D&D 5E How does your group determine ability scores?

[payn]

4D6 the way god intended.

New testament?

 

[Maxperson]

I will say that I kind of reject Point Buy out of hand as I just don't want to do the math. Not super excited about raw numbers themselves, so I'd rather use arrays that pick the PB results one would usually go for anyway.

Yeah. At the local Los Angeles game conventions there is this PvP tournament with rules on making a character. You could use the standard array, point buy, magic items you can select, level, etc. What you can end up with for your character is pretty varied. One of my players was making a character under this system to test it out and came to me one day to show it to me. He was like, "I spent a few hours going over the various combinations of stats you can buy with points and the best stats I could come up with are 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8." I just sort of stared at him for a bit until he was like, "What?" Then I pulled out the PHB and pointed at the array. His face fell a bit as he realized how much time he had wasted, then he told me that he didn't see that before he started.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

PF2 came up with a seemingly clever "ABC" system. Start with a baseline all 10s. Pick you ancestry (formerly race) get a few stat bumps, pick your background get a few more bumps, pick your class and get your final bumps. It all works out to basically 2-4 different arrays and everyone just skips to it that way.

I don't talk positive about PF but this is the closest to a system I would like to replace rolling.

I would rather you start with 2 8's 2 12's an 11 and a 10 put where you want then those bumps

 

[Thomas Rainsborough]

Meh. We also use Point Buy, and I guess the pros outweigh the cons, but the samey-ness of all the characters gets dull. Something has definitely been lost in the game.

Samey-ness??? Hardly.
There are hundreds of permutations for 27 point buy, and that is BEFORE species specific attributes are added on.

Now, to your point precisely, do you see a Barbarian and Fighter with the same starting stat block? Or a Druid and Cleric? If they are the same species? Quite possibly. But who cares? The chars may have overlapping functionality, so 27 point buy is working as designed. As I have read over millions of years of posts about this, char stats supposedly don't matter, and char play differentiates the chars, as long as all the chars start with a level playing field. So the fact that 27 point buy or Std array creates that level playing field is a most excellent thing.

If you seriously believe that dull chars are the result of initial starting stats, you would be mistaken. Dull chars are merely a product of not particularly imaginative and/nor invested players.

 

[Maxperson]

Samey-ness??? Hardly.
There are hundreds of permutations for 27 point buy, and that is BEFORE species specific attributes are added on.

Now, to your point precisely, do you see a Barbarian and Fighter with the same starting stat block? Or a Druid and Cleric? If they are the same species? Quite possibly. But who cares? The chars may have overlapping functionality, so 27 point buy is working as designed. As I have read over millions of years of posts about this, char stats supposedly don't matter, and char play differentiates the chars, as long as all the chars start with a level playing field. So the fact that 27 point buy or Std array creates that level playing field is a most excellent thing.

If you seriously believe that dull chars are the result of initial starting stats, you would be mistaken. Dull chars are merely a product of not particularly imaginative and/nor invested players.

Hundreds vs. millions = a strong feeling of sameyness to me. Rolling gives you 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 to 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18 and everything in-between. Point buy forces you into the high middle to middle middle high range for stats. You can't have a stat below 8. Nor can you have more than 3 stats below 8, and you can only have those three if you buy exactly 3 15s. If you lower even one of those 15s to a 14, one or two of those 8's goes away.

Point buy is incredibly limiting when compared to rolling.

 

[payn]

I don't talk positive about PF but this is the closest to a system I would like to replace rolling.

That PF1, PF2, or both? I just ask because I know you are a 4E fan and PF2 has a lot to offer on that front. (Not a copy nor identical but shares a lot of design space more than 5E)

I would rather you start with 2 8's 2 12's an 11 and a 10 put where you want then those bumps

What are you trying to do here? Seems a bit convoluted for setting up a point buy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I thought god did not play dice with the universe.

 

[jmartkdr2]

PF2 came up with a seemingly clever "ABC" system. Start with a baseline all 10s. Pick you ancestry (formerly race) get a few stat bumps, pick your background get a few more bumps, pick your class and get your final bumps. It all works out to basically 2-4 different arrays and everyone just skips to it that way.

I like it- it's more of a lifepath system to figure out your scores rather than starting with scores and trying to make it work or going through a lot of work to arrange them according to your class. All the fun of point buy but the math is much easier.

It would be neat to try with 5e, if someone designs a setup for it.

 

[payn]

I like it- it's more of a lifepath system to figure out your scores rather than starting with scores and trying to make it work or going through a lot of work to arrange them according to your class. All the fun of point buy but the math is much easier.

It would be neat to try with 5e, if someone designs a setup for it.

I like it in theory, but PF2 is wound so tight that ultimately there is very little variance between lifepaths. Its just an illusion of a character coming together organically.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I thought god did not play dice with the universe.

Quantum mechanics proves he flips coins, actually.