D&D General How Do You "Roll Up" Ability Scores?

[Lanefan]

there will always be some imbalance, but do we really need to throw any hope of somewhat balanced game right out the window with step 1 of character creation?

Thing is, fine-tuned game balance is in most if not all ways greatly overrated as a design goal.

A flatter power curve and more emphasis on class abilities means stat balance becomes less relevant; along with acceptance of the simple fact that there'll be some characters simply better suited than others to a job or adventure or even entire campaign.

in some campaigns high charisma will be more valuable than high intelligence or strength, but every campaign should be made with all scores being challenged somewhat equally.

I'd even go a step further here and say the game itself should try to provide each stat roughly the same amount of work to do regardless of the campaign being run; not so much for "balance" reasons as to avoid there being an obvious baked-in dump stat like Charisma was in 1e or an obvious have-to-take-this stat. like Dex in 5e.

you can try to make a game where half your party has 14,12,12,10,10,8 array and half 18,16,16,14,14,14 and over whole campaign say that both will have same effect in the gameplay.

I've run (and played in) many a game somewhat like that and have learned that each of those characters starts out with about the same average career-length* expectancy.

* - I'd say life expectancy but some characters' careers end for reasons other than death.

 

[Dallikiera82]

We have recently gone to a "predetermined" system and just use the modifiers, the scores themselves are no longer used.

For example, if you are a dwarf barbarian, the dwarf gives you +1 Con mod. The barbarian gives you +2 Str mod and your choice of +1 to either Dex mod or Con mod.

Finally, you get two additional +1 mods to put where you want.

In total, this gives you +7 modifiers in total for all PCs.

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I was totally on board with this until Sorcerer......as a Sorc main, giving me a 0 to Cha is a hard pass lol

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I was totally on board with this until Sorcerer......as a Sorc main, giving me a 0 to Cha is a hard pass lol

I believe this poster is someone who re-defined the casting stat of Sorcerer to Constitution instead of Charisma, so you wouldn't actually be suffering a loss at all, but rather a pretty substantial gain.

 

[Scott Christian]

I am curious: Who is still doing ordered placement?

 

[Lalato]

I am curious: Who is still doing ordered placement?

If you mean roll your stats straight down... rather than choosing which number goes where. I do stats straight down all the time. I generally have no idea what I want to play. I let the dice tell the story.

My current favorite method is 3d6, replace one die with a value of 4. This results in a range of 6 to 16. Similar to 4d6 drop lowest, but doesn't allow for 18s or 3s.

If I'm feeling spicy, I also like the 3x3 grid approach. You roll 9 times, placing the values in a 3x3 grid. Columns are Str, Dex, Con. Rows are Int, Wis, Cha. This gives each stat 3 options. But once you've chosen a stat, it can't be used again. This gives a bit more control on which stat is primary, but still keeps things interesting when you end up with a high Intelligence Fighter. Or a really muscular Wizard.

And if I'm feeling extra spicy, I'll do Life Path, where you roll on a bunch of tables to see events that happened in your life that push your stats up or down. For this, I have an Excel file with all the options. I like it, but it's definitely cumbersome. It's fun to piece together a backstory from the various life events.

 

[Scott Christian]

If you mean roll your stats straight down... rather than choosing which number goes where. I do stats straight down all the time. I generally have no idea what I want to play. I let the dice tell the story.

My current favorite method is 3d6, replace one die with a value of 4. This results in a range of 6 to 16. Similar to 4d6 drop lowest, but doesn't allow for 18s or 3s.

If I'm feeling spicy, I also like the 3x3 grid approach. You roll 9 times, placing the values in a 3x3 grid. Columns are Str, Dex, Con. Rows are Int, Wis, Cha. This gives each stat 3 options. But once you've chosen a stat, it can't be used again. This gives a bit more control on which stat is primary, but still keeps things interesting when you end up with a high Intelligence Fighter. Or a really muscular Wizard.

And if I'm feeling extra spicy, I'll do Life Path, where you roll on a bunch of tables to see events that happened in your life that push your stats up or down. For this, I have an Excel file with all the options. I like it, but it's definitely cumbersome. It's fun to piece together a backstory from the various life events.

Nice. I was just curious, because it goes against the conventional norm of character creation these days. Are these characters you're stuck with for a long time?

 

[Lalato]

Nice. I was just curious, because it goes against the conventional norm of character creation these days. Are these characters you're stuck with for a long time?

That's very campaign dependent. I try to play each character like they're going to make it all the way to 20th level. And if they make it far, despite their shortcomings, then it feels really special.

So I don't feel "stuck" with them. It's more like they're "stuck" with me.

There are times when I have to build a specific archetype or want to play/test a certain class. For that, I either fall back on standard array/point buy. Or do freeform placement of stats after rolling.