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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6867731" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Okay. I'm pretty busy this morning but I can think of a couple of specific things to like about rolled stats off the top of my head. Bear in mind here that all aesthetic choices are ultimately subjective/axiomatic, so if you happen not to find one of these properties as cool as I do, that doesn't mean it's not a concrete reason. If you try to claim that personal preferences based on these concrete reasons are still somehow not concrete and that I haven't answered your question, you go on Ignore.(1) Verisimilitude/plausibility. Even if everyone puts their lowest score in Int (I wouldn't), you'll still get a normally-distributed bell curve for Int. That feels more realistic/breaks my suspension of disbelief less than a uniform Int 8 score. The uniformity of PHB point buy makes me feel very much like a character in a videogame and not real person in a fantasy world. Note: There are point buy systems (e.g. GURPS, Shadowrun) that don't feel quite so artificial because they let you spend points on things other than attributes, so "everybody has the same Int 8" doesn't happen. But those systems tend not to work well in level-based systems like D&D. Rolled stats give you that nice bell curve automatically, without having to reinvent D&D as a non-class-based, non-level-based game system.(1b) Likewise, in a strict system like "3d6 in order", you'll find that there is no anti-correlation between stat pairs. With point buy, and possibly also with "4d6 drop lowest assign freely" (I haven't done the math so I'm not sure either way), there's an anticorrelation between e.g. Strength and Intelligence: smart people are likely to be weaker than dumb people, which is the opposite of real life. (High IQ correlates positively with fitness, whether because of genetic load or lifestyle habits or both.) Ditto for Intelligence and Wisdom. If you roll 3d6 in order, you'll have plenty of PCs (about 25%) who are both smart and wise.(2) Starting character creation with a randomized input acts as a spur to creativity and ensures a wide variety of characters. When Bob the Fighter dies, you literally cannot just scratch his name out on the character sheet and make Bob The Lesser. Your next fighter will be different from Bob, and perhaps in a way which makes you want to take him in a completely different direction. Rolled stats result in more organic characters.Off the top of my head, those are the two big reasons which come immediately to mind.Judging by your forum comments on how much you prize fairness, you'd probably hate property #2 and organic characters. But it's a concrete property of randomized stat generation, and the next time someone says they don't know why anyone likes rolled stats, you ought to be able to both (1) describe what some people like, (2) state specifically where and why you have a different preference.</blockquote>

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