Character Generation, random or not?

[Hereticus]

Depends on how long you want your game to last before it breaks.

Random character generation bakes in the brokenness before play even starts.

I have a friend who swears by random, but he almost always rolls considerably better than the average for the number of dice given.

LMAO... I've seen characters with randomly rolled hit points that exceed maximum die values.

For HP, I give characters the maximum at first level, and the average dice roll, rounded up afterward.

I had a friend whose dwarf fighter had an 18 Con and rolled four consecutive 10s for HP. I saw all dice rolls, but if I hadn't I would've expected some funny business. I also witnessed a fighter that rolled consecutive 1s of HP. The character died, and that player indicated they would rater start over than keep it alive. Randomness in character generation and development is not IMVHO good.

Personally I tend to favor point buy with a lower minimum attribute value It works out to being equivalent to 30 point point buy, with extra points given to offset the starting score of 6 instead of 8 (for a total of 42 points) and with the condition that no score be below six. If a score is below that after racial mods they have to buy it up to 6.

I threw out racial mods, because it pidgeonholed players into only running certain race/class combinations.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Depends on how long you want your game to last before it breaks.

Random character generation bakes in the brokenness before play even starts.

Yep.

Point buy, or arrays if they're more to taste. I prefer the former.

 

[Sunking]

it depends on what your goal is and how your group is;

random might be more fun (me personal anyhow) but it quikly screws with ballance.

Point buy semes more fair but is just plain dull (me personal anyhow) and can easely be broken to by power gaming.

Methods I have used as DM

Roll 4D6 removing lowest roll each time X6, rerolling if total bonus is less than +2 and there aint 2 15+ stats, gives all posibilitis for at least being good in theyr chosen field (can still fell bad playing a clearic with avarage stats and wis + 1 other stat 15 while pal have all stats strong for ex. but thats agein only if the players is overly jalous on each other)

for gestalt campagins i have run i used d20 7 times removing lovest roll rerolling all below 6 and total reroll if not +5 total modefier

Tried using point by but some of my players are just to muncking to not abuse this and that means casters who relye more one 1 stat are more power.

In a campagin were im a player these dayes (weee) we use
17, 16, 14, 13, 12, 11 place as u like, it ok but all caster types have chosen to start in age catergori 1, for bosts to stats and that sucks a bit i think (but that they could have done any how so mabey its just me ranting )

 

[Bladesinger_Boy]

[D]Tried using point by but some of my players are just to muncking to not abuse this and that means casters who relye more one 1 stat are more power.[/D]

Sunking, I've found that point-buy actually a more trade off between the high costs of fewer specialized stats as opposed to more middle to low stats. I have no problems seeing PCs with an 18- they build a lop-sided character and will have penalties for it.

I have no patience for the randomness in terms of not always being able to build the class you want, nor the power imbalance of varying point totals character to character. I guess point buy is a "systems" level approach to ability scores, that takes into account all elements as inter-related (rather than viewing each rolled stat as different/independent of each other).

For Point Buy methods, I prefer the Pathfinder values more than the DMG's values. 14s are so juicy to buy in the DMG method because they still buy at a 1-to-1 ratio of point cost to ability score increase. 10 is the base score at a 0 point cost. With the exception of 11s being considered 1 point to buy, each stat is the summation of all the modifiers up to that points. And you can buy down to 7.