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<blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 3736723" data-attributes="member: 40961">I used to play at a college gaming club.&nbsp; I was the rules guy, to a certain extent, so I've overseen dozens of people doing character creation.&nbsp; All of them claimed to be familiar with the rules.Nearly 100% of them had some sort of character creation house rule which they were adamantly convinced was real.&nbsp; I had to get the book out to prove otherwise on innumerable occasions.&nbsp; They all loved rolling up new characters, but they tended to roll 7 stats and discard the lowest, 5d6 discard the two lowest, straight rolling but everything gets automatically increased to at least 10, automatic do-over if you don't get at least one 16, etc, etc, etc.This rapidly soured me on rolling for stats.&nbsp; So I introduced point buy in my games, and tried to convince other people to use it.&nbsp; Everyone was uniformly shocked that a viable character was supposed to be possible on a 25 point buy.&nbsp; Point buy was eventually adopted, but most DMs other than myself allowed points in the range of 40.&nbsp; I myself had to increase to 32 due to popular complaint.I've seen similar things with rolling for hit points.&nbsp; I give them the option of taking exactly half hit points, completely with the .5 remainder (two of them add to 1).&nbsp; The players all want to roll, but the moment someone rolls a 1 or a 2, they give me this puppy dog look and ask if they can roll again.And you always end up with that one guy who announces loudly that he's going to roll for hit points, rolls out on the table in front of everyone, then snaps up the dice before you can see it and announces he got max or nearly max hit points.&nbsp; When you make him roll again where you can see, he acts offended, like you're stealing his good roll.&nbsp; So annoying.We already have randomization for how often you're hit, and for how much damage that hit does.&nbsp; Adding randomization for hit points doesn't add much more to the system, and adds a significant encouragement to cheat or intentionally misremember the rules.&nbsp; My experience suggests to me that people like rolling for character stats and hit points because they have an expectation of obtaining more favorable results than if they simply took the statistical average or used a point buy.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Cadfan, post: 3736723, member: 40961"] I used to play at a college gaming club. I was the rules guy, to a certain extent, so I've overseen dozens of people doing character creation. All of them claimed to be familiar with the rules. Nearly 100% of them had some sort of character creation house rule which they were adamantly convinced was real. I had to get the book out to prove otherwise on innumerable occasions. They all loved rolling up new characters, but they tended to roll 7 stats and discard the lowest, 5d6 discard the two lowest, straight rolling but everything gets automatically increased to at least 10, automatic do-over if you don't get at least one 16, etc, etc, etc. This rapidly soured me on rolling for stats. So I introduced point buy in my games, and tried to convince other people to use it. Everyone was uniformly shocked that a viable character was supposed to be possible on a 25 point buy. Point buy was eventually adopted, but most DMs other than myself allowed points in the range of 40. I myself had to increase to 32 due to popular complaint. I've seen similar things with rolling for hit points. I give them the option of taking exactly half hit points, completely with the .5 remainder (two of them add to 1). The players all want to roll, but the moment someone rolls a 1 or a 2, they give me this puppy dog look and ask if they can roll again. And you always end up with that one guy who announces loudly that he's going to roll for hit points, rolls out on the table in front of everyone, then snaps up the dice before you can see it and announces he got max or nearly max hit points. When you make him roll again where you can see, he acts offended, like you're stealing his good roll. So annoying. We already have randomization for how often you're hit, and for how much damage that hit does. Adding randomization for hit points doesn't add much more to the system, and adds a significant encouragement to cheat or intentionally misremember the rules. My experience suggests to me that people like rolling for character stats and hit points because they have an expectation of obtaining more favorable results than if they simply took the statistical average or used a point buy. [/QUOTE]

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