D&D 5E How do you generate ability scores for PCs?

[Psikerlord#]

I dislike standard array and point buy because we seem to get cookie cutter PCs.

We roll 4d6 drop the lowest. The DM also rolls up one array. If a player doesnt like what he rolled, he can choose one of the other arrays, but must take 1 point off one stat as a very minor penalty.

This method seems to get nice variations and provides a safety net for those who roll badly, maintaining intra party balance.

The PCs do tend to end up more powerful than point buy, but that's fine for our table.

 

[Valetudo]

I dislike standard array and point buy because we seem to get cookie cutter PCs.

We roll 4d6 drop the lowest. The DM also rolls up one array. If a player doesnt like what he rolled, he can choose one of the other arrays, but must take 1 point off one stat as a very minor penalty.

This method seems to get nice variations and provides a safety net for those who roll badly, maintaining intra party balance.

The PCs do tend to end up more powerful than point buy, but that's fine for our table.

I feel that is somewhat of a myth about stat arrays and pointbuys, but it could just be the people or the style you play with. People put their high stats in what they want to be good at 99 times out of a hundred wether they roll or point buy. And i had a group of thee player go all fighter and they where all guite different even though they gad to use stat array and two of them went 2hnded weapons.

 

[Valetudo]

Now i used to use 4d6 drop lowest in 3rd and early games i ran in 4th and my players always seemed to have uber stats . Not just one player but all of the and i dmed for alot of people during 3rd editions heyday.

 

[MechaPilot]

Just a quick question about your system that struck me as needing more input.

If there are eighteen remaining die results, and six ability scores, how would you ever end up with less than three die results to assign to a score when you can assign no more than three to each?

If a player wants to apply only two die results to an ability score, let's say because it matches her character concept, she can. The "no more than three results" rule is in place to prevent players from applying two results to a dump stat with the intention of then applying four results to a prime stat.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I feel that is somewhat of a myth about stat arrays and pointbuys, but it could just be the people or the style you play with. People put their high stats in what they want to be good at 99 times out of a hundred wether they roll or point buy. And i had a group of thee player go all fighter and they where all guite different even though they gad to use stat array and two of them went 2hnded weapons.

The thing you refer to as a myth isn't actually about the high score by itself; it's that the other scores end up in more or less the same priority order and at roughly the same value because scores are not determined independently from each other - the player is forced to choose between a higher value in a lower-priority ability and a higher value in a higher-priority ability, meaning in a basic sense that what a fighter's strength score is directly affects what that fighter's intelligence score is. If you put your 15 from your array in Strength, you can't also put a 15 in your Intelligence because you only get one.

Rolling determines each ability score independently of the other scores, which prevents that same effect - rolling one score of 15 doesn't change your odds that the next score is also 15.

 

[77IM]

I've used the following method for many years across all editions:

Roll 4d6-drop-lowest, rerolling 1s, 7 times, add together lowest two, if the total is less than 63 or greater than 97 start over, then +1d4 to your 2nd-highest score and -1d4 to your 2nd-lowest score. Do this 8 times, and if any of your scores match these arrays, you may add +1 to every score of a different array: (17, 16, 15, 12, 8, 4) (18, 18, 14, 13, 12, 9) (20, 19, 17, 15, 13, 11). Select the best array and make 6 different characters based on that array, then roll 1d6+n to pick which one of them to use, where n=((your age * the atomic weight of the favorite element of the player next to you) modulo 6).

If you're unhappy with these results then you can just use the standard array.

 

[Oofta]

The thing you refer to as a myth isn't actually about the high score by itself; it's that the other scores end up in more or less the same priority order and at roughly the same value because scores are not determined independently from each other - the player is forced to choose between a higher value in a lower-priority ability and a higher value in a higher-priority ability, meaning in a basic sense that what a fighter's strength score is directly affects what that fighter's intelligence score is. If you put your 15 from your array in Strength, you can't also put a 15 in your Intelligence because you only get one.

Rolling determines each ability score independently of the other scores, which prevents that same effect - rolling one score of 15 doesn't change your odds that the next score is also 15.

But they're still going to be arrange based on the character type. Strength based fighters are going to do Strength first, Con second, and so on. If I had rolled stats for my current character, the lowest number would still have gone to charisma whether that's a 14, an 8 or a 4. I don't see that it matters much what the actual values are and to be honest, I never look at character sheets.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

But they're still going to be arrange based on the character type. Strength based fighters are going to do Strength first, Con second, and so on. If I had rolled stats for my current character, the lowest number would still have gone to charisma whether that's a 14, an 8 or a 4. I don't see that it matters much what the actual values are and to be honest, I never look at character sheets.

No one ever said it matters that much, just that it matters - especially if the player is using what the score is to inform or color the personality they give to the character.

 

[Oofta]

No one ever said it matters that much, just that it matters - especially if the player is using what the score is to inform or color the personality they give to the character.

Well, but isn't that going to be the case no matter what? Unless all your stats are, much like the children of Lake Wobegon, all above average you're going to have a low score or two somewhere.

At least with point buy I have a reasonable low score (although admittedly I did have cursed character back in the 3.5 days with a 5 charisma). Personally I frequently make my "low" score 10. I like having the choice.

I guess this and the "cookie cutter PC" arguments just never made any sense to me. Are most wizards smart? Of course. Bards charismatic? Usually. As far as cookie-cutter PCs go, I don't see that either. Well, there's the one guy who always plays a halfling rogue or a female wizard, but that he'd be playing the same characters over and over again no matter how we generated scores.

 

[Maxperson]

But they're still going to be arrange based on the character type. Strength based fighters are going to do Strength first, Con second, and so on. If I had rolled stats for my current character, the lowest number would still have gone to charisma whether that's a 14, an 8 or a 4. I don't see that it matters much what the actual values are and to be honest, I never look at character sheets.

You assume that they can just choose where to place all of their stats. If rolling in order, or with say swapping only one pair of stats, both very common ways of rolling, that can't happen.