So a player presents a character with really high ability scores--what do you do?

[WayneLigon]

Hmm. I've had players create characters with some pretty high stats before, but then we normally roll characters in front of each other. But even if we don't, we trust each other not to cheat on dice. The standard we usually have is 4d6, drop lowest, nothing below a 10 initially (racial mods may drop it below that).

Only recently have I played in games that used any form of point-buy. (Played in one last night).

 

[Mystery Man]

Just to clarify a few things--

The PC was developed by the player at home. While I sort of like the 'Create the character in front of the DM' idea, I asked everyone to do it at home for time-saving purposes.

Ah, there's no way I'd do this.

 

[Dracolich]

Wow! All of you DM's that have your players roll in front of you are anal. If someone is going to cheat, they are going to cheat and you can't stop them. Even if you have your players roll in front of you, are you watching what each one rolls? The players rolling aren't going to be watching each other and you can't watch them all at once.

All a player has to do is record whatever number he wants after he rolls and unless someone is counting each dice over his shoulder no one will know the difference. You could have everyone roll one at a time while all watch, but if you feel you have to do that because of trust reasons, then why play with that group of players?

Most of the time it's the DM's who are doing most of the cheating during a game session anyway.

 

[Altalazar]

Use point buy. There really isn't another solution.

Even if dice are all rolled in front of the DM and five sworn witnesses under laboratory-random conditions, the dice CAN end up giving one player all 3's and another player all 18's.

In the end, what ultimately really matters is how close the players are to each other in overall ability scores. My first 3.0E campaign, I let players roll their own, outside of sight, and one player ended up with the equivalent of like a 47 point buy character and another player had the equivlaent of a 22 point buy character. With most tending toward the low end. The 47 pointer was a half-orc barbarian and they TOTALLY dominated combat. This made it very hard to balance encounters, because what would challenge the rest of the party this barbarian could kill by himself without breaking a sweat and what would challenge the barbarian would just kill the entire rest of the party if the barbarian didn't get there first. This started to level off a bit with higher levels, but it never went away entirely.

Point buy is fair and it means that the group will end up with evenly matched characters. This makes just about everything else in the entire game go more smoothly.

Leaving the stats to pure random chance that is then frozen for the entire life of the character is to me like having massive tables of backgrounds and personality characteristics and just rolling for those as well - but then you no longer are creating your character, you are just letting a computer create it for you.

 

[kirinke]

point buy is a good system.

point buy is a good system.
and this is coming from a girl who enjoys creating uber-munchkin characters that will never see the light of an adventure. lol

and even then, the character i'm currently playing has the following stats (done with the point buy system)

STR: 18
DEX: 16
CON: 10
INT: 10
WIS: 10

Not too shabby. And especially since she's going the ranger (archer)/sane tactics route.

 

[billd91]

Just to clarify a few things--

The PC was developed by the player at home. While I sort of like the 'Create the character in front of the DM' idea, I asked everyone to do it at home for time-saving purposes.

The player in question created the character (he enjoys character creation) before I could send out my guidelines on creation.

I think you should ask yourself 2 questions:
1) Do you trust the player to create the character fairly?
2) Do you trust the other players to trust this one player to create his character fairly?

If you answer yes to these two questions, you're done. A pack of high stats on one character won't be a game unbalancer if you as DM run your game well and work to give all PCs relatively equal screen time. Unless you're running your game like a computer-game hack fest, it's the way each player runs his character that will make them memorable and successful or not. Stats may make some mechanical tasks easier but the play is a much more significant determining factor.

And rolling stats is NOT like letting the computer make a character for you. That's a pretty silly commentary on the topic. The character is made by how you play it and some players, like me and most of the people I play with, prefer the challenge of playing the hand dealt to them rather than stacking their decks exactly as they want. It's a question of game style and tastes.

 

[Altalazar]

And rolling stats is NOT like letting the computer make a character for you. That's a pretty silly commentary on the topic. The character is made by how you play it and some players, like me and most of the people I play with, prefer the challenge of playing the hand dealt to them rather than stacking their decks exactly as they want. It's a question of game style and tastes.

What you call "stacking the decks" I call creating a character. When you let the dice decide for you, letting "fate" decide, you are no longer the one creating the character. That is just some steps removed from just being handed a pre-made character from the DM. That would also be "playing the hand dealt to you" - and for some, that may be fine, but when I create a character, I'd rather take an active part in it rather than passively being given what a random number generator has decided what my character will be.

 

[diaglo]

3d6 six times in order.

by the letter of the booklet. the referee should roll.

but it is more fun to let the player risk his own fate with the dice.

 

[Altalazar]

3d6 six times in order.

by the letter of the booklet. the referee should roll.

but it is more fun to let the player risk his own fate with the dice.

And then the player can choose between playing a fighter, a cleric, a wizard, a theif, and an elf.

 

[Luddite]

When I first DM 3rd Ed, I had all my players roll in front of me. Not because I did not trust them, but I wanted to make sure that everyone had "similar" stats and would have the stats to make their characters viable.

Also at that time, I was still under the 2nd Ed notion of any thing less then a 17 in your primary stat (or 18/95 for fighter's strength) was useless. So I wanted to make sure every character had high enough stats to play the class they wanted.

However, it was not till later that I noticed that some characters were just not as effetive as others. Once I went back to the see how many points they were worth, there was a greater then 10 point difference between the Highest and the lowest.

As A DM, I would like to insure some type of "equality" between characters and players. That should be that every player has an equal chance of having fun and enoying the game.

-The Luddite