Stat Generation - your wierd and wacky ways

[Psychic Warrior]

We've all seen the 4d6 drop lowest, 3d6 straight up, point buys of varying types but what unusual ways have you used to have player generate stats. I am (hopefully) going to be starting a new campaign next week and am thinking about a non-standard way to make stats.

One way I am considering goes like this.

Make you stat bonuses come out to a certain, pre-assigned number. By that I mean your stats can be anything you want (up to a maximum of 18 and minimum of 3) but the bonus, when added together, add up to a certain number (about 4 or 5 might be a good number). Half of your stats are designated odd and half even as well. I hope that makes sense.

Anyone have any other ways that are different? Or any comment on the method presented here? Point buy, to me, puts too much cost onto getting an 18 while random rolling can lead to 'superhero' characters fighting alongside 'joe average'.

 

[was]

We played with using a base of 10 and rolled a d8 for each stat once in a high-powered. campaign. We've also used stats that were arranged ahead of time (ex. 16,15,14,13,12,11) arranged as we chose.

 

[Crothian]

My way is very different: I let the players pick their stats. They can't pick numbers that the dice can't give them, so no starts with a 30 for instance. But if a player wants all 18's, more power to him. Though in practice I have never had a play choose higher then a 16 and all of the players so far have choosen at least one stat 8 or below.

 

[Thanee]

Last campaign I started used 28 PB, but afterwards 6d6 were rolled and for every '1' Str was increased by one, for every '2' Dex was raised, for every '3' Con, and so on. Points above 18 would be redistributed two for one (which means you need at least two points above 18 to actually benefit from it, a single point is simply lost) at the player's decision (didn't happen, tho).


I also like the method, which Berandor had thought up, using standard playing cards.

You have a deck of 20 cards, 4 sixes, 4 fives, 4 fours, 3 threes, 2 twos, 2 aces (ones) and 1 joker.

You set aside 1 two and 1 ace, then shuffle the remaining 18 cards and deal out six stacks of three cards each, face open. You then put the two cards you still have to any stack or stacks (one each to two or both to one). The joker doubles the highest card in the stack it ends up with. Add together and those are your ability scores to distribute freely among the six abilities.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Bayonet_Chris]

Stats

I'm doing a standard point-buy (28) with a modification on ability increases. Instead of getting a straight +1 to an ability, players get points at certain levels. This way it's more difficult to increase your higher stats (which makes a certain amount of sense).

2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th = +1 points
12th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th = +2 points

 

[Black Pharaoh]

My way is very different: I let the players pick their stats. They can't pick numbers that the dice can't give them, so no starts with a 30 for instance. But if a player wants all 18's, more power to him. Though in practice I have never had a play choose higher then a 16 and all of the players so far have choosen at least one stat 8 or below.

This is pretty much what we call the "we're all adults here" method. We use it with pretty much any game we play.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I love high power characters when I GM so I let the players get a little munchkin with stats... I use the Yahtzee method.

5d6, keep what you want roll the rest. After second roll repeat. Then done. Take the 3 highest dice.
Usually yeilds results in the 15+ range.

Most of my gaming time has been in the Supers genre, so I am just generally accustomed to very much larger than life kind of PCs.

 

[Michael Morris]

I've settled on 4d6 drop lowest 12 times, then pick 6 of the scores to use. This tends to yield characters in the pretty high range though (two 18's on a single character aren't unknown and anything less than 12 is rare, though I've seen players pick a low roll). I also lame duck upon failure to roll at least one 16.

Reasoning: I spend all week being a scrub nobody. I'll be damned if I spend my fantasy time being one - or force a player to do the same.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

I've settled on 4d6 drop lowest 12 times, then pick 6 of the scores to use. This tends to yield characters in the pretty high range though (two 18's on a single character aren't unknown and anything less than 12 is rare, though I've seen players pick a low roll). I also lame duck upon failure to roll at least one 16.

Reasoning: I spend all week being a scrub nobody. I'll be damned if I spend my fantasy time being one - or force a player to do the same.

I like characters to have some high stats as well. But I also think most characters 'benefit' from having a slightly lower than average stat. If everything is easy nothing is fun seems to be the motto I go by.

 

[Mephit James]

I think the ability generation method varies with the type of campaign. Most of my campaigns are the "little guy swept up in the big events" model and I always toy with the idea of rolling 3d6 and assigning the first to Strength, second to Dex, etc. I've never had the courage to force my players to do it, though, and was wondering if anyone actually has. I think it's fairly realistic and players would then put a lot more thought into what they would be effective as, but I imagine it creates unbalanced parties. If no one has a high Wisdom, for example, the party is without a cleric, which is doable, but a party without a fighter, for example, or any spellcasters is in trouble. I think it might work a lot better in a d20 Modern game and if I ever GM one of those I might try it out.
My question got a little lost in the middle so I'll repeat it here: Has anyone actually ever tried the 3d6 (or 4d6, drop lowest) roll six times and apply the first to Str, second to Dex, etc. method?