D&D 5E What is your current way to roll stats

[FormerlyHemlock]

Oh, I forgot--I did recently offer my players the chance to make new PCs, either 4d6 drop lowest and start at level 1d3, or roll straight 3d6 and start at 5th level with characters who'd spend 1d6 years each as prisoners of Cthulhu.

All of them opted to go for 3d6, which I thought was interesting.

 

[delericho]

Each player has a choice of three methods:

1) Random roll: 4d6 drop lowest, 6 times arrange to suit. Reroll if your highest stat is 13 or lower, or if your net modifier is +0 or less. (Also, if you choose random roll then you have to roll in front of the group, you're locked in as soon as the first die hits the table, and you're expected to play the character in good faith - no suiciding a character because you got bad rolls.)

2) Standard array: 16/15/13/12/10/8.

3) 28-point buy, using the costs from the 3.5e DMG.

(I spent a lot of time in the 3e years trying lots of different generation methods and not being happy with any of them. I finally hit on this as my solution. I used it in my final 3.5e campaign, and in my SWSE campaigns, and am now using it with 5e. It seems to work well enough, though I'm aware there are some concerns about stats starting above 15 in 5e.)

 

[S'mon]

My 5e campaign uses Default Array, but a couple of human races (Altanian, Amazon) have different modifiers than the standard "+1 to everything", so eg you can start with STR 17 if you're Altanian.

 

[ad_hoc]

Oh, I forgot--I did recently offer my players the chance to make new PCs, either 4d6 drop lowest and start at level 1d3, or roll straight 3d6 and start at 5th level with characters who'd spend 1d6 years each as prisoners of Cthulhu.

All of them opted to go for 3d6, which I thought was interesting.

That is interesting. Unless I wanted the background of being a prisoner of Cthulhu, I am certainly taking 4d6 drop lowest. My level will catch up soon enough.

It is interesting to create a party of different levels from the start.


I used to like 4d6 drop lowest, but I think starting with stats of 16 or higher breaks 5e. There is just nowhere to go with your level progression. And if you use feats they become overpowered because there is no hard choice to make between getting one and raising your stats.

My other concern is between demi-humans and variant human. I am thinking of using the standard array so that demi-humans can start with 2 16s if they want. The variant human could as well, but needs to take a half feat to do so.

I am starting a new campaign soon so I am looking for alternatives. I might try to fiddle with point buy, I don't think I quite like 27.

My favourite method in this thread has been the 4d6 drop lowest, then add or subtract randomly until you end up with X point buy.

Another fun method is to use a deck of cards. Take the 2s-6s, then deal out 6 sets of 3 cards out of those 20 cards. Those are your stats. You can even take out a 2 and a 6 (or 2 4s, or a 3 and a 5) so that all the numbers are the same for each player.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I’ve never caught anyone cheating either (though I certainly have had and have my suspicions about some). That being said, the only times I’ve seen someone show up with an 18 in any stat, outside of racial modifiers, has been with characters that have been rolled up and created on their own.

EDIT: Just thought I would add, that in the 30+ years of DMing I have not caught anyone cheating at rolling stats. Everyone at my table watched. We gave lots of applause for any 18s. Never saw an 18/100 STR.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

The standard array is a solid choice. Eliminating cheaters from my table is also a solid choice.

EDIT: Just thought I would add, that in the 30+ years of DMing I have not caught anyone cheating at rolling stats. Everyone at my table watched. We gave lots of applause for any 18s. Never saw an 18/100 STR.

Yeah, I trust my players and have never caught them cheating. Then again someone who needs to cheat at D&D would be removed from the table. But I'm gaming with close friends for 20+ years so trust is there.

 

[77IM]

I've always disliked rolling because some players can roll higher stats than others and that's not much fun.

So for my current Princes of the Apocalypse campaign I offered the players this experimental system:

Everybody rolls 4d6-drop-lowest, arranges them in any order, and then totals them up. If you're not the player with the highest total, you can increase your scores on a 1-for-1 basis until you match the highest total.

This experiment appealed to everyone but it was a dismal failure when the last player to roll got -- I kid you not -- 17, 17, 16, 16, 14, 14. That's a whopping total of 94 stat points. So now all the PCs are übermensch slaughtering everything in their path. It's more than a little imbalanced when the wizard has Strength 14 as his dump stat.

So, I don't recommend this method.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

In all my years of gaming one player having great stats has never caused an issue, and has never been the key for a character dominating the game. My players always seem to view anything that makes the group stronger as a good thing, and intelligent play and good luck is far more crucial to a PC and party survival than a few additional points of bonuses IME.

 

[bedir than]

I think I'm going to move to using the member here who developed the random point buy system (I'd link, but it's only saved on my laptop not work computer). I'll generate 20 random legit point buys and then roll once. That's it.

No power creep, and still uses the randomness to help inspire new character concepts.

Here it is - http://aramis.hostman.us/dnd/RedrickRoller.html
[MENTION=13962]Aramis[/MENTION] made this based on [MENTION=6777696]redrick[/MENTION] 's idea ... I think.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

It's more than a little imbalanced when the wizard has Strength 14 as his dump stat.

How, exactly?

Would it be imbalanced if a wizard chose to have a 14 strength via point buy?