How much flexibility is just right for you in generating characters?

Are you ok with 2 fighters being almost identical mechanically or do you prefer the option to make an almost infinite amount of different fighters?

Are mechanics important in differentiating between characters of the same sort?

What if your choice of classes is so large that in effect, your chances of playing the same character twice are next to zero even if there is little difference between members of the same class. Would that suite you if you like greater flexibility normally?

Options are nice. But after too many chargen gatherings, taking up a whole session in ecstatic planning and then fizzling into <5 sessions total, I'm now firmly in the "shut up, roll your damn character, and let's get playing already!" camp.

Never thought I'd get there in the mid-90s, but the past 15 years has been like a desert with rare oases. I'm tempted to run my next few campaigns as single class challenges just to shut down the bullshit. I already shut down people sharing their "how my character will go nova and combo!!!" with questions like, "yeah, but what did it actually do? and how long was it played?"

I like to be able to make the kind of character I want, not one that the game forces me to.  I'm fine with archetypes, but when those archetypes don't allow any variance, then that's where I have a problem.

I'm not fond of the idea of two fighters being 100% identical mechanically.  If everything mechanically about the character can be completely described by "he's a 5th level fighter" then I feel that's a failure and outright abdication of responsibility of the mechanics of character creation.  But I'm also pretty lenient on this point.  

So yes, to me mechanics are pretty important in differentiating characters.

As for situations where there's a wide choice of classes, it depends on how many are interesting to me.  I do tend to gravitate towards the same kinds of characters over and over, and that's one of the reasons why I prefer the mechanical bits of each character to be different.  But if starting a new character meant playing the same exact character in all mechanical regards just at a lower level of proficiency, then I wouldn't find that interesting.  If there were enough archetypes that I could switch to another one and have a decent amount of time until feeling I had to replay a previously played archetype then I suppose that would be fine as long as there was some kind of feeling of mechanical customization of the character.

Depends on what type of game it is.

Am I building a character or generating it?

I'm starting to prefer games with fewer but broader classes rather than having many extremely specialized classes. Nothing wrong with the latter, of course. But D&D 3.X has made me hate multi-classing and Feat chains tied to classes.

Quote from: One Horse Town;747722How much flexibility is just right for you in generating characters?

A lot.

Quote from: One Horse Town;747722Are you ok with 2 fighters being almost identical mechanically or do you prefer the option to make an almost infinite amount of different fighters?

Almost infinite amount of "fighter like" characters.  

Quote from: One Horse Town;747722Are mechanics important in differentiating between characters of the same sort?

Yes they are.

Quote from: One Horse Town;747722What if your choice of classes is so large that in effect, your chances of playing the same character twice are next to zero even if there is little difference between members of the same class. Would that suite you if you like greater flexibility normally?

I like to have to choose between numbers of pre-made templates but not as specific/strict as D&D classes because it restricts the choices of combining them with other templates (attribute, race, skill) since only certain combinations achieve effective results.

I like tons of flexibility as long as it isn't required so If someone wants to make a vanilla fighter it is easy if someone wants to go weird, exotic etc.. they can just don't make it hard for Vanilla to play as well.


I personally prefer investing effort at character creation and making competent characters. Not into the Zero to hero thing   (So much) if tons of Zeros die for that cause.

I like PC's to be the special ones by fate or whatever, The survivors.

I tend to design flexible char creation when I design/modify a game. I also like organic character growth so Classes are usually not good fits.

Just my thoughts.

Quote from: One Horse Town;747722How much flexibility is just right for you in generating characters?

Lots!

QuoteAre you ok with 2 fighters being almost identical mechanically or do you prefer the option to make an almost infinite amount of different fighters?

Infinite amount of fighters would be much better. I mean, perhaps a lot fewer than infinite ( ) but you get the idea.

QuoteAre mechanics important in differentiating between characters of the same sort?

Rather important, I would say.

QuoteWhat if your choice of classes is so large that in effect, your chances of playing the same character twice are next to zero even if there is little difference between members of the same class. Would that suite you if you like greater flexibility normally?

I wanted to say that it would not, but then I started thinking. I think that would really depend on the presentation. For instance, the D&D 3.x model irks me for a number of reasons, but not the least of those is that you have "basic" classes like Fighter and then a kabillion of variants that kind of do the same job (but better, but that's a whole another rant). Either every PC should have a weird custom class (like say the special classes in Disgaea, Demon Prince, Mid-Boss, Prinny Instructor et al) or no one should.

I'm OK with broader archetypes because at least half of the way I play my PC is based on how I want to play him or her, and not driven by mechanics.  I.e., I'm OK with one fighter being very mechanically similar to another fighter because if the first is a sword&board fighter, and the second is an archer skirmisher, they play totally differently to me regardless if the mechanics are the same.

That all being said, I'm also fond of general customization, but nothing near on the level of 3e.  I think 5e is really close to the sweet spot here for me, as you choose your basic class, and just have a few points during progression where there are mechanical options that reinforce archetypes, and you don't have to worry about feat chains or multi-classing.

For example:

In 3e, every time you're presented with an option, you have a full table of feats to chose from, many of those part of a feat tree (like power attack> cleave> etc), and you have a bunch of skill points to allocate.  And that's not counting multi-classing which throws a whole new layer of complexity on it.

In 5e, you pick your class and pick a specialty at level 3 or whatever.  From then on, you don't have to worry about feat trees because any other mechanical abilities you get are defined by that specialty at certain pre-determined points.  Even if I want extra complexity by using feats in the game, the feats are broad general groups, and not really linked in trees like 3e.  I can basically choose the type of archetype I want to play, and only make one or two core choices that offer total customization from another PC of the same class, while not having to figure out feat trees or skill point allocation.

If character generation takes more than 15 minutes, I'm not interested.  "Options" exist in the players' minds, not on paper.  I've seen more creativity with personalities in OD&D and Fantasy Trip than in far more complex systems.

And how the character plays should be determined by the player, not the character.  Want your character to be a badass?  Play her like a badass and dare the risks.

I like archetypes to help define what activities will define the game and provide a default "audience" for the gm to plan to.

But within those archetypes, I like lots of mechanically significant customization. The idea bombastically proclaimed in a recent thread about "if you want two fighters to be different just play them different" is nowhere near good enough for me.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;747748I'm OK with broader archetypes because at least half of the way I play my PC is based on how I want to play him or her, and not driven by mechanics.  I.e., I'm OK with one fighter being very mechanically similar to another fighter because if the first is a sword&board fighter, and the second is an archer skirmisher, they play totally differently to me regardless if the mechanics are the same.

The mechanics are still different. They may be different due to being able to use different combat mechanics as the same fighter, but still different. This is important, if you think of combat and its mechanics as part of being a fighter and this is true as combat is where the fighting class is efficient.

Quote from: Old Geezer;747776If character generation takes more than 15 minutes, I'm not interested.  "Options" exist in the players' minds, not on paper.  I've seen more creativity with personalities in OD&D and Fantasy Trip than in far more complex systems.

And how the character plays should be determined by the player, not the character.  Want your character to be a badass?  Play her like a badass and dare the risks.

What if you could somehow have character generation that takes 10 minutes but at the same time many different character options, intuitive and interesting?

Quote from: xech;747791The mechanics are still different. They may be different due to being able to use different combat mechanics as the same fighter, but still different. This is important, if you think of combat and its mechanics as part of being a fighter and this is true as combat is where the fighting class is efficient.

An AD&D fighter who fights sword&board isn't any mechanically different than an AD&D fighter who uses a bow and acts more like a skirmisher.  Not from a class perspective; their class features are all the same.

However, they can still play different, depending on how you want them to play.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;747793An AD&D fighter who fights sword&board isn't any mechanically different than an AD&D fighter who uses a bow and acts more like a skirmisher.  Not from a class perspective; their class features are all the same.

However, they can still play different, depending on how you want them to play.

The difference in gameplay is due to differences in combat mechanics (that the fighter class can take advantage of) and not due to the fact that you as a player can decide different character actions independently from mechanics as OG seems to be suggesting as a valid way of playing out.