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I demoed Pathfinder at an FLGS today. My big plan was to make building the character part of the demo for a number of reasons: players would know what their characters could do better; they would learn the different mechanics of the game better; building is a part of the game experience. Unfortunately, it took the players way longer to build their characters than I'd budgeted for. There were a few contributing factors outside my control and several improvements I have in mind already, but before I try this same approach, how long does it take you to build a new character from scratch?
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How long does it take you to build a new character from scratch?
It depends on how many resources avail and how experienced people are. For players new to 3e, it takes 2 hours or so in my experience. That's time to explain and have them sift through options.
If you want to cut down time, suggest you do a 4 class subset with a list of maybe 5 typical feats per class. Maybe a subset of equipment and spells too.
There are always more options...the idea is to introduce the basic concepts about the types of choices being made, not all of the possible options.
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Weeks. Sometimes months... The birthing process is long and painful for me, usually involving several debates, second-guesses and restarts before I get it 'right'.
However,if I'm rolling up a quick no background throwaway, I can do it in... 30 minutes to an hour. Depending on spell casting abilities and such.
I'm quick, maybe 15-20 minutes, maybe 1/2 hour if it's a caster, but I've learned that there's always gonna be somebody who is going to take 2 or 3 hours. So I'm not in a hurry.
I usually wanna do it in 15 minutes and get going. I'll even bring the damn thing prerolled, but everybody always thinks I'm up to something when I do that. But I just wanna get going. Never happens.
The first day is "roll up characters for ever wheeee!" So I make sure I have an escape plan.
Actually Ryan I like your idea, but as already stated it really depends on the experience of the players. If I was going to do something like this I would most likely plan a full PFS slot for it. If I recall the normal PFS slot is 2 hours.
Next I would make hand outs that I would hand out as I discuss the process. So for example when I am discussing skills I would hand out the skills portion. Then when I am talking about feats I would hand out the feats portion and so on.
I would also most likely have helpers who could maybe go from table to table to help answer the basic questions about skills, feats, ect. That way it would allow me to continue on when I thought it was appropriate.
I would cover background but I wouldn't linger on that part, explaining that they can work on that between rounds or at home in their spare time.
These are just a few quick ideas I have to offer hope it helps.
I find that sharing books DRASTICALLY slows down the character creation process. Anything you can do to give the information to them to hold in their paws, in my belief, will only speed the process up.
So anything involving handouts of "encouraged" feats, special powers, or whatever for their character choices can only help.
But two hours if you are not assigning pre-gens is probably a fair and honest time, unfortunately. There will be people that can finish faster, but there will be people that are still debating about their stats at the end of two hours. :/
Good luck!
Greg
Dear lord. Four, maybe five hours. More if it's 10th level or higher. And I've been doing this since the early days of 3e.
First I come up with a concept. Generalist mounted wizard. Then I start to get mechanical ideas. Halfling on a riding dog. Then I flesh out the details. Riding dog is the familiar. Then I research any details necessary to allow my build to work. Improved Familiar feat seems fair to allow a riding dog, submit to DM, get approval. Next it's generate stats from point buy, start to allocate feats. That suggests equipment which suggests skills. Skill choices might imply feat changes (Skill Focus for instance) and equipment changes might as well (hey, this is a high AC build... Dodge would work in well!) Does this guy still work as a generalist? What spells? Need a spellbook. Buy some scrolls? Dang, overspent on the other equipment, changes AC, feat choices maybe. Let's pick some traits. Ooops, change some skills.
My point simply is that for me characters are a process. They evolve. I work entirely using the standard statblock format. Almost like a spreadsheet, as I change things, there's a trickle-down effect. Everything is fluid until something great happens on the sheet. Something fun, something different from my previous eighty-bazillion wizards. Something... no... someone. A character!
Teaching new players... that's a session.
It depends on how much I care about the campaign, I suppose: half an hour for quickies or new-DM campaigns. During the main game, though... I'm with this guy:
Weeks. Sometimes months... The birthing process is long and painful for me, usually involving several debates, second-guesses and restarts before I get it 'right'.
Making a character is such an immense balance of mechanics and flavor in order to keep interest going as the campaign unfolds. Not to ramble, but as an example, my last character was an alcoholic ex-mother (yeah, a chick! what of it?), who failed as a scientist and took to being a traveling blade-for-hire. That's the first chunk that set off the mechanics, which went like this:
Alchemist / Barbarian, and a custom race our DM made that was on par with elves. Eventually, I found the Master Chymist prestige class, and the appeal of multiple personalities lassoed me back into flavor: the mutagen is what she would use when the alcohol couldn't get her drunk enough, and then her alter-ego would take over and make things right (in the alter-ego's eyes, anyway), which would cause a downward spiral of self-esteem, reliability, and emotions.
Role-playing was a blast (alcoholics have so much flavor, hardy har har), and she hit like a truck (30+ Str and a bunch of other gadgets), so both sides of my player palate were satisfied :o)
But yeah... It took me about a month to get it all balanced.
Char gen for me takes one of two forms, and each has a different amount of time taken.
If i get some mechanical idea and want to work a character around it- such as "we need a bard" or 'we need a witch" then it doesn't take alot of time to get the character going. The longest part is making sure I haven't forgotten some feat or spell that is a 'no brainer'. an hour maybe- half hour if a spell-less class.
If I have some inspiration about a character background/story and am them attaching the mechanics to it then that can take a good deal of time to flesh out. I have an oracle of that sort worked up that will likely never see light of day- but I've probably spent upwards of 4 hours in small bursts of going back to tinker around with them.
If i were to do what you are doing I'd probably sit down an afternoon and "rewrite" the rules abit toe dit out alot of hte clutter for PC's, removin things they don't need to mess with right away so they can make an effective character with little fuss.
For example- a prospective "rogue packet" wouldn't have any spell feats (or spells at all in it) and so on, since a rogue has no need ofo them and it just muddies the mess.
Likewise- a prospective wizard has no need for all the info about heavy armor prof and such.
They are things they will learn about later ona s they grow in the game- but doesn't really hurt them to not have tossed in their face in the beginning.
(i.e. remove choices that aren't actually choices, just confusion for a newbie)
-S
well, a rouge, mabye 6 mins
a fighter 10-15 mins
wizard, 30-45 mins
A fully fleshed out back story and personality
they come last
i prefer to have an idea for the character and build the persona to fit the mechanics, and that can take weeks
or in the case of my 1st character, i'm still working on it from 4-5 years back
About 2 hours for my group. 20 minutes or so for the rules parts the rest of the time is spent on detailed backgrounds and discussions.
First lvl character, half an hour. 10+ lvl, an hour.
BUT,
That can drag on for weeks, if I have the time. Because there'll always be something I overlooked, something I wanted to change, a piece of equipment I forgot, etc etc...
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If you want to cut down time, suggest you do a 4 class subset with a list of maybe 5 typical feats per class. Maybe a subset of equipment and spells too.
There are always more options...the idea is to introduce the basic concepts about the types of choices being made, not all of the possible options.
That's the conclusion I came to. I handed out a three page Pathfinder Primer to all players explaining the ability scores, skills, actions, key terms, and brief on the six races and the eight base classes they could choose from. I didn't do anything for feat and spell selection besides define what feats and spells were.
The one thing I did that probably sped up character creation the most was offer three sets of ability scores to choose from: maximized, specialized, and balanced. I think something similar for feats and casters would be of use. That and make a primer for each class. I would only print one of each and give them out to the players after they chose their class based on the brief.
If I already have the character's concept figured out (which is often the case, since I rarely get to be on the player's side of the screen and thus I always have that one character I want to try out) and we are sticking to core material, I think around 30 minutes.
My players tend to take longer (up to 2 hours in the most extreme cases), mainly because they really like to cutomize their characters (and I am often flexible when it comes to changing details here and there for the sake of variety, but trying to keep it balanced for everyone).
Generation time was greatly cut down when three of my players decided to get their own Pathfinder core rulebooks (something they had never done before in our AD&D-3e-3.5 era), plus the help of everyone having their own laptops logged into the Pathfinder SRD. Now we can set up characters really fast, at least mechanics-wise, since creating the background is another issue altogether.
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If there is a time constraint I can do most characters in under 20 minutes. If I don't have a time constraint I've been known to lovingly craft a character over the course of a week, making sure that every detail of the character fits the campaign and that he has a full backstory and abilities and feats that fit the character.
Now with the speed character design I highly HIGHLY suggest you restrict the wizard and witch to players with experience. Otherwise they can take FOREVER!
Something I did recently for a pick up game because I couldn't find the character sheets for my regular game (I friggin' hate moving!) was ask the players what race and class they wanted to play and knocked out three characters in about two hours. I just designed the characters in a way that the players could easily choose their own name, description and alignment.
Pre-gens are a MUST if you're doing a demo game for players new to Pathfinder (or any system IMO). The 3-page primer is dandy too. With those two handouts, you shouldn't spend more than 30 minutes getting ready for the game. Players worth their salt can learn on the fly - besides, that's what makes the game fun for me.
If you give me point buy and a character sheet, probably within 5 minutes. Unless it's a wizard with a spellbook, maybe 10. Anything with spells known somewhere in-between.
10-15 for a non-spell caster, 30’ish for a spell caster. Depends on how much a backstory is needed. My group takes a few hours without any fluff, it is maddening. I think it is partially because I DM mostly and read all the books so game information is on the top of my head.
Question though for the people who take a while. What is your thought process during creation? Do you start with the race, class, party role?
For me it is Party: “okay we need an arcane guy” then I am like bam!, Janaco the Halfling illusionist discovered magic as an escape while he was a slave in Kapatesh and is on the run from his cruel owner who wants him back. Not the most original story but something to start with and work on as the campaign goes.
Mechanically? Between 20 minutes and 1 hour, depending on level, class and options. I like to have a build-concept worked out to know when I can take certain feats and such.
Fluff-wise? A week or so. I am very thorough when it comes to fleshing out my characters and make them come alive.
Easily in less than five minutes. So can anyone in the group I game with. It's no big deal.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Easily in less than five minutes. So can anyone in the group I game with. It's no big deal.
Yup. I'm with Arnwolf here. Spellcasters can take slightly longer, but not much. I'm assuming we're talking about 1st-level characters here? Because it would take considerably longer to do, say, a 15th-level one. Especially a wizard.
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I use HeroLab and it can still take a couple hours. I like that HeroLab has all the main things for PF/PFS play. PDF's are also helpful.
It can take a couple hours for just a general shield / weapon fighter. But that's because I'm not a guy that can make a character that is super optimized. Even my 'throw-away' fighter for PFS took some time to develop and review.
I wish I had that super power. But alas, I can remove tape and stickers from products without messing them up. Maybe someday after I've played the game for some 32+ years I'll get better at it. =:->
Be Well.
Theocrat Issak
Just a 1st level toon with no concept or anything behind it...15 minutes maybe.
Higher level character's take a lot more thought and a lot more time.
I've worked on concepts that took days-weeks-months to work out and plan the character's progression and motivations but nobody was waiting for me. I was doing it for me.
First of all, I don't "roll" characters. I create characters. No rolling involved at all. But having that out of the way:
Depends on a killion of things.
It depends on whether you mean I have the character already in my head, know who he (or she, in rare instances) is before I start the technical stuff. It's going a lot faster if I just have to assign abilities to my vision. Writing up the sheet is usually the last step.
It depends on the character's level. Higher level means more mechanics, and of course a more experienced character, which means he had some adventures already.
It depends on whether it's a PC, or NPC.
It depends, in part, on the class - fighters are easier than wizards, because you don't need to select spells.
And it depends on how well I know the system.
I know Pathfinder well, but that's my bridge to your problem: You were running a demo of the game. Aside from some bored people, the guys you were running it for were new to this game. And if you're looking at a new edition or even game, there will be some sort of learning curve. People want to try out all the cool new stuff. Experimenting takes time.
That's why using premade characters for demo games will speed things up.
Both methods have their charms.
To answer your question: If we're talking about a 1st-level character I have a general picture about, it can take me over an hour. I'm not rushing things.
But I think that in a rush, I could do it in 10 minutes.
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15 minutes. I never sit down and throw a concept together. I am always thinking about characters. I see inspiration and I will ponder on them. So when I sit down its just writing it down. Most of the character creation stuff is memorized though. Keep in mind I DM mainly so I am always fleshing out charaters I average 3-4 characters a day.
Villians... thats another story, they are always evolving. I am constantly creating new ideas. see my DK wow post :P!
A first level character? 10 mins.
With CWBL, characters above level 4 tend to take fourty five minutes to an hour.
When I know I'm going to play a game with a group of people and we get some chances to bat concepts back and forth pre-game, I build 1-20 in about two hours, going through all sources.
However: We usually spend the first game session in a character bull session, figuring out character ties, backgrounds, history, concepts for party roles, etc...
I can generally do a base character in about 30 minutes average. What kills that is equipment which can set me back an hour or two depending. I'm almost to the point of recollection all of the equipment "kit" pre-gen lists that were done in Dragon and elsewhere in 3e.