Stat Method vs. How long you've played

[Cedric]

Well...

I had this theory that people who are "old school" defined as having played D&D since 1st or 2nd edition was being printer...vs. those people who started playing when 3.0 came out. My theory is that the old schoolers prefer rolling the dice for stats, but that the newer players prefer point buy.

Now, maybe I am wrong...and also, even if I am right, does it mean anything? Not really. But I was curious, so here's the poll.

This poll is really intended for people who always use one method of stat generation or who strongly favor one method of stat generation.

Cedric

 

[Creamsteak]

My first experiences were apparently with OD&D books that a friend of mine retained from his older brother. Most of my real experience is with the 3rd edition mechanics, and in a lot of ways I'm somewhat proud to have avoided 2nd edition especially.

I use point buy in 3.0/3.5 because it feels quite a bit more natural to me compared to rolling. I will roll for disposable characters/creatures, but I'm not interested in having too many of those.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I'm actually most fond of Carte Blanche ability scores. Let your players decide what they want for their characters, and let it go. I just went with what my default is for a game started with many new/unknown players.

 

[Crothian]

I've been playing since first and I use neither method. I let players assign their abilitiews as they see fit. So, it's sort of like a self limited point buy I guess.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

As long as the dice isn't straight down the line, I would almost always prefer to do it that way over the "new" 3rd edition way. I do use the point buy system allot to but I have a certain fondness for the older ways.

 

[Xeriar]

I've played since OD&D, and I use a method depending on what kind of campaign I run.

For one-shots, I will do the rolling method.

For low to mid power campaigns, I use 22 to 36 point buy, depending on what level I am shooting for.

For world-shaking heroic campaigns, I have a program I wrote which make a lot of characters. Millions, even. I pick a level I want (say, 1 in 10,000,000 for an obscenely powerful set) and have so many attribute blocks at that rating, and the players choose from them.

 

[Thanee]

I don't think there is a dependency.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Sanackranib]

Well...

I had this theory that people who are "old school" defined as having played D&D since 1st or 2nd edition was being printer...vs. those people who started playing when 3.0 came out. My theory is that the old schoolers prefer rolling the dice for stats, but that the newer players prefer point buy.

Now, maybe I am wrong...and also, even if I am right, does it mean anything? Not really. But I was curious, so here's the poll.

This poll is really intended for people who always use one method of stat generation or who strongly favor one method of stat generation.

Cedric

old school since basic in 1979-80
Gotta have those warm dice in my hand for "true" character generation.

 

[Tallok]

I roll, started playing a 1e game, but we thought that you should roll 6d6 for each ability, this made something like a 13 an amazingly low score, all 15 or higher, plus we called all our players large, and everyone, except for 1 or so played an elven ranger

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm old-old school, and I've always preferred rolling dice - but in 3e we found that good dice rolls could make one player totally outshine everyone else because the attribute values are now much more significant, so we use our own simple point buy system now, just to keep everyone on a fair footing.

Cheers

 

[Zappo]

Weird, the current poll results seem to prove the opposite of Cedric's thesis. (not really, there aren't enough answers)

I've used rolling throughout 2e, devising various methods to allow players to create the character they wanted and prevent players from dominating the field for the entire campaign because of a single lucky roll. When 3e arrived, I immediately switched to point buy, and me and all of of my players are still wondering why we didn't think of it before.