D&D General How Did You Generate Your Most Recent Character's Stats?

DeviousQuail said:

This is a cool setup I haven't seen before. Theoretically, an 18, 18, 17, 17, 16, 15 is the highest possible if you allow a total bonus of +19. On the flip side 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9 has a total of -10 if you're a masochist. 5e's standard array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 comes in at +5, but would need to add +1 to one of the even numbers to make it legal. You could even allow taking a feat at the cost of reducing your total available bonus by +1.

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My current x is set to give substantially better stats than the standard array, but you could obviously set it to anything, based on the sorts of characters you want to see. I kinda wanna see badasses I can push hard, others will have other preferences.

I've heard of GMs doing things like what @CleverNickName mentions--pick any stats--I just wanted there to be something more like more rules around it. That's not snark on the more open-ended approach.

CleverNickName said:

For some folks, all characters in the party need to be equally "good" at things (have equally good stats, in this case) for the players to have equal amounts of fun.

That has never been the case at my table, we're more of a "rising tide lifts all ships" sort of team, but I hear about it on the Internet a lot. I can see from that point of view.

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My experience is that nice (i.e. almost all) adult players will always act like a rising tide lifts all ships, but on close observation, it's pretty obvious that significantly poor balance of any kind results in people have more/less fun, barring truly unusual individuals (in either direction).

That's not just stats, obviously, and one of the best things about 5E is that it is easily the most-balanced D&D between classes (not races, not stats, just classes) which as @Umbran's post points out, helps matters because the less imbalances you have, the easier the DM's job of keeping everyone involved and having fun is! So I think having more stat differential in 5E hurts less than it did in say, 3E (which also tended to be more MAD).

Some players quickly get bored or frustrated if their PCs are pretty weak, others take sessions for that to kick in, a few it'll never matter to them. None of that reflects poorly or well on them personally or as RPGers, I would strongly suggest. The two best and most generous players at my main table are at opposite ends of the spectrum on this, for example - one will immediately get annoyed if their PC is good for nothing, there other not only tolerates it but has intentionally designed pretty weak PCs before.

Ruin Explorer said:

My experience is that nice (i.e. almost all) adult players will always act like a rising tide lifts all ships, but on close observation, it's pretty obvious that significantly poor balance of any kind results in people have more/less fun, barring truly unusual individuals (in either direction).

That's not just stats, obviously, and one of the best things about 5E is that it is easily the most-balanced D&D between classes (not races, not stats, just classes) which as @Umbran's post points out, helps matters because the less imbalances you have, the easier the DM's job of keeping everyone involved and having fun is! So I think having more stat differential in 5E hurts less than it did in say, 3E (which also tended to be more MAD).

Some players quickly get bored or frustrated if their PCs are pretty weak, others take sessions for that to kick in, a few it'll never matter to them. None of that reflects poorly or well on them personally or as RPGers, I would strongly suggest. The two best and most generous players at my main table are at opposite ends of the spectrum on this, for example - one will immediately get annoyed if their PC is good for nothing, there other not only tolerates it but has intentionally designed pretty weak PCs before.

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This does a good job of summing up why I moved away from rolling for stats. It's not that the people who would have less fun if the dice shafted them are bad people or bad TRPGers, it's that they'd be having less fun, and why would I want that?

CleverNickName said:

For some folks, all characters in the party need to be equally "good" at things (have equally good stats, in this case) for the players to have equal amounts of fun.

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Well those folks probably shouldn’t roll stats in the first place

AlViking said:

I've seen games where one person had very high scores across the board and another's were pretty abysmal. You may not care, but to the person with the low scores they never felt like they could ever contribute as much to the team. Being in the shadow of another character made the game less enjoyable to them.

It's pretty basic human nature. Two people doing the same tasks and one is superior to the other, knowing you will never be as good because of something outside of the control of either one isn't great. I think it's also completely unnecessary myself.

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Then they should probably use point buy, because that’s always a possible outcome of rolling stats

Ruin Explorer said:

My experience is that nice (i.e. almost all) adult players will always act like a rising tide lifts all ships, but on close observation, it's pretty obvious that significantly poor balance of any kind results in people have more/less fun, barring truly unusual individuals (in either direction).

That's not just stats, obviously, and one of the best things about 5E is that it is easily the most-balanced D&D between classes (not races, not stats, just classes) which as @Umbran's post points out, helps matters because the less imbalances you have, the easier the DM's job of keeping everyone involved and having fun is! So I think having more stat differential in 5E hurts less than it did in say, 3E (which also tended to be more MAD).

Some players quickly get bored or frustrated if their PCs are pretty weak, others take sessions for that to kick in, a few it'll never matter to them. None of that reflects poorly or well on them personally or as RPGers, I would strongly suggest. The two best and most generous players at my main table are at opposite ends of the spectrum on this, for example - one will immediately get annoyed if their PC is good for nothing, there other not only tolerates it but has intentionally designed pretty weak PCs before.

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This is why, I’ll remind folks, when I use rolled stats I tell players that if they’re unhappy with their set of six, they can discard them and roll a new set of six. It’s more important to me that the players feel like they can meaningfully contribute to the group than it is to adhere to some… I don’t know, sanctity of randomness? In my experience, players find it feels more fair when they can roll a new set if their rolls come up crappy than they do when they have to stick with whatever garbage the dice give them the first time.

Charlaquin said:

Then they should probably use point buy, because that’s always a possible outcome of rolling stats

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The player did ask to use point buy both before they rolled and after they rolled poorly. The DM laughed and said no because "We all roll so it's fair". Which to be honest I think is totally BS. Even if they had used point buy they still would have been behind the curve of the person that rolled extremely well, but at least they would have felt that their character was competent.

In any case I wouldn't care much if it was a short term campaign or a high lethality game where my character isn't likely to live long. But a sense of fairness is hard wired into us so again ... you may not care but a lot of people do.

Charlaquin said:

Well those folks probably shouldn’t roll stats in the first place

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Small clarification: then then entire table shouldn't roll stats.

prabe said:

This does a good job of summing up why I moved away from rolling for stats. It's not that the people who would have less fun if the dice shafted them are bad people or bad TRPGers, it's that they'd be having less fun, and why would I want that?

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Yeah exactly.

There's always been this odd judgemental streak where people, in what seems to me is a very false and fake way (but might not be!) act like they're fine with bad stats because one time in 1997 (or worse, 1979), they played a PC with a 6 (but also a 17, which they never mention unless pressed), for two sessions, and so anyone who wasn't cool with permanently having across-the-board bad stats in a long-term campaign is a TERRIBLE PERSON or worse yet a BAD ROLEPLAYER!

I might have bought that nonsense when I was like, a teenager. But at 47? Pull the other one mate, it's got bells on! It's obviously judge-y and either hypocritical or actually worse than hypocritical is "anyone who isn't the same as me sucks" (is there a word for that? It's kind of like elitism but not the same. Homogenaism?) bollocks.

Charlaquin said:

Then they should probably use point buy, because that’s always a possible outcome of rolling stats

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I mean, no, not always, and you know this too.

There are plenty of rolling methods that hard-prevent abysmal stats. In fact, my personal experience is that most groups that do still roll stats have some funky method (several cool ones mentioned in this thread) that does exactly that. Others still just simply let people re-roll if the stats aren't at least solid, in a very ad hoc way.

Charlaquin said:

Well those folks probably shouldn’t roll stats in the first place

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Absolutely agree - the problem is the decision is not typically at a player level, it's at a group level, and often a DM is making the decision for the entire group either without bothering to get input, or without really checking if that input is unbiased. Some people just aren't good at reading others, and aren't good at understanding the pressure to conform and so on. Given a much higher-than-baseline pop percentage of D&D DMs are autistic too, this is particularly likely to be an issue here (and I say that as someone with severe ADHD, note, real severe, it's not a judgement - I'm particularly likely to forget the initiative order or make similar errors for example!). I think especially among adults, especially among adults who are good-natured and polite and reasonable, people will agree to rolling stats even they loathe the practice. Now maybe we should all empowered and Californian and speak our truths and so on and maybe the world would be a better place that way, but... that ain't how it is. A lot of people go along to get along.

And that's the main way this becomes an issue.

The other way I've seen is the "I will die on this hill" rolling holdout. But the answer to that guy is just let him die on that hill by himself, and force him to publicly roll his stats with a legit boring method (not a funky one, which almost certainly gives average better results than the standard array or point buy) in front of everyone, get a worse result than the standard array, and decide to use the standard array (which you have kindly allowed).

AlViking said:

The player did ask to use point buy both before they rolled and after they rolled poorly. The DM laughed and said no because "We all roll so it's fair". Which to be honest I think is totally BS. Even if they had used point buy they still would have been behind the curve of the person that rolled extremely well, but at least they would have felt that their character was competent.

In any case I wouldn't care much if it was a short term campaign or a high lethality game where my character isn't likely to live long. But a sense of fairness is hard wired into us so again ... you may not care but a lot of people do.

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I agree with you, that’s dumb and I think the DM had their priorities twisted. It’s obvious that player was in for a bad time, and the point of playing a game together is to have a good time. This is why I tell players, if you roll stats you’re unhappy with, go ahead and roll a full new set of six. Do that as many times as it takes to get a character you think you’ll have fun playing.