I was sitting around, pregenerating characters for future runs through BG and IWD (doesn't everyone?), when I realized I'd fallen out of love with min-maxing. So I fiddled around a bit and I came up with a method that produces the characters I want to play.
That's got me wondering about how others roll up their characters. Do you reroll until you get above a certain number? Do you accept the first one out of the gate? Do you set limits on min-maxing?
How do you roll up a character, and why do you do it that way?
Here's what I came up with:
Goal-
I want characters like I used to play in PnP. Exceptional people, but not over the top.
Method-
1. Choose gender, race and class. Note the racial attribute adjustments for the ones I don't already have memorized.
2. Roll until I get a total 80 or over. This is the baseline.
3. Store it and note the individual rolls.
4. I now have 10 rolls to get something better. When I do get something better, I store it and then I have another 10 rolls to beat it. Beating a previous roll doesn't always mean a higher total because...
5. No min-maxing of individual points. I can swap attribute rolls (taking racial adjustments into account), but I can't take points from one attribute and add them to another. If I don't roll an 18, I don't get an 18.
6. Continue the rest of creation as normal.
Results-
Of the 10 characters I've created with this method so far, 2 of them have an 18 and 2 of them top out at 16. Six of them have one or two 17's, though on a couple of them, I took lower overall totals, because I intend to dual-class.
Besides having to be careful about the dual-class, I also noticed that sometimes I can't make swaps on classes like Ranger that have multiple minimum scores. I wanted to swap a high wisdom for a low charisma on an Archer, and I couldn't because of the minimum Wis requirement.
So, am I crazy for putting this much thought into a bunch of numbers, or is this tame compared to what some others are doing?
That's got me wondering about how others roll up their characters. Do you reroll until you get above a certain number? Do you accept the first one out of the gate? Do you set limits on min-maxing?
How do you roll up a character, and why do you do it that way?
Here's what I came up with:
Goal-
I want characters like I used to play in PnP. Exceptional people, but not over the top.
Method-
1. Choose gender, race and class. Note the racial attribute adjustments for the ones I don't already have memorized.
2. Roll until I get a total 80 or over. This is the baseline.
3. Store it and note the individual rolls.
4. I now have 10 rolls to get something better. When I do get something better, I store it and then I have another 10 rolls to beat it. Beating a previous roll doesn't always mean a higher total because...
5. No min-maxing of individual points. I can swap attribute rolls (taking racial adjustments into account), but I can't take points from one attribute and add them to another. If I don't roll an 18, I don't get an 18.
6. Continue the rest of creation as normal.
Results-
Of the 10 characters I've created with this method so far, 2 of them have an 18 and 2 of them top out at 16. Six of them have one or two 17's, though on a couple of them, I took lower overall totals, because I intend to dual-class.
Besides having to be careful about the dual-class, I also noticed that sometimes I can't make swaps on classes like Ranger that have multiple minimum scores. I wanted to swap a high wisdom for a low charisma on an Archer, and I couldn't because of the minimum Wis requirement.
So, am I crazy for putting this much thought into a bunch of numbers, or is this tame compared to what some others are doing?
