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I have never used pregen characters for a gaming group, I normally allow players abstract creation freedom and help new players with their imaginative character ideas.
So to practice this valuable skill, I am creating pregens for a South America adventure set in Colymbia.
What besides occ, equipment and stats are necessary to do this properly and what level do I start them at??

A pregen is just like any character you'd build for yourself. Maybe a little more detailed just to reduce how many things the player needs to look up. Sometimes I'll type up a paragraph of backstory for the character; sometimes I'll include only immutable stuff, like racial characteristics, and let the players make up the rest. The real advantage of using pregens is that you have an opportunity to theme the group of characters and focus their abilities in any direction you choose, or intentionally diversify them to take advantage of as broad a range of powers as you like.

As for level, what level do you want to start them at? I've handed out tons of level 1 characters and quite a few at other levels. Right now, I'm prepping ten level 8 ley line walkers. For me the big consideration when it comes to level is how much extra gear and spells a character should have picked up over those additional levels. These walkers have around 30 spells each, plus scrolls, talismans, and amulets. They're also getting vehicles, pets, familiars, and allies, if I've got time to add all of that information. I could just as easily say that due to a recent reversal of fortune they've got nothing but their learned spells. The former option makes a lot more work for me, but it also has given me the opportunity to make sure that between these ten characters almost every spell from the first eight levels of invocation magic is available, and a handful from levels nine through twelve. This will allow me to build complex puzzles that show off huge chunks of the magic system.

I'm thinking of a Columbian 1st Army Corps. Ine character from each unit.
Accept the Foreign Legion, because that is where the Characters I'm using now are. Let them use an off the wall character kinda munchy and use pregens from different divisions either in solo or co-op missions.
For now the Characters haven't met, and in my game Munchkin player characters start at Level:1. Setting characters I start a pc out at level:3 for locals. Since the average levels generally fall between 2nd to 7th I guess 1D6+1 and random roll it.
Since the book was vague in pilot occs, I used the Rmb and used old school cs classes and Columbian equipment, example, RPA Elite for the mechanized Division. As Kevin and Hal level up and prove themselves Hal will eventually end up in the psychic Battlion and Kevin its a toss up between Anti-Monster and Magic Battlion.
Also I think it would be cool to constantly cycle through different NPC roles.
Since the Foreign Legion doesn't cycle through the rest of the human military I also limited them to their equipment. It gets fixed but you get your laser pistol or your body armor back not new stuff.
I guess its time to write up one of each of the human OCC's listed as part of the standard Army.

So heres my idea.
1.Roll one character thats from each unit.
Then roll to see which unit we are playing from each session.
2. Have scenerios set up for each unit, some units work closely together for example Anti-Monsters and Special forces they will also have a combined adventure Catergory.
3. If the Foreign Legion is rolled you get your Munchy and an additional roll.
4.All xp is kept on the pregen sheet and they advance as normal characters.

I just thought of an El Dorado adventure cycling through the three cities.

More random than I would do. What will that accomplish for you?

A variety of adventures and characters, hopefully flesh out the units.
Example: this session I am playing a Burster at the end of the session I leave the xp with the character. Next session I play a burster yet again I can either play the one I used last time or fill another slot. When you fill up an entire slot (in this case 14 total) you can build a munchkin character for the foreign legion. This new munchkin is added to the npc sidekick list.

So far I have....

Security Division.
1-10% Police.
11-18% Mechanized unit.
19-27% Anti-Monster.
28-36% Special Forces.

Columbian First Army Corps.
37-45% Foreign Legion.
46-54% Mechanized Legion.
64-72% Air Support.
73-81% Anti-Monster Battalion.
82-90% Magical Battlion.
91-99% Psychic Battlion.
100% Control 1 unit of choice Either I occ all available levels OR 1 Of each member of the Unit.

When the entire Armed forces slots are full all 3820 Security division slots the Entire Average level of Experience goes up ONE level. The average Security Division abetage level moves from 2-6 upto levels 3-7.

This is a way for players to turn their favorite "Army" into one of the most Powerful on the planet. Level wise anyway.
For El Dorado I am doing all three cities with a random city chart for each city.
This effectively pits the players against themselves in a threeway Coldwar.

Sounds unnecessarily complicated. Are your players on board or will you need to convince them that this is going to be fun?

It will take convincing and a finished presentation and proposal. The rest of the group is fond of basic occ's, RIGHT OUT OF A BOOK!
I am the only Munchkin or Creative Character Concept driven Player. Occasionally one other will Munchkin but, its a rare and unpredictable event.
Good rule of thumb is if I'm playing, I am using a Munchkin creation. When I was finally allowed to use Creative Character Concepts I started at level 1, the setting characters and seemless fits started at level 7.
Not unfair and very game balancing actually. I find others don't che.....errrr Munchkin as hard as I do, so a level 1 import should be on par with a level 3 local or seemless fit.

I strongly recommend simplifying things down as much as you can if you're the only one that really prefers this style of play. Eliminate as much work as possible for the other players or I think you can expect resistance. You may get some just by suggesting that they play more than one character, even though the experience points will carry across.

That is an, I realized how strong Rifts Vampires are and in massive numbers just about anything fighting solo is doomed. Add in the rest of the south American dangers and yes I support allowing a player to play four Anti-Monsters or 10 different Types of spellcasters. Odds are only one or two are gonna make it back.

When I do pregens I like to leave as many secondary skills open as possible. I provide the players a list of possible secondary skills and allow them to select skills "on the fly" during the game as needed/wanted. The last few times I did this it seemed to work out pretty well.

First thing to do is find out if your players are happy to play pre-gen characters at all. Some gamers like to be involved from the ground floor of their character design, others will be up to the challenge. If they don't like the idea of pre-gen characters, then your idea dies here.

Secondly, make sure when you create the pre-gen characters that you include classes/races that you know that each individual player likes to play.

Thirdly, make up a reasonably detailed background story for each character. This will help the players get into the mind set of the character.

Fourthly, allow some room for the players to customize. Leave a few skills in each category (OCC/OCC Related/Secondary) for the players to choose. If a spell slinger, choose most of their spells, and include a list of spells that they can select from to fill out their spell book. Same with Psykers. Same goes with equipment.

Fifth, make extras. If there are 5 players, then maybe make 7 or 8 characters. Just in case they're a bit choosy or at least, it gives them the illusion of having more choice. You can then either use the extra characters as NPCs, and/or as replacements for when their character bites it.

I did a game once where all the characters were pre-gens. It was a modern setting game where the players were criminals hired out to do a job similar to the movie Reservoir Dogs. The pre-gens had everything done up and I made twice as many characters. The game lasted for several months and was fun.

CyCo wrote:First thing to do is find out if your players are happy to play pre-gen characters at all. Some gamers like to be involved from the ground floor of their character design, others will be up to the challenge. If they don't like the idea of pre-gen characters, then your idea dies here.

Agreed

Secondly, make sure when you create the pre-gen characters that you include classes/races that you know that each individual player likes to play.

Toss in a couple of "odd ball" characters as well. Some players will run an "outlier" if they do not have to "mess" with all the heavy lifting.

Thirdly, make up a reasonably detailed background story for each character. This will help the players get into the mind set of the character.

Fourthly, allow some room for the players to customize. Leave a few skills in each category (OCC/OCC Related/Secondary) for the players to choose. If a spell slinger, choose most of their spells, and include a list of spells that they can select from to fill out their spell book. Same with Psykers. Same goes with equipment.

Leave sufficient gaps to allow the player to customize the history/character but still be with in the parameters of the desired background.

Fifth, make extras. If there are 5 players, then maybe make 7 or 8 characters. Just in case they're a bit choosy or at least, it gives them the illusion of having more choice. You can then either use the extra characters as NPCs, and/or as replacements for when their character bites it.

I would suggest at least twice as many pregens as the number of players (three to four times as many is better).

Glistam wrote:When I do pregens I like to leave as many secondary skills open as possible. I provide the players a list of possible secondary skills and allow them to select skills "on the fly" during the game as needed/wanted. The last few times I did this it seemed to work out pretty well.

I'd do it this way to.
A bit of back story maybe..

I'm working on a campaign like this myself.. Four or five player, first level CS grunts or Dog pack OCC's. Let them get a feel for the setting... We've been playing AD&D mostly with some MechWarrior...

I have a Dead Reign game going (with a mix of people who have played palladium games, people who have played other games, and people who have not gamed at all) by play by post and even the one player who is semi-picky got a character he would have picked/liked anyway. The hardest part was people finding pictures for their characters and fleshing out their character (looks and such). After that they were off and running the second the game started.

Memnoc, also one of the group's gms, basically stepped in and reassigned all personal.
My goal of players leading squads of Npcs was shot down.

Say we are capping level 7 characters.
For two characters thats Now cut in half for levels split between multi character players.
So its now one level 7 character or 3 levels to split between a team.

The days of going into a Level:12 adventure with a dozen Partial conversion Bursters with LeB2 armor and Railguns Have ended
12 man team
Level 1 Partial conversion Burster.

Say, sometimes you just completely come out of left field.

say652 wrote:Memnoc, also one of the group's gms, basically stepped in and reassigned all personal.
My goal of players leading squads of Npcs was shot down.

Say we are capping level 7 characters.
For two characters thats Now cut in half for levels split between multi character players.
So its now one level 7 character or 3 levels to split between a team.

The days of going into a Level:12 adventure with a dozen Partial conversion Bursters with LeB2 armor and Railguns Have ended
12 man team
Level 1 Partial conversion Burster.

Take up skirmish wargames. All squad level action all the time.

How does that link to running a game with pre-generated characters?

I was going to stat the whole army. And let players use a division vs a suitable enemy, Largarto and Vampire hordes.

SittingBull wrote:How does that link to running a game with pre-generated characters?

Say's terminology can be inconsistent with common usage.

say652 wrote:I was going to stat the whole army. And let players use a division vs a suitable enemy, Largarto and Vampire hordes.

Sounds like a lot of work.