I'm thinking that the number of choices that actual makes sense is something like: 8 classes, each with two or three builds. Then for each of those you have two or three races that make sense. Then your at-wills are pretty obvious and so that doesn't add much in the way of choice. So I'm thinking that there are probably around 50-100 basic character concepts that people would actually play.
I'm making a new setting with pretty different rules. Not only are the races all new (except for humans) but each race is limited to being specific classes tailored to that races. Humans have four classes, the other four races each have three races. That results in 16 race/class combinations. That doesn't seem like enough. How many is enough? I'm thinking that the 5th player to make his character will have 11 different builds to pick from. This seems a little short but might be enough if all of the choices are interesting.
I'm making a new setting with pretty different rules. Not only are the races all new (except for humans) but each race is limited to being specific classes tailored to that races. Humans have four classes, the other four races each have three races. That results in 16 race/class combinations. That doesn't seem like enough. How many is enough? I'm thinking that the 5th player to make his character will have 11 different builds to pick from. This seems a little short but might be enough if all of the choices are interesting.
What, for 4E? Keep in mind the four rules of homebrew, dude:
(1) Your homebrew is not balanced.
(2) Your homebrew is more complex than it needs to be.
(3) What you're trying to do has already been done, and done better.
(4) Your homebrew is fixing a problem that doesn't actually exist.
Making your own complete set of new classes, races and powers, there's a less than 1% chance that you're going to come up with a fun, playable alternative to what's presented in the PHB. The original classes are made by a team of experienced game designers, they're playtested, they took months to design and they've had the benefit of a year of community use and errata.
I mean, go ahead, give it a try. You'll learn from it. Just start with the expectation that you're making rubbish and hope to be surprised, rather than with the expectation that you'll have a playable game at the end.
Put the equation this way: is the fun that your players will get from playing in your homebrew world going to be greater than the fun they'll lose by not getting to play the well-designed race and class combination that they would otherwise have chosen to use?
Whatever you are going to create, you will probably only play it with your group. So instead of creating 16 race-class-combinations and a total of aproximately 1200 powers (take the Rogue with 70+ powers for example and add Epic Destiny and Paragon Path stuff), you are probably better off asking your players in advance what they would like to play and only create those races and classes.
That is if you feel, you actually *must* completely redesign the game. Greg despite voicing this a little harsh, is actually right about what he said IMO.
As long as the choices are meaningful and good, numbers aren't really the point.
Whatever you are going to create, you will probably only play it with your group. So instead of creating 16 race-class-combinations and a total of aproximately 1200 powers (take the Rogue with 70+ powers for example and add Epic Destiny and Paragon Path stuff), you are probably better off asking your players in advance what they would like to play and only create those races and classes.
That is if you feel, you actually *must* completely redesign the game. Greg despite voicing this a little harsh, is actually right about what he said IMO.
Kathleen's advice is better (and more polite) than my advice, do that.
Sorry, I spent about six years homebrewing stuff during 2nd Edition and I sometimes forget that the best way to learn that homebrewing will break your campaign is to actually homebrew for six years. You'll still be alive at the end and you'll have six years of "what not to do" learning under your belt.
Plus at the point in your gaming career where you're still enthused by homebrew, your players are probably at the point where they're too inexperienced to care about your mistakes, so it all evens out. You'll probably all have a blast.
Ask them what kind of character they envision as early in your design as possible. So, if a player says "I want a classic dwarf, with an axe and a shield" it is your job as DM to somehow make a dwarf possible in your game world. If nothing else works, place a small dwarven community hidden in the mountains at the edge of your continent.
If your player says "I want to play a sentient cat with psionic powers" you'll have a lot more work, but it's possible to make that happen, and you'll be rewarded with one of the most interesting PCs you'll see in your gaming career. You see, there are only five PCs in your game world. Your group of adventurers consists of five, very special individuals. Nobody else in the world uses the huge array of options from player handbooks, everyone else is an NPC with an NPC stat block, if they have stats at all.
So, on a continent inhabited by birdmen and silicon-based crystalline cavedwellers, you could still have an elf adventurer, if the player wants. And vice versa, a group of birdmen and rockpeople in a world of elves and dwarves. The PC will just be a stranger.
What you need is a distinction between PCs and the usual folks. It is one thing to create a culture for your race in the game world that ties them to certain roles, and a completely different thing to fit a PC concept into these roles. There are of course some limits. If a player wants a Jedi with a light saber, you have to politely decline unless genre-crossovers are your thing. But maybe you can include a monastic order of Paladins that follow a code very similar to Jedi to make him happy.
So, for example, you can rule that all elves in your game world are nomadic tribesmen who cross the desert on camels. You could also rule that they are highly suspicious of arcane magic, and each caravan includes a shaman as a spiritual leader. There are no elven arcane casters, only rangers, shamans, and maybe rogues and barbarians.
But still, if your player has this great idea for an elven sorcerer, sit down with him and try to make it work in your game world. Maybe there is a hidden oasis where the elves leave their children with arcane gifts. Or maybe he never knew of his talents until they broke loose just yesterday and now he's an outcast, thrown into life as an adventurer. Because being different from everybody else is a strong reason to become an adventurer, and a hero, in the first place.
Right now Dungeons and Dragons has just under 30 playable races-- although more than a third are not in their final form and are still being tested. Within that group there ought to be something quite similar to the races you want to use in your setting. So just take the most similar one and tweak it slightly.
Same with the classes. You have 18 classes right now, and each them has roughly 2 main builds that the players can either take straight or mix together as they please-- surely some of them have abilities that match up with what you want your classes to do quite nicely.
So actually the number of possible characters jumps up dramatically. People creating new races are primarily creating them for FLUFF purposes. For instance, there is really no reason at all one can't take the stats of a Halfling and call the character a Goblin and play it with the personality of a Goblin. Sure, it may not have low-light vision or the right languages, but it is certainly close enough.
By the same token a Half-Orc could just as well be a full-blooded Orc or even a Minotaur. A Half-Elf could be a Goblinoid or a Demon or the descendant of an Angel with just a tweak of one of its abilities (it would no longer count as a human and elf for the purposes of feats, but could still take Half-Elf exclusive feats).
As for minimum numbers, how many races do you need? 1. Human-- or at least an equivalent of it (a race that can choose its own attribute bonus, skills, feats and power).
How many classes do you need? 4. One for each role. In fact, you could even go as far as combining all the strikers into a single class and do so for each of the other roles.
@Glak2: Your players only ever need one choice: The character they want to play.
Ask them what kind of character they envision as early in your design as possible.
This, this... and a bit more of this. That's the only advice you need at all when it comes to putting player choices for things into your homebrew campaigns.
It doesn't matter to a player that only likes Dwarfs that you designed a dozen other races from the ground up - unless, for example, one of those was "Dwarf my Dwarf loving player likes better."
If you ask me - this is a general advice point on campaign/world building as a whole: always find out what your players want, and then do everything you can to make it work and add your own flair to it.
I'm now converting to v4.
For the races, I am simply going to map them to matching races from a mechanical viewpoint in v4. This is mainly so I can use the Character Builder directly, but also because I don't want to spend ages re-designing things which work and my players like (they are already saying things like "I want to be an Eladrin Paladin")
Luckily, one of my "homebrew" races was Half Dragons - an obvious match to the new races there methinks :D Another was fey-based changelings (where I am going to allow mechanics of either Tieflings or Eladrin) etc etc.
I'll end up with a two-way dictionary between races. In one version races in my world to one or more mechanical equivalents in DnD 4. I need that map for players who want to start with a character concept in my game world, and then follow through to what the mechanics are.
The second dictionary is for players who like to choose their character mechanics first, and maps the mechanics names to one or more "Game world" races - i.e. the races that the characters "really are" to anyone they interact with in my world.
I say "dictionary", but it will be less than a page I think.
The only complexity is explaining that "No, you are not an Elf, you are a Changeling" for things such as racial history, expected behaviour, NPC reactions etc etc.
GregT_314: I'm actually very good at game design and balance. I've been making and modifying games successfully for a long, long time. Thank you for your concern.
CountessKathleen: Yes, making 1200 powers would be crazy. I'm only making 1st level powers. Most will be blatant copies or minor tweaks of published powers. After 1st level I'll be designing the powers with the characters. I'm looking at doing fewer than 100 powers up front.
mkill: Good advice but I have a very mixed group. Not everyone would be comfortable with just coming up with a character entirely from scratch. I'm also making a very different campaign setting where there are no elves and dwarves. I need some race/class combinations to establish a baseline. Where we go from there is open-ended.
Hebitsuikaza: Well my Treeman is basically a dwarf/dragonborn and my Corvid is basically an elf/shifter... trust me, the PHBs are being plundered for mechanics and the internet is being scoured for art. However not everything can just be refluffed. For example I had to design area weapons for my grenadier to use.
AaronOfBarbaria: yep, player feedback is always key to a successful campaign.
slobo777a: Character builder is awesome, but I'm a programmer so instead of handing my players a sheet of houserules I'll just sit them down and they'll go through a simple character builder wizard.
Also to everyone who that that homebrewed stuff doesn't make sense: are you aware of which forum this is?
I'm not even doing anything crazy like modifying healing surges or allowing people to recharge dailies.slobo777a: Character builder is awesome, but I'm a programmer so instead of handing my players a sheet of houserules I'll just sit them down and they'll go through a simple character builder wizard.
When you say "a simple character builder wizard" do you mean a new app that you have written, or a mod to the official Character Builder?
I'm a professional programmer, and have written plenty of hobby-level odds and ends for RPGS, so could have a go myself, if the official CB can accept modifications. I had assumed it could not.
not a mod, just a simple new app. I'm thinking of a series of screens with pictures, text, and radio buttons or check boxes. Nothing fancy at all.
Shame, you got me all excited about modding Character Builder there!
I'm definitely going the CB route, so that has defined how I want to handle customising the races.