Undrave
Legend
But you can also roll below an 8, which isn't possible with the other methods (except for a few races with -2 to an ability score...).
The REAL issue, is when people roll, IME they don't want to accept the possible low rolls as the trade off for the high rolls. They roll a 5 or 6, and maybe an 8, and even if they have two 16's, they will want to roll again instead of accepting the low rolls. Most games even allow players to roll a few sets of ability scores using 4d6-L, and then choose the set they want to keep. This artificially increases the impact of 4d6-L because now you can choose the best of 3 sets, for example.
If DMs were all absolute in the 4d6-L, one set of scores ONLY, you would not see as much desire to do it IMO. If you rolled a 3 or 4, it can be severely harmful to a PC, even if you have a couple great score to make up for it. A lot of players say "Oh, no, I would play it" or "We only roll one set, take it or leave it." IME that is crap. It isn't like the DM will forbid them from playing if they won't accept a set of with bad rolls. At worse, the DM then resorts to "Fine, but then you are stuck with the standard array" or something.
This has been the real issue since the beginning of rolling stats.
I agree, this is also why I don't like rolling for stats. Also, a player with a bad roll could just play recklessly and suicide their character early.
Since a player who's stuck with [10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10] will like suicide her character at the earliest opportunity, the question becomes: What is the poorest, "most average", set of scores your players can abide? Then use that as your fall-back array.
they could always go for a Moon Druid since your stats don't matter...
Here's a Q.
What would we use as culture?
Because to me, it kinda matters. It would determine the logical spread of ability score bonuses.
- Is it just subraces renamed (elves get dark, wood, and high but not mountain and swamp)
- Would every species get access to all cultures?
- If so would it be based on fantasy archetypes? (High, Dark, Light, Nature, Warrior, City)
- tropes? (stout, lightfoot, smart, magical, sneaky, normal)
- terrain? (arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, underdark, urban)
- caste? (royal, noble, priest, warrior, merchant, craftsman, commoner)
- class? (warrior, thief, mage, priest, bard)
- psuedo background? (foreign, urban, classy, tribal)
- a mix? (arctic, high, dark, tribal, commoner, stout)
The first playtest candidate has Elf as a heritage, and wood, high, dark elves etc. as cultures. Any heritage can take any culture, so you can have the dwarf heritage and the wood elf culture. All biological features reside in heritage, and all learned features reside in culture.
Personally I'd rather see more abstract cultures that can be plopped into any new setting. Probably with a combination of ideals, societal structure and a dash of terrain (so Militant by the sea and Militant in the mountains are slightly different flavor). Maybe even give building blocks so a DM can create their own race/culture set specific for their games.
You're absolutely correct. Even so, I've never run a game where everyone was ok with point buy or the standard array, so rolling is what we get. Maybe I can get away with point buy in a non D&D game where it's not a listed option, but to my players, rolling stats is a sacred cow of the game. I'm sure if we play Level Up it will be the same.
They wouldn't like to play in the Adventure League

Not a "big" fan of customizing races, as I feel some species in a fantasy world would share similar traits, but we won't let it stop our game and might use some bits of the idea.
I'm pretty sure some aspect will be inherent, it's the more cultural stuff like proficiencies and languages that'll change.