D&D 5E Pseudo-Random Ability scores

[Xeviat]

Hi everyone. I was chatting with my gaming friends about ability scores. Most of us use Point Buy now, but a few of us do like random rolling. Random rolling feels literally organic, but since most players start thinking of a character in the order of Class>Race>Ability Scores, random scores don't often help make the character you want.

Only one of my players substantially liked dealing with a random low stat, but everyone liked having a random high stat that wasn't directly pertinent to their race/class. So, I came up with an idea that I'm going to try out in my next game.

So, I found a statistical analysis of 4d6 drop the lowest that showed the typical array would be 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. This is slightly higher than what we have. It's 3 points higher. But, rather than just upping the point buy from 27 to 30 (which does open up more character options since buying a 16 is possible for everyone), I'm going to randomly roll and add 3 point buy points to a random stat on each character. I'm thinking of having it be random among the six, or among their three lowest, or simply not their primary Attack stat or Con.

Another idea I had was to give everyone a 16 and a 14 but then have them roll 3d6 for the rest. I'll have to see what those odds look like.

What do you think?


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[Dualazi]

Of the listed options you presented I think keeping it simply a random variation of any of the six attributes would be the best. If it's adding only to the lowest, then it stands to remove any negative modifiers at all, which some of your players seem to favor. It also removes any chance of getting a random high stat not class relevant, since you can really only swing it up to a +2, and that only would happen 1/3 of the time.

Keeping the 16 and 14 seems like that would be a net increase in player power, since they're assured decent presence in their chosen fields (or amazing presence, if the 16 matches a racial +2 bonus), but otherwise would also probably meet your goals.

A third option would be to make racial bonuses double if they aren't pertinent to the class in question (subject to DM review, obviously.). That way a dwarf mage could get +4 to str to help with those tertiary high stats, but would keep the usual con bonus since everyone uses that. Same thing for a tiefling druid getting a larger bump to charisma. This does run into the issue of possibly having a dwarven fighter have lower strength than the dwarven mage, but I doubt this would occur very often.

 

[pukunui]

I once used a semi-random ability score generation method. I don't remember the fine details, but I think the idea was that each player could roll 4d6, drop lowest, for three of their PC's stats, then they would figure out the point buy total of what they'd rolled on the chart, then subtract that from a given total, then use the remainder to purchase the other three stats. This was back in the 3.5 days, and I seem to recall giving them a total of 32 points.