of magic based entirely on the character's mastery of his own body and mind. Defensive powers fit pretty easily into the framework--we've all seen these guys walk on hot coals and lie on beds of nails, etc. Offensively the magic would be weaker, since I couldn't see a way to justify any kind of spell other than clairvoyance with a range outside his own skin--so no RKAs, drains, or mind control. So he'd have to use strength aids and the like, and wade into combat like anyone else.

That's when I actually started to scribble things down and work out the points. As usual I didn't have enough, but he fell into place pretty quickly now that I had a clear picture of the concept: a highly flexible, hairless yogi who could do make his body do all kinds of weird stuff if you gave him a minute to meditate. In this case the background actually came last, as the concept didn't really lend itself to a lot of interesting history. As a result the disads gave me a hard time--those are the most background-driven portion of character creation.

[EvilGM]

Originally posted by Old Man

I poked around on the net for ideas and came across the supernatural powers associated with Hindu mysticism and yoga.

Could you post the url for that web site, if you still have it?

[Old Man]

There's no one site that I found, but regoogling for 'hindu yoga siddhis' gives

http://www.indiadivine.com/tattva12.htm
http://www.yogichen.org/chenian/bk29.html
http://www.yogichen.org/chenian/bk29.html

among others. The "Siddhis" are the mystical powers we're interested in. There's between five and thirty-some of these depending on which site you hit.

[Steve]

Whole Cloth or Evolotionary Creation?

I may be in the minority on this, but I tend to go through several iterations of a character as a campaign progresses, not with the goal of ever increasing point efficiency but more that my concept of the character refines as I play him. So I usually start out with a rather generic concept at the outset. As time goes on, the character evolves into a deeper construct and sometimes takes on rather surprising dimensions.

I wonder, do most people create from whole cloth at the beginning or refine the concept over time like me? I've never been sure, since I have played with roughly equal numbers of both types of players.

[ShadowRaptor]

All those are great ideas, thanks for giving me some pointers. I appreciate it.

[Old Man]

Originally posted by Steve
Whole Cloth or Evolotionary Creation?

I wonder, do most people create from whole cloth at the beginning or refine the concept over time like me? I've never been sure, since I have played with roughly equal numbers of both types of players.

I think it's mostly a matter of degree. I usually start with a pretty clear idea of what my character is and how he acts and why, but that's effectively designing in a vacuum. Once the campaign starts things change, mostly through interaction with the other PCs. For example, my misunderstood necromancer suddenly developed a kind of contempt for religious proselytizers, because there's one in the party and it's more interesting to play it that way.

[Thag13]

I jus try to visulize what the character looks like and go from there.

I usually do the characterists first then skills and powers.

I do use HD now to speed things up.

Great thread folks, I just don't have a lot to add as Lisa and other have VERY well answered the questions.

[Arthur]

Originally posted by Steve
Whole Cloth or Evolotionary Creation?

Definitely evolutionary here. I start with little more than a cardboard cutout (Example: the character was raised by a single mom, from whom he picked up a hatred of elves. He does not know that he himself is a half-elf. He's now a bounty hunter).

As the game progresses, I get more ideas to flesh the character out. For instance, despite all the tough talk, he couldn't bring himself to execute a captured Elf. Deep down, he feels the kinship, but refuses to admit it, even to himself. Etc.

Some players have a completely fleshed out character from the get-go. Either way is fine - it's just a matter of style.