Kind of a belated Character Creation Challenge post here, huh? ANYway.
I was reading through the Hollows corebook after this weekend’s game, thinking about the Priest pregen, and I noticed that the stats on the preview seemed a little off in the low direction. I also had the aforementioned dissonance with optimal tactics for the two weapons. So I ran through character generation, mostly for the sake of checking the math but also to see if there were any easy tweaks I’d make if I wanted to play Caleb in a campaign. (Which I do, of course.)
I’m not gonna explain all the mechanics here but if you grab the quickstart you’ll have everything you need to fully understand this.
First, the pregen stats in brief:
Strong: 8
Hard: 10
Quick: 7
Sharp: 14
Wise: 11
Resolve: 7
Wounds: 6
The Book (Form: Sacred)
The Shotgun (Form: Sawed-Off)
OK, maybe a couple of notes. The stats were a fine enough blend although that 7 in Quick is a bear when you’re using it for defense, and plenty of enemies target Quick. Since you’ve got to roll equal to or under your stat to defend, 7 is a vulnerability. I don’t think you can totally avoid those, though, unless you want to give up your powerful attack stat which in the Priest’s case is Sharp. Second, Weapons have three Forms; the special ability that comes with Sawed-Off is what encourages the Priest to get up close and personal.
So let’s get into the remaking. I used the basic stat array: 10, 10, 10, 8, and 8 ordered however I like. I’m just trying to reproduce the math that generated the pregen here; that means I’ll start with:
Strong: 8
Hard: 10
Quick: 8
Sharp: 10
Wise: 10
The Book gives me a choice: I can take +1 to both Sharp and Wise, +2 to Wise, or +2 to Sharp. I’ll take the first one. The Shotgun (and in fact all weapons) also gives me a choice: +1 to Hard and Sharp, +2 to Hard, or +2 to Sharp. You may see a pattern here.
Meanwhile, the Book mandates -1 to Strong, +3 to Resolve, and +4 to Wounds. The Shotgun gives -1 to Strong, +3 to Resolve, and +4 to Wounds. There is no way to reproduce the pregen stat array if we start with the basic stat array. You can’t get Sharp to 14 unless you maximize the Weapon bonuses, in which case Wise is still stuck at 10, and Strong is going to drop to 6 unless I start it at 10 in which case Hard will drop to 8. And nothing drops Quick to 7. (Sorry this is long-winded – I’m literally working this out as I type.) What if we use the specialized build, which gives us a 11, 10, 10, 8, and a 7 to distribute?
Well, we can put the 7 into Quick which is not otherwise modified, OK. The 11 goes into Sharp… let’s just write it out.
Strong: 10 (-1 from Book, -1 from Shotgun results in 8)
Hard: 8 (no changes from Weapons)
Quick: 7 (no changes from Weapons)
Sharp: 11 (+1 from Book, +2 from Shotgun results in 14)
Wise: 10 (+1 from Book results in 11)
That’s closer but Hard is still 2 points lower using the real character generation rules. OK, so as far as base stats go, the pregens are a bit more powerful than they should be. Interesting.
The damage tracks are simpler and are what first caught my eye when I was reviewing the rules. You don’t get a base in either of those, so it’s just a total of 6 Resolve and 8 Wounds from the Weapons. Resolve is a bit lower than the pregen, and Wounds is higher. Overall the pregen is shorted 1 point of damage tracks but gets better stats.
None of this annoys me. The game was still going through the last bits of development when the quickstart was released, so it’s entirely plausible that the rules changed in ways which affected all of this and I’d rather have the preview copy of the rules I have now than a perfectly aligned quickstart.
As far as other choices: the Book/Shotgun pairing is almost certainly not optimal. That’s good for a pregen; as a player, I want to feel smarter than the pregens! The one thing I would tweak for the Priest, though, is the Shotgun’s Form. Instead of taking Sawed-Off, which rewards you a lot for being in Close range, I’d take Long-Barrel, which rewards you a lot for being at Ranged distance. That provides some breathing room for slipping back into Support mode when you really need to heal yourself.
If I was trying to design my very own version of Caleb the Priest for campaign play, I’d maybe flirt with the Rifle for the sake of stat synergy and staying at a distance from the enemy. Might be better for defensive play as well, given some of the Weapon abilities. But that’s a question for another post.
This level of player choice during character creation is absolutely perfect for some of my gaming moods. The choices matter in a meaningful way, there’s no clear best choice, and there’s a ton to discover during play. Because Christopher Taylor and Grant Howitt are smart designers, there is a mechanic for swapping around your Weapons although I don’t think you can change your base stats. I don’t think I’d wind up feeling stuck at any point. Even if Caleb swapped to, say, a Knife and a Spear, both of which use Quick, he’d still be able to have an 11 Quick before he even advanced that stat.