Favoured - Deficient System

The Favoured - Deficient System is a method of rolling stats in order that can be applied to any process that involves only dice of the same size.

To start with, choose up to half (rounded down) of your stats to be your Favoured Stats. These are the stats that your character focuses on in his day-to-day life. For example, a character with Strength and Constitution for his or her favoured stats might often find themselves in fights.

Next choose an equal number of stats to be your deficits. For one reason or another either these don't come easy to you, or your character simply doesn't focus on them.

For your favoured stats, you gain an additional die, but lose the lowest.

For your deficient stats, you lose a die, unless that would put you below your end number of dice, in which case you roll an additional die and then remove the highest result. (For instance, 4d6, drop the lowest would become just 3d6, whereas 3d6 can't go lower, so it becomes 4d6 drop the highest).

Thoughts?

EDIT: Now with Anydice links!
I recommend viewing them as either "at least" or "at most" graphs, as that shows you where the average lies.

For 3d6: http://anydice.com/program/af56
For 4d6, drop lowest: http://anydice.com/program/462

EDIT 2: For those who don't want to anydice, here's the outputs (maximum and minimum remain unchanged so I'm excluding them):

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 100%, align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]3d6
[/TD]
[TD]Favoured[/TD]
[TD]Normal[/TD]
[TD]Deficient[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Mean[/TD]
[TD]+ ~1.74 (12.244598765428275)[/TD]
[TD]Control (10.500000000004832)[/TD]
[TD]- ~1.75 (8.755401234562946)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Deviation[/TD]
[TD]- ~0.11 (2.84684444531159)[/TD]
[TD]Control (2.9580398915501926)[/TD]
[TD]- ~0.11 (2.84684444531159)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]4d6, Drop lowest[/TD]
[TD]Favoured[/TD]
[TD]Normal[/TD]
[TD]Deficient[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Mean[/TD]
[TD]+ ~1.19 (13.430169753077793)[/TD]
[TD]Control (12.244598765428275)[/TD]
[TD]- ~1.74 (10.500000000004832)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Diviation[/TD]
[TD]- ~0.25 (2.6034679846916866)[/TD]
[TD]Control (2.84684444531159)[/TD]
[TD]+ ~0.11 (2.9580398915501926)[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

Is it meant to start as rolling 4 dice and drop the lowest then adding one die and dropping another, or was the initial idea to just roll 3 dice and then add these extra dice? For the later option I would fear the possibility of very "deficient" scores for the deficient ones. For the former, the favored might get too "favored".

Barolo said:

Is it meant to start as rolling 4 dice and drop the lowest then adding one die and dropping another, or was the initial idea to just roll 3 dice and then add these extra dice? For the later option I would fear the possibility of very "deficient" scores for the deficient ones. For the former, the favored might get too "favored".

Click to expand...

Whatever you already play with.
The range remains the same, only the frequency is altered. I'll link up some anydice graphs so that people can compare.

Yunru said:

Whatever you already play with.
The range remains the same, only the frequency is altered. I'll link up some anydice graphs so that people can compare.

Click to expand...

Oh, that would be quite useful for additional comments.

Changed the wording to make it more accurate (although also more confusing), and added anydice links for 4d6 and 3d6.

So basically, if you normally roll 4d6 drop lowest, you can choose up to 3 stats to be 5d6 drop 2 lowest and the other 3 become 3d6?

TwoSix said:

So basically, if you normally roll 4d6 drop lowest, you can choose up to 3 stats to be 5d6 drop 2 lowest and the other 3 become 3d6?

Click to expand...

Yes. Also you could also have two at 5d6 drop 2 lowest, two at 4d6 drop 1 lowest, and two at 3d6.

Definitely more organic then arranging scores, you'll probably end up with lower scores in your "main" ability score but better overall where you want it. In other words, worse for SAD where picking your highest to go where you want, but better for MAD where you want a 2 or 3 good scores.



This is the curve of how much above or below standard 4d6 you would be.

Yunru said:

Yes. Also you could also have two at 5d6 drop 2 lowest, two at 4d6 drop 1 lowest, and two at 3d6.

Click to expand...

Hmm. Seems legit, although in my groups we let you assign stats post roll. But it would be a good way to chance getting higher stats with the risk of lower stats.

I like the idea overall, but there are some points one should be aware of.

If you assign the favored and deficient stats pre-roll, that would also seem to mean needing to have stats all pre-assigned too, right? Some players might not go with that.

If instead, I allow them to first roll 4d6 drop lowest or 3d6, then assign, then add the extra dice for favored and deficient and drop highest/lowest accordingly, then I would expect the final results to be skewed more strongly in favor of high scores, as this method can be "gamed". For instance, if one [13] score is the result of [1 6 6] and other is [4 4 5], assigning the first as favored would very likely improve it (chances are 5 out of 6), while assigning the second as favored results in very low expectations (2 out of 6). If one was to pay the favored score by using a [9] stat like [3 3 3], they would feel like a very profitable deal, as the chances of reducing such combination are only 2 in 6, and only 1 in 6 to actually reduce the final modifier.