My Best PC Rolls:
AD&D - 18/93? strength, psionics, and great constitution and dexterity (which was important due to the rule set were we used a segmented combat system). He was grossly overpowered relative to his peers, so I dual classed him to cleric of the God of Strength and filled a more supporting role in the campaign. We retired the PCs early-ish (level 5?)
My favorite current method:
- Roll 2d6 6 times.
- Then, you may reroll 2 of those 12 dice (if you like - you can choose whether to use the reroll or not).
- Add the dice in each resulting set together and add 4.
- Decide between: 1.) Use them in order and gain a minor boon, 2.) Keep 3 fixed where they are and move the other 3 around, or 3.) Put these aside and use point buy per the PHB.
A minor boon is something like an ally, wealth, a DM selected uncommon magic item (not top tier uncommon, not bottom tier either), or a minor special ability (in the past I gave out access to a cantrip of DM's choice, an unpopular feat, Resist 1 to all damage, adding a spell to a spell list, an additional 1st level slot, etc...)
I like the range and diversity of the PCs. You tend to not get 'dump stats' mentality as often, and there is still the excitement of rolling.
Other favorite system for new campaigns:
I have a deck of ~250 cards I made. I give each player 100 pennies. I randomly determine one player and hand them the idol.
The majority of the cards have numbers between 6 and 16 on them. The remainder have a boon on them (similar to above), or deck manipulation cards (look at the top 10 and put them back in any order, or look at the top 3 cards and put 2 on the bottom of the deck).
I flip over a card and the player that has the idol is assigned a bid of 1 on it. They then hand the idol to another player of their choice that does not have 6 ability scores. Then, we go around in circles bidding on the card to see who wants it the most. Once you have 6 attribute cards, you can't bid on attribute cards,but you can bid on perk cards.
If someone runs out of coins, I give them back 1 penny.
This falls apart a bit if they collude too much. There are a few cards that punish them for having too much money left when too many cards have been selected, but I find that they do not stop collusion as well as just asking them not to collude.