Rolling Abilities

[NMcCoy]

Tradition and/or to forestall grognard rage. Seriously, I'd suspect that a very substantial portion of the playerbase would houserule stat-rolling back in anyway; they might as well have an official way to do it in order to keep things mostly in line with expected power values, rather than encouraging everyone to use their favorite rolling method then complaining when things are too easy/hard.

The way my group did it, we gave everyone one shot at rolling and if you didn't like the result you could point-buy as normal. Seemed to work out well.

 

[erik_the_guy]

Hmm... has anyone statistically compared rolling to point buy to see if the average stat bonus is really lower, or in the +4 to +8 space.

 

[erik_the_guy]

The rolling method actually gives slightly lower scores on average than point buy.

In particular, a player who uses the rolling method only has about a 1 in 10 chance of getting an 18. The chance of rolling three 18's is only 1 in 12,000. So either:

• Your player was amazingly lucky, or
• Your player was somehow confused about the system, or
• Your player fudged his or her roles.

This was after racial modifiers, the player had a 16, 17, and 18, which is still pretty unlikely.

 

[Runestar]

An option is really only an option if it is a viable one. What is the point of rolling for your stats when your DM is going to reject those stats if he feels that they are too strong or too weak? At the end of the day, you still have to settle for rolling for "average stats", and you wouldn't really be any better off than if you had used point buy (which would likely be used as a yardstick to determine if your rolled stats are balanced or not).

At the end of the day, it just takes longer and the end result isn't much different from point buy.

 

[strumbleduck]

Hmm... has anyone statistically compared rolling to point buy to see if the average stat bonus is really lower, or in the +4 to +8 space.

Here are the results of rolling a single ability score using "4d6, drop the lowest":

• 17.5% of the time, you roll a score that is less than 10.
• The remaining 82.5% of the time, you roll a score of 10 or higher. In this case, the average number of point-buy points required to purchase the same score would be 4.25.

Therefore, the average number of point-buy points for one rolled ability score is about 3.5 (counting scores of 10 or less as 0 points). This makes rolling approximately equivalent to a 21-point buy, on average.

This was after racial modifiers, the player had a 16, 17, and 18, which is still pretty unlikely.

That is considerably more reasonable, though certainly a bit lucky.

 

[amysrevenge]

And really... not even a benign "heh" to my sacred cow joke? *Dalzig is sad*

If it makes you feel any better, I did a "Heh" out loud - just didn't type it.

Big Mike

 

[Charwoman Gene]

If it makes you feel any better, I did a "Heh" out loud - just didn't type it.

HOL

"heh out loud"

 

[erik_the_guy]

Meh, I did some stats on my computer and found that with the 4d6 method you get about +5 in modifiers on average. You get an 18 about once in every 66 rolls. For a character of 6 rolls this is about a 6% chance to end up with at least one 18.
Anyways, not a fan of the rolling. A player with much higher mods than the rest of the party may as well be a few levels higher.

 

[Zimri]

I rolled and ended up with a +17 in bonuses after racial mods, My DM said "thats too high my wife rolled +10 can we call it +12 ?" no harm, no foul. We are used to being "big damn heroes" +12 became the party default. I love my d6s

 

[StarFyre]

rolling

We prefer rolling, and friends refuse to use point buy (which I don't like anyways) so it's all good.

For some reason, find rolling more fun

Sanjay