D&D General Having your players roll their stats

[Hex08]

How many of you have your players roll their characters rather than point buy? When I run a D&D style game its usually Castles & Crusades but spent a looong time running Pathfinder 1E and D&D before that. I always give my players the choice and while they usually chose point buy it isn't uncommon (30%-35% of the time) for them to choose to roll their characters. If they chose to roll it is always 4d6, drop the lowest and arrange them how they like. I would also allow them to completely reroll if their total modifiers fell below a certain threshold, which differed depending on the game.

 

[overgeeked]

Always rolled. Always. In 5E, it’s 4d6 drop the lowest. In OSR games, it’s 3d6 down the line…like Crom intended.

 

[Umbran]

These days, the D&D games I run are point-buy.

I got tired of dealing with the issues raised by the common over-powered or under-powered characters that dice produce.

 

[mamba]

I use the standard array, or an alternative array for those that want no minuses

 

[JEB]

I let my players choose whichever of the three methods they wanted. Standard array was by far the most popular.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

Point buy if we're playing 5e campaigns, 4d6 drop lowest if playing 5e one shots, 3d6 down the line if we're playing B/X.

 

[pukunui]

I haven't had my players roll for stats since the 3e days. I strongly dislike the inherent unfairness inequity of the results. I only ever use point buy or the standard array.

 

[Jack Daniel]

OD&D vol 1 Men & Magic says: "Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in selecting a role."

So I have myself roll for my players' stats, old-old-school style.

I do it all at once, with one throw of many dice.

 

[cbwjm]

I always use dice rolling, though one person in my group decided to use point buy which was fine.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Mixed. Rolling tends to produce mostly higher-powered characters, but that's fun sometimes. Point buy for powergamers (make them work for it) or randos (less chance for bad-faith players to make a hash of things.)