New ways to generate ability scores.

[Kae'Yoss]

We know point buy. Good system, doesn't require DM spervision. But some think it's boring

We also know rolling. You roll 3d6 in order. Or you roll 4d6, drop the lowest, and arrange at will. Or you roll 5d4, or between 3 and 9 d6. It's the classical method, but requires DM supervision, and many think it's boring (the same old for 30 years now and all that.)

That's pretty much everything there is for D&D.

But There was a nice article about using Three Dragon Ante to do a reading, which will generate a sort of randomised point buy - your character will be a 25 point character, or a 32 point character, but the points are distributed as the cards say.

I liked that article. If you're using point buy because of balance, but can't decide on a character, or want to do something random, it's nice. It's even fun doing a reading without generating a character with them.



Do you use any other crazy method of generating ability scores? Can you think up something interesting?

 

[Crothian]

I can: Pick your own ability scores. Forget being limited by anything but yourself. Forget never being able to have the exact ability scores for your concept.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I was playing around with some numbers for a playing card system that works for a 4-person party (and only for a four-person party, unfortunately).

Basically, each player gets dealt 13 cards. Red cards can be assigned to mental abilities, Black cards to physical abilities. Players can trade cards (and may have to, if they don't have at least three Black cards, say). No limit to the number of cards assigned to a score, but the total must be between 3 and 18. (So a player with two Red Kings might trade one for a Red 8, so he could put an 18 in one score - he can't put both Kings in one for a score of 20.)

I can't remember which values I had assigned to Ace and face cards... it may have been Blackjack values (1 or 11 for Ace, 10 for face cards).

If a player had below a certain total, he could request a reshuffle.

I dealt a bunch of demo hands while I was playing with the idea, but never actually had a chance to try it in practice. The four-person-only restriction is a definite weakness, and there are five players in our group...

-Hyp.

 

[Benben]

I forgot who originally published this on ENworld but I've used this system for about a 1/2 dozen campaigns and it works well.

Take a deck of cards. Draw out 2 through 6 for each suite.
Shuffle these cards.
Deal out the cards, face up into 6 piles of 3.
You will have two cards left over.
Sum up the totals of the piles, these are your attributes.
The two leftover cards can be used to replace two other cards in any pile. Generally they are used to remove "2"s from the pile.

This gives a good set of random attributes, but gives the even playing field of point buy. I really do love this system.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

My group tried a simple "fixed set of numbers, arrange as you please" system.

18
16
14
12
10
8

Worked out pretty well for us.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I stole this from someone here on ENWorld some time back.

2. Pick Your Poison: “Rolling” your character will be done in a different manner than normal. Players may pick their character’s base attributes (STR, DEX, WIS, etc.; before species modifiers) at will; base attributes must still begin in the 3-18 range. After attributes are chosen and before applying species modifiers, calculate the Point Value of your attributes using the following scale (modified standard point buy scale, for those following along at home):

[Picture of the Point Buy Table, with values for scores < 8]

Then, subtract 36 from this total. The result is your Hubris score; write it down somewhere on your character sheet. Then, apply species modifiers as normal. (Change)

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Another method dealing with cards:
This emulates 32 point buy.

You'll need 4 Aces, 2 Kings, 2 Queens, 4 Jacks, 2 Jokers (or 10s), and 10 cards of lower value (24 total).

The point buy value is as follows:
Ace: 4
King: 3
Queen: 2
Jack and Joker/10: 1
Others: 0

Shuffle and deal 6 piles of 4 cards each. Add together the numbers on the piles and look up what ability score that would be. If you get something that isn't in the charts (like a 7 or a 15), you can deal with it however you like: either give away points to another ability (maybe the weakest or another impossible number), or subtract points from another score and add it to this one (ideally something that would be illegal, anyway).

 

[Roadkill101]

How about assigning fixed values of: 18, 16, 14, 12, 11 & 10. Each character will have three stats with a bonus (+3, +2 & +1 IIRC) and three stats without a bonus.

 

[Pyrex]

The four-person-only restriction is a definite weakness, and there are five players in our group...

-Hyp.

Why not just shuffle two decks (or a deck-and-a-half) together?

 

[Pyrex]

Then, subtract 36 from this total. The result is your Hubris score; write it down somewhere on your character sheet.

What does said score do?