If we all rolled the normal way for stats, how come he has three 18's?

[Urbannen]

I myself have rolled up lots of sample characters, and many of those characters had high scores and some 18's. I think the most I've ever seen in one character was two 18's. Certainly some rolled character stats are high.

But when you have one chance to roll the stats for a character that will supposedly last a couple of years, and you happen to get an array that you have a 0.1% chance of getting, I think you're cheating.

That guy with the 13, 14, 15, 18, 18, 18 (in that order) rolled each of his d6's one at a time. It seems fishy to me.

I like point buy, 32-point being a good amount. I think it's good if the campaign centers around a party of equals. It's also good if not everyone in the group knows each other well. If you don't use point buy, and all the characters have the same level of wealth, then those with higher stats will dominate. At least they should if you're roleplaying correctly.

I think rolling for stats is good if your group is composed of character actors, ready to take up whatever role befalls them. How many people are really like that? Really, people who have high stats in real life know it. I have rarely seen a player roleplay their stats correctly.

Point buy is bad if you want to play the non-core legacy classes from earlier editions: paladin, ranger, and monk. Point buy does not give them the stats they really need, while the standard method on average seems to yield higher point totals.

Still when I hear someone say, "Oh I naturally rolled these great stats", I think either, "I'm sure you did, but how many times did you roll?"

4d6 drop the lowest seven times is not the standard method, by the way.

 

[Thurbane]

Let me just state for the record, this is not indicative of all (or even most) groups who roll stats. I've been rolling up characters for nigh on 20 years, and not I (nor anyone in my groups) have ever cheated. On the odd occasion, a character's scores have been what was deemed "too poor to be playable" and allowed a re-roll.

We also often used a house rule that allowed you to decrease a score by two points to raise another by one...

There seems to be an underlying implication with some of the point-buy set that ALL rollers are a bunch of cheats, which really irks me.

 

[sniffles]

It would take more than a couple of 18s for me to assume the other players were cheating. I prefer to think the best of people until they give me good reason to think otherwise.

Some people are really lucky or unlucky with the dice when rolling up characters. I play in a game currently in which we were all allowed to roll 5d6 and drop the lowest two numbers for just two of our ability scores. We were also allowed to keep rolling until we got something we were happy with, although if you chose to abandon a set you couldn't go back to it.

Despite this very flexible system of rolling, one player who had abyssmally poor rolls still ended up with at least one negative ability score modifier. I could easily imagine the same thing happening in reverse.

 

[billd91]

Despite this very flexible system of rolling, one player who had abyssmally poor rolls still ended up with at least one negative ability score modifier. I could easily imagine the same thing happening in reverse.

I had one player with abyssmal luck at rolling the stats on 4d6 drop lowest. So we reversed it by subtracting his rolls from 21. He ended up with a reasonably decent set of stats with that method.

 

[Urbannen]

There seems to be an underlying implication with some of the point-buy set that ALL rollers are a bunch of cheats, which really irks me.

Well, as the valedictorian of my high school class said on more than one occasion: "If you're not cheating, you're not trying."

 

[Will]

I do fine a certain willful self-deception about most dice-rolling.... Yay I won! when someone rolls well, then cheat until you 'win' if the rolls go poorly.

A lot of folks seems quite happy to imagine OTHER players holding the bag of bad results, but aren't terribly keen on being the ones in question.


Count me in the point buy folks, and cue lots of laughter at the cookie-cutter comment.

 

[zachKS]

That's when you roleplay a LE character and make them roll those bloated stats again and again through a series of unfortunate events.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

There seems to be an underlying implication with some of the point-buy set that ALL rollers are a bunch of cheats, which really irks me.

You are looking at skewed statistics. I am certain even those who are the most down on rolling have known a number of people who were considered to be perfectly honest. So the "ALL" part is surely not true.

But who would feel a need to vent about the honest ones? Where is the fun in that?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I had one player with abyssmal luck at rolling the stats on 4d6 drop lowest. So we reversed it by subtracting his rolls from 21. He ended up with a reasonably decent set of stats with that method.

Now that is funny.

 

[Mkhaiwati]

One game I was in (I started two sessions after everyone else) I rolled my character in front of people. My highest stat was a 16, my lowest 10. I thought it was decent. All the other guys had at least one, sometimes two 18's. When we got higher in level, another player joined. He spent all his starting money on books for his stats. His lowest was str that was 18. His dex was 26 and his Int was also high 20's. we were 16th level at that time and those were his base stats. Since he had no real equipment, the DM gave him the most powerful weapon, too. I didn't stay around long after that, since he killed everything he met before I could even react. His initiative bonus was somewhere around +20.