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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 4997892" data-attributes="member: 38357">One of the things that gets me kind of excited when thinking about old-school gaming is "3d6 in order" ability scores, but then again I mostly DM'ed. Now, I didn't really use straight 3d6 in order much, in AD&D we usually had 8-12 players start, each with three characters, and then pared that down to 6-8 PCs by 2nd or 3rd level. So with PCs with higher scores favored (both by the rules and by the players) in terms of survivability, we usually ended up with pretty decent characters. But even rolling 3 characters each it was often as fast if not faster than fiddling with placing ability scores (and we did eventually switch to Method I). I never really felt bad about players not getting to play "the character they wanted" because I didn't really like players who would always play the same character, and I wanted them to have to try new things. In any case we let players swap characters if they wanted, so it probably wasn't that much of a problem.But, at the same time, one of the things I kind of like about 4e is that the "default" is point-buy. Characters are balanced overall, they don't seem that cookie-cutter, and you don't need to worry about unplayable / hopeless characters. I think that this might be in part because while ability scores are still important, so are a lot of other things on a given character sheet. When every character can get an 18 there's no real "Oh, wow!" factor to seeing a Fighter with an 18 Strength, but then again there's less need for that when each character can have different feats, powers, and skills (maybe not so much special, but definitely different).So I'm planning on running some Labyrinth Lord in the near future, just to scratch that "old-school DMing" itch. And I'm trying to reconcile these two ideas. I think the most obvious choice would be "4d6, drop lowest, arrange as desired", but for not-terribly-logical reasons I have a bit of a dislike for "Method I". I know I could just stick to 3d6 in order, but that in turn seems a bit "harsh". I guess I'm mostly interested in a player's perspective here... (And I'm also posting this on the Goblinoid Games forums, but because I've played 3e / 4e and I think a lot of my prospective players will have too I wanted to see what the posters here thought of this issue.)</blockquote>

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