Racial attribute limits
 

Are there any other racial attribute limits? I keep rolling a bunch of low ST and high IQ: "Hobgoblins: These are big, stupid goblins." Limit them to IQ 10?

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

Other limits besides which ones?

Well it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your random characters. What die formula are you using? I'd tend to just have them tend to put more points in ST & DX, but not make it impossible to spend a bunch in IQ, but again it depends on what the purpose of your table is.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

I'm following ITL14: Roll for skills, apply the requirements for those skills, then randomly assign any spare attributes.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

How are you randomly rolling Hobgoblins using the rules on p. 14? They don't appear on the table of races.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

Those random tables provide nice ideas and random examples to get people started when they're having trouble thinking of a character, but they have a design constraint of short print space and simplicity of use by new players, and it seems to me that (as a result) they're very prone to making peculiar characters.

If you want more typical characters to represent people the players might tend to meet that are not weird, I think you'd want much more developed tables. I've developed some in the past, and it can take quite a bit of tweaking to get the feel I want for a each sort of NPC.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

I'm a little confused about how people are encountering problems with these tables; they don't even present a random attribute generation mechanic - you are still choosing the stats, just with a constraint or two that won't lead to anything too wild. I suppose if you roll 'Human Tank' and an optional 'UC II talent' you have an inconsistency and will have to choose one concept over the other, but I don't think the tables can't force you to make a character that seems to violate the way different races' attribute limits are supposed to work.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

I've extended the tables to cover every possible PC race.

See an example here: http://www.hcobb.com/tft/rand_char.txt

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

Ah, I see; I thought we were discussing ITL p. 14. Can you explain how your algorithm assigns stats, talents and gear? I notice it 'likes' to create characters with very low adjusted DX scores (in the 5-8 range). Is this by design?

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

Not really, it just gets hammered by the IQ requirements for skills.

My adjustments from ITL14:

I consider gear by race, class and type. Dwarves wear too much armor for their DX, but I consider that a racial quirk.

On a roll of 1 on one die choose a random playable race other than the ITL14 table. Don't expect Proots or Giants to survive the skill requirements ahead.

Halflings and Half-breeds are randomly assigned a native tongue.

I randomly select from optional talents for each hero type.

I randomly assign each fighter a major melee weapon skill.

I replaced the three wizard types from ITL14 with a random roll against the job table on ITL59 and assigned attributes, talents and spells to qualify for the selected job.

Then add in all bonus talents (Halfling Thrown Weapons) and bonus spells (1-hex fire if you know a bigger fire spell).

Bump up attributes to the levels required for the character's talents and spells.

If the sum of the attributes exceeds the limit then abort and roll the next character.

If there are attribute points left over then randomly apply these.

If the character has too many skill points then abort.

Otherwise roll random talents (and for wizards spells) that they are qualified for.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

Well, however it all works, I think your algorithm is gravitating toward character designs that won't arise very often when a human is at the wheel. Chances of success drop off so precipitously below adjDX 8 that I don't think I've seen someone intentionally create a character that low.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

I'm planning to revamp the squad generator this weekend to focus on jobs and assign a leader figure for each squad.

http://www.hcobb.com/tft/squad.php

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

Squad generator seems to have a preference for wizards. I tried generating "a few" for Goblins and Orcs and many of the results had multiple wizards.

Pseudo-code suggestion:
If that's basically what your code is already doing, you might bump "3" up to a higher number (maybe "6").

Also, sometimes it created just one character. Sometimes it created six. I would let the drop-down quantity be hard numbers.

It might also be more useful for generating random encounters if the user could input an attribute-point total (for the average attribute-point total of the party to encounter them). Let PT = attrib-total input x num-in-squad. When an NPC is generated, deduct its attrib-total from PT. If this results in negative PT, throw-away that NPC and quit. Else, keep generating until PT = 0 or less.

Re: Racial attribute limits
 

The current system only checks a lot of restrictions after it has finished generating the character. So Giant scholars are rolled up and discarded.

I'm going to smarten up hero generation next deep dive.