I’m not sure who started it (though my guess is the Stew’s own Don Mappin), but my group has a longstanding rule that has served us well for years:
For the first adventure or two, or the first couple sessions (whatever’s appropriate to the current game), PCs can be reworked freely between sessions — you can change pretty much anything you like about your character. After that, they change and progress normally.
This has become part of our social contract (or a cross-system universal house rule, if you prefer), and one or more of us nearly always take advantage of it when we start a new game. We tend to play games for at least a year, sometimes longer, which represents a pretty good-sized commitment for everyone involved. Playing a character who turns out to be less fun than you initially thought for a year or longer isn’t enjoyable for anyone — the player of that character, the GM, or the other players at the table.
So for the first session or two, we always treat our characters as fuzzy outlines, sketches, or best guesses. If a character isn’t as tough as you’d hoped, you didn’t fully appreciate the ramifications of a particular rule, their personality and stats don’t line up, or you hate some aspect you expected to enjoy, you can change it. When the “no more changes” line is approaching, the GM gives us a heads-up: “After this session, you’re locked in.”
It works in part because no one sets out to abuse the system; my group isn’t wired that way. We trust each other, and we all want everyone at the table to have fun. This simple tweak, having a grace period for ill-considered or otherwise unwelcome character elements, has proven to be an easy way to head off one major cause of burnout, loss of interest, or other roadblocks to weekly fun before it becomes an issue.
If it sounds like a good fit for your group, give it a shot. If you’re already doing something like this, but perhaps implemented it a bit differently, tell us about it in the comments.
Feng Shui has it written in it’s rules that if a player isn’t satisfied with how the character is done, that player may redistribute the points.
When reading that, I thought it should be an obvious rule for all roleplaying games. I remember games where a player bought the wrong gun to match the skill and where the game master didn’t allow a retcon. A game should have player playing characters that they want to play; I’m even for the idea that the character can be abandoned to play another character. Why shouldn’t it (it depends slightly on playing style, of course)?
Nowadays, I’m mostly playing games where the characters start out with a blank pages, and information about them are filled in during play so I don’t really have that kind of problem of players wanting to change their characters. It’s already built in the system.
I generally do this as well – I call it the ‘pilot phase.’
Having said that, I’ve also been known to let players change things down the line if something just isn’t working for them.
I can whole-heartedly agree with your house rule.
Last June my group started playing Pathfinder. I had the most experience out of the players from having played 3rd edition. But the rest of the group had very little experience with gaming in general.
It is very hard to know what character will be fun for you. Some feats seem really cool until you realize how little effect they have on anything. Spells, too but that is really only an issue for the people that only know a select number.
But even my character had changed several times. I started as a Gnome Sorcerer because someone else wanted to play a Wizard. It was a good character, but honestly I prefer Wizards. So when that player decided that a Wizard was not for her, I changed my character to an Elf Wizard. My plan was to become the Eldritch Knight class. I took a level in Fighter and realized how lame it was to wait around to be higher level to start being my class. So at level 4 I remade my character as a Magus. I suppose now that I am a level 7 character I could remake my character again to be that Eldritch Knight, but I like this character as he is. Sure I would be better at being a spellcaster in some ways, but the Magus class does the job rather well.
You mean everyone doesn’t do this?!? I used to be of the opinion that the original character was set in stone, but gradually relaxed my policy. Often in my games a character is changed not because they don’t like a skill, power, or ability, but because something else works better for the group (if we have a group of stealthy rogues and one loud, clanky fighter, that last person often changes after they figure out that things are going to go badly… as comical as that situation would otherwise be).
Back in college, I played in a group in which only two characters who started the campaign actually completed it, the other players were all on their third or fourth characters… but that was because the players had short attention spans and just wanted to try new things. Still, it was fun at the time.
Now, I’m more about crafting a fun story with the group, and if a retcon is in order, so be it.
I did this with my group as well. In our case, we had a lot of new or inexperienced players (not to mention my own inexperience) so we had a pretty long, two month (4-5 session) grace period to change things, subject to GM approval. I did tailor it a little bit to player experience and would probably do similar again in the future.
For players who had never played before and had no experience with the system we were using, they were free to change pretty much anything. For people who were experienced role-players, but not familiar with the system, I tended to insist they leave any core character concepts in play (race, major skills, etc.). People who were experienced both as players and with the system didn’t tend to need to change as much but I would have been more insistent that major changes were off the table, allowing them to tweak a few skills and stats a point or two here or there.
That’s a house rule with us as well. We call it the test drive.
We do this too. We don’t have a definite “lock-in” point, though. Instead, as the campaign goes on, changes are less likely and receive more scrutiny. Particularly with regards to retcons — on Session 20, saying “I’ve never used this skill so I’d like to transfer the points elsewhere” is totally fine, but saying “Actually instead of an archer I think this character would be more fun as a martial artist” is not.
Our groups do the same,with the first session or two being a bit more fluid as far as character skills and such go, especially since it’s during those first few sessions the group will find out if they’re missing some critical skill or ability that would greatly benefit the team as a whole from then on.
I sometimes extend it further than 2-3 sessions if we’re playing with a new rule system or the player is new to table top rpgs.
I am in total agreement with this rule. I do it the same way. Once the first level is reached or the first experience/karma is dropped then you are stuck.
We do the “pilot”, as well, with tweaks for the first few sessions.
Another nod of agreement here. For us, it’s usually the end of session 3 for major changes, and as long as it’s something minor to the character (as 77IM mentioned) little tweaks can be made for a long time.