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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 7984777" data-attributes="member: 6988941">I've never not rolled for D&D. Someone can roll crap stats or someone can roll amazing stats, it's not really that important. Some people also seem to get consistently lucky or unlucky on rolls in general. Perhaps some people would prefer a game where your character just get a "standard array" of rolls to apply to skill checks throughout each game session.But more seriously, I totally understand why people would like point buying or standard arraying or whatever. If you are someone who likes theory-crafting (and I do) it works way better for that. Often closely related, if you are someone who shows up with their heart set on one and only one character concept to a group that would insist you play even with rolls where that character really wouldn't be viable then it may be a real bummer. In D&D 5e were you to not get a positive modifier for the spellcasting stat on a wizard, cleric, or druid then you would not only have less effective spells but you would barely be able to prepare any. But most people I play with are either newbies whom the group would all agree to let reroll truly bad stats so that they have a good first experience or else long time players who are bristling with a half dozen or so different character ideas they want to try out so it has never been an issue.I'm less sympathetic to the "everyone needs equal power levels" school of thought. That's the adolescent "Timmy got a cookie and I didn't. Where's my cookie!?" theory of fairness, and life is happier once you outgrow it.Or if the standard array were "fair" it should equal the average array of rolls for 4d6 drop the lowest. Or maybe straight 3d6 (with average roll of 10.5) is truly fair and standard array is for people who want overpowered characters. Fundamentally fair is whatever arbitrary values we set. But yes, someone much better then me at math determined the average rolled array would with 4d6 drop the lowest would be 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, which puts three stats one point above the 5e standard array, though the 9 and 11 are functionally the same as an 8 and 10 for most purposes, unless you are someone who invests in evening out your dump stats. In D&D 5e the main "unfair" advantage rolling gets you is the strong chance of starting with an 18 after racial bonus, and the low probability of a 20, both of which under the standard array are impossibly high to achieve, in a game where one or two stats tend to hold outsized importance for any given characters. But if starting with a +4 or +5 instead of a +3 to your main stat is unfair or gamebreaking then so is starting at any level after an ability score increase.</blockquote>

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