D&D 5E How Will You Be Generating Stats in 5E?

[Desh-Rae-Halra]

I frankly like rolling 4d6 drop the lowest. Do this 6 times which creates a 6x6 grid, then take the best set.

I also liked, I think it was in Elric!, where for some stats you got to roll 2d6+6.

~Desh

 

[RedShirtNo5.1]

Take the aces through 6s from a deck of cards to get 24 cards. Deal into six stacks of four cards. Drop lowest card from each stack. Assign to stats in order, then optionally swap two stats.
If I recall, this averaged to a 28 point buy (in 3e) with a very tight distribution.

 

[drjones]

Take the aces through 6s from a deck of cards to get 24 cards. Deal into six stacks of four cards. Drop lowest card from each stack. Assign to stats in order, then optionally swap two stats.
If I recall, this averaged to a 28 point buy (in 3e) with a very tight distribution.

That's an interesting one, almost too tight. I ran through ten of them (a small sample I know) and the total attribute bonus was always 5-7 only drew 2 17s and nothing lower than 8. Probably better for a long campaign than what I am doing.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Each player will start with a stable of 5 characters; abilities will be generated by 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange to taste. Play whichever character(s) you wish to adventure with this session.

 

[Lanefan]

[3D][/3D]

This discussion is making me tempted to try something more outlandish, like -

Choose 2 stats, roll 5d6 drop 2 lowest
Choose 2 stats, roll 5d6 drop highest and lowest
Choose 2 stats, roll 5d6 drop 2 highest

That risks generating lots of characters with some pretty low stats. The average of 5d6 drop 2 lowest is about 13, the average of 5d6 drop two best would be about 8; so expect lots of 5s and 6s and 7s.

One advantage of our using basically the same character generation method (5d6 drop 2 lowest, arrange as desired) since about the last ice age is that I can - and have - run the numbers to see whether starting stats make much if any difference to a character's eventual career length. What I found was that for the most part your starting stats average has only a very slight impact on projected career length* (counted by number of adventures done); with the variance possibly being entirely due to players tending to throw away characters with what they see as inferior stats.
* - which is one reason I don't at all mind stats being done by random roll.

Lan-"I probably still have the actual numbers around here somewhere if anyone cares"-efan

 

[Lord Blackstone]

Never did this before, but I wanted to try it.

The 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8 System. One player was a bit "annoyed" by it, but all in all... People seemed very happy with their characters.

 

[keterys]

That risks generating lots of characters with some pretty low stats. The average of 5d6 drop 2 lowest is about 13, the average of 5d6 drop two best would be about 8; so expect lots of 5s and 6s and 7s.

That's part of the feature, though. You get to have two pretty amazing stats, along with two pretty crappy stats. Whee, more RP opportunities.

And you can always toss your racial bonus or stat bumps into the lower stats to make them more playable.

I do wonder how many people would figure that a 5 Charisma would be no big deal.

 

[delericho]

Otherwise I find randomization inadequate for long term play. There's always one superstar at the table with great rolls and someone with terrible rolls.

Yep, I've seen that. But with point buy, what I've also seen is that very often there's one System Expert at the table who is capable of optimising his scores to within an inch of their life, while there is frequently one or more players at the table who (either accidentally or deliberately) assign sub-optimal scores to their stats - very often because they outright refuse to take a negative modifier on any score.

The resulting power disparity is not noticably different from the "good rolls vs bad rolls" situation, except that the guy who gets the benefit from that also gets the power boost from being the System Expert for the rest of the campaign as well.

Do you have any thoughts on how to resolve that? Or is that a feature rather than a bug?

Take the aces through 6s from a deck of cards to get 24 cards. Deal into six stacks of four cards. Drop lowest card from each stack. Assign to stats in order, then optionally swap two stats.

If I recall, this averaged to a 28 point buy (in 3e) with a very tight distribution.

I did this (but arrange to suit rather than in order) for a few short campaigns, and it worked okay. But it did seem to throw up characters with one very low stat with distressing frequency - somehow the 'good' cards and the 'poor' cards managed to clump together, so players would often drop a '4' or '5' from one stat, and end up with 3-2-2-2 in another. 'Course that was also in 3e, so those stats then got hit with a further -2 racial modifier in most cases.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

3d6 replaced lowest with a 4.

Advantages:

highest possible: 16
lowest possible: 6

average little below 12,5

chance for a

6-7: 2%
8-9: 9%
10-11: 21,5%
12-13: 32%
14-15: 28%
16: 7,5%

which seems not unreasonable.

I allowed a character with two rolled 9s to replace one of them. He rolled a 16...

maybe next time rerolls are done with a less favorable method, like 1d6+9 or 3d6 replace the highest roll with a 5 and the lowest (or middle) with a 4.

 

[RedShirtNo5.1]

But it did seem to throw up characters with one very low stat with distressing frequency - somehow the 'good' cards and the 'poor' cards managed to clump together, so players would often drop a '4' or '5' from one stat, and end up with 3-2-2-2 in another.

Yeah, it has it's own weirdness. If the high and low cards are evenly dispersed, you can get a basically straight 12s-14s which can look pretty blah, if they clump too much you get a high score and a pretty low score, and if you are lucky they clump just right and you get some goods scores and no low scores. But I still like it as a good compromise because it avoids the wild disparities between characters that can result from 4d6-1 across the board, but still has some randomness.