Wow, do I hate rolling for stats!

[billd91]

There are games where its fun to roll stats randomly and adapt to the results.

IMO, 3rd and 4th Edition D&D are not those games.

Now, see, I feel the exact opposite about 3e (and PF). With 3e, compared to 1e/2e, you don't need to get very high stats to start getting bonuses. And there are ways to increase all stats via magic items and level-ups. 3e/PF is, IMO, one of the best games for rolling stats randomly.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm a big fan of rolled stats, but my favorite RPG- HERO- doesn't use them. So I won't tell you to "man up.". You should never play a PC you don't enjoy- life's too short.

I'll just make this observation: in fiction, the hero isn't always the guy who was the best of the best, but rather is an Average Joe who rises above expectations to succeed. You see this in LotR, Westworld, and currently in Terriers.

 

[DragonLancer]

I'm the opposite. I can't stand point buy character generation. Everyone comes out the same time and time again. I like having a random character, and thankfully my players feel the same.

 

[FreeXenon]

Yea, I am in the same boat. I usually get crappy stats when rolling. We moved at my suggestion to the "Everybody sucks equally rule' which has been kind of mentioned already. One set of numbers for everyone.

However, if you were really motivated, playing average joe farmer who is somehow caught up and forced into this epic adventure with really professional and awe inspiring adventurers could be an interesting role playing experience. Hell, even your most likely eventual death could be something tales could be told of.

I feel your pain. Good luck!

 

[IronWolf]

I am not a big fan of rolling for stats these days. I tend to have a concept in mind and being able to use a point-buy to mold the stats to my concept is more attractive to me. I mean there is a certain allure to rolling and then building off of that, but I don't think I have the guts to actually go through with it for a long term character.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Do you hate rolling, or do you just hate rolling when you roll under the average of the group?

Some forms of game work well with the randomness, others do not. Sometimes, when handed a lemon, you can make some very fine lemonade.

As an example: years ago, I was running a 2e game, and we rolled randomly for stats. One player got a pretty decent set, except for one 6. He stuck to that set, though, and found he could put together a paladin out of it, if he put that 6 in Intelligence.

He spent a lot of time thinking how he'd play an Int of 6, coupled with a Wisdom score in the teens. He even did a bit of research, and came up with the idea of playing it as a learning disability. Ultimately it led to some of the best roleplaying I've ever seen. And it would never have happened if we'd used point-buy, as the player would never have thought of or chosen to build the character that way on his own. The stricture of the dice led to inspiration.

QFT and to observe that such a set of stats for a Paladin would also work for Dudley Doright.

 

[Filcher]

I liked the old 2 for 1 trades in the Otus-cover Basic D&D.

 

[ggroy]

I'm the opposite. I can't stand point buy character generation. Everyone comes out the same time and time again. I like having a random character, and thankfully my players feel the same.

According to some fans of stat rolling you need to man up and deal with it.

I, on the other hand, hate the randomness.

There are games where its fun to roll stats randomly and adapt to the results.

IMO, 3rd and 4th Edition D&D are not those games.

Why not a compromise hybrid of both point buy and random?

I liked the recent version of Gamma World using the 4E D&D ruleset.

IIRC, it assigned 18 to a primary stat and 16 to a secondary stat, while the remaining stats were generated randomly (3d6 for each one, iirc).

 

[rogueattorney]

I don't like for char-gen to be a major part of the game. To the extent that I spend any time at all on char-gen, I'd rather it be more like a game of craps than doing my taxes. Point buy feels to me like doing my taxes. Especially in games such as 3.x, where I then pick out race, class, spells, skills, feats, equipment. It's probably because the character sheets bear a slight resemblance to the 1040.

 

[Treebore]

I just allow my players to create stats however they wish, within racial limits of 3 to 18, plus racial modifiers.

Why people insist on obsessing over what method to use is beyond me, this is a game, let the players play what they want to play. It isn't like it makes it harder for me to kill them.

I have one player who goes by the random method, and I have others that go by methods that have high results, and they are all happy because they are playing precisely the kind of character they want, even when one character is noticeably less capable than the others. You know what I see, though? The guy with average stats plays smarter than the others and he has gotten hurt far less often than the others, and two others in one of my current games have already died.

The only thing where he is supposed to suck is in skills and saves, but so far he has done well in those regards as well.

I think it is because on a D20 to have a truly "significant" difference the difference has to be 6 or greater. A difference of 5 or less is not of mathematically significance.

So since the attribute modifiers tend to be 1 to 4, not 6 or higher, you don't really see a big difference when you consider all the rolls made. People just obsess and remember the few rolls that they failed, and forget all about the numerous rolls they succeeded at.

Heck, just two weeks ago I played in a game where the fighter who had good attributes still missed 7 times in a row. Why? Because he was rolling a D20, and dice roll randomly. So such a long bad streak is possible, just highly unlikely.

Now if he had bad attributes he would have blamed it on his attributes, but he had high attributes, so when he looked for something to blame he latched onto his to hit bonus being two lower than another fighters. Never mind every roll he failed to hit with failed by 4 points or more. He was just rolling crappy. That 2 points of difference had nothing to do with it.

So my point is, people tend to fail to look at the actual averages of the dice they rolled, they fixate on the few times they fail, and then blame it on not having that +3 or +4 attribute modifier, even if they failed the roll by 5 or more.