What Kind of Dungeon Fantasy RPG Party Do You Get With 150 Points and Freeform?

Looks like the first session of DF Whiterock is tonight.  We have seven players interested, but only five of them have PCs ready to go (maybe with some tiny tweaks remaining), so looks like we'll be rolling with five PCs the first week.  So what kind of characters did the players come up with?

Well, they're a very diverse group species-wise: one each of Human, High Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, and Half-Orc.  (I was really happy that someone made a Gnome, because nobody ever plays Gnomes.  And I was happy that someone made a Half-Orc, because nobody ever plays Half-Orcs, but the negative Town reactions to Half-Orcs are mildly annoying for everyone, so not quite as happy.)

And they're pretty diverse in terms of professions too: we have a fighter, a wizard, a cleric, a martial artist, and a bard.  (Because they had fewer points to work with and I didn't require strict templates, they're all a bit different than you'd expect if you're used to stock Dungeon Fantasy characters, but they basically fit those niches.)

I gave a few hints, besides general Dungeon Fantasy advice like Have a Cleric: speak a lot of languages because languages will matter, try to have a small character because fitting into small spaces might matter, buy your Special Order items now if possible because Cillamar is a small town and odd items might not always be available for sale later, if you have a Druid make sure they have Beast Speech because speaking to animals might matter.  The players seem to have taken that advice to heart, except nobody made a Druid.  (Yet?)

Over the course of a week-long Session Zero in Discord, the players shared their character concepts with each other, made suggestions, and sometimes actually acted on the suggestions.  I think this worked really well.  I wouldn't say all the characters are hyper-optimized, but they're all well-designed and interesting.

I gave everyone a free extra language at Accented, and they coordinated so the group speaks a wide variety.  (Everyone has Common, and then Elven, Dwarven, Gnome, Orc, and Halfling are also known.)  Amusingly, not one but two PCs are illiterate, so they won't do as well with written languages as with spoken ones.  Also, some of the non-humans speak Common better than their mother tongue, which probably makes their mothers grumpy.

The most obvious effect of not requiring strict templates is that if you don't force the Wizard to take -3 to Perception, they get a ridiculous Per as a side effect of their ridiculous IQ.  (And our Wizard doubled down on IQ; I expected that giving fewer points would result in lower-IQ more-Magery, but that didn't happen.)  So the Wizard does a pretty good job of filling the Scout / Thief niche of finding hidden enemies and traps and secret doors.  (But not other Scout skills like filling opponents with arrows, or other Thief skills like disabling traps and opening locks.)  But you'll notice that the group lacks a Scout or a Thief, so that's fine.  The Wizard is also halfway to being a Bard by virtue of being a High Elf (Attractive appearance, Voice, Musical Ability), so there may be dueling banjos at some point.  The Martial Artist, with her high DX, also appears ready to fill some of the Scout and Thief roles, with ranged attacks and (maybe?) learning some Lockpicking or Trap disarming.  So, there's more than one way to skin a dungeon.

From my point of view, the team's big weakness is a lack of big tough front-line fighters.  They only have one who kind of fills that role, and he doesn't have any armor yet.  Nobody bought Wealth or put any character points into extra cash, so nobody could afford much DR, so they're all a bit vulnerable.  Of course the upside is that if they defeat even a mook with DR1 Light Leather Armor, that's actually an upgrade for someone, if it fits.

Other weaknesses include the lack of Druid spells, the lack of a Heroic Archer, and the lack of a Thief.  But you just can't fill all the niches with 5 lower-point PCs, so this is fine.  If they survive they'll learn new abilities with their earned character points and get better, and if they don't survive the players will get to make new PCs.

Overall, I'm very happy with the characters, and the pre-game player cooperation.  I have no real worries about PC design or party cohesion.  My main worries going into the session are technical and revolve around Roll20.  Are my maps too big and slow?  Did I leave a gap somewhere that will give away a secret?  If we decide to go text-only, can I type fast enough to keep the players engaged?  I guess we'll find out tonight.