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<blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 6407263" data-attributes="member: 545">In terms of rolling versus generated, I am perfectly happy to play almost anything for a short 1-3 session adventure, as long as the PC is memorable.&nbsp; Bad stats, good stats, weird stats, whatever.&nbsp; Whether rolling or buy or fiat gets us there is unimportant.For long running campaigns, I strongly prefer point buy or similar.The basic question is not one of punishment, but whether the player has a legitimate right to gamble at a meta level in a manner that may create a burden on others.&nbsp; Firt of all, the player has no a priori fundamental &quot;right&quot; to gamble stat points.&nbsp; They are a metagame concept, not a bag of gold written on the character sheet.If you roll really badly, is it really true that you are going to be perfectly happy playing that PC for 10, 20, 40 sessions?&nbsp; Or are you going to decide that the weakling PC is &quot;not so fun&quot; and generate a new character sooner rather than later?&nbsp; The player cannot claim that a gamble is &quot;fair&quot; if there is no certainty about paying the &quot;debt&quot;.&nbsp; I am not suggesting anything about the OP, but it is conveniently easy to say &quot;this is a fair gamble&quot; when you know can weasel out of the negatives.If you roll really well, is it really true that there are not costs on other players?&nbsp; I am not even thinking about the players playing the PCs (yet), but the player behind the DM screen.&nbsp; A good DM tries to shape adventures that will be fun for all the players.&nbsp; I do not think you can make any believable claim that really high stats for one PC, relative to all the others, does not cause some degree of added work for the DM.&nbsp; What right do you have to add work to the DM's pile?As for the non-DM players, I have definitely seen that outstanding stats in one PC can hurt the fun of other players.&nbsp; Not always, but it does happen.&nbsp; Sometimes perfectly reasonable players get frustrated when they notice over and over again that they are second or third fiddle at their own specialty, getting overshadowed by another PC whose forte actually lies elsewhere.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ridley's Cohort, post: 6407263, member: 545"] In terms of rolling versus generated, I am perfectly happy to play almost anything for a short 1-3 session adventure, as long as the PC is memorable. Bad stats, good stats, weird stats, whatever. Whether rolling or buy or fiat gets us there is unimportant. For long running campaigns, I strongly prefer point buy or similar. The basic question is not one of punishment, but whether the player has a legitimate right to gamble at a meta level in a manner that may create a burden on others. Firt of all, the player has no a priori fundamental "right" to gamble stat points. They are a metagame concept, not a bag of gold written on the character sheet. If you roll really badly, is it really true that you are going to be perfectly happy playing that PC for 10, 20, 40 sessions? Or are you going to decide that the weakling PC is "not so fun" and generate a new character sooner rather than later? The player cannot claim that a gamble is "fair" if there is no certainty about paying the "debt". I am not suggesting anything about the OP, but it is conveniently easy to say "this is a fair gamble" when you know can weasel out of the negatives. If you roll really well, is it really true that there are not costs on other players? I am not even thinking about the players playing the PCs (yet), but the player behind the DM screen. A good DM tries to shape adventures that will be fun for all the players. I do not think you can make any believable claim that really high stats for one PC, relative to all the others, does not cause some degree of added work for the DM. What right do you have to add work to the DM's pile? As for the non-DM players, I have definitely seen that outstanding stats in one PC can hurt the fun of other players. Not always, but it does happen. Sometimes perfectly reasonable players get frustrated when they notice over and over again that they are second or third fiddle at their own specialty, getting overshadowed by another PC whose forte actually lies elsewhere. [/QUOTE]

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