There is all sorts of good advice for the high rollers, but what about the unfortunates?
Say you roll really badly and only have one OK stat and your others are really poor.
What classes would be best to use?
But more importantly, what concepts might be fun i.e. an incredibly clumsey cleric that falls off horses and puts their foot in every bucket nearby.
ideas to make this PC intersting and fun and get the most out of roleplaying them?
Clumsy
Rude
Witless
Dozey
Weak
Lazy
Sneezy
7 Dwarves?
I think a Forest Gnome Moon Druid 15/Monk 5 is a great place to use awful stats. 
Being small helps you hide and stay safe, and when combat happens, Wild Shape and go to town. If the worst happens and you get caught without Wild Shape, you're still a powerful spellcaster, and Monk lets you spend Ki to run away fast to a safe position. Put your best stat in WIS, and your next best in DEX. Try not to have a negative CON, but other than that everything else can fall by the wayside. Use Shillelagh and all you have to do is max your WIS, potentially giving you an opportunity to take some feats, even with crappy stats!
Yeah I was thinking Nature Cleric for the Shillelagh melee and the armour and the self healing. Otherwise pure dex ranged rogue
How about roleplaying a PC with bad dex or Int or Cha? Anyone got any fun or novel ways of playing an uncharesmatic,clumsey, softheaded oe weak buffoon?
I don't roll, for all the reasons. The only argument people ever make for it that actually holds up under scrutiny - that they like being surprised by a character with higher or lower stats than expected in particular scores, typically citing a smart fighter or a sickly wizard - isn't actually an argument for rolling, it's an argument for rolling in order. As soon as you arrange scores as desired, that surprise goes away.
That said, there's plenty of ways to wind up with low scores even in a more sensible manner of score generation, like point-buy.
rgoodbb wrote:
I had a character that was rolled. I had 10,10,11,11,12,12.
I made a druid - focused on spells that didnt require an attack roll or offer a save (so buffs mostly). The idea was to eventually use summoning spells.
However the character was utterly boring.
Such is the peril of stat rolling - far worse than a character with some high and some really low scores, is a character with basically nothing of note at all.
Those.......are some really tough rolls. I mean I was thinking at least one OK stat, maybe a 14 or something. I'm not sure how I would tackle those atributes.
I don't know. Whenever I rolled awful stats my DM told me to roll again. However you do it, tie them in with your background characteristics.
Low Charisma - Player shows her love for cats by having five of them on her all the time
Low Wisdom - Player believes he is the chosen and he should carry the holy avenger, even though he is the mage
Low Intelligence - The player is the party chef and his stir stick is a wand of magic missiles. Although he doesn't know it.
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:
I like the novelty of seeing what will turn up with rolls instead of picking something where I already know the result, but I usually go for point buy because of the risk of low rolls. But as long as people aren't actually cheating, I won't tell them to stop enjoying rolling ability scores.
Life clerics are probably the best for low rolls. Bless + Sanctuary, and then help, dodge, or heal as needed. Could easily play it as a pacifist.
The other casters (besides warlocks) can also be pretty passive with summons, buffs, and utility.
There are some auto-damage spells like magic missile and cloud of dagger.
Effects that deal 1/2 damage on a miss don't lose as much with low DC's. You can still kill a room full of kobolds with a DC 8 fireball.
Fighters, Rogues, Rangers, Barbarians, and Monks are pretty much out of luck.
You can have the surprise of rolls along with the balance of point buy. The roll only defines which ability should be higher.
Lets say you rolled Str 14, Dex 7, Con 13, Int 13, Wis 8, Cha 9. Your point buy should have Str > Con/Int > Cha > Wis > Dex. Which means a low Dex barbarian or eldritch knight.
Rolls are a surprise by degree as well as placement. That said, the issue of placement reminds me of a separate consideration that comes up when you try to combine a high degree of surprising randomness with a functional character, particularly in regard to character class. In order to make a functional character, you need to match the ability scores to what works for a character class, so one or the other shouldn't be random, giving us two methods.
The first method involves randomly rolling ability scores in order, then assigning your character class based on how your abilities turned out. The second involves randomly rolling both the ability scores and the character class, then assigning ability scores as appropriate for a character of that class (so the random character class effectively selects the order for you). So either their birth with particular ability scores, or their fate of being a particular class establishes how they'll function as a character.
Slagger.
Did you just say roll a random class? Wow. From way back red box to now, Iv'e never done that.
How would one go about that with all the new classes and subclasses
How far would you take this? Would you role for Backgrounds as well? Races?
rgoodbb wrote:
The boring answer is be a fighter, because they have the most chances to increase their stats.
However, it's kind of suprising how well a low stat character can do in 5e, and can be fun for role-playing reasons. The only problem I see is if you use feats, than rolling low basically results in a feat tax for that character, which is just plain not fun. It works if you don't use feats or you ONLY use feats (and don't allow flat out ability inceases).