D&D 5E About Rolling for Ability Scores

[Ti-bob]

I'm using a deck of cards to generate stats.

My deck contain cards with numbers 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9 and 9 on them.
Shuffles the deck; deals randomly 6 stacks of 2 cards; swaps any 2 cards, if desired; assigns each stack to any stat. That's it.

Nice blend of random and control, I find. More diversity than point buy without too many unbalancing low or high scores for some PC. No complain of players to date.

 

[Sunseeker]

I dislike telling and being told what methods (that are assumed in the default material) are not allowed to be used to generate my character. Rolling is high risk high reward. Point buy is great for people who enjoy number crunching. Arrays are the safe route. This covers almost every sort of rational actor at the table (unreasonable players need not be discussed), it covers people who want quick and easy, it covers people who want detail, it covers RPers and power gamers alike. That's why they were all included to begin with in the book.

If I as the DM modify what is available, all I will do is modify the given values. EX: 3d6 instead of 4 drop lowest, variant arrays, etc...

I'm fairly terrible with point buy, it's a level of number crunching I don't enjoy and don't fully understand, which amplifies my un-enjoyment of it. Personally if you said point-buy only (and no option for an array) I would likely walk.

 

[practicalm]

I generally like rolling and I don't mind getting a weaker character from rolling but I can see that some players don't like it. To me rolling poorly on a character is just a chance to have fun with a character called to be a hero but maybe not quite good enough to make the cut. The last character I rolled ended up 6 13 12 16 13 10 and while it might be a great set of stats I'm going to have fun with it. Turned him into a fire gensi mystic with an urchin background. He's adventuring because he wants to teach everyone to tap into their psychic powers.

 

[Saidoro]

The fundamental problem with rolling for stats is that it concentrates a very large amount of character power into a very small number of rolls with no real way to get around it after chargen. It's fine for one-shots because they don't last very long so the imbalance it inherently creates is small so the small and so the constant benefit from people who enjoy rolling can outweigh the cost from the linear penalty that imbalance creates.

Also, psychologically speaking, for many--even most--players it is more enjoyable to have an exceptional character. Everyone wants to be a little special.

In the end I don't think it really matters. The only potential problem is your third reason, which is when one player rolled poorly and has a character far below the others in terms of power. I tend to glance over the characters while they're being made and if I see one that looks significantly below the others, I have him re-roll.

All that said, I have considered point buy before, but if I do so I'd up it so that PCs were more heroic. Right now point buy and the standard array lead to above average individuals, but not exceptional or heroic ones. I'd probably go for something like: 18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10, and its equivalent in point-buy.

But as with everything, the bottom line is that it depends upon the specific campaign and its participants. I'd recommend using an ability generation method that as many folks are as happy with as possible. This is one instance, in my opinion, where the players' opinions matter just as much as the DMs. Why not present a few different options and put it to a vote?

The average character created by whatever generation method you use will be average, not exceptional. That is what average means. And the point buy and array rules in the PHB actually create characters which are weaker than the average rolled character. Which is a problem. Still, if you're looking for a less bad method which still involves some rolling you could try forte/foible. Everyone gets an 18 and an 8, the other stats are rolled by your preferred method.

If you don't use feats, roll for stats any way you like.

But if you do use feats, I VERY STRONGLY advise you to not allow starting scores above 15 before racial modifiers.

Feel free to still use random rolls, as long as there is no way to roll a 16 or higher.

You'll thank me later...

Honestly, I go the other way. If you're using feats, you should go out of your way to make sure everyone has a good main stat off the bat so you can skip the boring "everyone is sticking their feat in their main stat" phase at levels 4 and 8 so that people can start choosing actually interesting abilities that make characters more distinct as soon as possible.

 

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=6704530]Saidoro[/MENTION], by exceptional I mean relative to the average joe. Even the standard array is higher than the average dude, who would presumably average 10. So my point is, I prefer a game in which the PCs are considered exceptional relative to the average person, unless of course I'm DMing a low fantasy game in which the PCs are street urchins and such.

 

[Duganson]

My method: Let them roll, if - after the rolls have been tallied into what would have been point buy - their rolls are less than the allowed point buy amount they can raise stats to accomodate.

Easy-Peasy, fair, fun and allows for some higher stats.

 

[kalil]

Honestly, I go the other way. If you're using feats, you should go out of your way to make sure everyone has a good main stat off the bat so you can skip the boring "everyone is sticking their feat in their main stat" phase at levels 4 and 8 so that people can start choosing actually interesting abilities that make characters more distinct as soon as possible.

If your players are taking ability points over feats at level 4 I don't think you need to worry about them getting overpowered anytime soon

 

[pming]

Hiya.

*shrug* Whatever you and your players think is fun is the right choice. Personally, I like rolling. All of my players like rolling. Sometimes they get characters with high stats, sometimes they get ones with low stats... but averaged out over decades of play, it all balances out. (In my group: the "newest" member of the game has been playing for about two months...12 year old daughter of one of my main players; of the main players, the "least experienced" only clocks in at just under two decades, quickly ramping up to me with the most experience at 35 years).

I have played in games where the DM said "point buy". I still rolled, then calculated my total points. If I was over, I re-rolled everything. Once I had a character that was equal or under the point total, I played him. As long as you don't yell at a player in your group for making...as you put it "too much of a sub-optimal choice"..., then away you go.

However, I'm going to put money down that some (or all) of you eventually come to the conclusion that when a player at the table plays "Phil the XIV", who is exactly like "Phil the I" because, you know, if there is no rolling, and Phil I dies, the player can just put another "I" on his name and keep going...he can make the same exact choices every time. I've seen this happen when using point buy before. A player really likes some particular "mechanic optimization" because it's broken (or he/she sees it as that), and just takes that as a default for all their characters of that type. Always. Every single time. This ticks me off faaar more than a player cheating at his dice rolls and ending up with a character who's low stat is 14. YMMV.

If you are worried about inner-party discrepancies, you can do what I've done on occasion. I call it the "Wheel of Pain"; draw a "clock with no numbers" (basically 6 lines in an asterisk pattern). One player rolls 3d6; if it's 9+, it goes on the top (12 o'clock), if it's 8 or lower it goes on the bottom (6 o'clock). Another person rolls. Same thing...if it's 9+ it goes on the 11 o'clock, if it's 8- it goes on the 5 o'clock. This continues until all slots are filled. This is the Wheel of Pain that players can choose from. You choose an "opposite pair"; so if you want that 17 (at 9 o'clock), you have to take that 6 (at 3 o'clock) [or whatever is at the 3 o'clock point]. With this method, all players have the same choice, all players rolled in the open (so no cheating), and all characters will have "high and low" stats. Oddly enough, I've fond that this method produces some rather "slightly better than normal" characters, with most players choosing to try and shoot for 'average' rather than have some particularity low stat (like a 3 or 4). You don't have to use only 6 lines...you can up the lines if you want more choices...7, 8, etc.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[kalil]

The method I am using in my current campaign:

- Roll six scores using 4d6 drop lowest. Assign as you wish.
- Not happy? Use point buy instead.

Works fine. Characters with a starting 18 are not THAT different from characters with a starting 16, and players with starting 14s have actively selected this presumably for a reason. The biggest difference between super lucky rollers and lowly point buy peasants is that the former have more possibilities in terms of funky multiclassing.

 

[KidSnide]

I don't like it when some PCs are significantly more powerful than other PCs. If you have more of an old school sandbox game where characters are of different levels and may have significantly different levels of equipment, then it's fine to be random -- the game isn't supposed to be fair. But if you have a game where the players are supposed to share the power spotlight equally (or as equally as possible), random attributes can lead to significant differentials in character ability.

That all said, I see how point buy can lead to overly standardized attributes (e.g. all even numbers). If that bothers you, then I agree with the suggestion above where each campaign has its own unique rolled array.

Or, if you want more variety, you can create two (or more, I suppose) rolled arrays. Once you have the first one, just roll 5 attributes on subsequent arrays and set the 6th attribute so the point values come out the same.

-KS