Downloadable Pre-Gen Characters. Good or Bad?

[ElSuave 273]

I'm planning to run a session for a group that could potentially go up to 7 players and each taking 1 pre-gen per clan.

I've heard some mixed / bad things about the downloadable characters. Scorpion not having the right skills, other characters have too many good skills.

Would the Beginner Box adventure be enjoyable for the players using the downloadable characters? Are these downloadable characters better suited in the follow-up adventure I can download?

[Donovan Morningfire 10,200]

There was a thread over on reddit in the r/Rokugan section of a GM who ran the Beginner Box adventure a couple of times, and made use of both the in-box pre-gens as well as the online ones.

The only one that stuck out as being not feeling appropriate was the Scorpion pre-gen, though not sure that was so much a case of mechanics as it was just concept, given the PC is more of a ninja-type and the adventure doesn't really offer much of a chance for such a character to do their thing.

[DanGers 55]

First, good luck on running the game with 7 players.  Let us know how it goes. 

My TL;DR answer is "don't worry about it; play what looks fun".

My take on these characters after one play-through is that players would do better to choose their characters based on backstory, feel, personality, or even looks.  The characters included for this adventure aren't that different mechanically.  In the full game monks may have kiho powers that toggle on and off, shugenja will have high powered invocations for skirmishes and rituals for downtime, bushi will have more advanced kata, and there may even be ninjitsu techniques.  The few techniques on these beginner folios aren't very different, mechanically speaking.  For now, that's a good thing since this is meant to be an introduction.

While the pre-generated characters differ in skill scores and the tournament challenges do call for specific skills, the difference in skill points is mitigated by characters all having the same number of total ring scores (10 ).   Also, having just glanced through the three online portfolios again comparing them to what I remember of the challenges, it looks like each online character has extra dice in five skills that are called for in tournament challenges.  I could be off a little in either direction, but it won't matter much.  They'll each get their chance to shine.  Lastly, most of the adventure takes place outside of these set challenges and that's where your players can be more flexible in what skills they use to solve whatever problem is at hand.  This is where picking a character that a player likes to roleplay is important.  If someone really wants to be the short tempered bushi, but picked the smooth talking courtier with a better point distribution, the player is going to have less fun.

[ElSuave 273]

7 minutes ago, DanGers said:

First, good luck on running the game with 7 players.  Let us know how it goes. 

My TL;DR answer is "don't worry about it; play what looks fun".

My take on these characters after one play-through is that players would do better to choose their characters based on backstory, feel, personality, or even looks.  The characters included for this adventure aren't that different mechanically.  In the full game monks may have kiho powers that toggle on and off, shugenja will have high powered invocations for skirmishes and rituals for downtime, bushi will have more advanced kata, and there may even be ninjitsu techniques.  The few techniques on these beginner folios aren't very different, mechanically speaking.  For now, that's a good thing since this is meant to be an introduction.

While the pre-generated characters differ in skill scores and the tournament challenges do call for specific skills, the difference in skill points is mitigated by characters all having the same number of total ring scores (10 ).   Also, having just glanced through the three online portfolios again comparing them to what I remember of the challenges, it looks like each online character has extra dice in five skills that are called for in tournament challenges.  I could be off a little in either direction, but it won't matter much.  They'll each get their chance to shine.  Lastly, most of the adventure takes place outside of these set challenges and that's where your players can be more flexible in what skills they use to solve whatever problem is at hand.  This is where picking a character that a player likes to roleplay is important.  If someone really wants to be the short tempered bushi, but picked the smooth talking courtier with a better point distribution, the player is going to have less fun.

Awesome, glad to hear that. Hopefully it won't be a full 7 players, but I won't mind if it is. So far there's about 2-3 players confirmed with another 4 that might hop in. Definitely going to bring all 7 character folios to the table now.

[Tonbo Karasu 2,606]

14 minutes ago, ElSuave said:

Awesome, glad to hear that. Hopefully it won't be a full 7 players, but I won't mind if it is. So far there's about 2-3 players confirmed with another 4 that might hop in. Definitely going to bring all 7 character folios to the table now.

If you're running for 7, it may be worth reducing the number of NPC participants, maybe only keep the Kakita and Hitoshi: the home school gets one entrant, each Great Clan gets one, and the Scorpion finagle one for the Mantis.