Canned characters and rerolling

[Lymond]

I recently started a new game with four party members, including the basic IWD paladin and bard. I assumed that they would have their prime attribute maxed out, and was surprised to see that the paladin has only 17 charisma. Then I noticed the other attributes weren't great, either. Does anyone ever use these characters? Do they have anything special about them?

When I create a character myself, I usually reroll until the total points get to be over 80. Then I maximize the character's primary attribute, constitution and dexterity. Is that cheating or is that what you're supposed to do?

Lymond

[Duke Hereward]

As far as I am concerned that's what you should be doing - if you're transferring points then you'll be making some stats weaker to improve others, a kind of risk-reward deal. Its get to cheating (IMO) if you open up Dalekeeper and max everything out before tramping around the 'dale kicking the living daylights out of everything in a very speedy manner! I liked the challenge of the undead caves with a low level party - recently I took a maxed out party of six in there and just waited for the whole damn lot to come at me before knocking them out for six in a couple of swipes!!!

[pritchke]

No it is not cheating but could be considered power gaming. I usually do the same thing until I get at least reasonable states. Some people roll & roll until they get it perfect but I don't have time for that and realistically that is not how it would really be which I would consider true power gaming.

Don't forget that you can change points to different attributes as you feel fit when creating a character. Take a point from Wisdom and boast Charisma to 18.

[Yanez]

Those pre-made characters are in my opinion, meant to be a bit more realistic than those characters we gamers use to make. I played once with the entire party made of pre-made characters, and it wasn't so tough to beat the game.
Afterall I don't know a single DM in a PnP game who would let you roll your stats until you are satisfied with them.

[ 05-16-2003, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: Yanez ]

[Stratos]

I don´t know if the Paladin and the Bard have a prime attribute and since they can´t multi/dual class int his game it doesn´t matter either. But I suppose that Charisma can be called their prime attr. Both the Paladin and the Bard are good classes.

As for rerolling I have a bad habit of trying to make my characters perfect. Yes I know it´s power-gaming but but my opinion of a difficult fight is that the enemies have better weapons,armor and skills rather than that my fighter can´t score a hit due to low strenght. I´m starting to hold back on the perfectionism lately but I always go for the max Dex for most of the characters. The armor class bonus is great especially if you can´t wear armors. I usually also go for max Con for warriors and 16 on all others. As well as max the prime attribute. That´s max of 84 if I´m correct.

[Midget Gems]

Just like most people, I like to re-roll for good stats and play with powerful characters, but I try to make to make up for it by using smaller parties or by increasing the difficulty. However on one occation I wanted to beat the game with a weak party so I rolled six characters each with 80 points (no catagory less than 8 points) and I made them all dual-class or multi-class. It was quite a challenge to allocate the points but at the end of the day I had a nice well balance game. Just finished a solo game as well, so you can play it anyway you like.

[Stratos]

Yes, whenever I play solo I always have a better character than anyone in a party. I mean a solo character have to do everything for himself such as carrying around stuff. You don´t want a fighter with low to medium strenght when he has to wear a full plate mail, a twohanded sword, any other protection gear AND all equipment needed. Although I find inventory space more of a problem than how much you can carry in weight. Probably because it´s so easy to give a character a strengh of 18 or more while inventory space is constant.

[Dragonshadow]

Do you mean those pre-generated characters that come with the game that you can't change the stats of?

[ZFR]

Originally posted by Dragonshadow: Do you mean those pre-generated characters that come with the game that you can't change the stats of?

no you cant... can only change name and biography

[Dragonshadow]

Originally posted by ZFR: quote: Originally posted by Dragonshadow: Do you mean those pre-generated characters that come with the game that you can't change the stats of?

no you cant... can only change name and biography [/QUOTE]Yeah them. My most sucsessful party was with them, they're good, and I haven't had any others since. I suggest you use them.