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D&D 5E Rolled character stats higher than point buy?

MostlyDm

Explorer
To the OP, rolling for stats will give you an average roll that is only a couple of points higher than a point buy. In addition, it will guarantee that your character can't be too gimped.



Many people do simply cheat/lie/have the dog eat their character sheet if they roll bad. If you have the DMs approval then I guess it's not technically cheating. Call it generous house ruling if you wish.

All I can say is that I've been in games where one person rolled super-high stats (a couple of 18s, nothing lower than a 14) while my wife rolled a character with a high stat of 14 (most were below 10). When my wife asked if we could use point buy or reroll, the DM laughed and said basically "Wow that sucks. Too bad you have to play that character." I didn't think it was fun or fair back then, I still don't.
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Yeah, that's lousy.

If my players want to roll stats, I often implement the policy that they all roll together, in front of each other, one set each, and then they can all choose from any of the sets that were rolled.

So if one person rolls a crazy bananas set, everyone can take it and place the stats wherever they like. Each character ends up unique, but nobody ends up unfairly far ahead of anyone else.

Lately some of my people have enjoyed more classic 3d6 in order sets, which is fun when everyone is on board.

Frankly, I also have let everyone simply set stats that made sense. I don't worry too much about it, the goal is for everyone to have a character they like when they are done.
 

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Guest 6801328

Guest
An average rolled (4d6, drop) provides an average advantage of two points, and, more importantly, the advantage occurs with one of the high rolls (you average getting a 16 instead of a 15).

Sorry if this has already been asked/answered, but how do you figure it provides an average advantage of 2 points? 4d6 drop 1 gives an average of 12.5, which if we round to 3 12's and 3 13's, is exactly what you would get with point buy.

Where's my math wrong?

Finally? People cheat.

Yeah, and that.
 

AaronOfBarbaria

Adventurer
That is why, when I play, I prefer to have the DM roll my stats for me and just tell me what they are.

Reroll by suicide

As a powergamer, it's more important to me to be on an even playing field with the other players. As such, I hate hate hate rolling stats. If somebody rolls significantly better than me from pure chance, that bothers me.

You are right, but the flow chart from "Yes" looks like the following:

2) Are the results above point buy. If your answer is "Yes", stop, otherwise go to 3.
3) Did the player argue successfully that he had an unfairly bad roll and should be allowed to reroll? Or be allowed to reroll 1's. Or any other sort of reroll. If so, return to 2, otherwise 4.
4) The player now declares the character unplayable and the character is committing suicide or being retired. Return to step 1.

If I got a nickel any time that happened and paid a dollar any time it didn't, I'd still be rich.

I've been playing 30+ years. Rolling stats is just DM approved cheating.
These posts highlight why as soon as it became a clearly viable option to do so (5th edition with its ability score cap and relatively smaller difference between "good enough" modifiers and "best" modifiers), I changed my ability score generation method to "Just get scores you will be happy to play with, I don't care how - even if you choose them arbitrarily, copy another player's scores, or show up with straight 18s before racial modifiers."

That mildly off-topic-ness aside; In the past, I've always let it be a choice of the group by way of a vote as to how ability scores should be generated - I've even seen the same group change what they voted for from one campaign to the next, sometimes wanting point-buy, sometimes wanting super-powerful characters like 5d6, reroll ones, keep 3, 3 full sets of scores and pick the best, and occasionally even wanting the "ultra hard mode" of 3d6 rolled in order and you actually have to try to keep the character in the campaign long-term.

Dice-generated scores tend to, in my experience, be higher than point buy because they are typically a rolling method that makes higher scores more likely than lower scores, and that along with detaching the height of one score from the height of others (meaning rolling a 15+ on one score doesn't affect your ability to have a 15+ in another score, where point buy is designed so that any "peaks" cause "valleys") naturally results in scores that are higher on average.

As for why it seems that if you don't watch a player roll scores they manage to consistently get highly improbable score sets - that's because the player feels like they "need" those scores for some reason. It can be because the DM creates challenges the player feels are more difficult than they'd like so the player is trying to get the odds they would prefer, it can be that the player is just curious how such a character would be to play because they've never played such a character before, or it can be some other reason that doesn't even necessarily make any logical sense. But there is always a reason for the "cheating" and it therefore can always be prevented by discovering and removing that reason.

Of course, the only proof I have of that is the anecdotal evidence that in my current group which are allowed to generate ability scores however they should desire, no one has chosen to get even higher scores than they've previously had - they are all actually starting to trend more towards the only player with strong preference for ability generation method, and rolling 4d6 drop lowest, one set only (though she keeps her scores in the order rolled, while everyone else rearranges the scores they roll), though a large part of that trend is "I'll just use what she rolled."
 


mflayermonk

First Post
You would think a low stat would be an easy way to get much more inspiration. It's easy to RP a low stat. I remember when we used to roll 3d6 in order, a roll of 5 or less was called "some roleplaying".
 

AaronOfBarbaria

Adventurer
You would think a low stat would be an easy way to get much more inspiration. It's easy to RP a low stat. I remember when we used to roll 3d6 in order, a roll of 5 or less was called "some roleplaying".
Giving out inspiration to players that actually embrace their low rolls (i.e. they don't sit silently during every social situation because of their low charisma, they don't try to contribute to planning or puzzle solving because of low intelligence, and so on) is an idea I support.

Really, I support anything that might help my own group finally get into the swing of using Inspiration. We're currently struggling to get the players past the feeling that if they bring up whether or not something was worth inspiration that they are doing the undesirable behavior of begging for bennies, while I am also struggling to find a solution for me not always remembering every background detail of every character in all our campaigns that doesn't rely solely on my players speaking up about when they were trying to incorporate a detail meaningfully (so we can meet half-way on the matter). I'm struck by the idea of printing a sheet that lists their details in large enough print that I can reference it without struggling to read my scribble-scratch handwriting, but I keep forgetting to actually implement the idea and see how much it helps (but hey, now that I am reminded of it and not currently busy doing anything important, I'll get on that - thanks for the reminder, EnWorld).
 

MostlyDm

Explorer
I think we are completely different kinds of powergamers then. I couldn't care less how I compare to the other players--I only care that I am making the most of what I'm given. I've played briefly at a Shadowrun table that frowned on optimizing point allocation, and I would have been fine if they'd said, "Okay, you're better at optimizing, so you only get 80 points to make your build instead of the normal 150, so that we all come out at the same level of effectiveness in the end." To me that's fine because I still get to do what I enjoy--constraint-solving.

Instead these tables expected you to deliberately make inefficient choices based on the same resources as the other players. To my mind, that constituted interference with my fun. I found that distasteful enough that I ceased playing with them.

I played at another table where I offered to roll 3d6 instead of 4d6 drop lowest. The DM turned down but I would have done it, and had fun with it and been very effective.

It sounds like you probably would hate the "you get less resources" approach but for me it is fully consistent with powergaming.

I've never really considered myself a power gamer, but I definitely can respect the mentality here.

Story time: In 3.5's heyday I once played in a game a friend was running for some mutual acquaintances. They were all new to D&D, and my friend was new to DMing though not D&D in general. He asked me to make sure I didn't dominate the group.

So I rolled stats on 3d6 in order instead of 4d6 assigned wherever, allowing myself one switch. I rolled my race and class randomly and ended up with a Gnome Cleric (hence the switch; in 3.5 a low prime stat caster is much more worthless than in 5e).

It was, lamentably, in the Forgotten Realms, so I decided to be a cleric of the God of invention, Gond.

I ended up going for a lot of item crafting and focused primarily on buffing the party. I suppose I optimized the crap out of certain things... Due to 3e item creation rules costing XP I lagged behind everyone in level but outfitted everyone with highly effective gear to make sure they kicked ass. Then I would just layer on some buffs, crowd control some enemies, then kick back and relax.

It was a lot of fun.
 

Celebrim

Legend
Appeal to authority...

Why, yes. Yes I am.

- as if there aren't others playing here just as long who have other experiences? Really?

Now you are putting words in my mouth.

Way to be insulting, dude.

Sorry you took it that way. However, I think other GM's need to be clear sighted about what they are implementing with a dice roll option. Incidentally, GM approved cheating may not be the worst way to handle this issue.
 
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Celebrim

Legend
These posts highlight why as soon as it became a clearly viable option to do so (5th edition with its ability score cap and relatively smaller difference between "good enough" modifiers and "best" modifiers), I changed my ability score generation method to "Just get scores you will be happy to play with, I don't care how - even if you choose them arbitrarily, copy another player's scores, or show up with straight 18s before racial modifiers."

That is one solution to the problem that might work with some groups. It depends on how competitive the players are and what they'll compete on. If you have two people in the group that just have to have a better character than everyone else, the GM approved cheating method probably isn't going to work. If the players will conform to social pressure not to abuse their freedom, and even take pride in playing low stats, then letting them just go ahead and play what they want is probably better than making them go through the motions of rolling dice and cheating to get what they want.

What has seemed to work for me is to just allow a fairly high point buy so that everyone's characters are a tad OP. Since I crack down on power levels elsewhere in my house rules, and since I run a fairly lethal game anyway, having PC's that are a bit on the OP side actually works better for me than not. It also ensures everyone is on a level playing field and so avoids table drama, and it means I don't have to watch everyone roll their character or listen to whines about rerolling.

If you really must go with die-rolling, some of the methods in the 1e AD&D DMG are far more functional for the goal of letting everyone play the super-powered character they really want than 4d6 drop one. In particular, groups that have to have super characters will get better results from the method where you roll 3d6 6 times for each ability, and take the highest result of the set of six. That method basically guarantees no one has a bad character, generates lots of 16's and higher, and still has the feel and thrill of die rolling.
 
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I've never much agreed with any of the reasons people give for liking rolling random stats. That being said, I've honestly had little experience with randomly generated stats over the course of 20 years of playing D&D. During the 2E era usually we technically rolled, but there was so much cheating involved I wouldn't exactly call it random generation. The vast majority of this cheating occurred with the approval of the DM, either tacit or actively encouraged. I typically used the roll up a bunch of characters and use the best one method, but after a while I stopped rolling altogether and just wrote whatever stats I wanted on the sheet and said I rolled them. Both of these I did with at least the tacit approval of the DM. I can't recall ever playing a character in 2E with less than 17 dexterity, take from that what you will. During 3E/3.5E we almost always used point buy. A couple times the DM tried using random rolling, but between the cheating and the complaining we always ended up back at point buy in the end. For 4E, randomly rolling was never even remotely considered. 100% point buy for 4E no exceptions ever, and this was a nearly unanimous decision. For 5E, I've only engaged in organized play, so again, point buy.
 
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