High and Low Stat discrepancy and opinion

[Naoki00_]

So I joined a one shot game with a group I've never played before, and we got into a very interesting argument before the game got underway about stats and how they should be. While creating the characters we of course rolled in front of the DM, 4d6 drop the lowest, and put the rolls in what stats you want.

the average rolls of the other 4 members were 15, 15, 12, 12, 10, 8 (I'm mostly rounding since a few 13s and such were around but thats the jist), and I rolled 18, 18, 16, 14, 12, 13. This created a rather odd uproar from the DM when I asked if he'd let them reroll their negative scores since to me that seems like bad rolls.

The DM got a bit miffed and said that my own rolls were 'incredibly high' and that a character is supposed to always have at least one terrible score and only 1 or 2 at a +2 mod or more, and that anything more imbalances encounters. Personally I've never played with a character who had a negative score since in my normal group we don't believe in handicapping a character at creation when they have a pretty low survival rate at 1st-3rd levels anyway, thus I to me the OTHERS scores were the bizarre ones since they seems excited to get 'decent' rolls.

I admit rolling the second 18 was amazing, but to me those scores don't seem anything to really be 'amazed' at since they aren't really a huge boost to things (I never got the big deal behind a +1 addition when mathmatically your not much more likely to roll well, +4 is more decent)

What are your own opinions on stats and their importance and things like this?

 

[delericho]

If the group is going to roll for stats, then someone getting an unusually high set is a feature, not a bug. If the DM wants to ensure this doesn't happen, he should probably use point-buy.

Incidentally, that 15/15/12/12/10/8 is equivalent to a 26-point buy - it's marginally better than the standard array that the DMG suggests, and is marginally less good that the average of random rolls (which is 31-ish points), but it should be a perfectly workable set to play with.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

My thoughts, in no particular order

• balance is overrated
• if the DM and/or players don't want to abide by the dice, why on earth are you rolling for stats?
• it's a one shot, so who cares?

 

[N'raac]

If the group is going to roll for stats, then someone getting an unusually high set is a feature, not a bug. If the DM wants to ensure this doesn't happen, he should probably use point-buy.

Incidentally, that 15/15/12/12/10/8 is equivalent to a 26-point buy - it's marginally better than the standard array that the DMG suggests, and is marginally less good that the average of random rolls (which is 31-ish points), but it should be a perfectly workable set to play with.

My thoughts, in no particular order

• balance is overrated
• if the DM and/or players don't want to abide by the dice, why on earth are you rolling for stats?
• it's a one shot, so who cares?

Exactly - rolling for stats gets random results. Point buy or standard arrays does not. If you want everyone to have similar stats, why are you rolling?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The DM got a bit miffed and said that my own rolls were 'incredibly high' and that a character is supposed to always have at least one terrible score and only 1 or 2 at a +2 mod or more, and that anything more imbalances encounters. Personally I've never played with a character who had a negative score since in my normal group we don't believe in handicapping a character at creation when they have a pretty low survival rate at 1st-3rd levels anyway, thus I to me the OTHERS scores were the bizarre ones since they seems excited to get 'decent' rolls.

I think you're both a bit extreme in your views, but on different sides.

For the DM, he should know by now that high scores don't help that much, because you're only ever using one stat at a time. Most players, when presented with a low stat score, will place it in a stat that's unlikely to ever matter (strength for a wizard, charisma for a fighter, etc). Even if you'd rolled straight 18s, you would only be +3 AC and +2 hp/level over the wizard who rolled 18/14/12/12/10/8. I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder game where my cleric has Int 8, and it honestly wouldn't matter if that was a 5 instead, since I'm already only getting one skill point per level.

For you, I think it's weird that you feel a negative score is such a penalty. Seriously, every class has at least one stat that they don't need whatsoever, and even then it's only a -1 penalty to those checks. It's entirely possible that you could go through an entire campaign and it would never make a difference, because you would never fail a check related to that score by exactly one.

I will say that it's often more fun, to me, to play a character with an obvious weakness - I find characters who are above average in everything to be pretty boring - but that's just a matter of taste.

 

[Naoki00_]

For you, I think it's weird that you feel a negative score is such a penalty. Seriously, every class has at least one stat that they don't need whatsoever, and even then it's only a -1 penalty to those checks. It's entirely possible that you could go through an entire campaign and it would never make a difference, because you would never fail a check related to that score by exactly one.

I will say that it's often more fun, to me, to play a character with an obvious weakness - I find characters who are above average in everything to be pretty boring - but that's just a matter of taste.

I admit that it's partly my OCD kicking in, something about that minus sign just drives me nuts lol, I'd rather a +0 if possible, as for the fun part I always found that roleplay faults and weaknesses were more what to go for that actual stat weaknesses, I don't know too many people that want to play Sir Perfectateverything....sides optimizing wizards lol

 

[N'raac]

I admit that it's partly my OCD kicking in, something about that minus sign just drives me nuts lol, I'd rather a +0 if possible, as for the fun part I always found that roleplay faults and weaknesses were more what to go for that actual stat weaknesses, I don't know too many people that want to play Sir Perfectateverything....sides optimizing wizards lol

That "penalty drives me nuts" issue is pretty common. It's easy to fix, too. Make 0 - 1 +0. 2-3 is +1, 4-5 +2, 6-7 +3, 8-9 +4, 10-11+5, etc. All bonuses increase by 5.

Since your DEX is up 5, so is your AC and your ranged attack bonus. STR raises your melee attack bonus too.

All saves are up +5, and all DC's are up +5, so that's a wash.

Melee damage goes up 5, as do hp per HD. That's less than perfect, so we might have to monkey around with hp a bit to make it work. Variance on HD has a lot less impact, so maybe we just move everyone up to larger HD to soak up the extra damage, and make the variance meaningful again. Bows are made for STR 10 by default, so +5 damage bonus is the norm.

A lot of fiddly work to get over a psychology issue, probably not worth it, but "penalties" could be eliminated if we wanted to.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

A lot of fiddly work to get over a psychology issue, probably not worth it, but "penalties" could be eliminated if we wanted to.

I went the substantially simple route of re-defining the modifiers to be (score/4), with AD&D-style ability checks. This method gives your normal array of +0 to +5 for modifiers, but allows you to actually play someone with a low stat and have it not kill you in combat.

 

[Ranes]

I agree with all the previous posters. Personally, I often play with PCs that start out with a negative mod on one or more characteristics; it doesn't bother me. (It bothers me when other players query my lack of bother.) But everything said upthread is on the money.

 

[Umbran]

Exactly - rolling for stats gets random results. Point buy or standard arrays does not. If you want everyone to have similar stats, why are you rolling?

Because "similar" does not mean "identical".

Think of it this way - when we roll stats, we typically use 3d6, or 4d6 drop lowest, right?

Why don't we roll a random number of dice? Why don't we pick a random number from 1 to 1000? Or a random number from 3 to 18, with a *flat* distribution? Why do we use this bell-curve producing system with tight limits on the ends?

Because we don't just want, "random". We want, "random, with some fixed parameters and characteristics to the distribution".

So, this GM has some desires about the fixed parameters and distribution that are a little more stringent than "4d6 drop lowest". Given that one probably doesn't roll characters all that often, it may be easier to enforce them by way of an editing step than by trying to systematize them. Now, perhaps he didn't set the expectations properly, but there's nothing outright illogical or wrongity-wrong to what he's doing, in principle.