D&D 5E Point Buy or Standard Array

[Minsc]

Yeah, but even as late as 2e the "3d6 in order" and "3d6 arrange to taste" methods were still in the PHB, with "3d6 in order" being presented as the default. 4d6 drop lowest is listed as Method 5. I only ever played under one DM that ran 3d6 in order. Everybody was average.

Of course, 1e and 2e had the infamous dead zones for attributes between 7 or 8 and 14 or 15.

I played a lot of 2e with "4d6, drop lowest"

I rolled all 14's once. Straight down. LOL.

Nice roll, no bonuses (unless I chose to be a demihuman).

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Back on topic, I have no problem with point buy, but I prefer standard array for my own characters. I find the 15, 15, 15, 8, 8, 8 array to be, well, boring. If I were playing a big dumb Barbarian I'd go for it, but generally speaking I like my characters more well rounded.

I wouldn't even do it as a big dumb barbarian. I'd probably put an 8 into one mental stat, have one at 10, and another at 12. It's so much more efficient to skip one or two 15s and use those points elsewhere.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I wouldn't even do it as a big dumb barbarian. I'd probably put an 8 into one mental stat, have one at 10, and another at 12. It's so much more efficient to skip one or two 15s and use those points elsewhere.

Generally, I agree. I'd do it for a specific character concept, like playing the actual stereotypical Half-Orc or Goliath Barbarian. If I'm going to play an absurd character, I'm going to play it as absurdly as I can. In this case I want the character to have a weakness against mental saves!

 

[fewilcox]

The way it looks like to me is that there is only a couple best configurations and they involve a lot of dump stats.

Define "best". Here are the four characters I made for Encounters:

• Hill Dwarf Fighter dual-wielding handaxes: 15/10/14/10/12/14 – He's a not-entirely honest merchant and has made good use of that CHA in the 4Es of both HackMaster and D&D. He'll take Heavy Armor Mastery at 4, raising his STR to 16 and significantly reducing his incoming damage.
• Human sword & board Fighter that acts like a cleric: 13/16/14/12/12/8 – I'm generally opposed to dump stats since my dice rolls tend to suck enough with penalties, but he is very timid, so it fits. Since he has some of the skills of both his father (human S&B fighter) and mother (elf ranger who heals with herbalism), I was forced to go with a finesse weapon so he'd be good with a bow and sword. His human feat is Healer, and he will also be taking Heavy Armor Mastery at 4.
• Human Thief: 8/16/12/13/12/15 – Here, once again, the dump fits. She's not overly strong because she carries everything in her merchant's cart rather than on her back, and for years had Farga, my dwarf fighter, as bodyguard and apprentice. She is slightly more honest than he is.
• Half-elf Warlock (character I'm playing currently): 10/16/12/10/12/16 – She has two ways of dealing with problems: seduction (thus uses lots of DEX and CHA) and fireballs. She makes her way through life as professional arm candy, so any obstacle she can't talk her way past she blows up. With 1d10+3+10' push as a cantrip and Shatter prepped, she's as much fun in combat as she is in town.

All but the dwarf come from a book I'm writing (but in games and a short story I even tie him to them) so I have their backgrounds, appearance, abilities, and personalities very well flushed out, and that determines their stats for me, but I naturally have to compromise with whatever system I'm adapting them to. What that means is that they each have the best stats I could give them within the limitations inherent in all class-/level-based games. I agonized over every point so much that settling on stats took ages, and weren't actually finalized until near the end of the process.

One of the things I love about 5e is that the game's math no longer requires you to have a 16 in your attack stat and won't allow you to get an 18 at level 1. The 16 DEXes I used are only because I'm tired of characters dying all the time 8o) Last season my wife's cleric hit 0 HP several times in the first few weeks (which stung a bit since I was the GM), and this season one of the PCs actually died in our first encounter. It may even have been the first NPC attack that killed him, but we don't remember for certain.

A small rant while I'm on the subject: HackMaster and GURPS are both well known for the lethality of their combat (though HM5e isn't quite as bad as 4e), yet I've seen more characters go down in the short life of D&D 5e than in a decade of playing GURPS and HM. This edition is really scary sometimes. Even HackMaster 4e gave most characters a 20 HP "Kicker" at level 1, and in 5e it's your CON score instead. (But that's offset by penetrating dice rolls which can result in massive damage from a d4 dagger; I did around 40 damage with a 4d4 fire beetle once). From behind the screen I'm always paranoid about encounter design since a few bad dice rolls can lead to a party wipe (and before anyone says the oft-reviled word "fudge", I roll in the open so my players know for certain that I don't cheat). Fortunately, since I only run D&D at Encounters I never have to generate combats from scratch so that makes it easier, but in a home game I'd have to houserule in CON HP kickers for the sake of my own sanity.

 

[S'mon]

I'm using standard array in my 5e campaign and it's working great, no problems and no sameness since racial mods still change things up - and I have some variant human races with different mods than the standard +1 to everything.

I think in hindsight I wish I'd used a standard array in my 3e campaigns 15 years ago, the 3e style attribute mods do not work well with randomised stat gen and I suspect 3e was mostly playtested with the standard array. It just looked a bit weedy at the time - whereas in 5e, with the bonuses on top, it works great.

 

[CrownRoyalDice]

Yes, its called "every stat has a save attached to it."

So your 16/16/16/9/9/9 character is going to be great at three saves, and have a -1 with three others. Now, since three saves are "lesser" anyway (not called on as much) we could put our three 9's in those scores, so that your scores are

Str: 9
Dex: 16
Con: 16
Int: 9
Wis: 16
Cha: 9

Which I think makes you qualified to be a monk, druid, and archer.

By archer do you mean Ranger? Also, Cleric and Wild Magic Barbarian.

 

[Remathilis]

By archer do you mean Ranger? Also, Cleric and Wild Magic Barbarian.

:: looks at date::

Perhaps Necromancer?

 

[GreyLord]

If we don't roll, it's standard array. Rolling adds variance, but if we want something more standard, than keeping it even across all the players is preferable to me.

 

[Don Durito]

I use a different array.

15,15,14,13,12,9 or 15,15,14,13,11,10

Give players a lot more choice without really increasing overall power level.

 

[humble minion]

We rolled for my current campaign using a method I'd never seen before, 3d6+3, cap at 18, arrange as you like.

I don't think anyone had any unmodified 18s to start - my best score was a 16, which turned into 18 through racial modifiers. Though there's one guy in particular who i think rolled fairly badly and has sometimes seemed underpowered (I'm guessing here, we're on VTT and don't get to see each other's character sheets)

And we had a few low scores as well, to keep it interesting. I ended up with two 10s, and at least one other PC has an Int penalty.