the_bruiser
First Post
I'd suggest you start over. Tell the players that they're all stuck with their original rolls and let the bad rollers talk the good rollers into switching. That way you don't have to do all the dirty work - be a rat-bastard DM and guilt them into letting go 
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If that doesn't work, then your players may be jerks. Start the campaign, and 'accidentally' kill the whole party - you can be subtle, about this, right? Perhaps you could roll some dice, look up with an ashen face, and say - "Uh, oh, you've been over heard - reinforcements are coming. It is KEY that you act remorseful, sorry, and say that you thought it would work better, and that you PROMISE that it won't happen again, and that you'll be more careful. Again, it is key that this not come across as petty revenge - and it isn't - you're doing it for the good of the table in the long run.
In either of the above, now it's time to start over with character creation. This time I'd use the following system. Where we use 74, you could use whatever number you want. If you want to go VERY high powered, you could use 86, which would be TWO cards of each attribute per character and two wild cards. Basically, negotiate this number with the players.
The system we use:
We’re using a system new to our group in our current campaign. So far it’s been fantastic! I borrowed the general idea from Wulf’s (original?) campaign hour.
Here’s how we instituted it:
1. The DM determines his goal for overall attribute value. In my campaign, I chose 74 (an average attribute slightly above 12).
2. Before the first playing session, players arrive for a ‘war meeting.’ Each player has a general idea of some characters he’d like to play, knowing that this might have to change based on what other players want.
3. Each player is given eight cards. Six of the cards have the name of a stat and +2, such as “+2 STRENGTH,” or “+2 DEXTERITY.” The other two cards have “+1 WILD.” Effectively, each player has a starting distribution of 12 in each stat, with two +1s he can add to any stat.
4. The players trade cards amongst themselves, always on a one-for-one basis. No player can ever hold more than four cards of any one stat (i.e., 18 attribute max). When everybody is satisfied – or enough players are satisfied that nobody is trading anymore – trading is closed.
What happens is that, if two players want to play a rogue (for instance), they discover that pretty quickly. If you have four players, that pretty much means that either (i) one of them will have a bad dex, (ii) both of them will have so-so dex, or (iii) one of them will change to another option.
Assuming that you have reasonably mature and flexible players, this does a great job of taking care of party mix – you’re not going to wind up with four front-line fighters, because there aren’t enough front-line stats in the pool to support this. Also, it fixes one thing I don’t like about the point buy system – you don’t wind up with every character having a 14 con (at least it’s always worked that way in our campaigns). You’ll end up having a full gamut of stats among the group, which I like.
A front-line fighter might have a 14 wisdom, because he had to agree to trade a dex card and a con card for a wis card and a str card in order to get the strength he wanted – yes, I said above that trading is one-for-one, but players always seem to get around that. We don’t get this with point buys or even roll & assign, and it adds a certain character depth that I enjoy.
YMMV, but I plan on sticking with this system indefinitely, as it’s worked so well for us. If anyone’s interested, I can give a quick overview on our ways of dealing with new players and replacement characters.
.If that doesn't work, then your players may be jerks. Start the campaign, and 'accidentally' kill the whole party - you can be subtle, about this, right? Perhaps you could roll some dice, look up with an ashen face, and say - "Uh, oh, you've been over heard - reinforcements are coming. It is KEY that you act remorseful, sorry, and say that you thought it would work better, and that you PROMISE that it won't happen again, and that you'll be more careful. Again, it is key that this not come across as petty revenge - and it isn't - you're doing it for the good of the table in the long run.
In either of the above, now it's time to start over with character creation. This time I'd use the following system. Where we use 74, you could use whatever number you want. If you want to go VERY high powered, you could use 86, which would be TWO cards of each attribute per character and two wild cards. Basically, negotiate this number with the players.
The system we use:
We’re using a system new to our group in our current campaign. So far it’s been fantastic! I borrowed the general idea from Wulf’s (original?) campaign hour.
Here’s how we instituted it:
1. The DM determines his goal for overall attribute value. In my campaign, I chose 74 (an average attribute slightly above 12).
2. Before the first playing session, players arrive for a ‘war meeting.’ Each player has a general idea of some characters he’d like to play, knowing that this might have to change based on what other players want.
3. Each player is given eight cards. Six of the cards have the name of a stat and +2, such as “+2 STRENGTH,” or “+2 DEXTERITY.” The other two cards have “+1 WILD.” Effectively, each player has a starting distribution of 12 in each stat, with two +1s he can add to any stat.
4. The players trade cards amongst themselves, always on a one-for-one basis. No player can ever hold more than four cards of any one stat (i.e., 18 attribute max). When everybody is satisfied – or enough players are satisfied that nobody is trading anymore – trading is closed.
What happens is that, if two players want to play a rogue (for instance), they discover that pretty quickly. If you have four players, that pretty much means that either (i) one of them will have a bad dex, (ii) both of them will have so-so dex, or (iii) one of them will change to another option.
Assuming that you have reasonably mature and flexible players, this does a great job of taking care of party mix – you’re not going to wind up with four front-line fighters, because there aren’t enough front-line stats in the pool to support this. Also, it fixes one thing I don’t like about the point buy system – you don’t wind up with every character having a 14 con (at least it’s always worked that way in our campaigns). You’ll end up having a full gamut of stats among the group, which I like.
A front-line fighter might have a 14 wisdom, because he had to agree to trade a dex card and a con card for a wis card and a str card in order to get the strength he wanted – yes, I said above that trading is one-for-one, but players always seem to get around that. We don’t get this with point buys or even roll & assign, and it adds a certain character depth that I enjoy.
YMMV, but I plan on sticking with this system indefinitely, as it’s worked so well for us. If anyone’s interested, I can give a quick overview on our ways of dealing with new players and replacement characters.
