Interesting Party Creation Methods?

[bbugg]

Just wondering if anyone has used fun/interesting methods of character creation...

Here are some ideas my group came up with to mix things up a little:

Pass-along
Everyone picks two races, writes them on two character sheets and passes them to the right.

Then you pick the first classes for the characters you were just passes and pass them to the right.

Pick the stats for those characters, pass em on.

Write a short (couple line) backstory, pass em on.

Continue as you like, feats, skills, life ambitions, etc. or quit here.

Now you have a pool of characters for everyone to pick from, randomly or otherwise. This can get you to play a character concept you may not have come up with yourself, might even get you to play outside of your comfort zone.

Same Class
Everyone is of the same class and comes from the same church/army/guild/what have you.
Could be interesting and certainly helps with party cohesion and provides easy plot hooks for the DM. I don't think it would get too boring, because only the first level need be the same for everyone. From there, I imagine there would be some significant divergence.

Same Race
Again, not only the same race, but from the same family/tribe/clan/whatever. Also, helps with cohesion by giving a shared backstory and easy plot hooks that apply to the whole party.

Any other ideas?

[FlyMolo]

Just wondering if anyone has used fun/interesting methods of character creation...

Here are some ideas my group came up with to mix things up a little:

Pass-along
Everyone picks two races, writes them on two character sheets and passes them to the right.

Then you pick the first classes for the characters you were just passes and pass them to the right.

Pick the stats for those characters, pass em on.

Write a short (couple line) backstory, pass em on.

Continue as you like, feats, skills, life ambitions, etc. or quit here.

Now you have a pool of characters for everyone to pick from, randomly or otherwise. This can get you to play a character concept you may not have come up with yourself, might even get you to play outside of your comfort zone.

Any other ideas?

This one isn't so much a character creation idea but a lazy shortcut to cut down on backstory manipulation. All the PCs are captured by something that's about to kill them. Evil Slave Lord, Extra-Planar ESL, whatever. Then they get rescued, and have to help out their benefactor, or he'll just give them back to the ESL. Hey presto, instant quest. I also like pass-along. I think it'd be interesting.

[MorkaisChosen]

I like the idea of single-class and single-race parties- I might have to suggest that sometime! Signle-race will probably be easier than single-class, but it does depend on how specialised the class is- an all-paladin party might be a bit samey, but all-rogue, wizard or cleric party can have more variation (thug/ sneaky/ diplomatic for rogues, schools and spell types (range, buff, whatever) for wizards and domains and gods for clerics).

[FatherMalkav]

I played in a one-shot about a week ago. The party was me, an experienced RPer and D&D player of about six months, a player new to roleplaying and had only played WoD, a rusty D&D player, and a kid who asked if he could join and had never sat down at a game before. We rolled random races, rolled random PHB I class, 3d6 per stat +1d6 if it ended up below 5 (one guy had a 4 Con, -2 for elf, min. 3 and rolled a 1 on his fourth die...and he was the tank). You could swap any two stats but only one was allowed. Feats, skills and equipment were chosen by the players. Even gender, height and weight were random.
Party Line-Up
Glim - Male Gnome Bard with 9 Int and 18 Cha
Snu-Snu - Female Half-Orc druid with a bison companion
Landon - Male Elf Pally (4 Con tank) with the highest Int in the part at 11 and 5 Cha.
Shanie - Female Half-Elf monk with no stat above 12, and only two above 9

The bard never enterd combat until someone was about to die, then made really bad choices for actions (summoning Celestial Badgers against skeletons and such.) It was amazing we sucvived with our stats, 90% of which were below 10.

[bbugg]

Nobody else uses an interesting method to create a party?

We have some trouble getting inspiration for characters sometimes and some players seem to get in a rutt playing the same type of characters, I'm just looking for ways that other groups have overcome these issues.

[egg_green]

Single-class parties work very well with Gestalt rules. Force everyone to have one of their two classes be the same, and let them pick the other. I played in a short campaign once where we were all Warlock/whatevers. It fell apart eventually, because it was an evil game, but we lasted a lot longer than I expected, and I think having the same class helped quite a bit with party cohesion.

[Sofaking]

The Dancing Blades Amazing Technicolor Color Traveling Sideshow Extravaganza!

Or TDBATCTSE

1 - Half-Orc Male Bard - The Brute, villian, always plays the bad guy.
2 - Elf - Male Bard - The Hero, dashing, handsome, always gets the girl.
3 - Elf - Female Bard - The Love Interest, beautiful, charming, always getting kidnapped.
4 - Halfling - Male Bard - The plucky sidekick, always has something smart to say, helpful, sidekicky.

Uh yeah so they are a traveling show who could get swept up in some sort of crazy wacky adventure in every city they go to. Always wanted to do this, but never liked the idea of forcing characters on players.

OR...

You could always roll random from the DMG tables.

OR...

Have the person leave the room, and let everyone else create the character, you'll get that class/race you've never played.

[RTGoodman]

Single-class parties work very well with Gestalt rules. Force everyone to have one of their two classes be the same, and let them pick the other.

Yeah, I've thought of that before. Rogue seems like it'd be cool (for a hook, they're all members of a certain thieves' guild or something), or maybe Favored Soul (where each character's god is the one that most closely matches his other class). The dual casting stats might make that hard, though, unless you let people just pick one mental stat to be their primary casting stat.

We've also done an single-race game (with Kobolds), and it was excellent, and I thought about doing an all-dwarf campaign at some point, but never got around to it.


For a slightly old-school method of creation (and one a DM made me use when I rolled up a character after the first died) is to roll all of your stats, in order, and then pick your race and class afterwards. It didn't turn out too well for me, though - I had one good score (a 17 in Wisdom), and them 9 to 11 in everything else. So, of course, I played a Druid.

[Mr. Friendly]

Well, in a previous campaign the players all wrote down a number of roles (based on the number of players) the roles were:

Blaster, Buffer/Utility, Trapfinder, Medic, Tank and Wildcard

The Blaster ended up being an Elf Sorcerer
Buffer/Utility ended up as an Elf Wizard (Conjuror)
Trapfinder was a Dwarf Barbarian with feats that allowed Survival in place of the usual
Medic was a Dwarf Cleric and Thunder Twin of the Trapfinder
Tank was an Orc Fighter (dead in like 2 sessions)
Wildcard was a Human Factotum

Anyway, everyone put the generic role names in a hat and took turns reaching in. You got what ya got, but you could make it whatever you wanted as long as it fulfilled the role. (This was a while before 4e btw)

They then decided on a unifying theme for the party which ended up being luck.

[Prometheus]

I've heard it mentioned at least once on these boards about a group that decides all their character sketch (Race, class, alignment maybe, personality trait) by all the other members nominating and voting on it.

I have so many character sketches, that something I've found myself prone to do is to nominate the characters myself, and then let the others decide which of them I will be.

One thing I've yet to try but apparently is the most classic strategy, is to have the players roll up the ability traits, and perhaps choose the race, and then from there decide the personality background, and lets not forget, a class that works mechanically with the above.

[adanedhel9]

Start with a hat/bag/box/crate full of minis. All the players blindly draw one mini. Each player then has to create and play a character based on the mini.

I've never done this, precisely, but something really similar: as a DM, I've created characters to match minis. At the start of the game, each player chooses a mini; then they get the character sheets to match.

[Ascension]

I like the sound of a lot of these methods, especially the single race/single class parties. The traveling show bard party is a great idea. A rogue/bard traveling circus party would be really fun. It might be nice to start out focusing more on the performances than the fighting, having them gradually shifting over several sessions away from the circus life and into the adventuring life (and possible multiclassing).

I must admit I'm a sucker for unlikely race/class combinations. I've got an elf-hating half-elf barbarian (The backstory explains it, really!) slowly congealing in the back of my mind. I think it'd be fun to run a game where the whole party was using strange combinations... Barbaric elves, noble orcs, chaotic dwarves, that sort of thing... NO DROW ALLOWED! Of course, you couldn't keep it going for too long, because sooner or later the subversions would become the new cliches (like with Drow) and you wouldn't be playing against type anymore.

[Nebo_]

First you think of a character idea, then you make that character and play it. This method produces characters that the players like and aren't completely stupid and random.

[Ascension]

Well, I certainly wouldn't (couldn't!) force anyone into playing a character they didn't want to play, but what if all your players agree that random would be fun for a change? Life needs a little chaos sometimes. The DM class doesn't have an Always Lawful requirement.

[RTGoodman]

The DM class doesn't have an Always Lawful requirement.

No, but they are Usually Evil.


I had never thought of the minis-out-of-a-hat method - I've got enough to make it work (though a lot of them are more monstrous than humanoid), and that could be neat for a one-shot kind of thing.

[Squash Monster]

I've tried to push for all the same class before, but it hasn't gone over too well yet.

However, all roughly the same type of character is a bit easier to pitch. A party of all front-liners, gishes, skillmonkeys, or casters sounds like a lot of fun. One of the possibilities for the next campaign I run is that it'll be one of these, specifically all casters. No need to worry about balance if everybody's in the same tier of overpowered.

Though, that possibility isn't too likely: currently "ban core" is the most popular option.

Actually, does that count as an interesting party creation method? Ban all core races, feats, spells, and classes. (I already know it's actually better balanced).