An array for character generation

By Bilateralrope, in Dark Heresy House Rules

Posted at
I don't like rolling for stats in characters that are expected to live for a while, as I hate it when the rolled stats do not allow me to play the character that I want to play. The point buy alternative works, though the randomness on the fate threshold, wound count and divination are still annoying. Plus point buy is prone to really minmaxed stats, can take a while for some people*, and point buy is not usually something I'd recommend to players new to a system.


*I have the group do character creation in the first session.


One method I have seen work in other games is an array . So I'm going to try and implement one in Dark Heresy, though the characteristic bonus and penalty from the homeworld choice do complicate it a bit.


Array method

Players are given a table with 11 rows and 3 columns of numbers. This is the array. After choosing their homeworld they assign one line to each of their characteristics. For most characteristics they add the first two numbers together as if it was the 2d10 roll, then add 20 to get the characteristic value. Where the homeworld gives a + or - to a characteristic they take all three numbers and treat them as if they had rolled them for that characteristic.


The player then takes the first two numbers in the remaining line. One of them is used as the result for the Emperors Blessing roll, the other is divided by two (rounding up) to see how many wounds they have.


That just leaves two types of rolls for random things left. The interesting rolls, and the uninteresting ones.

Interesting rolls : These are the rolls where letting players choose their result should lead to them thinking about what to pick. Examples include: Divination roll, mutation roll for mutant background, malignancy roll for Mutation without, corruption within.

Uninteresting rolls : These are the rolls that, if a player is allowed to choose, they would almost all pick either the lowest result (for harmful effects) or highest (beneficial effects). Examples include: The CP roll on unsanctioned psykers, the fellowship reduction on the razor fangs mutation.

For the interesting rolls, I'll let players choose the result during character creation (but not if the roll comes up later). Note that they only get to choose from results that are possible from the dice roll, for example mutants will only be able to take mutations that need a roll of 50 or less.


For the uninteresting rolls, I can't see any way to make them interesting. So I'll leave them as random and justify it by saying that the players chose an option that would lead to a random roll.


The only problem I can see is that I'm not sure what values to use for the array. Ideally I'd like numbers where I can give my players a choice between rolling for everything by the RAW or using the array leads to them choosing the method they prefer, without either method reliably producing characters more powerful than the other. Because I know that some people like rolling for stats.


Any thoughts ?

Posted at

As a GM I asked the group wether they wanted to roll or buy the stats. They decided to roll them. When the dice rolls didn't mesh with the character concept the player had, I allowed him to switch two (max. 3) values around, so it would make sense. For example, I allowed the Feral World - Warrior character to switch WS (which was really bad) with FEL (which was really good), because it fitted his character concept of the space barbarian.

Posted at

If Sum([Rolls]) < 110

Then RerollAll()

Else Allow one reroll (Keep Last) and 1/2 switches.

Switches exception (Optional): Only between + to +, Normal to normal. If Normal Char > - Char, then Allow switch between the 2 (Meaning - char will be less than others, which is ok).

If it does not suit the PC, just because of the numbers (and not the totals being almost 220 ... ), you could propose to reroll as well.

Since I dislike the min/max with the manual allocation, I tend to prefer rolling and getting fair results.

If you like manual allocation, you could also impose to put at least 1/2 points in each characteristic. It tends to disturb the min/maxing a bit :)

Edited by devilredneck
Posted at

Here's another way to do it:

Roll characteristic dice 5 times (rather than 10) to generate 5 values.

Subtract each of those values from 20 to generate 5 more values.

Assign your 10 values to characteristics as desired.

This will drop down your character averages a bit from normal, so I'd recommend then adding an additional 10 floater points the player can spend on any characteristics they want.

This makes every player balanced, adds the fun of randomness, and allows freedom in character concepts.

Posted at

Here's another way to do it:

Roll characteristic dice 5 times (rather than 10) to generate 5 values.

Subtract each of those values from 20 to generate 5 more values.

Assign your 10 values to characteristics as desired.

This will drop down your character averages a bit from normal, so I'd recommend then adding an additional 10 floater points the player can spend on any characteristics they want.

This makes every player balanced, adds the fun of randomness, and allows freedom in character concepts.

What kind of average scores should this be generating?

Because the standard point buy has 315 points divided across 10 statistics, with each one included between 25 and 45. Your method seems to assign 5 scores around 15 and 5 around 5 (on average), with a total of only about 100.

So here's what I'd do:

Roll characteristic dice 5 times (rather than 10) to generate 5 values.

Subtract each of those values from 20 to generate 5 more values.

Assign your 10 values to characteristics as desired.

Add 20pts to each characteristic, and then modify some of the by 5 as your homeworld requires.

You then have 10 points to add as you wish to any stat.

Posted at

Here's another way to do it:

Roll characteristic dice 5 times (rather than 10) to generate 5 values.

Subtract each of those values from 20 to generate 5 more values.

Assign your 10 values to characteristics as desired.

This will drop down your character averages a bit from normal, so I'd recommend then adding an additional 10 floater points the player can spend on any characteristics they want.

This makes every player balanced, adds the fun of randomness, and allows freedom in character concepts.

What kind of average scores should this be generating?

Because the standard point buy has 315 points divided across 10 statistics, with each one included between 25 and 45. Your method seems to assign 5 scores around 15 and 5 around 5 (on average), with a total of only about 100.

So here's what I'd do:

Roll characteristic dice 5 times (rather than 10) to generate 5 values.

Subtract each of those values from 20 to generate 5 more values.

Assign your 10 values to characteristics as desired.

Add 20pts to each characteristic, and then modify some of the by 5 as your homeworld requires.

You then have 10 points to add as you wish to any stat.

You're doing it the way I intended. I forgot to mention that you add the base values of 20 modified by home world.

Posted at

You all seem to like randomness to some degree, just not quite as much randomness as the RAW provides. I don't like randomness in character creation at all, nor do I like how point-buy often leaves characters so minmaxed, so I'm looking for another method. One with as little randomness as possible.

Here is an OpenOffice spreadsheet I quickly made to demonstrate what the array would look like. The three coloumns on the left are the array, with the cells set to generate random numbers between 1 and 10 (ctrl-shift-f9 rerolls all of them). The three columns on the right give the total characteristic given if you use that line for a -characteristic, regular characteristic or +characteristic. With conditional formatting to highlight values of 25 or less and values of 35 or higher.

If I don't get some good numbers to fill the array with, I could keep rerolling the array until I get one everyone is happy with (playing with the thresholds for conditional formatting will affect how happy they are with the same numbers*). Then give my players a choice between the array and rolling by RAW.

Something that might amuse you is how much difference there is in the chance of rolling stats that let you qualify for specific classes in early D&D when rolling 3d6 straight down the line and 4d6 drop lowest, arranged .

*I am disappointed by the lack of evil grin smilies on this forum.

Posted at
*I am disappointed by the lack of evil grin smilies on this forum.

Sorry, I don't post much in the House Rules forum.