Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Cromeium 09-04-06, 02:33 AM	I'm thinking of starting a game where are the players will be playing themselves and thrown into a AD&D world. Any thoughts, ideas, and resources for character creation would be nice.
Yaeri 09-04-06, 08:11 AM	It sounds like they should all start as either commoners or Experts. Their first level feats should probably be highly restricted to something they could have in real life. In the game they will hopefully encounter one or more persons who can train them to the class they want to be. Or, (like in the old dungeons and dragons cartoons?) just one person can give them some piece of magical gear that gives them the starting abilities of one class. The hard thing seems to be the ability scores. If it's your intention that everyone has their "real" statistics, you're gonna have to find a way on how to closely calculate them. Lifting weigths for strength? Iq-test for intelligence? Social tests from some magazine for charisma? Giving them diseases and see how fast they beat it for constitution? :D All in all, it seems like a fun idea.
Xagunder 09-04-06, 11:10 AM	When our group did this same thing for d20 Modern, we had each player come up with stats for every other player, then averaged them for the final scores. Gets rid of the ego...
Adam Smite 09-04-06, 08:16 PM	Or you can use point buy/elite array to figure it out. That way you just figure out 'realtive' strengths in yourself. That's what my group did, though for some people it took some convincing that a 14 is not a bad score. Don't know why they think being twice as dextrous as the average halfling or elf means their clumsier than everybody else.... anyways, this method means that everyone is going to have the same power level, though it can sometimes lead to incongruity. Namely, person A is better at almost everything than anyone else is, while person B just happens to be much smarter than they are anything. Since they both have the same number of points to spread out, this means that likely as not person B will seem smarter than person A, even though in real life that may not be the case. Another method is to use an ability score test, like this one (http://www.angelfire.com/dragon/terragf/). That however, means that you may end up with extremely different power levels for each person, as some people really do look like they should be out adventuring and doing it right, and some people honestly seem like they should stay at home.
MaximumPain 09-04-06, 09:49 PM	Anothe idea is to build in some kind of enhancement for each player. IE whatever event caused them to be sent to the D&D world also built up there stats and abilitys. You could use one of the "what D&D character are you" tests to get a base class, give them some mundane stats that is some what close to your idea of them in RL then give them a heroic boost to get them to the lvl they will need to survive. Ego is the biggest danger here some one will be like " how is steve smarter them me" and get mad or make steve mad. These ideas can work if every one is friendly and understands that its only a game.