Behold -- a coalescence. Two disparate elements have come into phase, like the orbits of planets lining up to enable a ritual to destroy all life.
One: People are once again tearing each other's throats out over racial ASIs. This directs at least a small amount of attention towards old-school chargen -- roll stats in order, pick race (possibly to "fix" your stats), pick class (possibly some are locked except to certain stat rolls), maybe die young and start again. A lot of us don't really understand why anyone would want to play this way, since we're so accustomed to building our binders full of potential, fully-built characters that are ready to play in whatever adventure we manage to sign up for.
Two: Your friendly neighborhood ChoirOfFire is writing a meat grinder adventure that's going to use this method (or a slightly abbreviated version thereof). But I've never actually used it before! And some of my prospective players haven't either. I'm afraid it'll be a hard sell, for some, and while it's fine if someone really doesn't like it, I'd like to convince them to give it a try if they haven't.
So! I've marked this a (+) thread, which isn't really used here on Beyond but elsewhere it means basically, don't post if you're going to disagree with the premise of the thread. And that premise is: character discovery, aka character *generation,* is a cool and valid way to play. Now, I can't actually enforce that, and it's cool if you want to present counterarguments for the purposes of counter-countering them, but I'd personally appreciate if we don't turn this into an argument over whether rolling is better than point buy, or whatever. What I'd really like is to hear from those of you who do, or did, use this method in your games, and enjoy(ed) it. I'm interested in what exactly is cool about it. I'm more or less locked into using it anyway, for reasons other than its inherent value, but it'd be good to have some perspective that I can share with the skeptics in my group.
It's an interesting premise for character generation. I've only ever seen it used for beer and pretzel throw away characters. However, I can't comment further because you clearly don't want to hear about any negative experiences.
It's an interesting premise for character generation. I've only ever seen it used for beer and pretzel throw away characters. However, I can't comment further because you clearly don't want to hear about any negative experiences.
I'm open to hearing some pitfalls or things I can maybe avoid. I just don't really need this to turn into the thread that has to defend the very concept of one of the oldest traditions of D&D. Consider it a given that it's not necessarily for everyone, and that the Other Way is also good.
So I'm old hat. I've played this way, and it's accidentally led to some hilarious and fun builds.
A former friend of mine had a Barbarian called Grue, who had a 5 INT, 4 WIS and 4 CHA. Dude was certified stupid. Also had a 18 STR, 18 DEX and 18 CON. Dude was a brick shithouse who could nimbly climb anything you threw at him. If you could get him to understand you.
He was an absolute blast to be around and play. This was during 2nd edition where roleplaying your character was built into mechanics. Found a magic item with that barbarian? They were going to try and destroy it. First level barbarian would rather DIE than be TOUCHED by a spell caster.
I think one of the positives of this is that it accidentally encourages builds from people who otherwise wouldn't do them. Step outside your comfort zone forever bard, you're a melee class now.
If I wanted to do 'character discovery', I'd do it properly:
Roll stats in order (4d6 keep 3, or some other method; roll a dozen characters on 3d6 and pick the one you like best is about as powerful). No arranging them in an order you like.
Roll on the table in Reincarnate (or other table the DM likes better) for race. No picking a race that fits your stats.
If I wanted to do 'character discovery', I'd do it properly:
Roll stats in order (4d6 keep 3, or some other method; roll a dozen characters on 3d6 and pick the one you like best is about as powerful). No arranging them in an order you like.
Roll on the table in Reincarnate (or other table the DM likes better) for race. No picking a race that fits your stats.
Come up with a random table for backgrounds.
Class... that part you get to pick.
I feel you're being facetious. Legally, you have to tell me if you're being facetious.
If I wanted to do 'character discovery', I'd do it properly:
Roll stats in order (4d6 keep 3, or some other method; roll a dozen characters on 3d6 and pick the one you like best is about as powerful). No arranging them in an order you like.
Roll on the table in Reincarnate (or other table the DM likes better) for race. No picking a race that fits your stats.
Come up with a random table for backgrounds.
Class... that part you get to pick.
Honestly, I like it for a one-shot or something. Call it "God decided to roll on the Wild Humanoid table."
If feeling extra spicy, maybe even add in an extra step before choosing the class where everyone gets a free feat at level 1......also determined completely at random. This is by no means necessary but could make things even more of a wonderful mess
Edit: Its clearly too late for this, but thinking about it I feel like they should have printed a new (optional) version of the Reincarnate spell for MMM.
I feel you're being facetious. Legally, you have to tell me if you're being facetious.
I'm not. If you're going to go the route of random character creation, do it properly.
Alright, well I'm not going to get real deep into it here, but the inspiration behind the thing I'm writing is the video game Hades. (Obviously I'm hoping my absence of an incredible design team and lots of testers and so on, will be made up for by the inherent magic of playing live with my friends, and my raw charisma.) If you're familiar with how that works, you can think of the race choice as replacing the weapon. It's a little raft of control in a sea of chaos. I think it helps you get your mind started imagining paths you want to try to take.
Anywho, I'm curious. Are you saying you would actually want to, as you say, do it properly, or are you saying that if one was going to make the mistake of doing it at all, then one might as well do it properly? Have you done it in the past? It's more than a little difficult to infer tone over the internet, sometimes.
Anywho, I'm curious. Are you saying you would actually want to, as you say, do it properly, or are you saying that if one was going to make the mistake of doing it at all, then one might as well do it properly? Have you done it in the past? It's more than a little difficult to infer tone over the internet, sometimes.
I haven't done it with D&D, but I've done random character builds for other systems (such as various lifepath systems). It definitely leads to some interesting characters that you wouldn't think of otherwise, but that includes characters who are totally the 'wrong' race for their stats, so by letting people optimize on race you're losing a lot.
It's all about the people you're playing with. My regular group wouldn't be up for it. I'd do it. For me, "character discovery" means I build the bare bones, and let their experiences dictate how they build as they level. Maybe they need to take a feat at lvl 4 instead of an ASI. Maybe the ASI gets put into a non power stat because they had a few clutch rolls that changed the direction of a story. Maybe the adventure they had at level 1 and the group dynamic determines the subclass they take at level 3 instead of me declaring and trying to play the character like someone with this subclass would act.
So I've used this way a many times back in the way way back, and it has generated some fun times. Long story short it made playes play classes they normaly didn't play, and that made for some fun time, and great role-playing moments.
Old timer here. It can definitely generate some interesting role play moments if your group enjoys role play. It does put a lot more on the DM to help the players feel okay with what has been wrought. But if that would be fun for you then by all means do it.
"Discover at the table" means backstory is left at the door and nobody has any history or connection to the world - you're just assembling whatever the numbers tell you to assemble and then punching the Go Time button. If you want to sell your players on the idea, perhaps your game could lean into that.
If your table is as chock full of weebs as mine, maybe the new characters are all isekai'd souls with no idea how the world works, pulled into this realm and given the bare minimum of instructions before being sent off to find either glory or death a'la Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash. Could be that a magical disease/contagion/curse of some sort randomly saps people of their memories but empowers them unpredictably, and the characters are trying to figure out the cause of this chaotic effect and either undo it or learn to control it for themselves. Could be that all of the characters are people who've died in the past, corpses reanimated and brought back to life without any memory of their original lives, and they're considered both blessed protectors of the realm and not truly people - they're guardians animated by whatever protects the land, not the living men and women they once were.
There's a few other ways to generally explain "you're an [X]ish [Y] because you rolled [Z] stats, here's your basic starter kit, no you don't know a damned soul in this world, now go out and murder evil shit until you die", but I figure that making it an integral part of the worldscape could be a twist most D&D players don't get to dig into. Make it a chance to figure out a new and different kind of story rather than simply denying people the story they're used to telling.
Depending on how 'meat grinder' the campaign is, you could even use a trick Angry GM did for one of his games and have the PCs tied to an object that continually resurrects them when they die. Perhaps they come back in a new form, but you could let them retain the soul and memories they've built up, a'la reincarnate. Every time they die, the player rolls new stats and builds a new sheet, but the character is the same. They have the memory of being something else, and they cannot break their tie to this strange alien magical object that keeps pulling them from the grave. Let the players keep their built-up history and connections but with all the mechanical penalties of getting merder'd, and give them a mother of a mystery to solve to boot. Why them? Why does the device not work on anyone else? Why won't it stop working on them? Why do their minds and bodies change so drastically whenever they come back? What happens when other people realize the object exists and tries to take it - and thus, them - by force?
Lean into the whole "you have no history" angle and use it as a chance to present your players with a story none of you could really experience otherwise, and you may get better buy-in on the idea.
"Discover at the table" means backstory is left at the door and nobody has any history or connection to the world - you're just assembling whatever the numbers tell you to assemble and then punching the Go Time button. If you want to sell your players on the idea, perhaps your game could lean into that.
Well, that's not necessarily true -- you could fill out the backstory after you know the stats. However, this is how my plans are shaped, yes. You don't really develop your character before you start a Rogue-like, and this is one of those.
Lean into the whole "you have no history" angle and use it as a chance to present your players with a story none of you could really experience otherwise, and you may get better buy-in on the idea.
That's the plan. I won't go in-depth because A: no one cares, and B: my players sometimes read the forums. But I'm glad to hear that you had the same idea, because I think you're pretty clever. However, I think the "reincarnation device" angle might be better than my idea... Hm. Well, I'll think on it.
Old timer here. It can definitely generate some interesting role play moments if your group enjoys role play. It does put a lot more on the DM to help the players feel okay with what has been wrought. But if that would be fun for you then by all means do it.
Yeah, that's something I'm a little nervous about. I'm of two minds on it. One side of me says that since death is a part of the gameplay loop here, I should just lean in and let characters suffer and fail. I mean, sometimes the dice don't even want to let you die, and that can be hilarious too, but you're not really meant to have a character exist for more than, I'd estimate, about four sessions. Probably fewer. The other side says I should balance out truly abysmal stats with some kind of consolation prize, and I can think of some that would make sense in my lore, I'm just not sure it's a good idea.
What's been the best balm at your games where you've had players roll trash stats? Better for the DM to encourage a devil-may-care attitude? I heard a quote about the Blades in the Dark game, saying that players should play their characters like a stolen vehicle, and I like that. Get up to as much trouble as you can before you get caught.
So I've used this way a many times back in the way way back, and it has generated some fun times. Long story short it made playes play classes they normaly didn't play, and that made for some fun time, and great role-playing moments.
Nice! I'm hoping to have some of that, where players need to feel which way the wind is blowing. Decide when to change to something unknown, and when to push through with something they're already good at. I'm a little worried that the sort of meat grinder aspect will dissuade people from actually having fun characterizing their probably-doomed characters... But really, I don't think I could stop them if I tried.
I'm pretty sure that was serious. I'd be serious if I said it. If I'm taking randomness for my character build, I'm leaning into it.
I'm in a group now where we rolled our characters randomly to determine race/class/background, although we didn't use the old school method for coming up with stats. In fact, I don't ever remember doing that in BECMI or 1e -- we always either kept rolling stats until we got a set we liked, assigned the numbers where we wanted, or fudged the numbers afterward with some cost attached (i.e. shifting three points out of some stats got you two points to add to others, that kind of thing)
First campaign, I got an orc rogue outlander ("I was, in fact, raised by wolves"), a combo that allowed me to discover how useful the Aggressive feature is on a character that wants to zip around the battlefield. We TPK'ed at level 3 though
Second campaign, out of a party of five we ended up with three bards and my yuan-ti druid entertainer (I went full Magical Girl with Circle of Stars). We decided to form a band and Scooby-Doo around solving mysteries and playing gigs, with the one non-musical member (a dragonborn fighter) as our roadie and bodyguard. It's been a blast
My advice if you're attempting something like this would be to give the players ONE element they have full control over, whether it's assigning stats, choosing a class, or something equally crucial, but let the fates decide the rest
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I’ve given this a bit of thought, and here’s what I would do.
Week 1, Session 0 “Character Creation.”
At the top of Session 0, give them your 3-minute pitch for your game and let them know what their getting into.
Players: 3 — 5 + DM
XP (not Milestone), generous enough to make up for the rest of this.👇
No ignoring coin weight.
Slow, natural healing.
Guarantee them that PCs will die (and mean it).
Whenever a PC is removed from a player’s Roster, the backup starts at the lowest possible XP required to come in at the same level as the lowest level PC in that player’s Roster.
Give them another 3-minute pitch about the setting lore and such so they get some ideas about the “people” they’ll meet and the world to lubricate their brains. A brief (1 - 1.5 Pages) handout to send them home with is also a decent idea. After that the DM should be on hand to answer questions while people get underway with character creation:
Ideally everyone should generate their characters together in Session 0. That was really part of the fun, everybody getting to "ooh” & “ahh, boo & sigh, and cheer & jeer over their stats as they discuss them trying to figure out what everyone was gonna play. I would use 5e’s 4d6k3 method (because 5e isn’t balanced for straight 3d6), and stats are rolled in order, that’s important. I would have everyone roll 3 batches of 3 sets of stats (so 9 total, batched in 3s), and they must (eventually) pick 3 arrays, one out of each batch (no shuffling).
As part of the process of choosing they should be talking to each other about what they have and what classes would work best and comparing them. . The point is not “what do I want to play?” The point is “what’s the best PC I can make for the party from what I have to work with. This should result in each player having 3 PCs with Abilities & Classes selected.
They each choose a Race and Background to complement each of their 3 PCs. Again, communication is encouraged. The point isn’t #random, it’s pullin’ a Gummer as a team.
At this point everyone should have 3 PCs with everything done but spells & equipment which they can do quickly and/or finish on their own if necessary. Those three PCs they each have are their “roster,” they each pick one as their “active duty” PC and the other two are currently Alternates.
Before they leave they will all also roll another batch of 3 arrays and choose 1 so everyone can make their backup/replacement PC at home by themselves on the ready (“just in case”). They should all also have a very brief (1-3 paragraphs, 3-5 sentences each) backstory written for each of their 3 PCs. That’s not enough to make them “bespoke,” or especially meaningful but it is enough to turn a PC into a Character. A PC is a collection of stats & rules, a character is a person nobody becomes emotionally attached to stats, but people do become attached to people.
Week 2, Session 1”Getting Started.”
Give ‘em a “hot start” and shove them into a dungeon. Nothing complicated or difficult to figure out, but hard to clear. By the end of the session, with luck, 1 PC will be dead and the others will be dragging themselves out to recuperate and tag in Alternates, one player will add their backup to their Roster and need to generate a new backup before next session.
Week 3, Session 2 “Settling In.”
They will hopefully have finished that first dungeon and with luck nobody died this session. (The point isn’t to collect PC scalps. Someone should die in the first two sessions though because 1) it made sense when it happened because the situation was what it was, 2) to set the precedent for the future so it won’t shock them after that first time.)
In the beginning life will be fairly cheap (by 5e standards) and people will throw caution to the wind because they don’t “love” their PCs (yet). As they spend time with those various PCs rotating in and out of active dusty they will each naturally develop their own personalities. They will add to their characters’ backstories just through RPing them. You will see people who would have never built those PCs that way in a million years otherwise grow to love those characters more than they would have ever guessed in a million years. By 5th level they will be far more cautious. By 6th level they no longer get to make backup characters until their Roster is down to 1 character. By 7th level they will have grown more attached to their charactersthan anyone will expect because they’ll have been through the grinder together. And things that many players new see as “wasteful” or “bad building” or whatever because it isn’t optimized to 11 will have proven to be assets instead of detriments through the process of every having pulled a long-running team Gummer. What will have started as a short stack of PCs will eventually become a handful of loved characters. It’s inevitable.
Behold -- a coalescence. Two disparate elements have come into phase, like the orbits of planets lining up to enable a ritual to destroy all life.
One: People are once again tearing each other's throats out over racial ASIs. This directs at least a small amount of attention towards old-school chargen -- roll stats in order, pick race (possibly to "fix" your stats), pick class (possibly some are locked except to certain stat rolls), maybe die young and start again. A lot of us don't really understand why anyone would want to play this way, since we're so accustomed to building our binders full of potential, fully-built characters that are ready to play in whatever adventure we manage to sign up for.
Two: Your friendly neighborhood ChoirOfFire is writing a meat grinder adventure that's going to use this method (or a slightly abbreviated version thereof). But I've never actually used it before! And some of my prospective players haven't either. I'm afraid it'll be a hard sell, for some, and while it's fine if someone really doesn't like it, I'd like to convince them to give it a try if they haven't.
So! I've marked this a (+) thread, which isn't really used here on Beyond but elsewhere it means basically, don't post if you're going to disagree with the premise of the thread. And that premise is: character discovery, aka character *generation,* is a cool and valid way to play. Now, I can't actually enforce that, and it's cool if you want to present counterarguments for the purposes of counter-countering them, but I'd personally appreciate if we don't turn this into an argument over whether rolling is better than point buy, or whatever. What I'd really like is to hear from those of you who do, or did, use this method in your games, and enjoy(ed) it. I'm interested in what exactly is cool about it. I'm more or less locked into using it anyway, for reasons other than its inherent value, but it'd be good to have some perspective that I can share with the skeptics in my group.
So yeah! Uh... Thoughts?
It's an interesting premise for character generation. I've only ever seen it used for beer and pretzel throw away characters. However, I can't comment further because you clearly don't want to hear about any negative experiences.
I'm open to hearing some pitfalls or things I can maybe avoid. I just don't really need this to turn into the thread that has to defend the very concept of one of the oldest traditions of D&D. Consider it a given that it's not necessarily for everyone, and that the Other Way is also good.
So I'm old hat. I've played this way, and it's accidentally led to some hilarious and fun builds.
A former friend of mine had a Barbarian called Grue, who had a 5 INT, 4 WIS and 4 CHA. Dude was certified stupid. Also had a 18 STR, 18 DEX and 18 CON. Dude was a brick shithouse who could nimbly climb anything you threw at him. If you could get him to understand you.
He was an absolute blast to be around and play. This was during 2nd edition where roleplaying your character was built into mechanics. Found a magic item with that barbarian? They were going to try and destroy it. First level barbarian would rather DIE than be TOUCHED by a spell caster.
I think one of the positives of this is that it accidentally encourages builds from people who otherwise wouldn't do them. Step outside your comfort zone forever bard, you're a melee class now.
That stat array is incredible. That's the dream, right? A barbarian of legend.
If I wanted to do 'character discovery', I'd do it properly:
I feel you're being facetious. Legally, you have to tell me if you're being facetious.
I'm pretty sure that was serious. I'd be serious if I said it. If I'm taking randomness for my character build, I'm leaning into it.
Honestly, I like it for a one-shot or something. Call it "God decided to roll on the Wild Humanoid table."
If feeling extra spicy, maybe even add in an extra step before choosing the class where everyone gets a free feat at level 1......also determined completely at random. This is by no means necessary but could make things even more of a wonderful mess
Edit: Its clearly too late for this, but thinking about it I feel like they should have printed a new (optional) version of the Reincarnate spell for MMM.
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I'm not. If you're going to go the route of random character creation, do it properly.
Alright, well I'm not going to get real deep into it here, but the inspiration behind the thing I'm writing is the video game Hades. (Obviously I'm hoping my absence of an incredible design team and lots of testers and so on, will be made up for by the inherent magic of playing live with my friends, and my raw charisma.) If you're familiar with how that works, you can think of the race choice as replacing the weapon. It's a little raft of control in a sea of chaos. I think it helps you get your mind started imagining paths you want to try to take.
Anywho, I'm curious. Are you saying you would actually want to, as you say, do it properly, or are you saying that if one was going to make the mistake of doing it at all, then one might as well do it properly? Have you done it in the past? It's more than a little difficult to infer tone over the internet, sometimes.
I haven't done it with D&D, but I've done random character builds for other systems (such as various lifepath systems). It definitely leads to some interesting characters that you wouldn't think of otherwise, but that includes characters who are totally the 'wrong' race for their stats, so by letting people optimize on race you're losing a lot.
It's all about the people you're playing with. My regular group wouldn't be up for it. I'd do it. For me, "character discovery" means I build the bare bones, and let their experiences dictate how they build as they level. Maybe they need to take a feat at lvl 4 instead of an ASI. Maybe the ASI gets put into a non power stat because they had a few clutch rolls that changed the direction of a story. Maybe the adventure they had at level 1 and the group dynamic determines the subclass they take at level 3 instead of me declaring and trying to play the character like someone with this subclass would act.
So I've used this way a many times back in the way way back, and it has generated some fun times. Long story short it made playes play classes they normaly didn't play, and that made for some fun time, and great role-playing moments.
Old timer here. It can definitely generate some interesting role play moments if your group enjoys role play. It does put a lot more on the DM to help the players feel okay with what has been wrought. But if that would be fun for you then by all means do it.
"Discover at the table" means backstory is left at the door and nobody has any history or connection to the world - you're just assembling whatever the numbers tell you to assemble and then punching the Go Time button. If you want to sell your players on the idea, perhaps your game could lean into that.
If your table is as chock full of weebs as mine, maybe the new characters are all isekai'd souls with no idea how the world works, pulled into this realm and given the bare minimum of instructions before being sent off to find either glory or death a'la Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash. Could be that a magical disease/contagion/curse of some sort randomly saps people of their memories but empowers them unpredictably, and the characters are trying to figure out the cause of this chaotic effect and either undo it or learn to control it for themselves. Could be that all of the characters are people who've died in the past, corpses reanimated and brought back to life without any memory of their original lives, and they're considered both blessed protectors of the realm and not truly people - they're guardians animated by whatever protects the land, not the living men and women they once were.
There's a few other ways to generally explain "you're an [X]ish [Y] because you rolled [Z] stats, here's your basic starter kit, no you don't know a damned soul in this world, now go out and murder evil shit until you die", but I figure that making it an integral part of the worldscape could be a twist most D&D players don't get to dig into. Make it a chance to figure out a new and different kind of story rather than simply denying people the story they're used to telling.
Depending on how 'meat grinder' the campaign is, you could even use a trick Angry GM did for one of his games and have the PCs tied to an object that continually resurrects them when they die. Perhaps they come back in a new form, but you could let them retain the soul and memories they've built up, a'la reincarnate. Every time they die, the player rolls new stats and builds a new sheet, but the character is the same. They have the memory of being something else, and they cannot break their tie to this strange alien magical object that keeps pulling them from the grave. Let the players keep their built-up history and connections but with all the mechanical penalties of getting merder'd, and give them a mother of a mystery to solve to boot. Why them? Why does the device not work on anyone else? Why won't it stop working on them? Why do their minds and bodies change so drastically whenever they come back? What happens when other people realize the object exists and tries to take it - and thus, them - by force?
Lean into the whole "you have no history" angle and use it as a chance to present your players with a story none of you could really experience otherwise, and you may get better buy-in on the idea.
Please do not contact or message me.
We had a great time as a city guard, where we rolled 3d6 in order (not 4d6 keep best 3).
It was a good diversion from the main campaign with "serious" characters, and everyone played into their high and low stats.
Well, that's not necessarily true -- you could fill out the backstory after you know the stats. However, this is how my plans are shaped, yes. You don't really develop your character before you start a Rogue-like, and this is one of those.
That's the plan. I won't go in-depth because A: no one cares, and B: my players sometimes read the forums. But I'm glad to hear that you had the same idea, because I think you're pretty clever. However, I think the "reincarnation device" angle might be better than my idea... Hm. Well, I'll think on it.
Yeah, that's something I'm a little nervous about. I'm of two minds on it. One side of me says that since death is a part of the gameplay loop here, I should just lean in and let characters suffer and fail. I mean, sometimes the dice don't even want to let you die, and that can be hilarious too, but you're not really meant to have a character exist for more than, I'd estimate, about four sessions. Probably fewer. The other side says I should balance out truly abysmal stats with some kind of consolation prize, and I can think of some that would make sense in my lore, I'm just not sure it's a good idea.
What's been the best balm at your games where you've had players roll trash stats? Better for the DM to encourage a devil-may-care attitude? I heard a quote about the Blades in the Dark game, saying that players should play their characters like a stolen vehicle, and I like that. Get up to as much trouble as you can before you get caught.
Nice! I'm hoping to have some of that, where players need to feel which way the wind is blowing. Decide when to change to something unknown, and when to push through with something they're already good at. I'm a little worried that the sort of meat grinder aspect will dissuade people from actually having fun characterizing their probably-doomed characters... But really, I don't think I could stop them if I tried.
I'm in a group now where we rolled our characters randomly to determine race/class/background, although we didn't use the old school method for coming up with stats. In fact, I don't ever remember doing that in BECMI or 1e -- we always either kept rolling stats until we got a set we liked, assigned the numbers where we wanted, or fudged the numbers afterward with some cost attached (i.e. shifting three points out of some stats got you two points to add to others, that kind of thing)
First campaign, I got an orc rogue outlander ("I was, in fact, raised by wolves"), a combo that allowed me to discover how useful the Aggressive feature is on a character that wants to zip around the battlefield. We TPK'ed at level 3 though
Second campaign, out of a party of five we ended up with three bards and my yuan-ti druid entertainer (I went full Magical Girl with Circle of Stars). We decided to form a band and Scooby-Doo around solving mysteries and playing gigs, with the one non-musical member (a dragonborn fighter) as our roadie and bodyguard. It's been a blast
My advice if you're attempting something like this would be to give the players ONE element they have full control over, whether it's assigning stats, choosing a class, or something equally crucial, but let the fates decide the rest
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I told ya l8er. Well it be l8er and here I be.
I’ve given this a bit of thought, and here’s what I would do.
Week 1, Session 0 “Character Creation.”
At the top of Session 0, give them your 3-minute pitch for your game and let them know what their getting into.
Give them another 3-minute pitch about the setting lore and such so they get some ideas about the “people” they’ll meet and the world to lubricate their brains. A brief (1 - 1.5 Pages) handout to send them home with is also a decent idea. After that the DM should be on hand to answer questions while people get underway with character creation:
At this point everyone should have 3 PCs with everything done but spells & equipment which they can do quickly and/or finish on their own if necessary. Those three PCs they each have are their “roster,” they each pick one as their “active duty” PC and the other two are currently Alternates.
Before they leave they will all also roll another batch of 3 arrays and choose 1 so everyone can make their backup/replacement PC at home by themselves on the ready (“just in case”). They should all also have a very brief (1-3 paragraphs, 3-5 sentences each) backstory written for each of their 3 PCs. That’s not enough to make them “bespoke,” or especially meaningful but it is enough to turn a PC into a Character. A PC is a collection of stats & rules, a character is a person nobody becomes emotionally attached to stats, but people do become attached to people.
Week 2, Session 1”Getting Started.”
Give ‘em a “hot start” and shove them into a dungeon. Nothing complicated or difficult to figure out, but hard to clear. By the end of the session, with luck, 1 PC will be dead and the others will be dragging themselves out to recuperate and tag in Alternates, one player will add their backup to their Roster and need to generate a new backup before next session.
Week 3, Session 2 “Settling In.”
They will hopefully have finished that first dungeon and with luck nobody died this session. (The point isn’t to collect PC scalps. Someone should die in the first two sessions though because 1) it made sense when it happened because the situation was what it was, 2) to set the precedent for the future so it won’t shock them after that first time.)
In the beginning life will be fairly cheap (by 5e standards) and people will throw caution to the wind because they don’t “love” their PCs (yet). As they spend time with those various PCs rotating in and out of active dusty they will each naturally develop their own personalities. They will add to their characters’ backstories just through RPing them. You will see people who would have never built those PCs that way in a million years otherwise grow to love those characters more than they would have ever guessed in a million years. By 5th level they will be far more cautious. By 6th level they no longer get to make backup characters until their Roster is down to 1 character. By 7th level they will have grown more attached to their charactersthan anyone will expect because they’ll have been through the grinder together. And things that many players new see as “wasteful” or “bad building” or whatever because it isn’t optimized to 11 will have proven to be assets instead of detriments through the process of every having pulled a long-running team Gummer. What will have started as a short stack of PCs will eventually become a handful of loved characters. It’s inevitable.
You know me, I hope that helps.
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