Starting Stats..?

[Kristivas]

About two years ago, I ran a game where players rolled up their characters. We had some average scores going on, til the Paladin rolled. Well, it seemed he really was blessed by his god. The guy amazed me: 18 17 13 14 16 17.

Well, he was happy and he did roll that (I use the 4d6 method, drop lowest) and the game began. From the beginning, things took a dramatic turn. Feeling vastly superior, he started bossing the other guys around. He would succeed at nearly every check, and just became more of an ass with each session.

Well, a friend suggested I toss in something to bring him down a peg, so I came up with an Ogre who lead around some orc lackeys. The PCs were only level 2 at this point, so this encounter was pretty much meant to rough them up (especially the paladin) and teach them cooperation (since, in battles, they were all doing their own thing.)

Well, it was also a disaster. As the battle began, the paladin and the ogre with an orc lackey squared off. They both attacked, missed. The rest of the party is faring ok, but I'm sitting here thinking to myself that the paladin is about to get a major butt-kicking. Well, he uses a smite evil and rolls. 20 (with a greatsword). Rolled to confirm, 19. I'm kicking myself at this point. 9 (sword) + 6 (str and 1/2) + 2 (smite) + 7 (crit).. 24 out of 29.

The next round goes as predicted. The paladin takes 3 damage from the orc, missed by the ogre (of course), and finished the Ogre off with a neat swing. By now, several of the party members have dispatched their attackers and are helping play clean-up.

4 PCs against 7 Orcs and an Ogre. I was beginning to get a little annoyed, but then the paladin made the rest of the party (yes, made them) kneel down and praise Tyr for their victory. Even the rogue.

Well, the party revolts at this point, and they all begin fighting among themselves. The wizard tries to sleep the paladin for a quick end, Will save succeeded. They start beating on him, but he took down the wizard first, killed the poor druid, and finished off the rogue with half of his hit points left.

Needless to say, the game ended there.

Why did I post this amusing (and long) story? I'd like to know, first off, if anything like this has happened to you? I'd also like to know some of your house rules for character creation. I've considered point buy, allowing a few re-rolls, ect.

To clarify, I like to have tough PCs. I don't mind good scores, in fact it's easier for me to run the kind of challenging games I like to run. The only problem is when 1 PC overshadows all of the others.. *chuckles*

Suggestions would be helpful

 

[Crothian]

Nope, never had anything like that happen to me. I'd have had the Paladin lose his powers, Hubris is a dangerious thing and the gods don't like it.

As for what I use for character creation, I went with point buy this time around since the players are somewhat new. My usual method is to just let players pick their stats.

 

[Felnar]

My group went to point buy after some players complained their characters were always overshadowed by the characters with high stats. Point buy helps in combat encounters too because it's hard to make an encounter that is challenging to a high stat character without being deadly to average stat characters.

point buy has a few problems though
characters begin to have identical stats
min/maxing, dump stats, no odd stats
some classes depend on more high stats than other classes

 

[smootrk]

Point buy is the way to go, but add a couple of HR's to limit stat dumping.

I personally balance a 25 point buy with a couple of random boosts or adjustments that are figured in just before the first session after the player has made all his choices... adds some variability and some surprise stats.

 

[Grazzt]

Cant say Ive ever had that problem (been DMing since '82 or so). And we've always used 4d6, drop lowest (even back in the 1E days of "Roll 3d6 in order").

 

[dedicated]

LOL... the problem was with the player not the stats

we have a person who always rolls high stats but he uses stays in the backround

 

[delericho]

The last 2nd Edition campaign I ran, we used the 4d6-drop-lowest method. One player rolled the following: 18-17-16-16-16-16. I was watching at the time, and didn't spot any cheating. Naturally, this was much more powerful than anyone else in the group, an advantage that he then compounded by playing the only multiclass character in the campaign: a half-elf mage/thief.

The campaign didn't last terribly long, as about 6 months later 3rd edition came out, but in that time it was clear that the character was much more powerful than any other character in the campaign.

Since then, I have always used some variant of point-buy. I don't really like it (in particular, dump stats and identical stats), but it's better than the alternative.

My opinion was confirmed in the one and only 3rd edition campaign in which I've been a player. One other player rolled 11-10-14-17-18-18 (I think - I remember the 14, 17 and 2 18's). The DM was an old-school DM from way back, and retained the rule that you could drop one stat by 2 to increase another by 1 (which I first saw in the Red Box, but then it was only the prime requisite that could be increased). Anyway, the player in question chose to drop his 14 to 12, and boost the 17 to 18. And, again, the character was much more powerful than anyone else in the group.

(It's worth noting that that latter character's stats were not generated entirely fairly. The player in question was in the habit of picking up the dice and tossing them down again at once. Consequently, they didn't bounce much, and so one good roll was usually followed by another. The 17-18-18 was rolled in this manner. The player, of course, didn't realise he was 'cheating', and I didn't want to make an issue of it.)

 

[was]

We used to roll dice for stats, now we just use the 32-point buy system. It just seems fairer to everyone.

 

[greywulf]

We just fix the stats at 10,12,13,14,15,16 and have the players allocate them where they want. The players can trade points up or down on a 2-for-1 basis if they really want that STR 18/CHA 8/INT 10 fighter.

That tends to wipe out any risk of min/maxing the stats, at least.

I've had plroblem players in superhero games like that though. The solution tends to be to have them lose their powers and gain a little humility for a while. I'm sure that would have worked in the case of your paladin too. Atonement is there for a reason, after all

 

[Bront]

I have 8 stat sets that are fairly diverse and each set adds up to I think 81 (Adding the atributes, not the points, I don't think an 18 and 8 should be the equivilent to a 16 and 14). It seems to have worked fairly well so far, no one complained about not having the stats they wanted, though it seems one party dumped charisma collectively, (Not intentionaly, but only 2 of 6 are above 10, and only 1 is above 12, but they all built the bad number into their background, and 3 of the six have a cha penalty due to race) the other party didn't (the only 2 below 10 have racial penalties).

The stat sets:
Set 1: 18, 17, 15, 12, 11, 8
Set 2: 16, 16, 15, 13, 11, 10
Set 3: 15, 14, 14, 13, 13, 12
Set 4: 18, 15, 15, 15, 10, 8
Set 5: 16, 15, 14, 13, 13, 10
Set 6: 18, 17, 17, 13, 8, 8
Set 7: 18, 17, 15, 15, 10, 6
Set 8: 18, 14, 13, 13, 12, 11