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

[prabe]

I'd like to ask people who play 4d6-L:

Do you ALWAYS ALWAYS keep the first set you roll, or do you have some kind of "oh that's okay, roll again" when you inevitably roll crappy?

This is the biggest reason why I don't "trust" rolling. I played decades with 4d6-L but there was ALWAYS someone who rolled like crap who got to reroll.

The part where I found that offensive, and finally gave up on it, was when someone rolled an "okay" character and was forced to keep it, and another player rolled a "garbage" character (like highest stat 11 or something) and then got to reroll and wound up with a powerhouse. How is that fair to the guy stuck with the "meh but fine" character?

Now, I agree that point-buy and array make for some pretty samey-stats. But at least there's no zeroes and heroes.

This is why when I roll, A) I roll in order and B) there are guardrails to prevent someone from getting completely hosed.

 

[thullgrim]

4d6-L arranged to taste. If your stats don’t meet the standard array you can take it.

Last couple of times though we’ve done poor buy.
I’m gearing up for a PF1 game when my SWADE Nights Black Agents game ends in a couple of weeks. I want this to be kinda old school so I may go with straight 3d6 or standard array just so there is a floor.

 

[Charlaquin]

If I have a clear character idea in mind, I’d rather use point buy to make them exactly the way I want them. If I’m rolling stats, it’s because I don’t have a specific character in mind already, and I want to build one around the stats the dice give me. Which means I’m rolling in order. 4d6 drop lowest is how 5e says to roll, so it’s what I roll when making a 5e character.

 

[bedir than]

As I DM it's Point Buy (though I'm probably shifting to the Kobold Press Point Buy soon)

When I'm creating NPCs using PC rules or PCs to play, I use the Roller from @aramis erak

Redrick Roller

 

[Micah Sweet]

For 5e-like games, lately we've been doing one set of 4d6 drop 1, and letting each player arrange that set as desired for their PC. Its not my favorite method, but that's what the players wanted.

 

[el-remmen]

OTHER.

Starting characters: Stat Draft
Replacement characters: Pre-determined arrays in a pool created from the left over stats created in the initial draft.

For more details on how I run it, you can check out my zine, HOW I RUN IT #5: Stat Drafts & Other Character Creation Options or the threads on here where I ran practice stat drafts.

 

[ichabod]

Point buy with 30 points, and you can buy a 16 for 12. That way you can buy the average of 4d6 drop low (16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), and avoid the slight power loss you get from using point buy instead of 4d6 drop low.

The last time we rolled, each player rolled one stat and I rolled two. That gave us one array everyone used. There were guardrails, but as I remember we went with an array that broke the guardrails because it had three 15s and everyone was drooling over the MAD characters they could make.

Oh, and you forgot a few options in your poll.

 

[reelo]

4d6 drop lowest, in order. Then, swap two stats if desired.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Standard Array all the way.

 

[ezo]

I'd like to ask people who play 4d6-L:

Do you ALWAYS ALWAYS keep the first set you roll, or do you have some kind of "oh that's okay, roll again" when you inevitably roll crappy?

When we used to roll this, our rule was your modifiers had to total +3 or better, otherwise you could reroll.