Wow, do I hate rolling for stats!

[Campbell]

While I think there is a certain amount of value in rolling for stats, I think most of that value is lost when you get to arrange the results to taste because you're not really living with what you got or playing a character you didn't intend to except in the extroadinary edge cases where you either have pitiful or amazing scores.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Isn't this stat discussion highly dependent on the actual CLASS you were taking?

A 18 WIS, 10 DEX, 10 STR, 10 CHA, 16 INT, 10 CON means entirely different things for certain classes.

In 3.x for example, this is more than acceptable for a druid or a Wizard but pretty much unplayable for a monk.

Really..the best stat allocation method is the 4e gamma world (or variant of it). Give out a 18 and 16 and then simply roll the rest.

View of the GM and the player but it generates class to be played after the role and that class and character is what the player role-plays. If a player gets a 18 and a 16, they more than likely will play the same class over and over again; you get Bob the Cleric, always Bob the Cleric, never Bob the Wizard or Bob the Monk.

 

[Nifft]

Depends on how much money you have and how much I have. If you only have a few bucks on hand, and I have $1000 or more, this could be a winning game for me, because the odds are good that at some point you'll run out of money and have to stop playing, and I walk away with your cash. Gambler's ruin trumps your slight edge in the odds.

It never happens that way. The guy who runs the (slightly) rigged odds game is the casino, and it always has more cash than you.

They do benefit from "gambler's ruin" -- but even if you don't run out of cash, they still tend to win.

Also note that the right player in the right campaign can make even a character with bad stats work--but you'll still be at a visible disadvantage compared to an equally well-played character in the same campaign with good stats.)

Yep yep. I pointed out the one 3.x class which works well without stats -- but even there, it works better with one or more good ones.

Cheers, -- N

 

[LostSoul]

What character creation system is better for a game where...

...the dice fall as they may; you can get eaten by a ghoul just by an unlucky series of die rolls
...you are expected to have a long backstory for your PC
...the DM has pre-planned a story to guide the players through
...dangerous wandering monsters are common
...you have hundreds of customizable options for your character
...your first point of contact with the system is not character creation
...you are expected to manipulate the in-game environment in order to achieve success

edit: I should have said that each line is independent of the others, not all part of the same game.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I rolled 3d6 in order last night. No stat was below 10 and I got a 16 and an 18. My friend Drew even watched every roll. As I showed my character to the DM, I thought "Wow. That is amazing--almost impossible." That is the exact moment when I realized I was dreaming.

 

[Nifft]

What character creation system is better for a game where...

...the dice fall as they may; you can get eaten by a ghoul just by an unlucky series of die rolls

Doesn't much matter so long as it's quick.

...you are expected to have a long backstory for your PC

Conflict detected (process must be quick).

...the DM has pre-planned a story to guide the players through

Conflict detected (long backstory).

...you have hundreds of customizable options for your character

Conflict detected (process must be quick).

Cheers, -- N

 

[billd91]

Alright, how about this: we'll flip a coin. Heads, you give me $1.00; tails, I give you $0.95. We'll flip the coin a thousand times.

Would you agree to this set-up?

It's not a rip-off because I only have a theoretical edge, right? The coin could come up tails a thousand times in a row!

The difference here is that you're talking about a competitive zero-sum game when the difference between two PCs, one with a +1 and one without, is not. You're also setting the terms of the number of coin flips. If I had the choice of whether to continue after each flip, as a gambler would have in a casino, I might well take up the offer even with this arrangement, hoping for a streak and a chance to stop before losses caught up. That's why games with even worse payoffs for the player can still work in a casino environment.

Now, if we were to roll d20s and every time we rolled over 10, we got $1 from the DM, and you had a +1 compared to me, would I still play and expect to do quite well compared to you? Yes. But at any particular snapshot in time throughout those 1000 die throws, would an observer be able to easily tell you have an edge over me based on the piles of money we've amassed? That's really what the question of statistical significance is about. What + do you have to have for the observer, looking at our money piles, to be confident he's correctly identifying which of us has the better odds of making the money.

In the end, the +1 is a nice benefit, but it's not a game breaker. Missing one or two +1s in character development compared to your peers isn't likely to make a huge difference in any particular encounter. Each +1 is likely make the difference between success and failure for only 5% of the rolls. If you happen to roll the (success number-1) a lot in a fight, then the +1 is a huge benefit. But that's not likely to happen. It's far more likely for any single roll, given 19 other numbers on the die, that the +1 has no effect whatsoever.

 

[TheYeti1775]

...snip...
If I wanted to take one of the starting 8's down to a 7, how many DMs would give me a benefit in return?
...snip...
Lanefan

I've been in and have given benefits to buy downs. You could buy down to a 3 if you really wanted to. 7 = 1; 6 = 2; 5 = 4; 4 = 6; 3 = 9 points in your normal point buy generation.
Other times maybe that low Dex was a product of extra tough skin giving a +1 Nat Armor bonus or something similar. Really the only limit is between you and the DM for figuring this stuff out.

...snip...
If you only use Players' Handbook when you create your character (customizing Monks with splat books is allowed), you can put 2 extra points on your abilities (no cost).
...snip...

I do like the idea of rewarding players for sticking to a Core only. 2 points in point buys doesn't mean a lot in the overall game, but it's little benefits like that, that the players will remember and enjoy about the game.

I guess it is your view and your GM's view on the subject, but if the characters are above average and the average is 10, then that should be their lowest stat. It's a house rule from my group, 4d6 minus lowest or 10 which ever is better.

Another good method have seen it used before as well.


Another Point Buy + Random generation method is one I've used before and acutally use regularly now when I DM.
Points + dice
This is mainly when you want a more high power game though.
The concept is simply pick a point buy as a starting point.
Say 25, than roll dice of choice and add that to the point buy total and than buy your scores.
One of the best I've found that players like for higher power games is 30 plus 2d6.
Combine that with something like allowing a buy of one score higher than 18 base, you can come up with quite a few combinations.

But the main point of it all is, the method that allows your group to enjoy itself without worry is the best one of all.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

My mistake was in setting my heart on a concept. (I was sorta surprised that we'd be rolling stats.) I can scrap the concept, of course, and build something less interesting to me (but slightly stronger), but that also dampens my enthusiasm.

This is where the problem lies it seems. Not with rolling stats in and of itself, but with deciding on a concept... committing to a concept, and only THEN finding out that the DM's decision on how characters will be created may not accomodate it.
Edit:

(4) One of my big beefs with random-roll is that nobody complains when they roll high, only when they roll low. And that's what it'll look like.

And how is the DM to ever know the players have an issue with his choices if they say nothing?

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

To all the people who say rolling allows for you to play underpowered "flavorful" characters...why does point buy stop you from doing that?

It isn't a matter of choosing only one method above all others forevermore. The issue is that ALL character creation methods have advantages and disadvantages. Rolling randomly is not by default Game Poison any more than point-buy is Game Perfection.

DM's have preferences for what method to use just as players do. Though DM's are frequently coming from a somewhat different perspective in their choice it is almost never their goal to make the game LESS FUN for their players. I would suggest that what they're interested in most when they choose Rolling as the method of choice for their campaigns is to steer their players away from approaching character creation as yet another opportunity to push the boundries of optimization - to exercise creativity through IMAGINATION and not statistics.

But that's just me.