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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hautamaki" data-source="post: 5924779" data-attributes="member: 42219">I understand your concerns.  Here's my thoughts on the subject: 1st off, the more things you roll for, the more likely it is to even out.  Therefore if you only roll for 1 aspect of a character, that actually makes that character MORE random than if you roll for every aspect of a character.  When you only roll for ability scores but everything else is set, the ability score rolls are very important.  When you roll for ability scores AND hp, good or bad rolls in area are more likely to be offset by the inverse in the other area.  Taking this principle into account, I also have my players roll for skill points (2d4 at level 1 + d4 for every level thereafter).  Now there are three areas where rolling matters, so things are even more likely to average out. 2nd; it's true that rolling for ability scores works on a bell curve given that there are 3-4 dice rolled (3 kept in any case).  But this is equally true for 3rd level characters, and it only becomes more true after 3rd level.  So the only real problem is the first 1 or 2 levels where 1 or 2 rolls become all-important.  There are a number of simple fixes to this problem.  The fix I use is to simply allow players to roll 2 hit die and keep the higher.  Combined with their constitution bonus it's very rare to have a really low HP character.  Another simple fix is to give the player their constitution in HP at level 1, and then they roll hit die + CON bonus for every level thereafter. In general though, rolling for HP upon gaining a level is a fun and interesting mechanic and over time everything balances out.  I like it even though I acknowledge that rolling a 1 on a level 1 character and then having to play that character is potentially a problem for like 95% of people, so I implement a simple fix for level 1 characters and keep the rest as is.</blockquote>

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