Character generation method? Our groups first AP (possibly)


Carrion Crown


We are looking at doing an adventure path, but haven't bought it yet. What is the method for carrion crown character generation? Rolling dice, point buy (and if so, how many points)?


15 point buy.

I do 20, because all it does is make tertiary stats go up.

In example, how I'd build a fighter based on point buys:

15 pt buy fighter

STR 16+2 (10)
DEX 12 (2)
CON 14 (5)
INT 10 (0)
WIS 10
CHA 8 (-2)

20 pt buy fighter

STR 16+2 (10)
DEX 13 (3)
CON 14 (5)
INT 12 (2)
WIS 10
CHA 10

There are some people who will min-maximus even at 20 point buy, but if you look at sheets before the game you can just veto them or something.


Thanks, so it is a 15 point buy, but the DM may allow for more. Got it.


i go the ol' fashioned dice rolling, usually 4d6 keep the highest 3 or if they want a challenge 3d6, i've never used point buy system, i like randomness:)


Don't knock it till you try it Captain. First tens are free man....

But really, give it a try sometime. Character creation becomes more of a strategy game and less of a game of chance when all of the characters are potentially equal.

When I was introduced to 3.5 my group had some whack way of rolling. Something like:
2 sets of 4d6 reroll ones drop the lowest.
It took me a lot longer than it should have to realize the people I played with were huge number crunchers. I felt they needed to stop being concerned with making the best character ever and focus on the roleplaying aspect (the fun aspect).

So I broke from the group. At first the break was a little heated but after a while we made up.
I started another gaming group that uses point buy and doesn't actually know my close call with the dangerous drug of powergaming....

The good news is that old gaming group has since converted to point buy. All it took was that GM to think he was going to make a super character with 25 point buy.

Sorry I went off on a tangent.

As far as the OP, if its your first AP go for 20. Like IT said, it barely makes a difference and only to your tertiary stats


I'm a big (recently converted) fan of the point buy. It really helps to balance out characters. While it's fun to role-play a character with really low stats, I can say from years of playing and DMing that what often happens is one character is over powered by a few high rolls and they totally own the game. It becomes not very fun. I played a a barbarian recently that had 18s in str, dex, and con - half orc - all at level 1 due to some amazingly (apparently loaded) dice. It made things really hard for the DM and for the party as I could wade through anything and if the DM upped the difficulty the other players were way out of their league.

Point buy +1.


And as cool as it sounds to have a total BA, its very seldom as rewarding.

I commonly like playing the underdog.

Silver Crusade

If you have a very exp group and they work well together.
15Point buy.
If your group is exp but dose not work every well together.
20Point buy.
If your group is new to Pathfinder.
25Point buy. They will need the extra buffer. From all the realy nasty stuff paizo people put in there AP.

Liberty's Edge

Being honest, the actual point buy(unless you go really wild) doesn't make a huge difference in actual effect: going from 15 point buy to 25 point buy with a min-maxer means their highest stat has a +1 modifier or 5% on most rolls, other characters will just be more diverse as they split the points among stats and shore up weaknesses.

The different point buy values really can have an effect on the characters feeling however, even if the numbers aren't so vastly different in play the players will have a different perspective. In a lot of campaigns I want my players to feel really heroic and superior to the norm so I give them 25 point buy. In carrion Crown I'm planning to really play up the horror of it all and am strongly thinking of 15.


BornofHate wrote:

Don't knock it till you try it Captain. First tens are free man....

But really, give it a try sometime. Character creation becomes more of a strategy game and less of a game of chance when all of the characters are potentially equal.

When I was introduced to 3.5 my group had some whack way of rolling. Something like:
2 sets of 4d6 reroll ones drop the lowest.
It took me a lot longer than it should have to realize the people I played with were huge number crunchers. I felt they needed to stop being concerned with making the best character ever and focus on the roleplaying aspect (the fun aspect).

So I broke from the group. At first the break was a little heated but after a while we made up.
I started another gaming group that uses point buy and doesn't actually know my close call with the dangerous drug of powergaming....

The good news is that old gaming group has since converted to point buy. All it took was that GM to think he was going to make a super character with 25 point buy.

Sorry I went off on a tangent.

As far as the OP, if its your first AP go for 20. Like IT said, it barely makes a difference and only to your tertiary stats

i did not knock the system, merely said i've never done it and prefer the randomness of dice rolling, i have no strong feelings opposed or for the system. some people like it, not my cup of tea is all. i do not maximize my characters as i feel that takes away from my experience.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

Please note that the APs are somewhat easy. They are built for 15 point buy, with 4 people, and spending 20% of your feats/etc on sub-optimal choices.

If you increase beyond that, the APs get even easier. As a GM, it's very easy to power up a group of PCs (give them cool loot, level them up, etc). As a GM, I find it more time consuming to power up the enemies (combats take longer to run with more combatants, etc). So therefore, start low, and raise it up if you need to.

- my 2 cents


TriOmegaZero recommends the [url=http://invisiblecastle.com/stats/help/grid/grid[/url]. I'd like to try it someday. It blends the randomness of rolling with stat picking strategy. Because all players start off with the same grid it may be slightly more fair than straight rolling.


I used a simple system using harrow cards to create the ability scores for my players. This has the added benefit of me doing a reading of the character to add some spice to that characters background and possible future :)

Draw a reading:

Choose the best aligned card for each ability score. Each additional card of that specific ability score present in the reading adds one to the base score to a maximum of 18. If there are enough cards of a particular suit to increase a score above 18 replace that card with a new one. If necessary continue to redraw until you get a card of a different suit.

*Totally misaligned cards is a 7

*One misaligned is a 9

*No card of a particular ability score is present 10

*None aligned is an 11

*One aligned and one misaligned is a 12

*One aligned is a 13

*Both aligned 14

Silver Crusade

Tarlane wrote:

Being honest, the actual point buy(unless you go really wild) doesn't make a huge difference in actual effect: going from 15 point buy to 25 point buy with a min-maxer means their highest stat has a +1 modifier or 5% on most rolls, other characters will just be more diverse as they split the points among stats and shore up weaknesses.

The different point buy values really can have an effect on the characters feeling however, even if the numbers aren't so vastly different in play the players will have a different perspective. In a lot of campaigns I want my players to feel really heroic and superior to the norm so I give them 25 point buy. In carrion Crown I'm planning to really play up the horror of it all and am strongly thinking of 15.

WoW just Wow.

Let me see just how much better a 25 point buy is then 15. Dose not seam like much untill you add up thats +2 to one save and two skills. +1 to hit and +2 damage. It lets me fully make a oracle that can do the job of the rogue. I can't disable magic traps. I can dispel them.

15 Point buy
Human
Oracle of battle (this is what I have made for my last game.)
Str 17
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 7
Cha 14
Feats:Human bonus: Exta Revelation:Skill at Arms
1st: Improved Initive
Revelation: War Sight
Traits: Reactionary, Vagavond Child(Disable Device)
Skills:Disable Device(6), Diplomacy(6), Perception(2), Sense Motive(2), Use Magic Device(3),
Init: +7 (+4II+1Dex+2Trate)Roll 2 dice keap one.
Glave +3 to hit 1D10+4/20X3 damage Reach
Fort 2 Ref 1 Will 0

25Point buy
Human
Oracle of battle
Str 19
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 10
Cha 14
Same Feats and Traits
Skills: Disable Device(6), Diplomacy(6), Perception(4), Sense Motive(4), Use Magic Device(3)
Init: +7 Roll 2 dice keap one.
Glave +4 to hit 1D10+6 damage Reach
Fort 2 Ref 1 Will 2


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Hi,

Find here pre-calculated BUY TABLES for 20,15 and 10 points. (Word 2007 format)

Please note: not taking responsibilty for any misscalculations...


ah.....ignore the link above....use

THIS ONE

Liberty's Edge

Calagnar, I'm not actually sure if you are arguing or agreeing with me. In your example the strength has +1 mod on it because of the difference, and you were able to bring your wisdom up 2 points because it was a total dump stat before. It didn't make a huge difference in strength level and by letting you put points in a stat you wouldn't have otherwise, it makes a more rounded character which in my experience has led to less completely min-maxed characters.

To the OP, if we are tossing out other options you can use for rolling a character I always thought that using playing cards was a sort of neat method that gives pretty balanced characters compared to each other, but still gives a level of randomness in stats.

Basically pull two of each card out of a deck from 4-9. Shuffle them up and deal them out in stacks of 2 and those are the stats you have to place. Your numbers will all be between 8 and 18, average 13, but because there are only two of each card you won't have the one person who will get all 18s and one who has all 8s. The sum of the character's modifiers should all be within a couple points depending on whether they got a lot of even or odd stats.


Windspirit wrote:

ah.....ignore the link above....use

THIS ONE

ahhhh rubbish....I cant belive I'm that butter fingered today...

http://langenhan.info/RPG/BuyTable.pdf

now it works :)


Windspirit wrote:
Windspirit wrote:

ah.....ignore the link above....use

THIS ONE

ahhhh rubbish....I cant belive I'm that butter fingered today...

http://langenhan.info/RPG/BuyTable.pdf

now it works :)

Don't wanna nitpick, but if I did a table like this I would want to know if I was missing something and I noticed you missed on 20 point buy:

17, 12, 12, 11, 11, 11
14, 14, 13, 13, 12, 12

If only there was pm on this board so I could mention it privately.


The Great Katallin wrote:


Don't wanna nitpick, but if I did a table like this I would want to know if I was missing something and I noticed you missed on 20 point buy:
17, 12, 12, 11, 11, 11
14, 14, 13, 13, 12, 12

If only there was pm on this board so I could mention it privately.

nana....I appreciated it. Thanks...I did the tabels while beeing bored @ work...so yo get bambuzzled by all the numbers.

I UPDATED the download.


Windspirit wrote:
The Great Katallin wrote:


Don't wanna nitpick, but if I did a table like this I would want to know if I was missing something and I noticed you missed on 20 point buy:
17, 12, 12, 11, 11, 11
14, 14, 13, 13, 12, 12

If only there was pm on this board so I could mention it privately.

nana....I appreciated it. Thanks...I did the tabels while beeing bored @ work...so yo get bambuzzled by all the numbers.

I UPDATED the download.

In that case 14, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13 is also missing, I noticed it too late to edit and didn't wanna be a prick, especially since no one in their right mind would choose that set anyways.


The Great Katallin wrote:


In that case 14, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13 is also missing, I noticed it too late to edit and didn't wanna be a prick, especially since no one in their right mind would choose that set anyways.

UPDATED...again

and why would one NOT? Its good in the long run. Go human then you have 16 13 13 13 13 13 and 4th you go 16 14 13 13 13 13. Sure could be more optimized, but then its also fun to play a wired character...


Windspirit wrote:


UPDATED...again

and why would one NOT? Its good in the long run. Go human then you have 16 13 13 13 13 13 and 4th you go 16 14 13 13 13 13. Sure could be more optimized, but then its also fun to play a wired character...

Actually I never thought about after racials, I think anything other than 50%+ human would be even better because it would be 16, 15, 13, 13, 13, 11 which is pretty darn good. So I stand corrected.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Path / Carrion Crown / Character generation method? Our groups first AP (possibly) All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Carrion Crown