Quote:
Originally Posted by dripton
Random characters aren't usually very good, because their abilities aren't really chosen to work together. But if you have no idea what you want to play, you could start from a random character then tweak stuff.
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That is indeed a likely problem with random skill selection. Lack of internal synergy.
If all you want is a random DF character, it may be best to just roll 1d11 for character class, then roll 1d3 for sub-template, then write up the 33 sub-templates. IIRC some of them are already right there in DF1, with exact spell selection for the Wizard and so forth, while in other cases it's only guidelines and suggestions for which skills an assassin sub-template Thief should select, without being specific about CP amounts.
One semi-random way to handle sub-templates, is to start by assigning 1 CP to each specified skill. After that you distribute the remaining CP randomly, 1 at a time, with each specified skill having an equal chance of getting chosen. That will produce odd CP amounts, with some characters having 3, 5 or sometimes 6 or 7 CP in a skill, but that's a temporary problem. It also has the benefit of being agnostic as to the amount of CP being distrubted (you just run the alghorithm until they're all distributed) meaning it's not a problem if there are a bit fewer CP than usual becaues a random species[1] template was chosen.
Each sub-template in DF1 also has guidelines about which Advantages to buy, but randomizing that isn't as trivial as skills.
[1] For species, I think it's best to use a random-nested table, with maybe 35% chance of Human, 50% chance of a fairly normal non-Human species, and 15% chance of an exotic species.