Worst Stat Rolls You Have Seen

[Olaf the Stout]

Last session I had a player that had just joined the group roll up a set of stats for his new character (he actually played in the previous session but just ran a departed player's PC). I have never seen a player roll so badly in my life before!

He rolled up 4 sets of stats (only because the first 3 were so poor that I told him to roll again). Out of the 24 rolls of 4d6 keep the highest, the best he got was a 13. And that was just once. All of the other rolls were below 12. Many of them were in single digits, including a 3! That's the first time I've ever seen someone roll a 3 on 4d6 before.

He tried rolling with 2 other people's dice (at their suggestion) after the first couple of sets of poor rolls but it made no difference. The guy was just having a bad luck day I guess (his car had also broken down with a cracked head that day).

He gave up after those 4 sets. He tried again at the end of the session and managed to get 6 rolls all between 10 and 15, which was much better to say the least.

So what is the worst stat rolls you have seen? Was it you or someone else? And did the DM make you play the character or did he let you roll again?

Olaf the Stout

 

[Nyaricus]

Hmmm, I've see a couple of 3s come up, and my last character I rolled had a 4 for Int [organic method]

I think the worst roll I've seen was something to the effect of: 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 11.

It was pretty terrible, in any case.

As a Dm, I allow re-rolls on a case-by-case basis. If one character would obviously be outshined by others due to their rolls, I let'em try again.

cheers,
--N

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I generally don't allow re-rolls. Sometimes if a player rolls some slightly weaker stats I might bump up one of their stats by a couple of points or let them take a couple of points off one stat and give it to another so they have at least one good stat.

None of my other players complained about me letting the player keep rolling though. They were more concerned with getting him to use other dice or roll on different surfaces to try and improve his dice mojo!

Olaf the Stout

 

[Moon-Lancer]

we let players roll once, but if they fail (like your guy did) that they can take a 32 point buy. yeah, might be a bit strong, but its risk without fail. Like the price is right. You loose and they dont cut off your arm.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I generally don't allow re-rolls. Sometimes if a player rolls some slightly weaker stats I might bump up one of their stats by a couple of points or let them take a couple of points off one stat and give it to another so they have at least one good stat.

None of my other players complained about me letting the player keep rolling though. They were more concerned with getting him to use other dice or roll on different surfaces to try and improve his dice mojo!

Olaf the Stout

In the PH standard character generation method, if he had no 14s, he would be labeled as a hopeless character and given a reroll all four of those times by standard rules, actually, so you weren't even fudging anything

 

[Machiavelli]

You loose and they dont cut off your arm.

...or do they? You know, they rarely show what happens to the losers. I don't actually recall a single instance when they DID show it.

Could be there are a bunch of one-armed losers kept under strict lock-down in an abandoned silo in the middle of a wasteland. Could be...



The worst stats I've seen rolled with the 4d6 method came out to something like a 15 point buy. Not as pathetic as it could have been, but still pretty shabby.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

In the PH standard character generation method, if he had no 14s, he would be labeled as a hopeless character and given a reroll all four of those times by standard rules, actually, so you weren't even fudging anything

I don't have my PHB on me so I can't double check but I think it was no stat over 13 or his ability modifiers added to a negative number and you could re-roll.

I think I remember saying something along those lines when the guy rolled the crappy stats.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Olaf the Stout]

we let players roll once, but if they fail (like your guy did) that they can take a 32 point buy. yeah, might be a bit strong, but its risk without fail. Like the price is right. You loose and they dont cut off your arm.

One of my players also runs a campaign. He lets players roll up their stats and then choose between what they rolled or a point-buy (can't remember how many points).

Olaf the Stout

 

[Sound of Azure]

If you're talking about David, it was 32 points (I rolled far higher, though).

 

[Rystil Arden]

I don't have my PHB on me so I can't double check but I think it was no stat over 13 or his ability modifiers added to a negative number and you could re-roll.

That's correct--so if he never rolled more than a 13 in the first four sets of stats, they were by definition hopeless. I had a player who rolled four hopeless characters once, but his fifth character was rather high PB (40). In the next game, he rolled a character that he wasn't sure if it was hopeless (it was on the edge, so he asked me to check), and he rolled a back-up in case it was indeed hopeless. The first wound up not being hopeless, but his second character had the following stats (rolled in this order) 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 15. On the last roll, he was a big sad it wasn't 13, even though it was higher. Anyway, I made him take the first character that was barely not hopeless--them's the breaks