As a player I've always rolled, and as a DM I've always had my players roll, their stats in previous editions of the game.
I'm considering doing the points-buy system for my first 5E game, simply because it tends to keep players fairly balanced in their scores, with no overpowering stats at Level 1 (i.e. Elf with a 20 DEX), especially since a 15 is the highest score you can buy according to the PHB. Additionally, since no score can go over 20 by the ability increases every 4 levels, it gives the players something to look forward to. And with the magic items no longer giving a carte blanche "+2 to ____", but rather increasting a score to a certain number, gives them something to strive for.
Thoughts? How do you run your games, and what are the pros/cons of each in your opinion?
I haven't rolled for years, because I don't find it balanced between players and because players tend to have a character in mind that the scores don't go with. There are various rolling methods that get around this, but they are complicated enough that I just give up and go to point buy.
I would roll under certain circumstances. Basically, I'd have to know that the game would still be fun for me (and everyone else) no matter what I rolled, and that if I rolled a character that couldn't survive and quickly died that I could get quickly back into the game.
In general, one shouldn't roll unless every result that might come up is interesting, and this applies to every roll in every game. I'll happily go through the random character generation in Traveller, because every result is interesting, and also because there are ways around low attributes.
Centauri wrote:
Synjin wrote:
I have always gone with dice rolls (4d6, drop the lowest roll, arrange the six scores in the desired order), but personally, I might actually try the points buy method for a character of my own sometime just to get a feel for it. 
Akeisha wrote:
Deja vu thread... cool.
I let my players choose individually whether they are going to use point buy, the standard array, or roll 4d6 drop lowest die - and if they roll, I let them re-roll as many times as they want to (though they have to roll a whole set of six scores, not just re-roll the scores that were low in one set, and I won't delay the start of a campaign so there is a point at which they have to choose to take a set they have already rolled or miss out on part of the game).
My focus is not on worrying about whether each player feels like their scores are as good as other players scores, or "balanced" or whatever, but rather is on whether or not each player as an individual is happy with the scores their character has.
As a DM, if I had any authority over which method of generating ability scores will be used (that's another discussion), I would insist on point buy for many reasons that have already been discussed and debated to a fine pulp. Then again, I don't believe the DM is the only person who gets to decide what goes in a group, so I usually will go with the flow if I'm out-voted.
As a player, I won't play in a modern D&D game where I'm forced to roll ability scores. Not only do I think it has the potential to cause balance problems, but as I said before, I don't think it should be the DM's sole decision. If I'm creating my character by the rules but someone else is already trying to dictate how I should play before I even start playing, we have a problem. ;)
There are reasons for point-buy. Most of my 3x was in Living Campaigns where point-buy was required. In our first major home campaign we made the mistake of allowing rolling. Myself and another had good rolls, one fair, and other rather poor. By 4th-level, it was clear which characters were dominating the game. Skills, languages, attack roles, hit points, damage, etc. The DM really had to work hard to keep encounters balanced, have non-combat encounters which the other two could contribute something to, etc. I found myself specifically 'nerfing' my character by taking non-optimal choices. Even then... the poor roll fellow repeatedly dropped in combat -- despite being a cleric.
It isn't that I expect campaigns to be perfectly balanced -- some players are better, some classes are more powerful, some settings/adventures make certain character classes more powerful, etc. -- but it was clear that stats in 3.x have such a major overall effect on character effectiveness and gameplay. IMO, random rolling isn't a great idea in a campaign which can last months or years. It isn't fun to see someone dominate or struggle continuously through shear luck. 5E has extremely low attribute ranges, lower magic, and fewer abilities to make up for this. As such, I would expect that it would remain an isssue in 5E also.
I would go point-buy. I want all players to have an equal opportunity for successs, failure, and game time.
If you want some type of rolling, then a number of folks on the forums have suggested as number of options in which each player roles one or two stats, they combine them, and then all use the same or simliar stat array. Examples:
* Each player rolls 4d6 -- one per player. DM rolls 4d6 for until there is 6 scores. All players use those scores and arrange them in any way they wish.
* Each player rolls 3d6 twice. DM rolls 3d6 until there are 12 scores. Top 6 scores are taken. All players use those score and arrange them in any way they wish.
* Each player rolls 4d6 twice. DM rolls 4d6 until there are 12 scores. There are arranged in two columns. The first with the highest scores from highest to lowest, the second with the remaining scores from lowest to highest. Players can select any three rows of scores and arrange them in any order they wish.
etc.
There are lots of ways one can allow rolling, if necessary, yet still not end up with long campaigns where one or more characters is simply way more powerful than another.
I absolutely loathe rolling stats. It always leads to an imbalance which always ends up pissing at least one person off in the group. People's insistance on rolling stats is bizarre. It's as if they want to cause conflict.
Thank_Dog wrote:
Here's an idea. If people love the randomness of rolling stats, but you're concerned about having balanced ability scores do this:
Present the player with the list of all possible arrays (someone posted a list somewhere here recently, I thought), then have them roll randomly to determine which array they're going to use. I'm no mathematician, but I have a feeling that after all the stupid dice tricks people use to come up with randomly rolled but somewhat balanced stats, you're going to end up pretty damn close to what you'd get by just choosing an array anyway, so you might as well just choose an array and not either suck hard or dominate the encounters.
Best of both worlds.
If you want randomness, roll a random race and class. If you won't because you had a specific idea in mind, or because certain combinations don't work as well as you'd like, then why would you roll for ability scores?
This would solve the "every ranger is an elf" "issue" too.
Centauri wrote:
Centauri wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I ran a one-shot and I had players roll up their stats.
If I were running a longer term campaign I probably wouldn't have done that. These are some of the options I might choose:
- Standard 27-point buy, limit of 15 as per the rules.
- Roll 3d6 three times, your other 3 scores are 21 minus your first stats. Arrange as desired.
- Everyone rolls 4d6-drop-lowest for a set of six stats. You put those on a list. Any player can choose any set of six stats, arrange as desired.
- Take A through 6 from a deck of cards. Shuffle them. Let the player deal out six hands of four each, drop the lowest from each hand. Those are her stats, arrange as desired.
I like the last one the best, although it requires that I remember to bring a pack of cards with me. It preserves the feel of 4d6-drop-lowest but because there are only 4 sixes in the deck (and 4 of any other card), it tends to even out the excesses. At best, even if a player totally cheated, they wouldn't end up with a huge advantage over anyone else -- which isn't true for straight 4d6-drop-lowest rolling.
(The point-buy system gives minor rewards to those with system mastery, but is probably the most fair. The third choice is particularly interesting.)
Centauri wrote:
Interesting replies, thanks! My players (been the same group since 1999/2000) must be pretty chill, because I can't recall any time they complained about their stats with the die-roll approach. Indeed, if they ever had crappy scores, they incorporated it into their character development. (e.g.: Raistlin Majere. Crappy CON, but part of his character and thus part of his quest for power.).
First game is this Friday night, and I think I'll try the points buy suggestion, but I'll be open to their opinions as well. If they want to roll, so be it.
Incidentally, our party's Ranger was a Human, and the Rogue was a Half-Elf. 
I strongly dislike point buy for several reasons, but the biggest issue is that it encourages players to do things like copy a build posted on the forums. Oh, a player died and has to create a new character? In comes McFighter mark II who is identical to the prior character.
I want decisions made in-character at the table to be the most important factors in the game. Not out-of-character forum research done done not at the table. I want to discourage theory crafting min/max munchkinism and the absolute best way I've found to do that is to make them roll stats.
Also, most players have a character type that, in the absence of any other compelling reasons, they will gravitate towards. My wife will always be a rogue, my brother a fighter, my business partner a halfling paladin, old co-worker a dumb barbarian, etc.
I find that having players roll stats encourages them to break out of set defaults and play characters that aren't the same ones they've been playing for the last 20 years. That being said, I want them to buy into their characters as well.
Generally, I'll have them 4d6 drop the lowest straight down the line, then give them a 7th 4d6 (or 5d6) that can be swapped into any position. Helps offset bad luck and if using 5d6 for the 7th slot it tends to be above average and can be put into the prime stat slot of a class they were really wanting to play.
Maybe I'm rare in this regard, but it bothers the hell out of me when I have a party full of 08 int characters because nobody made a mage and so everybody is using the same dump stat for char-op purposes.
On a side note, I understand that point buy has a place in league play for balance purposes. Outside of league play though it feels too much like 1984 (the book) when I'm aiming for 1984 (the year, which didn't have point buy yet).
Synjin wrote:
Synjin wrote:
LongTimeLurker wrote:
tehsquirrely wrote:
Centauri wrote:
Thank_Dog wrote:
I am going to go with a point buy for my first 5e game. I am new to DMing and don't want to have to try and figure out how to make a wildly underpowered PC useful to the group on top of everything else I am going to be worried about.
However, I prefer rolling stats as a player. My current Star Wars d20 group rolled 5d6 and dropped the lowest. This actually led to everybody in the party having rediculously powerful lvl 1 characters and has caused the DM to have a hard time with putting together encounters.
Randyofpriate wrote:
This is what I do now: I let the players roll 4d6 x 6 as per normal. Then, once they have this array, they can use this one or choose to point buy. This way, they have a chance of having some interesting ability scores, but if their rolls completely tank, then they can fall back on the point buy.
If you're trying to sculpt something very particular you have in mind already, or you are building a "competitive" shell of stats to basically play yourself in a fantasy world, point-buy's virtues shine.
If you're looking to randomization for ideas of who or what to play, or like seeing what contraption you can survive the D&D world playing, rolling shows its benefits.
I usually roll as a player. As DM, I allow each player to pick their method. Nobody really measures or compares results among the methods. I recently asked a player to roll 3d6 x6 and assign how they like, and I did the same for my characters for him to DM. We could reroll by scrapping all previous rolls.
Best way to roll for stats... roll 27d6, group them by roll (1's,2's,3's,4's,5's,6's) Then you spend that many points towards a stat. If there are odd numbers (not fully enough for next stat boost), you can spend those as points. There you go, randomly rolled character perfectly legitimate within the pointbuy system. Unless of course your goal isn't to have a randomly rolled character and instead it's to break the boundries of the stat restraints.
I'm starting a 5th edition campaign now, and I've been thinking about how the players should get their ability scores. My group will have players who are brand new to roleplaying games, and players who have played since the 80's, so I'm sure that whatever I pick, someone is going to hate it.
The major reason for using the 27 point buy system is that no character will be uber, and no character will be hard to play due to low stats. If my group had been all newbies, I would've gone for this in a heartbeat. But, as I said, some of my players are oldtimers, who have already decided how their character should look at level 20, so they might hate me for a 27 point buy system.
The major reason for using the 4d6, discard the lowest (and reroll all stats if unhappy) is pleasing the oldtimers. They want to start with their main stat maxed, and they don't care if they have a stat that's really low. The trouble here is that my newbies might roll average characters, who after a while will be inferior to my oldtimers characters, because they aren't min-maxed due to the newbies lack of understanding of the rules.
The major reason for not using the 27 point buy system, apart from pleasing my oldtimers, is that these characters are heroes-in-making. They are not Average Joes, and should be thougher, smarter, and better than the other members of their races. In my mind, Average Joe will never become a hero. (Just look at every sport you can think of. Average Joe can't compete against the players on the field.)
The major reason for not using the 4d6, discard the lowest, is as I said above. The newbies will end up with the short straw.
Luckilly, all characters gain abilities as they level up, so the wizard will get INT 20, the cleric will get WIS 20 - but not right away. This is the fact that makes me decide to go for the 27 point buy system, because the characters will grow into the hero the player wants them to be. They will have to fight for it, they will suffer, and curse, but in the end - if they survive! - they will end up as some of the very best in the world. (And, as a side effect, the newbies will reach the same hero status as the oldtimers, around the same time.)
NoNeed,
Well said. I think that if a seasoned player has his character arc played out in his head, that it can make for some excellent gaming. If he sees his character in a particular place (and therefore the character sees themself that way), then that vision will shape their decisions in-game. If you roll low, or have just average PC stats (15 and under), then use that as a story device. Quest for those gauntlets of STR. Have your Paladin or goodly Cleirc be tempted, and so forth.
Synjin wrote:
No kidding deja vu.
Way back when when I first learned to play we always rolled, but everyone used the same roll. Everyone rolls 4d6 drop the lowest x 6 to create an array. Everyone uses the best array roll. Everyone rolls, everyone is even, done. No one ever, in 25 years of playing, has said "but, no I must have that lower roll!"
But now I'm DM'ing for a group of 10 year olds - I just use the standard array. They don't know any different, which is great, because, IME, much of the complaint against rolling stems from a 'the way we used to do it' attitude. True - and we also used use time segments and THAC0, so...progress.
Personally I've always used Point Buy to keep things fair. recently I've been thinking a lot about 5e and how valuable stats are.
Thoughts about how stats change the difficulty of the game play have puzzled me. For example if you wanted to offer easy, standard or difficult play how would you change the total point buy? How much do higher stats and feats boost the chars odds to a point where the game is no longer balanced? If all your PCs roll high do you feel the need to boost encounters a bit to rebalnce the game? Will the DMG have more information on this?
What if the DM allowed those who rolled lower to take both a stat boost and a feat (or similar combination) at levels 4, 8, 12, 16 until they "caught up" to those who rolled really well?
nightwalker450 wrote:
I am currently running two groups.
For the official AL Expeditions game, we just use point buy (or more commonly the array). Boring, but legal.
But for my home game, I gave them the option of rolling. However, I told them that as the DM I would be doing some 'balancing' if they rolled significantly above or below what would be possible with the point buy. This 'balancing' would take the form of a flaw (or flaws) for any character who rolled very well or a boon of some kind if a character rolled very well.
The only character who rolled significantly better than they could have done has a familial connection to some very unsavory people - and ready made enemies/ problems to go along with that (by comparison, essentially a Major Enemy hindrance from savage worlds). The other characters were not significantly out of bounds.
Bottom line: Randomness (i.e. rolling) is fun. And Flaws and Boons can be fun as well. So we balance then fun with more fun.
Carl