D&D 5E Letting Char-Gen Influence Race Concept

[Saeviomagy]

But wouldn't this still be a big incentive for everyone to always put their highest scores into the same abilities for each race?

Since advantage gives less of a bonus the lower you need to roll, not really? The mathematically optimal strategy would be to have advantage in your most average score, assuming all scores see equal play and an average score means 10+

 

[Ahrimon]

But they would apply to three of the skills most closely associated with the rogue. Couple that with expertise on the same skills and you have even more of a reason to min/max your elven rogue, even if you don't also get the bonus to AC, attack, and damage.

The only way to remove that would be to make every race mechanically exactly the same and just give them story differences. That's too extreme of a change for me. You're always going to have differences that make one race better than another. A high dexterity race should be slightly better at dexterity things than a regular dexterity race. The same goes for every stat. But the great thing about 5e is skills aren't specifically tied to class. I can have two stealth plate fighters and the halfling will be better than the half orc because of his race. My biggest push here is to divorce the racial bonuses from combat bonuses. Most campaigns have a fair amount of combat and too many players get focused on the difference between +3 to hit vs +4. If the racial bonuses don't affect combat stats then more people would be willing to explore alternative character ideas without getting hung up on the numbers or worrying if they are contributing enough.

 

[Hriston]

I had a thread running here a while ago, about character generation and random race selection and random ability score generation. I think that a lot of the problems arise from the fact that you can pick what race you play Indeed, I have my players roll their race, and then roll their ability scores and they get what they get in the order that they are rolled. Haha, I know, heresy

After, you pick your class. Now, you might well assign your ability score bonuses, if you have some flexibility, knowing what class you'll now be going for. But that's fine.

This idea actually comes from Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) where you roll for everything except alignment, your name, and your class (that you choose after levelling up once).

This is actually a lot of fun. Players do not get to pick their race and do a character concept that they have in mind; but you know what? They roll with it. They come up with their character concept after they roll for race and abilities. "Let's see what nature gave me..."

My entire character generation method is as follows:

1) You are born: Roll for race.
2) Natural selection: roll two ability score arrays: each has 3d6 six times assigned in the order they are rolled. Pick the one you like best. (Perhaps you had a brother that died, or lived but never made it as an adventurer?)
3) training: change one ability score of your choice to 14
4) nobody's perfect (and those that are, pay for it): if you don't have at least one score of 7 or less, or two scores of 9 or less: lower one ability score to 6 or less. (Perhaps you had an accident?)
5) pick your class

Makes for a slightly more gritty and variable method. Some characters are weaker, some are stronger. My games are a lot about role-play, typically with 1-2 battles in a given session, so honestly PCs that suck in their ability scores have ample space to shine in-game. Weak characters are often the center of attention for some reason.

This is awesome. So great to know I'm not alone in preferring this kind of approach, at least in theory. This isn't a criticism mind you, but since you're already rolling stats in order, how come you also roll for race? It seems like you could let players choose their race before they roll to prevent any meta-gaming. Am I missing anything?