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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 3775106" data-attributes="member: 54877">Our group prefers random methods that have very little deviation.  Our current favorite is to use a subset of a deck of cards, aces through sixes, with whatever total we want.  We either set aside some of the smaller cards, or have one or two left over from the deal.  Typically, we deal out 18 cards, divided into six piles.  Those are the raw stats.  Then the player gets to assign the remaining cards to any of the piles, but the stats can't go over 18 (or 20 or whatever we want).  Take those adjusted stats, arrange per preferences, then apply racial mods.Our current campaign used a deck such that every character was guaranteed to have a total of +5 or +6 total ability mods, which approximates 29 point buy.  The +5 only occurred if a person had 5 odd numbers, and therefore by 12th level, it was moot.  That gives us very balanced characters, but without the player having complete control over the outcome (which the players prefer, as they like the challenge of fitting their concept around such stats).You could get a similar effect using dice by introducing a chart that produced a sliding scale.  Roll well on the first roll, you get negatives on the remainder, and vice versa.  Or take the roll out of a total of points.I think a lot of people that don't like "random" really don't like a high degree of randomness, especially as it creates imbalances between PCs.</blockquote>

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