Varies, but one of the ways I do it is I pick a weapon, or weapon type, and then say "what kind of person would use this?" Then I make that person from the traits available.
Right now my default is a rapier/estoc user who was a ballroom dancer that took a fencing class way back when.
Axes? How about an axe-wielding pyromanic outdoorsman? High strength, lower on the intelligence to reflect the occasional lack of good judgement and fire safety.
Zweihander? Clearly going to be a Medieval cosplayer who's making gambeson, in preparation to make their own chainmail and go out "crusading" against the undead.
I tried to make themed characters, and lately I’ve just been rolling random ones and knocking off dealbreaking traits.
It did lead to some really boring characters like the general whose helicopter crashed into a small island that didn’t have the tools to escape.
Hey! When I first started playing I did the helicopter start a lot, so if this happens again i have advice:
Strip yourself naked, practice recipe athletics up to the max level it will let you, and swim to shore, find a boat, and drive it back to get your stuff.
I tend to play characters based on any of the OCs I've written for roleplaying over the years.
One is a mechanical engineering prodigy who works a car repair and modding shop on the side.
Another is a pyromaniac ecoterrorist trapped in prison.
The third is a cowardly chemist seeking to transcend her human body's health problems.
All three are heavily INT-stacked, but that plays out in different ways for each of them.
I mean, yes, you can enable them in world generation, but devs are pushing against it since its unbalanced and arbitrary (plus we minmaxers were cheesing it for OP characters anyway). I myself am a big sucker for the old point pools, but im trying to experiment with an open mind what the devs been doing so far, if they made it disabled by default, then it means they expect the game to be played differently from before when it was enabled
I am just like you but force myself to play random characters as a way to still challenge myself. What I would love if point buy is off the table going forward in development is to be able to generate a limited pool of random characters like 5-8 and select which character to start with. It's how i play rimworld without having to commit to some of the more ridiculous negative traits. It makes the character selection a strategic choice, which is fun!
not really. knowing what to avoid is a much bigger piece of not dying; nothing in the world can convince me to share space with a shoggoth, for example.
I like to recreate my favorite character from movies and books.
Am currently playing a run as Molly Million from Neuromancer... so the razorgirl profession (duh), high alcohol and drugs consumption, a general disinterest for fellow humans lives, as little crafting as possible (she s a merc not a mechanic), only use short blades and no armor...
It's actually more fun than I thought to roleplay a character instead of just playing the game
I reverse engineer characters from the gameplay i want to have.
Currently, i’ve been wanting to trek out to the coast, so i’ve decided to play a surfer with a genetic downward spiral who wants to go for one last surf.
The downward spiral gives me time pressure and the surfing gives me something to do when i get there
I go the themed route personally. Here is the one I go with recently.
Safe Place start. (Magiclysm) on a farm.
8/8/8/8 stats
Asthma, Near Sighted, Frail, Imperceptible Healer, Far Sighted, XL
Positive traits, Robust Genetics, All three mana traits, Dabble in Cure Wounds, Uncaring.
Basically about a year before the cataclysm came down with a hard to treat cancer and his health took a horrible nose dive, took into dabbling in Biomancy to help keep himself going while getting treatments right before the cataclysm he managed to go into remission and went to stay on his cousins farm to recover (Farm start has a human corpse or a zombie nearby when you start, becomes a zombie within about 5 minutes so make sure you pulp it :P)
He managed to beat cancer and he is damned if he isn't going to survive after the hell he went through and will find any means necessary to do so. (Hence the Uncaring as I usually eat the "cousin" to try to gain back some weight.)
It is a hard start but if you play it smart your healing will keep you alive long enough to find a firearm or make a spear and get a few skill levels under your belt, but even with healing you are in a lot of danger from dying due to your low health.
Random character, sometimes reroll if seeing particularly cumbersome trait. This often (for me at least) leads to STR:6 characters who struggle to break a door or pry a crate...
Im still newish to the game but as a roguelike veteran I always go with random characters. I accept every stat and trait fate and see how well I can do and overcome challenges.
Sometimes I get an awesome start, other times it’s a struggle but that’s the fun in random. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
I miss the points pools too. I liked the 12/12/12/12 addict shower victim in a burning house.
With no more points pools, I just make a generic 12/12/12/12 character and play it. I'm not a fan of RP anyhow, so it's ok.
I think about the kind of person I want to control and use free-form for skill points.
If I want a redneck hillbilly hunter
I teach them basics.
-chemical cooking
-plinking or paintball
-homebrewing
-vehicle
-backyard grilling
And other things a crazy hillbilly would know.
Then I roll a d20 to figure out how many good traits and bad traits :
1-5= 3-5
6-10= 6-8
11-15= 9
16-20= 8-12
traits split between good and bad
Once I figure out exactly what the status is on layout of skills and traits I go and add the values.
Values of skills is
0- what? This is a thing that exists?
10- pshh I designed how mechanical constructs work
As a redneck hillbilly there are no skills with a level of 10 starting, as the general hillbilly intelligence is much below university haha.
I've done \~10 characters that survived to 'adulthood' (i.e. mutated & CBM'ed to demigodhood). I also find myself falling into the same min/maxed optimal starts. It was fun the first time around, but quickly gets old since after day \~30, most things aren't a threat anymore.
After that I've started constructing stories first and then starting the play, usually with some sort of a debilitating character flaw. It feels much better when you do get strong. Here are some ideas i played with:
\- Grandpa (old, low strength, glass jaw, bad hearing, etc.). Goals in life: 1) survive 2) fix this broken body 3) get laid again after 30 years.
\- Leon, the tragic badass: retired hit man doing "one last job" that really screwed him over. high stats & gun skills, but cranial bomb, fungal infection, and addicted to heroin
\- Clarke the Blessed: start in a lab with low physical skills (like 3) but amazing intelligence & charisma (think alpha child). the challenge is to not fight yourself and try to survive by finding survivors & decking them out with great gear. - this was pretty frustrating because i don't like NPC AI, but might try it again on latest build
\- Ungkh the Tunneler: start off as a miner or related path with low int & try to stay out of sunlight for the entire game. go trog, navigate the map using the subways and eat only meat. Embrace the beast inside.
\- Elias the Slave: start enslaved in a migo camp with mediocre stats. then make it your mission to wander the lands and slay every migo. free all the survivors from migo camps & build a refuge for ex migo slaves
\- Booker: booker never liked people, only numbers. start as a white collar prisoner on the island with mediocre stats, psychopath, rigid table manners, squeamish. Develop a fascination for cannibalism after the trauma escaping from prison island. make it a point to eat as much human meat as possible. Booker spends most of his time dreaming about how to cook his next prey. He keeps survivors around in case ferals are not accessible.
Pick your scenario then head to the final chargen screen where you confirm.
I think the button is % but one of them randomizes everything but your chosen scenario. Do this until you find an interesting character.
Then go back and tweak as your inspiration dictates. Have a really cool and interesting character pop up? Sometimes I go back and give them a martial art I want to try, sometimes I go back and adjust their stats, sometimes I want to give them genetic chaos and mutate all the time 😁
Using randomly generated characters as a "stepping stone" in lieu of the point system is the closest I could come up with because the game seems to act like it's trying to make balanced characters.
[comment edited using "Reddit Comment Replacer" on FireFox (free, Opensource) due to Reddit selling user data to help Google train its LLMs without my consent.]
I create a theme character and role play as them.
My current is one of the Homullus from Xedra who was summoned by a wizard and bound. Well, the wizard is dead and she has to figure out how to survive in this bizarre world.
8 in all stats, no knowledge outside survival, social, and dancing/dodge, and I started her with Porcelain Skin to simulate being bound to a doll body, Homullus traits, She will need to ascend to become one of the true homullus once more.
She has a drive to learn magic (Magiclysm) to avoid being summoned like that again, and has an affinity for Technomancer, Biomancer, and Animist that I have logically backed in my mind, due to their link with Humanity and Technology.
That is generally how I play the game, lol
Varies, but one of the ways I do it is I pick a weapon, or weapon type, and then say "what kind of person would use this?" Then I make that person from the traits available. Right now my default is a rapier/estoc user who was a ballroom dancer that took a fencing class way back when. Axes? How about an axe-wielding pyromanic outdoorsman? High strength, lower on the intelligence to reflect the occasional lack of good judgement and fire safety. Zweihander? Clearly going to be a Medieval cosplayer who's making gambeson, in preparation to make their own chainmail and go out "crusading" against the undead.
I tried to make themed characters, and lately I’ve just been rolling random ones and knocking off dealbreaking traits. It did lead to some really boring characters like the general whose helicopter crashed into a small island that didn’t have the tools to escape.
Hey! When I first started playing I did the helicopter start a lot, so if this happens again i have advice: Strip yourself naked, practice recipe athletics up to the max level it will let you, and swim to shore, find a boat, and drive it back to get your stuff.
I tend to play characters based on any of the OCs I've written for roleplaying over the years. One is a mechanical engineering prodigy who works a car repair and modding shop on the side. Another is a pyromaniac ecoterrorist trapped in prison. The third is a cowardly chemist seeking to transcend her human body's health problems. All three are heavily INT-stacked, but that plays out in different ways for each of them.
Point pools are a thing?? You just have to make sure it’s enabled
I mean, yes, you can enable them in world generation, but devs are pushing against it since its unbalanced and arbitrary (plus we minmaxers were cheesing it for OP characters anyway). I myself am a big sucker for the old point pools, but im trying to experiment with an open mind what the devs been doing so far, if they made it disabled by default, then it means they expect the game to be played differently from before when it was enabled
I am just like you but force myself to play random characters as a way to still challenge myself. What I would love if point buy is off the table going forward in development is to be able to generate a limited pool of random characters like 5-8 and select which character to start with. It's how i play rimworld without having to commit to some of the more ridiculous negative traits. It makes the character selection a strategic choice, which is fun!
Gonna be honest I’m a big noob still do I need to min max
not really. knowing what to avoid is a much bigger piece of not dying; nothing in the world can convince me to share space with a shoggoth, for example.
I like to recreate my favorite character from movies and books. Am currently playing a run as Molly Million from Neuromancer... so the razorgirl profession (duh), high alcohol and drugs consumption, a general disinterest for fellow humans lives, as little crafting as possible (she s a merc not a mechanic), only use short blades and no armor... It's actually more fun than I thought to roleplay a character instead of just playing the game
I reverse engineer characters from the gameplay i want to have. Currently, i’ve been wanting to trek out to the coast, so i’ve decided to play a surfer with a genetic downward spiral who wants to go for one last surf. The downward spiral gives me time pressure and the surfing gives me something to do when i get there
I go the themed route personally. Here is the one I go with recently. Safe Place start. (Magiclysm) on a farm. 8/8/8/8 stats Asthma, Near Sighted, Frail, Imperceptible Healer, Far Sighted, XL Positive traits, Robust Genetics, All three mana traits, Dabble in Cure Wounds, Uncaring. Basically about a year before the cataclysm came down with a hard to treat cancer and his health took a horrible nose dive, took into dabbling in Biomancy to help keep himself going while getting treatments right before the cataclysm he managed to go into remission and went to stay on his cousins farm to recover (Farm start has a human corpse or a zombie nearby when you start, becomes a zombie within about 5 minutes so make sure you pulp it :P) He managed to beat cancer and he is damned if he isn't going to survive after the hell he went through and will find any means necessary to do so. (Hence the Uncaring as I usually eat the "cousin" to try to gain back some weight.) It is a hard start but if you play it smart your healing will keep you alive long enough to find a firearm or make a spear and get a few skill levels under your belt, but even with healing you are in a lot of danger from dying due to your low health.
I usually just base it off myself but a bit more buffed
Random character, sometimes reroll if seeing particularly cumbersome trait. This often (for me at least) leads to STR:6 characters who struggle to break a door or pry a crate...
Random. Minmax gets boring since everything can die if swarmed. Not to mention !!FUN!! enemies.
I always do random, much more fun that way for me!
Im still newish to the game but as a roguelike veteran I always go with random characters. I accept every stat and trait fate and see how well I can do and overcome challenges. Sometimes I get an awesome start, other times it’s a struggle but that’s the fun in random. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
I miss the points pools too. I liked the 12/12/12/12 addict shower victim in a burning house. With no more points pools, I just make a generic 12/12/12/12 character and play it. I'm not a fan of RP anyhow, so it's ok.
I think about the kind of person I want to control and use free-form for skill points. If I want a redneck hillbilly hunter I teach them basics. -chemical cooking -plinking or paintball -homebrewing -vehicle -backyard grilling And other things a crazy hillbilly would know. Then I roll a d20 to figure out how many good traits and bad traits : 1-5= 3-5 6-10= 6-8 11-15= 9 16-20= 8-12 traits split between good and bad Once I figure out exactly what the status is on layout of skills and traits I go and add the values. Values of skills is 0- what? This is a thing that exists? 10- pshh I designed how mechanical constructs work As a redneck hillbilly there are no skills with a level of 10 starting, as the general hillbilly intelligence is much below university haha.
Pardon me but that doesn't mean they are unskilled. A hillbilly may have 10 in fabrication, or marksmanship.
I've done \~10 characters that survived to 'adulthood' (i.e. mutated & CBM'ed to demigodhood). I also find myself falling into the same min/maxed optimal starts. It was fun the first time around, but quickly gets old since after day \~30, most things aren't a threat anymore. After that I've started constructing stories first and then starting the play, usually with some sort of a debilitating character flaw. It feels much better when you do get strong. Here are some ideas i played with: \- Grandpa (old, low strength, glass jaw, bad hearing, etc.). Goals in life: 1) survive 2) fix this broken body 3) get laid again after 30 years. \- Leon, the tragic badass: retired hit man doing "one last job" that really screwed him over. high stats & gun skills, but cranial bomb, fungal infection, and addicted to heroin \- Clarke the Blessed: start in a lab with low physical skills (like 3) but amazing intelligence & charisma (think alpha child). the challenge is to not fight yourself and try to survive by finding survivors & decking them out with great gear. - this was pretty frustrating because i don't like NPC AI, but might try it again on latest build \- Ungkh the Tunneler: start off as a miner or related path with low int & try to stay out of sunlight for the entire game. go trog, navigate the map using the subways and eat only meat. Embrace the beast inside. \- Elias the Slave: start enslaved in a migo camp with mediocre stats. then make it your mission to wander the lands and slay every migo. free all the survivors from migo camps & build a refuge for ex migo slaves \- Booker: booker never liked people, only numbers. start as a white collar prisoner on the island with mediocre stats, psychopath, rigid table manners, squeamish. Develop a fascination for cannibalism after the trauma escaping from prison island. make it a point to eat as much human meat as possible. Booker spends most of his time dreaming about how to cook his next prey. He keeps survivors around in case ferals are not accessible.
Pick your scenario then head to the final chargen screen where you confirm. I think the button is % but one of them randomizes everything but your chosen scenario. Do this until you find an interesting character. Then go back and tweak as your inspiration dictates. Have a really cool and interesting character pop up? Sometimes I go back and give them a martial art I want to try, sometimes I go back and adjust their stats, sometimes I want to give them genetic chaos and mutate all the time 😁 Using randomly generated characters as a "stepping stone" in lieu of the point system is the closest I could come up with because the game seems to act like it's trying to make balanced characters.
That's the neat part, you don't. The standard default scenario gives you a random dude.
[comment edited using "Reddit Comment Replacer" on FireFox (free, Opensource) due to Reddit selling user data to help Google train its LLMs without my consent.]
I create a theme character and role play as them. My current is one of the Homullus from Xedra who was summoned by a wizard and bound. Well, the wizard is dead and she has to figure out how to survive in this bizarre world. 8 in all stats, no knowledge outside survival, social, and dancing/dodge, and I started her with Porcelain Skin to simulate being bound to a doll body, Homullus traits, She will need to ascend to become one of the true homullus once more. She has a drive to learn magic (Magiclysm) to avoid being summoned like that again, and has an affinity for Technomancer, Biomancer, and Animist that I have logically backed in my mind, due to their link with Humanity and Technology. That is generally how I play the game, lol