Oh, I forgot--I did recently offer my players the chance to make new PCs, either 4d6 drop lowest and start at level 1d3, or roll straight 3d6 and start at 5th level with characters who'd spend 1d6 years each as prisoners of Cthulhu.
All of them opted to go for 3d6, which I thought was interesting.
That is interesting. Unless I wanted the background of being a prisoner of Cthulhu, I am certainly taking 4d6 drop lowest. My level will catch up soon enough.
It is interesting to create a party of different levels from the start.
I used to like 4d6 drop lowest, but I think starting with stats of 16 or higher breaks 5e. There is just nowhere to go with your level progression. And if you use feats they become overpowered because there is no hard choice to make between getting one and raising your stats.
My other concern is between demi-humans and variant human. I am thinking of using the standard array so that demi-humans can start with 2 16s if they want. The variant human could as well, but needs to take a half feat to do so.
I am starting a new campaign soon so I am looking for alternatives. I might try to fiddle with point buy, I don't think I quite like 27.
My favourite method in this thread has been the 4d6 drop lowest, then add or subtract randomly until you end up with X point buy.
Another fun method is to use a deck of cards. Take the 2s-6s, then deal out 6 sets of 3 cards out of those 20 cards. Those are your stats. You can even take out a 2 and a 6 (or 2 4s, or a 3 and a 5) so that all the numbers are the same for each player.