Stat generation option

[ladycass]

What do you think about this base stat roll option:

Assuming a roll 4 d6 and drop the lowest system...
Characters can either 1. Have 74 points to assign as they wish.

or 2. Roll a set of 7 stats dropping the lowest of the 7. The total bonus of these stats must add up to be between +4 and +8 (prior to adding racial bonus). If you have a lower total bonus than +4 you may reroll your stats. If you have higher than a +8 total bonus you must voluntarily lower your scores until the bonus meets that requirement. This will give you control over how you lower them while still keeping all player scores within a certian range. The lowest total points should be around 66 for a character with only a +4 and the highest should be 82. By taking the option 1 median of 74 you can choose to avoid the chance factor.

Obviously this system has an advantage built in it toward rolling, on the bell curve of possiblities all of the low range (below 66) are rerolls, and all of the high range (above 88) allow the best possible scores.

The goal is to keep all characters in a certian range of starting stats without having grossly advantaged/disadvantaged characters.

If any of what I just said made sense I would love to see what you think!

 

[ValhallaGH]

If we assume that your point buy is a 1 for 1 starting at 0 (which is a wild guess, since you could be using the standard point buy) then it seems a reasonably fair system. Although the seventh roll will tend to make the rolled stats average slightly better than the 74 point buy, but not by enough to make it a problem.

 

[useridunavailable]

That looks pretty good to me. Keep in mind that allowing scores higher than the standard point-buy system permits does, IME, grossly unbalance encounters as they are prepared in official material (i.e., KotS). In our games, we like for our characters to be heroes, head and shoulders above the average Fred, so we generally roll 4d6, drop the lowest, reroll 1's (of course you can choose to make one of your scores a 6 for RP if you wish). In doing so, we found that KotS went from being pretty darned hard (pregens) to being ridiculously easy (requiring huge modifications).

It's all about play style. Your method seems to put characters somewhere between the standard point-buy (weak) and our style (buttkickers).

 

[ladycass]

If we assume that your point buy is a 1 for 1 starting at 0 (which is a wild guess, since you could be using the standard point buy) then it seems a reasonably fair system. Although the seventh roll will tend to make the rolled stats average slightly better than the 74 point buy, but not by enough to make it a problem.

Yes I should have pointed that out. 1 for 1 point buy.


Part of the goal is to have fairly "heroic" character stats without being totaly unbalanced. It is much less generous than the stat system we have used for the last 6 years and I like that. ( I don't even want to go into what we were doing before). We seem to be getting a fair mix of 76-82 point characters this way.

 

[Jhaelen]

If any of what I just said made sense I would love to see what you think!

Well, 1-for-1 point buy always resulted in extremely min-maxed characters in my game that look totally unrealistic.

I also dislike rolling for stats regardless of the method used: Have good luck once and be superior to the rest of the party forever or have bad luck once and suck forever.

So, I'd recommend to use the point-buy method as written and increase or decrease the number of available points until you'll get an attribute range that you like for your campaign.