I played a crappy character...and it was great!

[kitsune9]

I was running a cleric that had a terrible Con. She only got 2 hp a level on average. I enjoyed playing her and wanted to see how far she could last.

 

[Quickleaf]

I rolled up my first D&D character that way when I was 8 - I think his highest stat was a 14 dexterity, but everything else was abysmal, so he was the party thief. This was 1e IIRC, and the group was running the Slave Lords series. Man, I must have died four times, and each time the party debated whether it was worth the money to resurrect me. I think by the fourth time they decided to find a new thief, and then the game ended.

It's a lot of fun to do once, maybe twice, and get that old school vibe. Heck, good RPers can have fun with any character. But eventually I wanted a tactically competent character too, not only a great RP concept. That said, with the right group, I would do 3d6 in order in a heartbeat. Heck I'd even randomly roll class!

 

[Elf Witch]

my very first character had horrible stats. Because nothing was above a 10 I played a fighter. I admit at first I was jealous when other people had better rolled stats and one even rolled well enough to be a paladin.

I decided to play this character as delusional thinking he was the world greatest fighter. Think Joxer from Xena but this was years before Joxer.

I had a blast playing him and the DM and the rest of the party loved him as well. They paid to have him raised several times.

For the most part I don't want to go back and roll 3D6 in a row but I prefer rolling to point buy. I feel it gives a more organic character and it gives you the chance to play a truly spectacular character.

I am willing to accept the low rolls as the cost of taking the gamble.

Since I know some people don't like to gamble when I DM I offer the chance to roll or take a 35 point buy.

 

[haakon1]

For what it's worth (nothing), I use:
-- 4d6, drop lowest
-- any order
-- You can re-roll the whole set if any stat is 7 or lower (that -2 ability modifier (3.5e rules) means your character probably isn't fit to be an adventurer, but hey, you can try it if you want).

Across two campaigns, the lowest stats I've seen are:
-- Wizard/Sorcerer with a Wis 6 (but an Int 18, at 7th level)
-- Wizard with Str 7 (but Int & Con 16, Dex 15 at 4th level)
-- Monk with Charisma 8 (but Dex and Int both 18, at 9th level)
-- Rogue with Wisdom 8 (but Dex 17 at 4th level)

The highest stat I've seen is a Fighter with Str 20 (at 8th level, naturally, so started at 18)

 

[Li Shenron]

See, I prefer a more point-buyish method because that way I can get the character I want to play.

I think this summarizes the difference between different players.

One player already knows what character he wants to play, rolling stats carries a risk of being forced into playing something else, while point-buy guarantees he can play what he wants (or guarantees he can't, in case he wants to play something inappropriate for the campaign).

I'm a different kind of player because I don't know what I want to play, or in other words, I want to play a lot of characters. Random stats can make the choice for me, and I'll accept that as a challenge.

There are still a couple of obvious reasons why I don't always want to roll stats:

- random stats have a chance for a severely less survivable PC and that's ok for me; what is not ok is that there is also a chance for several PCs like this in a row... I can actually still live with that, but can my DM do the same? There are DMs who get irritated if the party of PCs changes continually due to deaths, because this might make the campaign story arc less believable, like having a Shire to Mordor epic quest run in 4x100 relay format

- often RPG rules are such that a lot of character traits requires a minimum score in at least one ability to be used; rolling stats has a small chance that your scores are so slow that there is almost nothing for you to do...

On the other hand as a DM I would never force rolling stats on players, at least because I don't want to hear any of them to complain for poor rolls for months afterwards.

 

[Alzrius]

I think this summarizes the difference between different players.

One player already knows what character he wants to play, rolling stats carries a risk of being forced into playing something else, while point-buy guarantees he can play what he wants (or guarantees he can't, in case he wants to play something inappropriate for the campaign).

This is an excellent point, and something that I suspect that I didn't communicate clearly enough in my original post.

I wasn't trying to be bullish about rolling for stats as opposed to point-buy (and if I came across that way, I apologize) - I was just talking about my experiences and reactions to doing so.

I did start with Basic and Second Edition, but as I said above, this was mostly reading the books, with a few isolated instances of GMing. It wasn't until college and Third Edition that I tried to run a campaign, and it was only in the last few years that I finally got a chance to be a player in someone else's campaign.

I mention that because, by the time I got to be a regular player, I had a lot of pent-up ideas about what sort of characters I wanted to play, and it was easy enough to fall in-line with the group's preference for point-buy (which is, as noted, more conducive to creating a character that you already have in mind). It was only after doing that a few times that I'd worn through that urge enough to try rolling for stats and creating a character that developed organically through play.

Doing so was a lot of fun, despite the resulting character running counter to a lot of what I perceived to be the reasons for point-buying stats - namely that the character has, as listed above, some truly atrocious ability scores. That isn't me proselytizing - I just wanted to share my enjoyment.

 

[Stouthart]

I think there is something pure to rolling your stats. I have never used the point buy system in D&D, and won't allow it in games I run. I like having the rolls determine the character- helps players think outside the box.

 

[Grogg of the North]

If you had fun playing him, then I wouldn't call it a "crappy character".

 

[Bullgrit]

Wondering: What made/makes playing that character fun for you?

A- That you randomly rolled his stats (regardless of what the end result is)?

B- That the character has several low/bad stats? (Would you have had fun if all the stats had been really good?)

C- That you approach playing the character as a "challenge"? (Therefore you put more thought into how to play him rather than just play him like previous characters that you don't have to prove a point with.)

D- That you expect the character to be short-lived, so every success is sweeter?

E- Something else?

Bullgrit

 

[Alzrius]

If you had fun playing him, then I wouldn't call it a "crappy character".

That was something of a shorthand on my part - it was a comparative reference to the ability scores of the other PCs in the game; in other words, he was "crappy" as a quantitative judgment, not a qualitative one.

Wondering: What made/makes playing that character fun for you?

A- That you randomly rolled his stats (regardless of what the end result is)?

This one's a "sort of." If you look at rolling stats purely as its own thing (that is, divorce it from then actually playing the character after the stats are rolled), I find fun in that. There's an element of imminent anticipation there, a la "what's in this gift that I'm about to open?" sort of way.

Several times, purely for fun, my group has conducted "fake" 3d6 rolls, where we see what stats for characters we would have been playing, had the entire thing not been a fun "what if" exercise.

(EDIT - Fun fact: I once got into a debate with a guy who couldn't believe that there was any fun to be had in rolling dice for their own sake. He kept removing meaning from the equation, finally asking "but if the numbers themselves don't have any greater meaning, if even high or low doesn't matter, is rolling dice still fun?" He couldn't believe it when I said yes - since I find it fun in the same way spinning a top is fun - and disdainfully ended the debate by saying how to him "fun needs to be more than rotating polyhedrals," or something like that.)

B- That the character has several low/bad stats? (Would you have had fun if all the stats had been really good?)

In regards to playing up the aspect of the bad stats, that's part of it. It's honestly amusing, and somewhat refreshing, to play a character that isn't notably better than the "average NPC" in some areas. It's fun to portray some rather dramatic limitations on what my cleric can do.

I do think that I'd have been quite happy if I'd rolled all 18's though!

C- That you approach playing the character as a "challenge"? (Therefore you put more thought into how to play him rather than just play him like previous characters that you don't have to prove a point with.)

I'll admit, I do see this character as a challenge, and that's certainly boosting my enjoyment.

I do have something of a point to prove, but while my reason for doing this was my wanting to show the value of random stats to the other players, I want to stress that my doing so was done in good humor; I don't feel a drive or a need to "win" this particular difference in views.

For the most part, this was something I'd simply long wanted to try, since the first method of character generation that I'd initially read about when I started D&D was via the random method - specifically 3d6 in order. That's clearly much more stringent than point-buy, but as I said, I do enjoy the challenge.

D- That you expect the character to be short-lived, so every success is sweeter?

That's true also, but not quite so much. I'll admit there's a balance in terms of wanting to make my character useful, but at the same time not subjecting him to a situation which, due to his stats influencing his die rolls, he'd likely not survive. Luckily, as a support-based character, that's usually not a problem...but even so, I do see something of a personal victory with each session that ends with him still alive.

E- Something else?

There's also the enjoyment that comes from having tried something I didn't think I'd like - a cleric PC, in this case - and finding out that I do in fact like it.

I won't say that I don't feel a sense of personal vindication there - a sort of "it worked!" fulfillment that comes from finding that something you'd long believed to be true actually is true when you finally try it. Likewise, it feels good to have that particular vista of future opportunities for cleric characters be open (e.g. I'm not mentally writing off all future ideas for cleric characters anymore).

There's a lot of disparate elements involved in why this makes me happy, like there is for anything that makes anyone happy, I suspect. But I'm just happy that I'm happy with what I tried.