D&D 5E How does your group determine ability scores?

[Maxperson]

You are taking two entirely different games and trying to make the same point. Monopoly is an ameritrash game designed specifically not to be equitable at any but the starting stage of the game. Chess, on the other hand, is designed to be equitable entirely. Folks who don't like rolling stats are saying they don't want their D&D to be like Monopoly, they want it to be like chess. However, ideally it should be somewhere in-between. Which is why you have so many failsafe methods during stat rolling and playing like inspiration and/or hero points.

Which is fine. At least you are arguing equity here. Monopoly, Chess and the D&D Rolling Stat Generation Method are all fair. If you want more equity, pick point buy or array. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not unfair if someone rolls. He's playing by the rules.

 

[Maxperson]

I think that's right. We could get into all sorts of linguistic tussles over the exact denotation of "fair," but I've never seen one of those go well on this site, so I'll beg (and plead) that we not do that. The issue, I take it, is that Oofta's wife was put at a severe and unnecessary disadvantage right from before the game even began: a lot of people won't even want to play under those circumstances.

So let's just forget "fair" or "unfair" momentarily and instead talk about "kind" or "unkind." The DM's response was surely unkind.

Sure. This is very group dependent, though. For groups with players who care about that sort of inequity, change to point buy or array. There are a lot of groups where players just don't care about the inequity, though.

Right now I play in 2 games. I DM one and play in the other. Neither group cares who rolls what for stats. In the group I play in, my PC's stats while good, are in the middle of the 5 players. Two have fantastic stats, and two have worse, but decent stats. Mine are good, but not fantastic.

Nobody cares. We all are having a blast contributing to the game both in and out of combat and it doesn't matter if one player has +6 and another has +3. This is 5th edition with it's bounded accuracy, so we all have pretty good odds of success and with a D20, the +3s beat the +6s a fair amount of the time.

In the group I DM, there's a similar range of stats, though I think only one player rolled really well.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think you want to use a game originally designed to demonstrate unfairness to make the point you're trying to make.

Inequity

 

[Ath-kethin]

Which is exactly how races going forward work.

Sure. And it's about time. I'm glad they came around on that, after 40 odd years.

I haven't used/allowed racial bility modifiers in my games since 2005 or so. My logic is, if a race is "known" for a thing (like elves being good with magic), a player can lean into that idea or not as they see fit.

While you could make a case that the natural affinity (i.e. Int bonus) should apply whether or not a character is designed around that affinity, I've found find players are much happier with greater options.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Please stop.

 

[Musing Mage]

For 5e I use 3d6, assign as desired.

If players are unhappy with their attributes they may invoke a Faustian bargain, in which they may reroll the character but must keep the new rolls regardless of whether it's an improvement. Further, I take the discarded stats and craft them into an enemy who is on the hunt for the PC.

 

[Maxperson]

For 5e I use 3d6, assign as desired.

If players are unhappy with their attributes they may invoke a Faustian bargain, in which they may reroll the character but must keep the new rolls regardless of whether it's an improvement. Further, I take the discarded stats and craft them into an enemy who is on the hunt for the PC.

"Help! Help! I'm being hunted by below average man!"

 

[FitzTheRuke]

now this is why we stopped rolling. people would reroll and reroll and take the best... or in your case roll then if it isn't 'good enough' take the stats...

Yeah, us too. Everyone I've ever known who's rolled will take their rolled-stats as-is if they are good but will whine and whinge if they're bad and expect a reroll. Therefore, rolling always, ALWAYS results in above-average rolls. Worse, the player who rolled a "just okay" character winds up stuck with it, while the person who rolled badly and rerolls often gets a better array than the one who rolled "fine" the first time. That's the part that I find unfair, and the main reason why I use point-buy.

I agree with people who don't like point-buy that it winds up being disappointingly samey, but we just have to drop the idea that your stat array really says anything (interesting) at all about your character.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sure. And it's about time. I'm glad they came around on that, after 40 odd years.

I haven't used/allowed racial bility modifiers in my games since 2005 or so. My logic is, if a race is "known" for a thing (like elves being good with magic), a player can lean into that idea or not as they see fit.

While you could make a case that the natural affinity (i.e. Int bonus) should apply whether or not a character is designed around that affinity, I've found find players are much happier with greater options.

It took me a significantly longer time to realize it wasn't needed.

It took pulling the whole game apart and doing inventory to realize I could just give the players floating bonuses, then do the work to make humans interesting without having the 'unique' ability to let you customize your character.

 

[ART!]

no defense needed... I have seen WAY worse... and heck I have put up with worse.

what I have found is there is a lot of people who like rolling when they roll high and hate rolling when they roll low...

or maybemore accurately when they roll the stats more or less they want.

Yeah, it's pretty rare that people want a bunch of crappy scores, and if they're stuck with them they're generally going to feel at least a little "robbed".

BUT!

I played a character for several sessions a while back who I decided to roll ability scores for, and decided I wanted him to have low scores across the board, so I rerolled several times until I didn't have anything above a 9, and kept the rolls in order. He was a cleric with a wisdom of 5! He was challenging to play, but fun!