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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DinoInDisguise" data-source="post: 9708316" data-attributes="member: 7045806">I think we agree on most of this. Point buy and free pick can be accused of encouraging min-maxing, and maybe they do, but what's interesting is that many players don’t want to be seen as min-maxers. There's a social cost to that label. Picking all 18s in a free pick system feels gauche, even if it’s allowed. But if you roll those same stats? Then it’s just luck. You're not a try-hard, you're blessed by the dice gods. There is a big social difference.This is where the popularity of 4d6 drop-lowest comes in. It's skewed in the player's favor, and it provides plausible deniability. It lets people min-max without owning it. Especially when tables allow rerolls or fudge bad outcomes, the "gamble" becomes almost risk-free. It’s the best of both worlds: stronger characters, with no blame for choosing them. That’s why, in my experience, truly random methods like 3d6 get so little traction. Players would rather take point buy, even if it smells of min-maxing, than risk a weak character with 3d6. But they love 4d6 drop-lowest, because it feels like rolling, while being, essentially, a buffed stat array wrapped in a thin veil of chance. I have a feeling that given a choice between 4d6 drop the lowest, and free pick, most pick 4d6 for these reasons.So yeah, you can call 3d6 “punitive,” but it’s just honest randomness. What most players actually want is a system that gives them power while sparing them the social awkwardness of saying, “Yeah, I chose this optimized build.” They cite randomness in those cases, because the real reason has a social cost. This plausible deniability is probably why point buy is most commonly chosen than free pick in my games.This leaves me with the question of, how many players would pick rolling if it guaranteed a low-stat character? The answer is probably very few, because at the end of the day, they care more about the power than the method, they just don't want to admit it due to social pressures. And as such will pick the method that gives them the most deniability while not meaningfully hurting the outcome.</blockquote>

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