Stats, how you come about it!

[diaglo]

*blink* 42 point buy? Good lord. Why not just say "take whatever stats you want"? You'd probably end up with lower average scores. A 42 point buy gives you an 16-16-16-16-10-8. That's crazy powerful. I think if you were really hard core, you'd have used 3d6 in order even for that game, no matter what the other players were using.

i tried every which way i could to get that character killed.

the DM saved us...he thot i was roleplaying well.

i told him i was trying to get killed.

 

[Talon5]

In my last two campaigns I rolled up four sets of stats and let the Players pick then arrange the stats to fit their chosen class. Everyone picked the same set, but they all got very different characters.

It allowed me to keep their stats in the range I wanted them.

(We have a tendency to play high stat campaigns- its more fun that way. The first campaign I wanted to start with a certain flavor- the other I was unsure of what the hell I was doing.)

 

[Camarath]

My group uses this method:
Roll three sets of
4d6
3d6+6
3d6
2d6+6
2d6
1d6+6
Choose one set and reroll one roll
Arrange as desired

 

[FireLance]

My favored method is to use a nonstandard point buy. I don't like the way that the cost of higher ability scores increases after the even numbers. It makes more sense to me that it would be harder to go from 13 to 14 (and increase the ability score modifer) than it would be to go from 12 to 13. The feat prerequisite advantage doesn't seem that significant to me.

As such, my point buy values are as follows:

Ab - Points
08 - 00
09 - 01
10 - 02
11 - 03
12 - 04
13 - 05
14 - 07
15 - 09
16 - 12
17 - 15
18 - 19

I generally go with 32 points, which allows for characters in the range of 27 to 31 points in standard point buy terms.

 

[Li Shenron]

We go very easy on stat generation. Nowadays it's almost always point-buy (28, 30 or 32 depending on the current DM's preference) but otherwise we used the standard method 4d6 drop lowest and arrange as desired. A couple of times I used a fixed array (IIRC... 18, 15, 13, 11, 10, 8) to make it easier.

Point-buy is boring, because it always leads to the same characters, more or less. No one ever plays a PC with low constitution, low dexterity is only for very heavy-armored melee combatants, charisma is still the most used as dump stat, etc...
On the bright side, you get the same chance as everyone else, and it always feels fair that your stats (which will remain with you forever) are under your own responsibility and not the dice.

Rolling stats is still more fun, you can end up with weird characters if you don't allow to assign scores freely. The worst thing of this is that you are unlikely to play the type of character you want: roll a low Cha and you can forget about spontaneous casters. This was the worst thing we experienced when playing OD&D, that some players never got to play what they wanted and were not enjoying the game. It felt like rolling a dice to choose which college courses you had to do for the next 6 months :\

It would be nice to use some HR to mix the 2 ways, so that you still get a high enough score in your main stat, and the rest is random.

 

[S'mon]

I used to use "roll in private until you're happy with results" - PCs averaged 49-50 points (4/6), with a low of 47 pts & high of 56 pts. Recently I've used mostly 35 point buy, which gives ok results for a high-powered game. 32 PB seems a bit low to me but works ok in Midnight where the racial stat mods are worth at least +2 points - racial stat mods of +2/-2 effectively add 2 points if you raise a 14 to 16 and lower a 14 to 12, while raising a 16 to 18 is worth 4 more points and 18 to 20 is off the chart, but presumably at least 4 points, so a 32 PB PC suddenly becomes 36 points.

 

[KenM]

When I run, this is how I have my players do stats: 4D6, taking out lowest, 10 times. Players take six of those and put them anyplace you like. This makes better then average PC's, as they take the better stats, IMO thats ok. The PC's are heroes, larger then life, and they should be better then average.

 

[Kylearan]

Well met!

Being in Berandor's group, we use a card-drawing mechanism. I know he posted it somewhere on these boards, but I don't know when...

So here is a crude English version.

You need 18 playing cards of a poker deck. Take one "ace", one "2", three "3"s, four each of "4", "5" and "6" and one "joker". Also, put aside another "ace" and another "joker" as extra cards.

Shuffle the 18 card deck and create six piles of three cards each. Add together the cards' values for each pile, generating six scores from 3 to 18. The "ace" counts as one point, a "2" as two points etc. The "joker" doubles the higher of the other two cards in the pile (eg, a "5", a "3" and a "joker" add up to a 13, the "joker" doubling the "5").
After you generated your 6 Attribute scores, you may add the additional "ace" and "2" to the scores of your choice, but a single score may not be higher than 18 at this point.

Now assign the scores as you see fit. In the end, your attributes sum up to 78 --- 81 points (whatever this means in point buy), you usually have one high score and two or three 14+; it builds strong characters which are about equal, but you still have a random element.

We like it lots more than point buy (I think that's boring) or dice rolling (I usually end up with ability scores for True Roleplayers TM, ie. very low ones )

Kylearan, needs to improve his English and explanation skills again

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Being in Berandor's group, we use a card-drawing mechanism. I know he posted it somewhere on these boards, but I don't know when...

So here is a crude English version.

You need 18 playing cards of a poker deck.

Intriguing. Now I have to try this out.

 

[Tharen the Damned]

We are also plying with a card drawing generation:

Cards:

4 x 2

4 x 3

4 x 4

4 x 5

4 x 6

set aside 2 x 2. Shuffle. Draw 6 times 3 cards.
Arrange them to your stats.

now you can put down the additional two 2s.
No ability with more than 18 is allowed.

This generates PCs with average 13-14 Stats.
It´s a random point buy as every PC has the same Stat value of 80, but different abilites.

Works well with us.