Hello,

This is my first post on these forums, so hello to everyone=)

Now on to the topic. I've always liked the idea of rolling a character. Given, in practice, it can (and will) mess people up. The easy way around this is of course just giving characters points to divide up, but that felt a bit boring to me. My second idea was having every character roll 2d10s nine times and then dividing their total by the number of players. However, I felt that this was like punishing the guy that rolled the highest, because he would have to give up alot of points to the guy that rolled the least. So i set about to find away to make sure people at least rolled a decent character, and this is what i got:

Step One: Homeworld is rolled (no change)

Step Two: Characteristics

This is where most of the changes are made. You roll each characteristic in order. On a roll of a seven or less you may re roll until you are above a seven, my logic being that with the average starting stat of 20 plus eight would but you in the average range while with a starting of 15 it will put you within on stat advance ment of average. Once this is done you select one stat to re roll, with the same rules as before. Once you have all your rolls, ask your players to add them up. If the result is less than a number you (The GM) has selected, in my cause 100, your player may choose to re roll all his stats. If not then you proceed.

Step Three: Career

To continue with the random nature of these creation rules, I wanted to expand it to careers as well. But to avoid shoehoring characters into careers they are no good at, I let players roll twice on these tables, re rolling repeats. If you want you can even rule that the player re rolls repeats within a group.

This is as far as my changes have gone. Wounds and Fate points are up to you. I gave a re roll to a player that rolled a one on his fate points. Most of all these rules are made to keep the randomness in a fun way rather than risking playing the statistcally weak character. As a final fail safe, I ruled that at the end of character creation, the player may say "GM, I really don't feel this character." And at that we would start all over.

What do you guys think? So far I have tried it twice, once with a semi WHRPG vet, and once with a guy that was VERY opposed to rolling characters. They were both won over, and rolled, respectively, a Tech Priest with a 130 and a Cleric with a 109. This is what i wanted to perserve most of all, some characters being more gifted than others without their being a runt.

I did a couple of home brew char gens for DH, the best one in the end was

do a "points buy", ie give the characters, way 180 (avg: char of 20) or 225 (avg char of 25) and then roll 9D10, each players adds the result of one die to each of their characteristics.

The advantage of this is that it removes the phenomena in straight points by where all characteristics are multiples of 10 and I find everyone is much happier with a group pool of dice to pick characteristics from and can pick the characteristics they want to be highest.

Wounds and Fate points I just give everyone 3 Fate and Double Toughness bonus + 5 wounds.

Our house rules have always been somewhat generous in regard to stat generation. We typically allow a flat re-roll of any "1"; and for DH, I allow one re-roll of one stat, in addition to Emperor's Mercy, which allows you to your lowest stat, and then, raise it to the average score if below that number (much like the WHF allowed Shallya's Mercy, this means that you take "11", which is average for a 2d10 roll and add that to the static value typically generating a score of "26", "31" or "36").

My players get their characteristics for DH or RT in the following way and they love it; each player rolls 2 sets of nine numbers (2d10 of course). They then reroll the lowest number in each set taking the higher of those two numbers (for example 7 is the lowest number in a set so the player rerolls but the reroll is a 6 so they keep the 7). They pick the better set and allocate those numbers where they want. This keeps it somewhat random and keeps me from giving them anything for free. After all if a player rolls a 2 and rerolls a 3 then they will pick the other set if it’s better overall… that or they were just destined to have a really low characteristic.

Using this I had a player end up with his lowest number in both sets (after his rerolls) being 4’s. But since he could allocate he put the 4 in Intelligence because he was a Guardsman and said thinking was for other people. The highest number in the set he chosen was a 19 (in the other set the highest was 14, easy pick, lol) which he put in Weapon Skill.

When I get bored I make random characters and I’ve rolled up a random NPC using this with every number in both sets being under 12 and I’ve rolled characters with all the numbers being over 12. I (and my players) like this system because it has the sense of being random but because you can allocate you aren’t really punished for rolling poorly once or twice.

That’s the problem with rolling the characteristics in order for me. If your first three or four rolls are bad your character won’t last long because they will die in the first real fight. But with this system you can make sure your character fits the way you want to play it. I’ll never forget the time I made a random character on the Dark Reign character generator which rolls the states in order and got a Tech-priest with an Intelligence of 23 and a Fellowship of 38, lol, or the Guardsman with an Intelligence of 40 and a WS and BS or 24 and 27 respectively.

we use following system: choose homeworld+career

9 *2d10 in order

then check if all your 3 primary stats are 15+ if only one is below 15 you have to try get it to 15 with your reroll

if there is one primary stat below 15 by now you can (not have to) throw away the array and completely start over

primary stats are the 3 stats that you can train with 100xp

alternatively we tried the gm rolling 3 sets for each player and he could decide which one he liked best but this wasn't accepted very well

I have been slowly building a Character Creation Booklet 4 my new campaign (my 1st in DH, btw). If you want a copy, email me @ [email protected].

The rough basics are as follows

1 - Home World

- as normal

2 - Characteristics

- 130pts 4 stats

- all stats start @ 20 + homeworld modifiers (HWM)

- no stat below 25 - HWM

- no stat above 50 + HWM

3 - Career Path

-as normal

4a - Secondary Characteristics (W, FP, Wealth, M)

- Wounds are taken as 10 + HWM + Toughness Bonus

- Fate Points = max roll on Fate Points Table

- Wealth is Max Roll + 100

- Movement speeds as normal

4b - Spend Experience

- 600 XP to spend

- All Quick Start Character Options from the Core Rulebook are available

- All Background Packages from Inquisitors Handbook are Available

This is as far as I have got so far, but I am planing to allow the players to pick 1 rare - very rare weapon for free (gifts from their Inquisitor), and a few changes on the wat ur characters look like bit.

Let me know wat you think

I made a set of rules for background character creation when DH first came out. It should still be on Dark Reign as "Alternate character generation". It was one of my many Unofficial Unearthed Apocrypha Articles (UUAA) back when I use to write them.

Maybe I should get back on that train.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Totally, PK_B. I rather enjoyed your work when I could actually get my digital hands on it.

? Come on ride the train... ?

-=Brother Praetus=-

EDIT: Totally forum failure to recognizes ASCII characters Alt14 and Alt13. Level = EPIC

I gave the players a few extra rerolls, and the option to switch two rolls. It worked fairly well, but like anything based on dice it could turn ugly with some bad luck so I wasn't all that fond of it. I have never found a way to handle this that I like, in any game based on d100. Either you roll, and get nice random numbers but risk getting way of the norm, or you buy, in which case all DH-characters will only have stats on a multiple of 10 and you might as well have used a d10-system instead.

If I was to start a new campaign now I would consider doing a very small random. let the characters buy most of the stats (probably allowing at the most 15+homeworld in each stat), and then add 1d5 to each.