Character Creation Stat Draft (Trial Draft Complete!!)

[maggot]

For what its worth, I tried a draft last night as an experiment, and used 4d6 drop 1 rolls without modification for all catagories. Each player chose a class that they wanted to play ahead of time, but the wizard character immediately changed to sorcerer when he got to choose the 18 cha.

Str 11, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 8, Cha 16 (wanted bard, not happy with results)
Str 17, Dex 13, Con 16, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 12 (wanted ranger, okay with it)
Str 8, Dex 13, Con 13, Int 13, Wis 9, Cha 18 (wanted wizard, switched to sorcerer, not happy with all the odd stats)
Str 18, Dex 12, Con 13, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 13 (wanted tank fighter, happy)
Str 11, Dex 10, Con 15, Int 15, Wis 15, Cha 15 (wanted cleric of travel, may change to cleric of magic, happy enough)
Str 13, Dex 16, Con 13, Int 15, Wis 8, Cha 14 (wanted rogue, happy)

We had a lot of high cha scores, so the party is pretty charismatic. The bard player selected last in the first round and it hurt him for the rest of the draft. We think the last player in the first round gets hosed.

The wizard/sorcerer went first and chose the 18 Cha, and then went last in the next round when the stats he really needed to cover (dex and con) were all down to 13s. The wild section had a bunch of 8s and 6s, so wilds did not cover as much as we had hoped.

All told, these are some interesting characters, but we want to fix the "last in the first round" problem. Perhaps introducing rolls after picks would help. Perhaps.

We first tried the draft with 3d6 straight up, but abandoned it when we each had three picks to go and only a couple of 10s left on the board.

 

[LostSoul]

This was interesting to watch. It looks like it could be fun to play out.

I'd probably let each of the players roll 6 stats, just for fun.

 

[Conaill]

not even close to what you would get with actual point buy.

Not even close to what you would get with an actual 25 point pointbuy, you mean? Well, can't argue with that!

Fact is, these stats are a good deal higher than what you would get using standard 4d6-drop-1, and far higher than the default 25 point pointbuy. Now, I acknowledge that a lot of people prefer to play with higher pointbuy levels, like 28 or 32. And actual pointbuy will give you more opportunity to minmax scores to begin with. But an average point value of 35 doesn't seem even a little overpowered to you?

 

[Thanee]

If you compare it with 25 point buy, of course you get better stats then.

But if you compare it with 32 point buy, I wouldn't be so sure.

I think that 32 point buy is a lot closer to the average that is actually used in games than 25 point buy.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Conaill]

I think that 32 point buy is a lot closer to the average that is actually used in games than 25 point buy.

If I remember the polls on this topic correctly, I believe 28-30 points was the most common for pointbuy, and 4d6-drop-1 for rolled stats. Too lazy to go dig for the relevant polls though.

I do agree that a 35 average point value for rolled stats is probably close in power to a 32 poinbuy, because the latter can be optimized better. (For the same reason that 25 point buy is roughly equivalent in power to 4d6-drop-1, even though the latter averages higher than 25 points.)

 

[Thanee]

Yeah, 28-30 is most common, 32 is also quite common, 25 is pretty rare IIRC.

4d6DL is close to 28-30, if done by the book. Most groups seem to allow more benevolent rerolling, which makes it closer to 32, most likely.

All in all, I really don't think the above stats would be much different if used in an average campaign.

Bye
Thanee

 

[maggot]

If you go with 4d6 drop 1 rolls, you should come up with an average point buy of about 33 which is the same as when you do 4d6drop1 seven times and drop the lowest of those. I've played in a couple campaigns that have this extra drop.

The draft spreads the scores out so not all lucky scores are with one player. I'm not sure why my draft had the bard at 27pts while everyone else was at 35+.

In any case, the selection of the initial draftable scores is what determines the average point-buy level, not the presence or absence of the wild column. One could generate the array of scores in Excel or a program and calculate the average PB based on the fact that the lowest 6 scores will go undrafted. Then you could regenerate the array until you had a PB average that you liked.

 

[el-remmen]

The sets that were arrived at by means of the draft were awful close to that of characters in the games I run and I have allowed players one of two methods to determine stats.

4d6 drop the lowest six times and place it where you like - if the total mods are less than +1 you may re-roll the whole thing (and the whole thing only) by either method.

and

4d6 drop the lowest IN ORDER twice and pick the set your prefer. If both sets total mods are are less than +1, you can scrap both sets and roll again with either method.

 

[Thanee]

if the total mods are less than +1 you may re-roll the whole thing

Did you never end up with extremely unbalanced stats?

Like 18 17 17 15 12 10 and 13 12 11 10 10 8 in the same group?

Bye
Thanee

 

[el-remmen]

Did you never end up with extremely unbalanced stats?

Like 18 17 17 15 12 10 and 13 12 11 10 10 8 in the same group?

Bye
Thanee

Yep.