I started in 2e, and stuck with 3.5e. We've always rolled 4d6 keep the best 3. (well, way back originally, the first few PCs were 3d6 arrange to taste)
In hardcore 1e, it was my assumption that you rolled 3d6 in stat order. So you got stuck with whatever you rolled on that stat. Definitely limits your choices when you roll low on a stat.
In 3e, the RAW had a sucky roll clause, which said that if your total bonus was 0 (or was it less than 0), you got to re-roll the stats. To me, that was acknowledgement that the game was not about sticking you with a crappy character.
I never liked point buy systems, as to me, that tended to make players do photo-copy PCs, where if one dies, their sibling with the exact same scores appears. I make my players create their PC at the table. No stable of pre-generated (and therefore optimized dice rolls) is allowed.
I also don't like rolling low, especially really low. I want my PC to have some variance in his stats, but having multiple boat anchors really blows.
I suppose a random scheme that created a stat within the desired range (8-18 or 10-18 maybe?), would prevent the "really" bad results.
From there, for variance, instead of rolling 6 times, roll 3 times, and use the inverse of the result for a 2nd stat.
Let's say we use 6+2d6 (8-18). If you roll a 10, the inverse is 4. So you'd have a 16, and a 10 stat result.
Thus, rolling high, gets you a low stat to counter it. Since there's a minimum.
In theory, point buy results in the same thing. The difference being the PC is still random.
I haven't tried this idea out, but its an interesting concept to me.
