On Picking Classes

The character generation method you use largely determines what character you'll play. We're rolling 3d6 in order, so fate has a hand in making this decision for us. Many of my players are coming from the 4E environment, where point buys allow you to pick anything you want and you came up with a character concept in advance.

Instead, we now have characters with scores of 10 in their prime requisites, who picked Thief because they didn't qualify for much else, and I've even got a couple characters rocking Charisma as their highest stat. We have real attribute diversity in the party now, and I love it.

We're using the AEC rules, including separate races and classes, and I wanted to see whether these options would make our party makeup drastically different from what you'd find in Original Edition or a LL Basic game.

So far, we have the following characters:

• Human Fighter
• Dwarf Fighter
• Dwarf Fighter
• Half-Orc Cleric
• Elf Cleric
• Dwarf Cleric
• Dwarf Thief
• Halfling Thief
• Human Magic-User
• Human Magic-User

Observations on Labyrinth Lord AEC character generation:

• 3d6 in order makes the Advanced Edition classes special; only one of my players rolled the attributes necessary to play a druid, illusionist, assassin, paladin, ranger, etc., and he instead chose to use LL's stat-swapping system to play a magic-user with 18 Intelligence, dropping points two-for-one from Strength and Wisdom. 
• All four core classes are well represented, with cleric and fighter being slightly more popular options.
• Dwarven Constitution bonus (more HP), saving throw bonuses, and infravision made it a very attractive racial option.
• The half-orc cleric is played by a friend who has always played battle priests/priests of war for as long as we can remember. He has higher Strength and Constitution than Wisdom and has no problem with it, even if he does suffer from a 20% chance of spell failure.
• I removed racial level limits from my game, so most players went for a demihuman race.
• Three players went human for the 10% XP bonus I house ruled in my game. 
• Our halfling thief only went with halfling because of the math. He already had a Strength penalty, but lowering his Strength by one wouldn't penalize him any more. His Dexterity was one point below the next modifier bonus, and he would usually be relying on missile combat. Halflings get a +1 to missile attacks and a bonus to Dexterity, so he effectively received +2 to hit by just picking that race. A no brainer, really.