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

[Celebrim]

How about rolled stats are fun just like all the other dice in the game are fun? It's a gamble and gambling is fun.

I understand this argument. I too enjoy rolling for stats. I too love the sound of dice clattering on the table.

The only problem with this argument is that once I backed up and reflected on how dice rolling actually worked in practice, I realized that my entire history of dice rolling was one long fight against the element of risk in rolling stats.

4d6? That's risk mitigation.
Place them how you like? Risk mitigation.
Reroll the 1's? Risk mitigation.
Reroll characters that are 'below average'? Risk mitigation.

The way dice rolling works in practice is that it continues until someone doesn't feel that they lost. And usually that means that it continues until everyone feels that they won. If we are honest, that's not gambling.

Now, I want to be very clear that I have no problem with that. I think groups should play with the stat array the want. The elaborate char gen methods with dice are IMO functional responses to poor rules. But over the years the ritual of pretending that that is not what is going on has started to seem superfluous to me.

 

[Maxperson]

Most people cheat, usually with the approval of their DM. I did some analysis way back and a significant percentage of randomly rolled characters will have a truly bad ability score (4 or less). The average is fairly close to the point buy system.

If the DM approves, it is by definition not cheating. The DM has altered the rule for you and you are now playing by those rules.

 

[Celebrim]

I find it interesting that apparently nobody here seems to just use the standard array method, which is what we do at my table.

I am ok with the standard array method. It's very fair and it tends to mitigate against hyper-specialization that can be a problem with point buy.

But coming from a background where we always rolled the dice, one thing I do like about dice rolling and sometimes miss, is that it can create rather unpredictable characters. These characters are usually predictably pretty good, or IMO they don't get played. But dice rolling especially when you can't place the stats where you want (which is the method I always enforced) leads you toward playing characters with abilities that surprising. You'd often see characters with really high stats, but one really bad stat - like 2 18's and a 7. Or you'd see characters with one good stat in an ability you often didn't associate with the class, like a wizard with a 17 charisma. And while I've eventually gotten tired of many aspects of dice rolling, that's one area I still wish I could capture. For that reason, I prefer point buy methods to standard arrays, because they generate a more varied set of arrays. You lose some of the joys of randomness, but without giving up all the variety.

 

[Arial Black]

The best character creation systems combine a level of chance and a level of control. All control with no chance leaves no room for ideas that fit outside the limited possibilities allowed, while total chance may leave you with something you have no interest in playing.

With rolling, you are not stuck with 3d6 six times in order, like it or lump it! You can have 4d6 drop 1, or assign those six scores to the attributes you want, or both. 3d6 seven or twelve times, assign the best six. Re-roll if too low, or not!

There are many ways to get the desired combination of chance and control if you use rolling, but there is no way to do that using point-buy.

Superhero RPGs feel this divide more keenly than D&D, because of superpowers. Do the players roll their powers randomly, or use point-buy like Champions?

Here is a quote from Simon Burley from his SHRPG Squadron UK:-

"I love the character generation system for Squadron UK. It straddles the divide between RANDOM and DESIGN systems. It allows you to design a hero you want to play but the random element gives a nudge to your imagination and stops you creating the same hero over and over again.

"I'm not interested in totally random character generation. This too often gives characters with unfeasible combinations of powers which players don't want to run.

"In addition, the player doesn't feel 'ownership' of the character having done little except roll the dice to create them.

"In the same way I don't like game systems which allow players total control of the design of their characters. I don't want to insult anyone but we don't all have the imagination to come up with a brand new superhero. Then there's the guy who spends hours poring over the rulebooks trying to squeeze every little advantage out of the system. Not to mention the players who - when their favourite character is killed or sidelined - simply creates a clone.

"So, for me, the perfect system for making Heroes should have a random element tempered by the player selection and design."

Rolling enables that. Point-buy doesn't. Point-buy allows and encourages you to squeeze every advantage from your points until you get the 'best' fighter or wizard or whatever, and you can just make another clone with a different name when the first one bites it. It creates an unreal population of people with Str/Dex of 8/16 or 16/8.

I understand why organised play needs point-buy. The shame you'd feel for, say, choosing six 18s would rapidly evaporate in front of strangers who are doing the same.

In nearly four decades of playing D&D, I have never used point-buy outside of organised play!

 

[Celebrim]

The best character creation systems combine a level of chance and a level of control. All control with no chance leaves no room for ideas that fit outside the limited possibilities allowed, while total chance may leave you with something you have no interest in playing.

I agree with this, but in the context of D&D, I can think of no system that meets the competing criteria. I'd love to have one, and I've been racking my brain on and off over the problem for nearly 20 years now. If you've got a good solution, I'll happy gives you 20-30 XP for it.

Take any random system that you want. Whatever results that random system produces could be exactly replicated by some system where the DM randomly generates a stack of points for each player to spend, and then the player spends his allocation of points to create a character. And as a thought experiment, I think that shows why its very difficult to create a random system that avoids problems. What we'd actually want is a system that is both random, but always generates a fair and balanced result so that everyone is on as level of a playing field as we could manage, and which is random but over which the player had a certain level of guidance so that it doesn't produce a character which he has no desire to play.

That ideal system just simply may not be possible. The goals are in too much competition.

The best I've been able to come up with is start with any point buy system. In theory, what we could do is begin to randomly assign values until we had assigned as many benefits as hit some point buy value. So in the context of say 3e D&D, we could randomly select an ability, and randomly generate a score for it. Then we could compute the number of points that have so far been spent. Then we could randomly select an unfilled ability, and randomly generate a score for it. Continue this process until there are no more points left to spend, at which point the remaining scores are all bought at the '0' level, or until there are enough surplus points remaining to buy the last ability (or abilities) at some value.

That's not terribly bad, but it does have the subtle problem that all point buy tends to have, and that is that not only is point buy often not perfectly balanced (some abilities in D&D tend to be better than others, for example no one wants to dump stat CON), but point buy tends to neglect the value of synergies that players don't neglect when spending the points themselves. For example, DEX synergizes well with INT, because rogues who would prefer a high DEX score, also would like to have a high INT score, and Wizards - who need a high intelligence score - would prefer a high DEX score. It might not synergize as well with a high WIS score, because the natural use of a high WIS score - make a cleric - doesn't get a huge benefit from a good DEX, pushing you toward some less intuitive and perhaps less potent builds to get a benefit from both.

The more complex your point buy and the more parts of it you want to make random, the more that is true. For example, if we randomly assigned ability scores in D&D, and randomly assigned a class (or randomly generated a class), then invariably we'd generate more characters where the points came out at the desired total, but the synergies weren't there.

When rolling, what tends to happen is that we recognize that random is problematic, but don't want to give up the sensation we feel when rolling the ability scores. We want to retain that thrill of victory, but we don't want to retain the agony of defeat. So we come up with methods that are like gambling, but with free insurance. We gamble, but if we lose, we can play again without paying a cost. So we end up with a system where we can't lose, but have retained the sensation of gambling.

 

[ccs]

If you think everyone in your group is perfectly fine with rolling, it's quite possible you're like the DM of yore who laughed when my wife asked for another chance. To this day he probably thinks no one ever had a problem with rolling even though it was one of the reasons we quit the campaign.

I'm 100% certain that anyone rolling stats in my games is perfectly fine with it.
Why? Because they're CHOOSING to do it.
Each player has the option to generate their stats via standard PB limits, standard array, or rolling 4d6 drop one (doesn't HAVE to be the lowest, but I've never seen that happen). Their choice.

IF YOU ROLL:
1) You're doing it at the table in front of the group. We like to witness the rolls & cheer or jeer right along with you. And they get recorded.
2) You're only rolling 1 set of stats.
3) You WILL play the character you generate this way in good faith. After all, you had the opportunity to take a sure thing but chose to leave it to chance....

 

[ccs]

I've never much agreed with any of the reasons people give for liking rolling random stats.

1) I like the randomness of it.

2) If you have the option to potentially be awesome, TAKE IT!
I might roll up that Holy Grail, the "perfect" character - all 18s! (before race mods). Haven't managed it yet in all these years, but hey, maybe the next time. I'll NEVER accomplish that with PB or array.
Likewise I could roll up stuff more awesome than PB/Array allows. (truthfully I'll likely just achieve something comparable....)
Of course the downside here is that I might roll below PB/array or even really badly. And both have happened (plenty of times). I'm OK with that & will play the resulting characters in good faith.

 

[FrogReaver]

Playing a poorly rolled character doesn't seem expected at many tables from what I'm seeing. Many allow rolls and then point buy if those fail.

I think a system where each player rolls an in order array using 4d6 drop lowest and then each player chooses an array from that set of arrays could work.

1) I like the randomness of it.

2) If you have the option to potentially be awesome, TAKE IT!
I might roll up that Holy Grail, the "perfect" character - all 18s! (before race mods). Haven't managed it yet in all these years, but hey, maybe the next time. I'll NEVER accomplish that with PB or array.
Likewise I could roll up stuff more awesome than PB/Array allows. (truthfully I'll likely just achieve something comparable....)
Of course the downside here is that I might roll below PB/array or even really badly. And both have happened (plenty of times). I'm OK with that & will play the resulting characters in good faith.

 

[sim-h]

Back when I played before 5e (which is, basically, 1e days) I would have summarily dismissed any fool who dared suggest some sort of 'standard array'. I would probably have mocked them roundly as a buffoon, idiot and a halfwit. Take those 3d6 and hope for the best.

Having rediscovered the game at 5e and had my players create their characters - I would now *insist* on standard array for future games. Allowing re-rolls of scores of 5 and 6 (at least two players got these), whilst another player gets 17, 16 and 15? Feels dirty. Watching how quickly a player snatches at the statement 'or you could ignore those rolls and just take the standard array...?' Feels tragic.

To me, no point rolling any more unless it's a deliberately 'hardcore' or 'old school' game - and that's not 5e, it's OSRIC or something.

I kind of feel sad about that, to be honest! But it's the reality that I've experienced.

 

[Oofta]

I'm 100% certain that anyone rolling stats in my games is perfectly fine with it.
Why? Because they're CHOOSING to do it.
Each player has the option to generate their stats via standard PB limits, standard array, or rolling 4d6 drop one (doesn't HAVE to be the lowest, but I've never seen that happen). Their choice.

IF YOU ROLL:
1) You're doing it at the table in front of the group. We like to witness the rolls & cheer or jeer right along with you. And they get recorded.
2) You're only rolling 1 set of stats.
3) You WILL play the character you generate this way in good faith. After all, you had the opportunity to take a sure thing but chose to leave it to chance....

Ok, you personally give people a choice. Good job. In that game of yore, we were never given the choice (we asked if we could use point buy instead of rolling).

Even with that, most people are overly optimistic and assume they will beat the average (there have been several studies on this).

When I've done true random (rarely) there was a incredibly high incidence of character death for PCs with really bad stats. In most cases the player just gave the DM puppy-dog eyes or there was some house rule that ensured decent characters. Given that below average characters were always rerolled or died before getting to higher levels, taking an average score would be a sucker's bet.

If you guys are happy with it, go for it. I just won't ever join your game.