D&D 5E Point buy vs roll

[Cadence]

I never said luck was equal footing. I said point buy and standard array was. Lots of people like luck though, and like rolling dice. If someone is unhappy with their rolls, things can be done to change things up. I personally find point buy boring. Others don’t. shrug

I think a lot of posters on here like luck and will take about anything and make it fun.

I'm guessing there are a lot of players (a lot of folks on here DM too or mostly) at large who like good luck, and will take rerolls on bad luck -- which makes it sound to me like what they really want is higher stats.

 

[Dausuul]

Point buy here; though I have considered the system where each player rolls a set of stats and then anyone can pick any of the stat arrays this produced. So if one person rolls god stats, the whole party gets them (or if someone doesn't, it's a deliberate choice to take a lower array). It preserves excitement and uncertainty but removes the unwilling disparity in results.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Point buy here; though I have considered the system where each player rolls a set of stats and then anyone can pick any of the stat arrays this produced. So if one person rolls god stats, the whole party gets them (or if someone doesn't, it's a deliberate choice to take a lower array). It preserves excitement and uncertainty but removes the unwilling disparity in results.

You could do it as a draft. Everyone rolls. Take all stats and do 6 rounds of drafts where each player gets a turn to pick a stat.

 

[Mezuka]

Point buy. Let the players play what they want to play.

I don't like dice shenanigans (ex.: 4d6 reroll ones, drop lowest). There is always one player who will roll badly and feel cheated by the Goddess of Luck.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I know I've responded to posts like this before. So I had to look up the last one, remind myself what I said, and see if there's anything new to add. There's not. Here it is again.

Rolling for attributes is exciting for the five minutes you spend hoping to beat the odds. After that, you'll spend the rest of the campaign with the outcome, good or bad, and eyeing everyone else's sheet to compare their results. Nobody ever really goes into this method hoping for less than or average numbers, and many will come up with numerous ways to circumvent the odds to ensure better results anyway, like more dice, discard low numbers, arrange the order, etc.

Point buy makes more sense to me. Everyone is given the same pool of resources and freedom to make decisions for themselves. If players want to play with low scores, it's determined by their choices, not chances.

 

[Yora]

I agree, but the problem is usually one of jealousy, especially with people whit powergaming tendencies, even small ones, "it's not fair"...

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. My campaigns are not dependent on having all the players who started staying through to the end and some rotation is part of the game. If this is something that indicates early to players that they won't be getting the kind of game they are looking for in my campaign, that's another benefit.

I agree with that, but if it's a long campaign and you are unlucky at rolling, it can really suck for years.

In some games, yes. But with 5th edition in particular, I don't think it's really possible to get truly awful stats.
There is a 0.5% chance to get a character with one or more scores of 3. That's one in 200 characters.
There is a 7% chance to get a character with one or more scores of 5 or lower. That's one in 14 characters.
At 4th level, you can increase that 5 to a 7, for a -2 modifier. And -2 is not terrible. Especially when you can decide your worst stat goes into an ability your chosen class does not rely on much.
And if by that point you still really hate your character, you can always start a different one. Nobody is being forced to stick with the same character just to play in the campaign.

 

[Dausuul]

You could do it as a draft. Everyone rolls. Take all stats and do 6 rounds of drafts where each player gets a turn to pick a stat.

That puts players in competition with each other, though. One of the things I like about the "array pool" is that it's fully cooperative--one person's fantastic luck is everyone's benefit. I'd rather not undermine that by adding a competitive element.

 

[Oofta]

I'm sure there are some people who will live with sub-par numbers and be happy with it. It's just been my experience that if someone doesn't like the result they either get a reroll, an adjustment or the PC dies quickly. I've seen games where 1 person had multiple 18s and another had a high score of 13 and most numbers lower than 10. Neither player was happy with the result.

If you want higher stats than what the 5E point buy allows, use the D&D 3.5 point buy system. If you want random but roughly equivalent come up with an array of 20 or so options with point buy and determine which array and/or sequence randomly. The only advantage of rolling is a disparity of results.

But, whenever this comes up there's no real answer. People like what they like and nothing changes.

 

[Helldritch]

Also @Lanefan , @Maxperson, @RoughCoronet0 , and anyone else who mostly rolls...

How often do you get a so-called "hopeless character"? Are none viewed that way, does the rolling system not have them occur, or is there a threshold to ditch them?

Thanks for any insight! It's been so long since I regularly rolled that I'm curious to hear.

We roll. But since I have 6 players in each group we do the following.
Every players rolls 4d6 and I roll 4d6 too.
This creates a pool of 7 ability score from which all players will draw, and we, of course, drop the lowest one.
This way, all characters are equal in stats, but it is not a sure way to get OP characters.

 

[clearstream]

I'm curious about what is the general preference (if any) on this forum for the method to generate stats in 5e.

Other - draw cards from a deck with no replacement.