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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6629822" data-attributes="member: 42582">Why not, then, roll for race? (This is how Stormbringer and some versions of Runequest go.) For class? (This is how Stormbringer and some versions of Runequest go, and Classic Traveller also has more than a hint of this.)Even RQ and Stormbringer allow some player choice in PC building, and Classic Traveller allows the player to choose which service to try and enlist in, as well as whether or not to make a re-enlistment attempt (although double 6s mandate enlistment irrespective of choice).Stats are not terribly special as an object of choice versus randomisation that means that choosing stats is obviously irrational whereas choosing class is not.But those who use point-buy or array are not playing a PC-building game designed around dice; they have chosen to permit the players to pre-determine the outcome of PC building. That's the whole point of using point-buy or array!How is it irrational, as such, to want every player's mechanical vehicle to be roughly comparable in starting mechanical capacity? You  may not share the desire, but you've given no reason for regarding the desire as irrational.That is play. Building PCs is not play; it's pre-play. This is the argument for why randomisation in PC building (or in content introduction) is different from randomisation in action resolution. It's an argument that you have ignored.Traveller has a survival mechanic; PCs can die during the course of being built. Is it irrational for a game to lack such a mechanic? Does the absence of such a mechanic from D&D PC generation imply that infant and childhood mortality in the world of D&D is zero or close to it? Or do we choose not to roll for that because we would prefer that our PC not die before we even get to play it?Not everyone plays a combat-centric game. And not everyone equates game mechanics, and game mechanical capability, with combat ability. So I don't really see any very tight connection between the importance of stats and combat avoidability.Obviously you are an expert player, and those of us who prefer other approaches to yours are simpletons who can only win games when we play on easy mode! That makes it much clearer why we should be rolling stats rather than point-buying them.Oh, and letting players choose their PCs' stats from an array, or via points buy, is railroading them too! Clarity abounds.D&D doesn't have as much randomness as a FRPG might have. For instance, spell casting is always automatically successful caster-side - whereas in games like Rolemaster, HARP and Burning Wheel (just to name a few) there is the chance of spell failure, magical feedback, etc (in ways reminiscent of A Wizard of Earthsea or Fantasia).So yes, painting with broad brushes has to be done pretty carefully. Having GMed Rolemaster for 20 years (which has a crit-resolution system for combat that makes combat outcomes far more random than in D&D) I have probably played with more, and more significant, randomness in action resolution than [MENTION=6794198]spinozajack[/MENTION], if spinozajack has only been playing D&D. More generally, there is no tight correlation between Gygaxian dungeon-crawling and randomness in action resolution (RM is more random than D&D, but not as suitable for dungeon crawling, in part for that very reason).But that still doesn't give me a reason to think that rolling for stats would improve any of my current games!</blockquote>

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