Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
The only fair [and fun] way I've ever heard to do random stats is the six-set pool: all players roll a set of stats, show them to everyone, and then each player chooses which set to use.
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Wow, do I hate rolling for stats!
- Thread starter Jeff Wilder
- Start date
Jeff Wilder
First Post
Why 13? Go really creative and stick with a 10.
I mean, heck, a 20th level wizard would still have 40 spells!
Jeff
P.S. And that's a lot of prestidigitations!
Quite true...hell, in 3.x you could STILL cast high level magic even with a 10 INT. Simply BUY a helm of intelligence and you're good to go.
(As an aside, this is why in 4e, spellcasting is much weaker...Combat spells a.k.a non-ritualistic magic works off the d20 and thus the spellcaster PC HAS to interact with the d20 and all its vagaries with regard to success and failure.)
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
My suggestion:
Play something else. Something wierd that you might never play because you wouldn't. Don't worry about power at all, go purely for fun of the concept.
And if you don't like it, kill him off.
(it would be interesting to know if you could create a character that was so hopeless at adventuring that the other characters would ask him to leave....)
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I also hate rolling for stats, based on similar experiences. In my first 3e campaign, we rolled for stats, and I had a barely viable character (net +1 bonus), in a party with supermonk (no stat below 15). I chose to play a wizard because it was the only class that would be viable with the stats I rolled. The campaign was still fun, but I was glad I was playing a Wizard and not a class where I would have to be constantly reminded of my inferiority to supermonk.
Am I the only one here who can figure out that when one player has a total bonus of eleventy billion and another has a bonus of +0.0000001 that maybe a little balancing is in order?
Personally, I prefer to roll for stats. Mostly cause I usually dont have a real good handle on the character I want to play, so the dice rolls give me ideas about the character. With buy systems, I tend to incessantly fiddle with the characters.
As a DM, I generally prefer rolling also, cause then the characters generally end up with a bit more character also. I do check to make sure the spread in total isnt really big tho. Last time I did some rolling, one guy had to roll 3 times to get a character that was at least average.
I have found that how you play and how you roll in the game are alot bigger factors than the character stats in how the game goes. If you choose poorly, you end up a withered corpse on the floor. If you are careful and roleplay well, you end up saving your father from his gun shot wound.
Wait that sounds familiar......
Personally, I prefer to roll for stats. Mostly cause I usually dont have a real good handle on the character I want to play, so the dice rolls give me ideas about the character. With buy systems, I tend to incessantly fiddle with the characters.
As a DM, I generally prefer rolling also, cause then the characters generally end up with a bit more character also. I do check to make sure the spread in total isnt really big tho. Last time I did some rolling, one guy had to roll 3 times to get a character that was at least average.
I have found that how you play and how you roll in the game are alot bigger factors than the character stats in how the game goes. If you choose poorly, you end up a withered corpse on the floor. If you are careful and roleplay well, you end up saving your father from his gun shot wound.
Wait that sounds familiar......
Aberzanzorax
Hero
Why not just roll for level?
No...seriously!
Picture two fighters, One with a 10 con and a 10 str (bonus of 0 and 0), and another (Two) with 18 con and 18 str (bonus of +4 per lvl and +4.)
At lvl 1, Ftr One has 10 hp and an attack of 1, and does weapon damage, while Ftr Two has 14 hp and an attack of 5 and does weapon damage plus 4.
At lvl 5, Ftr One has about 33 hp, an attack of 5, and does weapon damage. Ftr Two has about 53 hp, an attack of 9, and still weapon damage plus 4.
One of these things is not like the other. In fact, Ftr Two is better at lvl 1 than Ftr One is at lvl 2 (having a mere 15 hp, an attack of 2, and weapon damage versus the Ftr Two stats above). Even moreso, Ftr One doesn't catch Ftr Two's level 5 stats until level....
NINE.
It takes until level 9 for Ftr One to match level 5 Ftr Two.
At level 9, Fighter 1 gets 55 hp, an attack of 9, and does weapon damage with no bonus! (potentially add 9 hp or 1 to hit/damage depending on where the lvl 4 and 8 ability score bonus points went, but remember that Ftr 2 also can add bonuses as well).
I'll concede mitigating factors like magic items and such and so on, but the base is there...lvl 5 for one guy is about equivalent to lvl 9 for the other.
When I ask "Why not just roll for level?" I sorta mean it. It's ok if the game embraces variable power mechanics...not all players HAVE to be the same power lvl, and some can be weaker/follower/commoner types versus the more powerful leader types. (You can even have fun with juxtaposing a "weaker" leader with a "stronger" follower.) But really, in d20, ability scores can mean almost as much, or more than, levels. If the assumption that rolling for levels is absurd, then so is the assumption of rolling for scores. However, I don't mean to claim either is necessarily absurd per se. I just mean to point out that rolling randomly for stats that establish long term (perhaps for the duration of a campaign) power has an impact. That impact will set roles, and in a game of balance, will offset balance.
I'd be ok playing a "weak" character, even a squire or follower, in a good roleplaying focused game...but man, I'd HATE playing a squire to another pc in a sort of chess game of survival and hack and slash....it'd be like "you gotta fight these baddies, but YOU, and only you, get a handicap for the whole game...and guess who gets to be the pawn as opposed to a king in a fight of pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queens and kings?".
SOOOOO, yeah, I'm not a fan of permanent bonuses being randomized. I AM a HUGE fan of randomization during play, though! I think it adds a ton of excitement, on the fly thinking, and creativity for explanations as well as tactics.
But randomization for initial character generation or for permanent character development (like hps, or, for example, number of skill points or base attack points?)...NO.
No...seriously!
Picture two fighters, One with a 10 con and a 10 str (bonus of 0 and 0), and another (Two) with 18 con and 18 str (bonus of +4 per lvl and +4.)
At lvl 1, Ftr One has 10 hp and an attack of 1, and does weapon damage, while Ftr Two has 14 hp and an attack of 5 and does weapon damage plus 4.
At lvl 5, Ftr One has about 33 hp, an attack of 5, and does weapon damage. Ftr Two has about 53 hp, an attack of 9, and still weapon damage plus 4.
One of these things is not like the other. In fact, Ftr Two is better at lvl 1 than Ftr One is at lvl 2 (having a mere 15 hp, an attack of 2, and weapon damage versus the Ftr Two stats above). Even moreso, Ftr One doesn't catch Ftr Two's level 5 stats until level....
NINE.
It takes until level 9 for Ftr One to match level 5 Ftr Two.
At level 9, Fighter 1 gets 55 hp, an attack of 9, and does weapon damage with no bonus! (potentially add 9 hp or 1 to hit/damage depending on where the lvl 4 and 8 ability score bonus points went, but remember that Ftr 2 also can add bonuses as well).
I'll concede mitigating factors like magic items and such and so on, but the base is there...lvl 5 for one guy is about equivalent to lvl 9 for the other.
When I ask "Why not just roll for level?" I sorta mean it. It's ok if the game embraces variable power mechanics...not all players HAVE to be the same power lvl, and some can be weaker/follower/commoner types versus the more powerful leader types. (You can even have fun with juxtaposing a "weaker" leader with a "stronger" follower.) But really, in d20, ability scores can mean almost as much, or more than, levels. If the assumption that rolling for levels is absurd, then so is the assumption of rolling for scores. However, I don't mean to claim either is necessarily absurd per se. I just mean to point out that rolling randomly for stats that establish long term (perhaps for the duration of a campaign) power has an impact. That impact will set roles, and in a game of balance, will offset balance.
I'd be ok playing a "weak" character, even a squire or follower, in a good roleplaying focused game...but man, I'd HATE playing a squire to another pc in a sort of chess game of survival and hack and slash....it'd be like "you gotta fight these baddies, but YOU, and only you, get a handicap for the whole game...and guess who gets to be the pawn as opposed to a king in a fight of pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queens and kings?".
SOOOOO, yeah, I'm not a fan of permanent bonuses being randomized. I AM a HUGE fan of randomization during play, though! I think it adds a ton of excitement, on the fly thinking, and creativity for explanations as well as tactics.
But randomization for initial character generation or for permanent character development (like hps, or, for example, number of skill points or base attack points?)...NO.
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Actually, there are systems in which you do this very kind of thing. Traveller's character history charts can result in wildly different resource allocation.
RIFTS character classes vary WILDLY in power, even on the basic game- Glitterboy vs Vagabond, anyone? (Sure, the system has its flaws, but they don't really stem from imbalanced classes so much as bad mechanics for everything else...)
Or look at the classic point buy system, HERO. It works by having a point limit in a given campaign at startup, but to reach those limits requires that PCs take disadvantages...and no PC is required to take disadvantages at all. (Disadvantages can account for as much as 20-25% of a typical PC's point total.)
What does the weaker one have for Dex?
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Aberzanzorax
Hero
Sorry Danny, was busy color coding and clarifying my post so you responded before it was entirely finished.
My apologies....I tend to think...and then formalize.
Anyway, yeah, agreed that there are systems where power is variable, and that's a part of what I hoped to convey. It'd be like a game of chess in which, before starting, each side had to "roll a d6, you lose that many chess pieces, selected by your opponent, but not the king."
One person could roll a 1 while the other rolled a 6. It'd be quite a handicap, but not necessarily a bad/non-fun game. (Imagine beating an opponent who rolled a 6 when you rolled a 1...Talk about bragging rights!)
And in answer to your question, let's assume that Ftr One had poor rolls across the board (Dex 10) while Ftr Two had great rolls across the board (Dex 18).
I get your point that rolls SHOULD even each other out across large samples. However, my point is that a single set of stats or even a single gaming group's worth of stats is not a large sample, and does not necessarily result in fairness of rolls (so Ftr One could realistically roll all 10's while Ftr Two could realistically roll all 18's in a single group...not likely, but also not as unlikely as having uneven rolls that happen hundreds or thousands of times across a campaign).
So, in essence, my two points are:
1. In a gaming group random long term rolls are not fair, as they are not randomized across enough rolling to become fair.
2. Fairness matters more in some games than others, and that needs to be an expectation that players share when they enter into the game.
My apologies....I tend to think...and then formalize.
Anyway, yeah, agreed that there are systems where power is variable, and that's a part of what I hoped to convey. It'd be like a game of chess in which, before starting, each side had to "roll a d6, you lose that many chess pieces, selected by your opponent, but not the king."
One person could roll a 1 while the other rolled a 6. It'd be quite a handicap, but not necessarily a bad/non-fun game. (Imagine beating an opponent who rolled a 6 when you rolled a 1...Talk about bragging rights!)
And in answer to your question, let's assume that Ftr One had poor rolls across the board (Dex 10) while Ftr Two had great rolls across the board (Dex 18).
I get your point that rolls SHOULD even each other out across large samples. However, my point is that a single set of stats or even a single gaming group's worth of stats is not a large sample, and does not necessarily result in fairness of rolls (so Ftr One could realistically roll all 10's while Ftr Two could realistically roll all 18's in a single group...not likely, but also not as unlikely as having uneven rolls that happen hundreds or thousands of times across a campaign).
So, in essence, my two points are:
1. In a gaming group random long term rolls are not fair, as they are not randomized across enough rolling to become fair.
2. Fairness matters more in some games than others, and that needs to be an expectation that players share when they enter into the game.
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I'm unswayed by the fairness argument you're proposing because there is more than one kind of fairness, such as fairness of opportunity.
D&D stat rolls are fair by definition because each player has the same chance of the same low or high rolls. This kind of fairness has been a key factor in the design of countless boardgames. Is Monopoly unfair? An exceptional sequence of rolls can let a player essentially lock up victory as early as the first circuit of the board. The rest of the game is merely details.
Or looking at other RPGs like the original Stormbringer game: you rolled for race. This is because the game was trying to accurately reflect the variations between the races in Moorcock's setting...and there was no way the game would be marketable if certain races like Melniboneans, Pan Tangeans and others were not available for PCs. Yet those races vary GREATLY in power, both in the setting and the game. Each player had a 1% chance of playing a Melnibonean, and a 2% chance of a Pan Tangian, for instance. And if one was in your party, you could see his impact immediately and in all aspects of the game. In a game in an RPG club, we had a party that included 2 Melniboneans and a Pan Tangian- the party was virtually unstoppable.
But the same odds applied to the least desirable races- the party could have included just as many sub-humans as supermen.
Fair? Again, yes- because each player had the same opportunity.
