Salamandyr
Adventurer
More and more I'm leaning to just letting the PC's have whatever stats they want what fits their characters. Even all 18's doesn't really skew the challenge all that much.
It's not permanent. It's only until level 6 or 8, when the other character will catch up in their main stat and the character who started with the 20 will be forced to boost their less useful stats instead.I agree that allowing someone to start with a 20 is too strong though as they'll basically have the equivalent of a permanent +2 weapon compared to other players with that same stat that are created through point buy.
Put simply you kind of want 4 stats 14 or higher or a 14 dex with medium armor or 15 strength in heavy armor.
About a year to two ago, I ran a sample size of 4d6 drop lowest compared to array. This was the result. Funny enough, the average was exactly the same as the array. It's almost like they knew what they were doing...
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Which goes to my original post earlier. Every time I hear "4d6 is awesome because here's a list of examples with the stats higher!", I immediately think there is fudging of the numbers going on, because statistically, you'd have just as many PCs with stats lower than array as well, but we hardly ever see them, do we? Funny how when players bring their 4d6 PCs to the the table, nearly all of them have better than average stats lol. Yes, this has been going on since day 1. I am positive it's, "I don't like this set, so I"ll just reroll until I get stats I like." And thus it shouldn't be much of a shocker when someone says they like 4d6 better if that's what they are doing.
So you're preferring 4d6 because you're ignoring the lower rolls and only taking the higher ones over an array? Big shocker there. I say ignoring, because almost all of your examples are dependent on statistically higher than normal rolls. So you're either ignoring low rolls, or cheating, because there's no way statistically you would have the majority of your PCs having stats be higher than array or point buy. Statistically, you'd have just as many PCs with lower stats as you do with higher stats, and yet your examples are almost always higher. So either you have a lot of moon druids in your group, or someone is fibbing the dice rolls.
*Note, this isn't meant to pick on you as a new thing, per se, because after 35 years of gaming, it's always interesting to see how everyone always has higher stats for their PCs than what the math would suggest.
Although oddly, when you total them up through point-buy value, 4d6k3 does result in a "better" average array than the standard. The point-buy chart's weights may be off.About a year to two ago, I ran a sample size of 4d6 drop lowest compared to array. This was the result. Funny enough, the average was exactly the same as the array. It's almost like they knew what they were doing...
Consider that next time you are tempted to hurl accusations of cheating and "immediately think there is fudging of the numbers going on."