A popular and time-honored method of generating stats for character creation in D&D 5e is "roll four d6, drop the lowest dice, repeat five times, and assign the resulting numbers however you like." A method often abbreviated as 4d6kh (four d6, keep highest), which has been around in one form or another since the game began and is often considered the 'default' method of building out a character's stats. Buuuut...well.
Many tables have houserules hedging their 4d6kh stat generation to prevent what I tend to think of as the 'Village Idiot' array, i.e. a stat array with a modifier total of 0 or less and a point total of 60 or less. Typically these arrays have at least one cripplingly low number (5 or less) and three or more negative numbers (9 or less), usually without a single high result to try and hang a character on. Some players love the challenge of playing a Village Idiot, and some players can do a fantastic job of making this highly disadvantaged character the heart of their adventuring party, but Village Idiots pose a problem for DMs that now have to account for this character in a group of otherwise mostly competent adventurers. It's the Powergaming Problem in reverse - one of the DM's players is 10+ points behind their companions, becoming an outlier that makes encounter math difficult.
To avoid this, many tables have rules stating that a character which fails to roll above a certain BST (Base Stat Total, to borrow a competitive Pokemon term), often 72 or 75, can reroll their array. Some tables have each player roll an array using 4d6kh, then the entire table chooses one of those rolled arrays to use as their new "Standard Array" for that campaign. Other tables have different release valves, with rules stating that an array without a number higher than 15 can treat its highest-rolled number as 16 instead, or even simply "If you don't like the array you rolled, take Standard Array instead". This can prevent Village Idiot arrays, but it does nothing to compensate for an exceptionally lucky Superhero Array, and it also seems to miss the point of rolling for many players. If one is not bound by their rolls, then why is one rolling in the first place?
D&D 5e is built with the 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 8 standard array in mind. All the prewritten modules assume SA as your starting point. PHB Point Buy gives players enough points to exactly recreate Standard Array, which is what most Point Buy builds end up doing anyways. All the CR math assumes Standard Array numbers for the party. The entire edition is underpinned by SA, and the further away from SA you get the more the DM has to start fudging the numbers herself to line up.
I posit that it may be time to start asking yourself why you're rolling for stats at your table, if you do. Not because doing so is bad, but because it's always good to understand what you're getting from a choice made at your table. Rolling 4d6kh for your table simply because it's tradition may not be the best choice for your games.
So far as I can tell, rolled stats provide two main benefits in exchange for their drawbacks covered above: they greatly facilitate games/DMs who prefer the "Discover your characters at the table" method of character generation, and some players get extra charged up and enthusiastic to play from rolling their stats instead of assigning fixed values. The former is most famously exemplified by Matt Colville, who famously disallows prebuilt characters at his table. Instead, his players roll stats in order and create their stat arrays before making any other decisions, and everything else follows from that process. Colville has several reasons for this, but the most prominent seem to be that he hates dealing with characters burdened by elaborate prewritten backstories and his preference for getting his players to step outside their comfort zones and experience parts of D&D they never would've otherwise touched. This is a perfectly valid reason for rolling stats, even if you aren't as strict as Colville is. The dice are facilitating the kind of game you want to play, which is the reason the dice exist.
The second reason is less cut-and-dry and a lot less famous, but no less valid. Some players simply enjoy rolling. The act of randomizing their stats energizes them and gets them more invested in their character than they ever could be with assigning fixed numbers. Some of them are hoping for that epicdiculous 90+ point Superhero Array so they can finally try out that crazy tri-class Mandalorian Action Hero character idea they've had for forever, but just as often these players are simply looking for the charge and inspiration that a randomized array gets them. This is the player who can roll Standard Array through a bizarre fluke of fate and find that enormously funny, play the character enthusiastically as Joe Average Everyman, but who would be glum and unengaged if forced to take SA without rolling. These are harder to spot ahead of time, but it's a good question to ask in Session Zero. Simply strike up a conversation on stat generation and see if an y of your players are enthused by the randomization itself rather than the hope that the randomization favors them.
What rolling 4d6kh is absolutely terrible for is the increasingly popular Critical Role method of play, i.e. carefully crafting interesting PCs with rich backstories (note: there is a difference between rich and elaborate. You never need more than a page of backstory for a low-level character) and many connections to the world that the DM mines to determine much of the plot of the game. That sort of bespoke, handcrafted experience requires careful control of all the variables to work to its best, and should absolutely use a fixed stat array at generation.
A great example is the comparison between Yasha Nydoorin and Jester Lavorre, from Critical Role. Matt Mercer also famously rolls stats, and in their current campaign their wastelander barbarian, Yasha Nydoorin, rolled 17 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 9 | 7 (after species adjustments). Which is a perfectly valid array, a little on the derpy side but not unacceptably so. Jester Lavorre, on the other hand, is a tiefling cleric of a trickster god* who spent very nearly her entire pre-campaign life locked in a single bedroom watching her mama boink, and her starting numbers were...16 | 17 | 15 | 12 | 17 | 12. Charles Atlas himself must've spent time as Jester's personal trainer in her little bedroom. For much of the campaign, their pastry-scarfing five-foot-nada bubblegum-brained Penis Cleric has been their most physically capable character, often overshadowing the tribal wasteland raider-survivalist barbarian. It is bloody weird, and only the fact that the CR crew are fantastic friends as well as extremely talented actors and roleplayers both has kept this from being an Issue.
If you're building a Critical Role-style game where characters are carefully hand-built to work within a narrative and provide the DM with a plethora of interesting narrative hooks to pull the party along, you shouldn't be rolling numbers. Or if you are, you have to roll the numbers first then build to suit them, which means more work for the DM to vet your rolls. Your stats should reflect the narrative you're building, which means you should be working with a fixed-array system like SA or point buy to allow you the control you need to create that perfect game world. Much like a bespoke suit, your numbers should fit.
Anyways. I've rambled on long enough. What do you folks think?
I have been rolling stats for D&D since 1993 and we have never once felt like it impeded our ability to create the kinds of narrative games you mention.
You know how you frequently say that people do their skill checks backwards? Well, if a player writes their backstory and plans where their character arc should go before actually building their character, then they’ve done it backwards. And the DM doesn’t need to “vet” rolls, they just need to see the rolls to make sure that they were legit and not invented.
Yes, a player should always build their PC first and then create the character for that PC. If you create the character first then you’ll always be stuck trying to force D&D to fit that character. If you roll stats and choose your race&class to suit, then develop your character concept afterwords not only will you likely develop characters you normally wouldn’t develop, you’ll also get closer to the way they do it on Crit Roll.
Those are actors trained at improv. They absolutely build their PCs first and develop those characters with rich backstories afterwords. Rolling isn’t terrible for that style of play, in fact it’s rather quintessential.
Just like some people get their energy and jazz for working on characters from rolling the numbers and using them as a springboard, some people get their energy and jazz by conceiving of the character seed they want to play and fitting the mechanics to that idea. If the numbers simply don't allow for it - and rolled stats rarely do - that player will be left as glum and unengaged as the numbers guy forced to use Standard Array.
I'll admit that I do not care for "Discover Your Character At The Table". When you eliminate backstory entirely from character creation, you also eliminate a character's connection to the world and their reasons for adventuring, beyond "I'm playing D&D so my character will do the thing because I wanna keep playing". In effect, you create a batch of completely disposable Legendary Heroes - this set of 4-6 Legendary Heroes is no more or less desirable than the last, the campaign could work with any set of Legendary Heroes. These are just the ones you happen to have so they'll have to do. My own gaming group tends to agree, which is one of the reasons we've moved away from rolled stats. If you can get the entire table involved in creating the adventuring party, then the adventure can be about your adventuring party instead of random impersonal world happenings that you're simply the ones in a position to deal with.
Heh, but that's the sort of thing I'm hoping people will do. Not just go by rote, say "rolls are good let's always use them!" or "rolls are bad let's never use them!" but to analyze the kind of game they want to play and fit their character generation method to that game.
I never said to eliminate backstories from character creation, I just said to do that part last.
And starting with a concept and then forcing D&D to match your idea is exactly why you have so many issues with the D&D character creation system, because it is designed with the intention of doing it the other way ‘round. It’s like insisting that you put your shoes on first and then your socks and complaining that your socks keep getting muddy. If you want to start with your character and then build a PC to match it then there are other games designed specifically with that in mind. D&D is not one of them.
And the story is always about the Party and not the world’s happenstances. But again, D&D is designed to have a rough idea of “character” and to figure the rest out during levels 1-3, you know, the levels you like to skip.
What you're arguing for is "Discover Your Character At The Table", simply with a bit more time to refine what one finds via the dice attached. Again, there's nothing wrong with that style of game. A lot of people love it, and I'm not averse to trying it should an opportunity ever drop into my lap to do so, but I would go into that game with the understanding that no decision I made about whichever character the dice gods decide to hand me matters and nothing about that character will have any impact on the game world.
Some people love that. I enjoy it more when the DM and the players can all work together to create a party of Fated Heroes that's truly anchored to the world they live in, with plenty of room for the DM to remind players of decisions and events in their characters' past. I will avoid personal anecdotes, but I will say that it's a matter of knowing your table. Everybody should be on the same page, and I'd go a step further and say everybody should know why they're on that page rather than doing it just because, without understanding.
What you're arguing for is "Discover Your Character At The Table", simply with a bit more time to refine what one finds via the dice attached. Again, there's nothing wrong with that style of game. A lot of people love it, and I'm not averse to trying it should an opportunity ever drop into my lap to do so, but I would go into that game with the understanding that no decision I made about whichever character the dice gods decide to hand me matters and nothing about that character will have any impact on the game world.
That’s the part that makes absolutely no sense at all. That will only be the case if you predefined it to be the case like you just stated. That’s all in your head my friend, and has nothing to do with reality whatsoever. You seem to conceive of the entire character from start to finish, from 1st-0th in its entirety and then make the game fit that and get charged when it doesn’t.
Do you think the Crit Role cast does it that way?!? Absolutely not. I guarantee you that they conceive of who that character is from backstory to the 1st-level PC they just created and then strap in for the ride to discover the journeys those characters will go on. And I guarantee you that those players are still occasionally surprised about what those characters discover about themselves even into later levels. They’re in it for the ride, not the destination. Do those characters not have merit?!? Are their actions meaningless in that world?!? Of course not. Every character has impact on the game world. Players in my game world will inevitably meet NPCs that were the PCs of my friends and I back in the day. Future players will eventually meet the current PCs one day.
Lemme guess, if your PC died in the next battle, you’d be pissed. Right? You would be super upset that your “fated heroine” turned out to be not so “fated” after all. Wouldn’t you? But the Crit Role cast has no such problems with PC death. It may be sad, it may be upsetting, but then they would roll a new character and learn about someone new. That “crit role play style” that you keep talking about seems, like, 180 degrees from the way they seem to do it on the show. And I watch the show. I know what I see and there are definitely times when they have absolutely no idea if a character will actually be resurrected or not. They clearly get surprised by twists and turns for their characters.
Do you think Liam wanted Vax to pick up Paladin levels and so he went to Mercer and Mercer did the whole Raven Queen story arc for Vax?!? Heck no. Mercer clearly dropped that vestige for Vex since she was the one who always wanted to fly and it was purely due to the completely improvised, ad lib “sibling rivalry” between those two characters that Vax got that armor instead of Vex. When Liam beseeched that “*****” to “take [him] instead,”’you could see the surprise on Mercer’s face. Mercer had an ongoing story, and he had a player who’s PC was obsessed with flight. He used the story arc to drop a cool magic item in the game that would let that PC fly. The players’ characters surprised the crap out of everyone, including Liam and Laura, watch everyone’s faces and body language. The story then changed and because of that, Liam decided that becoming a Paladin to the Raven Queen was appropriate for Vax and what was supposed to be an excuse for Vex to get wings turned into this whole other story arc that leads to actual tears at the finale of season 1. All because of one failed save, and one impassioned plea.
You think that was planned?!? Heck no. That was an exercise of taking the characters you get the chance to develop from what the dice gods give us, and then discovering where the journey will go.
"D&D 5e is built with the 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 8 standard array in mind."
Meh. Any DM can run LMoP or DoIP in a way that destroys your average party if they want, or equally easily in a way that makes it a breeze to get through, or anything in between. Which is a good thing, because using the standard array in no way assures an expected level of effectiveness - not on individual PCs' accounts, and certainly not on the party as a whole's account. CR is nebulous math with unreliable results.
The pro of using the standard array is that it guarantees everyone equal opportunity. It's the equity option. That's it. Any other quality ascribed to it is a delusion.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
"D&D 5e is built with the 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 8 standard array in mind."
Meh. Any DM can run LMoP or DoIP in a way that destroys your average party if they want, or equally easily in a way that makes it a breeze to get through, or anything in between. Which is a good thing, because using the standard array in no way assures an expected level of effectiveness - not on individual PCs' accounts, and certainly not on the party as a whole's account. CR is nebulous math with unreliable results.
The pro of using the standard array is that it guarantees everyone equal opportunity. It's the equity option. That's it. Any other quality ascribed to it is a delusion.
You mistake my words, Sposta. I'm not speaking of in-play moments and progression beyond campaign start, but merely the act of creating characters. While I enjoy experimenting and fiddling with Future Trunks-ish daydream sheets, I never nail down a fixed, unchanging plan for character progression past campaign start and I don't recommend anyone else does, either. That way lies frustration, bitterness, and regret. Instead, I'm more trying to raise awareness of the different pros and cons of "Discover At Table" (which is emphasized by rolling stats and accepting what you get, whether True Superhero or Village Idiot) or "Bespoke Creation" (emphasized by fixed arrays and maximum control over character generation).
The former places the emphasis on what happens at the table - whatever happened to your character before campaign start doesn't matter. Your character has no story before campaign start, they spring from the ground to take up the mantle of Fated Hero and go about their Fated Hero business.
The latter is asking the DM to weave the narrative paths and hooks of the other players into their tale. I actually consider it the more difficult approach to GMing and would recommend most tables start with a variation of Discover At Table to keep their starter learning adventure simpler and easier to both run and follow, but I do love when a DM can incorporate the characters into the world beyond simply the direct results of their adventures. The ultimate example, since we're discussing CR so heavily, is Percival and the Whitestone arc of Campaign 1. Taliesin (who is a ******* master player I admire greatly, just for the record) wrote a very simple story of how Percival
witnessed the events of his family's destruction at the hands of strangers, barely escaping with his life and leaving behind everything he ever knew. Percival's DM wove that backstory into the best arc of Campaign 1, an absolutely haunting Gothic fantasy interlude that had tremendous impact on both the character and the world they inhabit. I will never be that good a DM, but **** if that isn't the pinnacle of what I'd want to achieve if I were ever to run a long campaign game again.
It's that sort of deep interweaving of 'GM Plot' and 'Character Plot' I love to see/experience. Rolled stats don't prevent it, but they certainly don't help it, and if a GM is doing the Matt Colville thing of "Discover Your Character At The Table", they can't do it at all because those characters don't have any backstory to turn into exciting plot twists later in the campaign.
Again - I don't mind it when players prefer that. Some folks hate having to slog through other people's backstories; they're in it to play the game in front of them, not the game Linda wrote eight months ago when she turned her character sheet in to the DM for vetting. But more and more players these days are really hoping for that kind of engagement, and I truly think they'd be better served being able to control their character's start points in life properly when shooting for that sort of game.
"D&D 5e is built with the 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 8 standard array in mind."
Meh. Any DM can run LMoP or DoIP in a way that destroys your average party if they want, or equally easily in a way that makes it a breeze to get through, or anything in between. Which is a good thing, because using the standard array in no way assures an expected level of effectiveness - not on individual PCs' accounts, and certainly not on the party as a whole's account. CR is nebulous math with unreliable results.
The pro of using the standard array is that it guarantees everyone equal opportunity. It's the equity option. That's it. Any other quality ascribed to it is a delusion.
Speaking to this specifically for a moment before I have to take off for a bit.
A DM can obviously do this, yes. However, my point was more that newer DMs who are still figuring out how the Game Master thing works have an easier time of it if they can use all the prewritten numbers in the prewritten adventures and those numbers will be mostly correct for their game. Someone running their first campaign with a batch of relatively new players they're putting through Phandelver will have an easier time doing so if their players are all relatively even in expected performance, as opposed to Alice playing a 95-point literal superhero while Blake struggles with his 58-point Village Idiot. A good DM can find a way to manage that discrepancy, but even Good DMs find that obnoxious, and not all DMs are good. That's the conceit too many folks cling to in this forum - the idea that the DM is always an exceptionally well-practiced, competent one that can easily fix any issue the players have without fail.
New DMs exist. Merely average DMs exist. DMs without the time to become Matt (whether Colville or Mercer, take your pick) exist. They deserve to be able to run games too, and they could benefit from knowing what kind of game they hope to run and how to best fit their characters to that game.
"D&D 5e is built with the 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 8 standard array in mind."
Meh. Any DM can run LMoP or DoIP in a way that destroys your average party if they want, or equally easily in a way that makes it a breeze to get through, or anything in between. Which is a good thing, because using the standard array in no way assures an expected level of effectiveness - not on individual PCs' accounts, and certainly not on the party as a whole's account. CR is nebulous math with unreliable results.
The pro of using the standard array is that it guarantees everyone equal opportunity. It's the equity option. That's it. Any other quality ascribed to it is a delusion.
Speaking to this specifically for a moment before I have to take off for a bit.
A DM can obviously do this, yes. However, my point was more that newer DMs who are still figuring out how the Game Master thing works have an easier time of it if they can use all the prewritten numbers in the prewritten adventures and those numbers will be mostly correct for their game. Someone running their first campaign with a batch of relatively new players they're putting through Phandelver will have an easier time doing so if their players are all relatively even in expected performance, as opposed to Alice playing a 95-point literal superhero while Blake struggles with his 58-point Village Idiot. A good DM can find a way to manage that discrepancy, but even Good DMs find that obnoxious, and not all DMs are good. That's the conceit too many folks cling to in this forum - the idea that the DM is always an exceptionally well-practiced, competent one that can easily fix any issue the players have without fail.
New DMs exist. Merely average DMs exist. DMs without the time to become Matt (whether Colville or Mercer, take your pick) exist. They deserve to be able to run games too, and they could benefit from knowing what kind of game they hope to run and how to best fit their characters to that game.
The numbers will be mostly correct for parties with CritRole stats as well. Stats aren't nearly as important as how they are used to create a character, as how characters are put together in general, or as party composition is. The Mighty Nein are not such a solid crew because of their stellar stat arrays, but because there's seven of them as opposed to the more usual four or five, they cover all bases well between the lot of them, they have two clerics (even if one doesn't heal much) and they deal with situations creatively (and because Matt draws a pretty well-placed line when it comes what he allows them to do and what's out of order).
As for dealing with power discrepancies, that's the exact one thing I said the standard array is good for.
As a DM, and this has been true from day 1 of being a clueless DM who barely even had any experience playing to day I-lost-count-a-decade-ago of being a DM who has fewer fingers on both hands than year+ long campaigns under his belt, the numbers have never been a big issue. Coaching new players to be creative and stake their claim of the spotlight is much harder. So is managing potential tension in groups, or making sure everyone's expectations are being met, or creating interesting and engaging storylines, or any of a dozen other things. The difference between running a group of standard array type characters and one where the average ability is 14-15 is pretty minimal.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I rolled stats for my current character, decided on Druid for my class and arranged my stats accordingly, then created my backstory for this character before we ever started session 1 of our campaign.(edit: I rolled a 4 and put that in CHA so decided that I was a hermit living in the mountains [Circle of the Land:Mountain] and incorporated that in my backstory) I don’t know if I’m missing something in your explanation, Yurei, but it seems that a DM could then take that backstory and weave it into their campaign just the same as if I used the standard array. I would just be picking Druid first, arranging stats and creating my background.
I also played “back in the day” in the early 80’s where we rolled 3d6 in order and played what we got. And for the longest time I wanted to play a monk but couldn’t because they had such high stat requirements you had to roll very well to be able to choose it. So an array back them would have been helpful in that circumstance.
People can generate characters either way but I don’t see how one keeps a player from making a backstory or a DM using it. Rolling means it just not be the exact character you had anticipated at first.
Yurei, why would it have to be either/or?!? That’s all in your imagining, not in any way a reality. There is nothing restricting that interweaving if you write your backstory after creating your character. Seriously, it just seems you cannot become invested in a backstory you write for a PC as opposed to a PC built to suit your predetermined backstory. You seem to keep getting hung up on the order of operations, but again, that’s all you and has nothing to do with rolled stats or D&D or anything other than how invested you feel you can get into that story.
The real question is, why can you become invested in a backstory before you write that PC, but you cannot become invested in a backstory inspired by that PC? Because I guarantee you that the Crit Role cast frites their characters after rolling their PCs.
1) If you're building a Critical Role-style game where characters are carefully hand-built to work within a narrative and provide the DM with a plethora of interesting narrative hooks to pull the party along, you shouldn't be rolling numbers.
2) Or if you are, you have to roll the numbers first then build to suit them, which means more work for the DM to vet your rolls.
1) I pretty much skipped this, because to be honest I can't even understand why you'd think this. But even whatever rationale you have aside, you do see that you're saying that to build a CritRole style game we shouldn't do exactly what CritRole does, right? You're literally saying something doesn't work well while in the same breath bringing up an example of it working great.
2) Generating abilities first is, in my experience anyway, the most common approach. I know it's not the suggested order of things in the PHB, but the far greater majority of my players doesn't decide on any aspect of their character until they know the stat array they'll be using. They usually have some ideas and options they're interested in, but actually picking race and class? Not until they know what their abilities will look like. As for this taking more work for the DM, how much work is it to watch someone roll half a dozen fistfuls of dice? This doesn't seem like it's a meaningfil impediment at all.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
2) Or if you are, you have to roll the numbers first then build to suit them, which means more work for the DM to vet your rolls.
2) As for this taking more work for the DM, how much work is it to watch someone roll half a dozen fistfuls of dice? This doesn't seem like it's a meaningfil impediment at all.
They don’t mean “vet” as in confirm that the rolls were random, they mean confirm that they’re good enough to play. Because if our rolls aren’t good enough they have to tell you to make a new character or something. 🤷♂️
2) Or if you are, you have to roll the numbers first then build to suit them, which means more work for the DM to vet your rolls.
2) As for this taking more work for the DM, how much work is it to watch someone roll half a dozen fistfuls of dice? This doesn't seem like it's a meaningfil impediment at all.
They don’t mean “vet” as in confirm that the rolls were random, they mean confirm that they’re good enough to play. Because if our rolls aren’t good enough they have to tell you to make a new character or something. 🤷♂️
Presumably they have predefined requirements for that, they're not looking at them and deciding yay or nay based on some subjective gut feeling. That seems to be the case for every single example of such a method I've seen people bring up, anyway. Unless players keep rolling shitty arrays, this shouldn't make the proceedings meaningfully convoluted or time consuming.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Their “predetermined requirements” are an enhanced point-buy and all floating Ability Bonuses from Race/Species/Whatever. Anything “less than” a standardized point-buy with total control over all three “bonus” points is restrictive to player agency to realize the pre-envisioned character they came up with. That’s why it has to be that way, to validate the character they decided to play before they even knew what they were working with. So therefore, the only proper way is to know exactly what you are always working with and have total control.
I'm almost certain that rolling for stats happens long after character seeds are floated/decided on for the CR team. I know for an absolute fact that such is the case for Jester, and having watched a number of interviews with the cast, most of them have stated that they create their seeds first and then fit the mechanics and numbers to those seeds, including deciding on character concept prior to selecting class and species.
As for 'vetting rolls', I more meant that the DM has to find time to meet with each individual player to observe their roll. That is nothing for some groups, but finding time for everyone to meet can be an annoying impediment for busier groups. Many DMs I've seen have also espoused a sharp resentment for having to 'babysit' the character creation process - they want PCs to come to the table with sheets ready to go, not have to spend an entire four-hour session in Character Workshop.
I've been trying to avoid personal anecdotes as they have an unfortunate tendency to derail threads around here, but I've outright turned down arrays with too-high numbers for the character I'm building before. I rolled an 89-point array for a short adventure a friend was building, with no score lower than 12 and the chance for a level 1 (or 3, in this case) 20 in my casting stat. I told the DM I'd shave a point off each high score and spike the lowest number down to a 6 to water down that ludicrous result; he had to work to convince me to keep those rolls and succeeded only because he didn't want to open up the genie of Fudging With Your Numbers to the rest of the game. I'm not arguing this from a powergamist perspective; I'm arguing this from the perspective of someone who uses the numbers to guide and reinforce the tale I'm trying to set up with a given character. '6' is one of my favorite stat numbers, and arrays totaling much of anything over eighty points make me feel guilty.
Nevertheless. There are many a time I use specific arrangements and/or values of numbers to reinforce a story. I cannot do so, however, when I am given rolls and instructed "Those are your numbers! Fill out your sheet, we start the game for real in ten minutes! I'ma go get a beer before we start, have fun ladies!" Or rather, I can, but at that point I'm playing a sheet with nothing but mechanics on it that I have no attachment to and no reason to continue with save to continue playing. That sheet has only the loosest, foggiest idea of any sort of background or anchoring to the world, and it will never have a better idea because the DM has chosen to exclude that phase of character creation.
Which is still deep in the weeds. The original intent of the first post was simply to try and point out some of the underlying pros and cons of different generation methods, as I believe very strongly in knowing why one is doing a thing and what that choice nets you over others. I prefer fixed generation and bespoke character creation; others clearly prefer to meet their character for the first time at the same time everyone else does. Neither method is bad, but tables should know which way to go without just doing it at slapdash random because Tradition.
I agree with the idea that randomized stats is a deeply embedded tradition in D&D that works well for some people's playstyles and not as well for others. I think it does work better for styles that have their characters develop as a response to a simulated world and while I deeply respect people who like to have their characters develop as an emergent gameplay experience, but that is not my playstyle at all. I prefer to come to the table with a character that has a well developed signature style, if nothing else.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
often overshadowing the tribal wasteland raider-survivalist barbarian. It is bloody weird, and only the fact that the CR crew are fantastic friends as well as extremely talented actors and roleplayers both has kept this from being an Issue.
Haha, this reminds me of one scene where as it happened Yasha attacked Sam's character and once she did roll for damage, his comment was, jokingly, "Huh, Yasha is not that powerful". 99% of this was Sam being his usualy loving self but there was a kernel of truth to that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
A popular and time-honored method of generating stats for character creation in D&D 5e is "roll four d6, drop the lowest dice, repeat five times, and assign the resulting numbers however you like." A method often abbreviated as 4d6kh (four d6, keep highest), which has been around in one form or another since the game began and is often considered the 'default' method of building out a character's stats. Buuuut...well.
Many tables have houserules hedging their 4d6kh stat generation to prevent what I tend to think of as the 'Village Idiot' array, i.e. a stat array with a modifier total of 0 or less and a point total of 60 or less. Typically these arrays have at least one cripplingly low number (5 or less) and three or more negative numbers (9 or less), usually without a single high result to try and hang a character on. Some players love the challenge of playing a Village Idiot, and some players can do a fantastic job of making this highly disadvantaged character the heart of their adventuring party, but Village Idiots pose a problem for DMs that now have to account for this character in a group of otherwise mostly competent adventurers. It's the Powergaming Problem in reverse - one of the DM's players is 10+ points behind their companions, becoming an outlier that makes encounter math difficult.
To avoid this, many tables have rules stating that a character which fails to roll above a certain BST (Base Stat Total, to borrow a competitive Pokemon term), often 72 or 75, can reroll their array. Some tables have each player roll an array using 4d6kh, then the entire table chooses one of those rolled arrays to use as their new "Standard Array" for that campaign. Other tables have different release valves, with rules stating that an array without a number higher than 15 can treat its highest-rolled number as 16 instead, or even simply "If you don't like the array you rolled, take Standard Array instead". This can prevent Village Idiot arrays, but it does nothing to compensate for an exceptionally lucky Superhero Array, and it also seems to miss the point of rolling for many players. If one is not bound by their rolls, then why is one rolling in the first place?
D&D 5e is built with the 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 8 standard array in mind. All the prewritten modules assume SA as your starting point. PHB Point Buy gives players enough points to exactly recreate Standard Array, which is what most Point Buy builds end up doing anyways. All the CR math assumes Standard Array numbers for the party. The entire edition is underpinned by SA, and the further away from SA you get the more the DM has to start fudging the numbers herself to line up.
I posit that it may be time to start asking yourself why you're rolling for stats at your table, if you do. Not because doing so is bad, but because it's always good to understand what you're getting from a choice made at your table. Rolling 4d6kh for your table simply because it's tradition may not be the best choice for your games.
So far as I can tell, rolled stats provide two main benefits in exchange for their drawbacks covered above: they greatly facilitate games/DMs who prefer the "Discover your characters at the table" method of character generation, and some players get extra charged up and enthusiastic to play from rolling their stats instead of assigning fixed values. The former is most famously exemplified by Matt Colville, who famously disallows prebuilt characters at his table. Instead, his players roll stats in order and create their stat arrays before making any other decisions, and everything else follows from that process. Colville has several reasons for this, but the most prominent seem to be that he hates dealing with characters burdened by elaborate prewritten backstories and his preference for getting his players to step outside their comfort zones and experience parts of D&D they never would've otherwise touched. This is a perfectly valid reason for rolling stats, even if you aren't as strict as Colville is. The dice are facilitating the kind of game you want to play, which is the reason the dice exist.
The second reason is less cut-and-dry and a lot less famous, but no less valid. Some players simply enjoy rolling. The act of randomizing their stats energizes them and gets them more invested in their character than they ever could be with assigning fixed numbers. Some of them are hoping for that epicdiculous 90+ point Superhero Array so they can finally try out that crazy tri-class Mandalorian Action Hero character idea they've had for forever, but just as often these players are simply looking for the charge and inspiration that a randomized array gets them. This is the player who can roll Standard Array through a bizarre fluke of fate and find that enormously funny, play the character enthusiastically as Joe Average Everyman, but who would be glum and unengaged if forced to take SA without rolling. These are harder to spot ahead of time, but it's a good question to ask in Session Zero. Simply strike up a conversation on stat generation and see if an y of your players are enthused by the randomization itself rather than the hope that the randomization favors them.
What rolling 4d6kh is absolutely terrible for is the increasingly popular Critical Role method of play, i.e. carefully crafting interesting PCs with rich backstories (note: there is a difference between rich and elaborate. You never need more than a page of backstory for a low-level character) and many connections to the world that the DM mines to determine much of the plot of the game. That sort of bespoke, handcrafted experience requires careful control of all the variables to work to its best, and should absolutely use a fixed stat array at generation.
A great example is the comparison between Yasha Nydoorin and Jester Lavorre, from Critical Role. Matt Mercer also famously rolls stats, and in their current campaign their wastelander barbarian, Yasha Nydoorin, rolled 17 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 9 | 7 (after species adjustments). Which is a perfectly valid array, a little on the derpy side but not unacceptably so. Jester Lavorre, on the other hand, is a tiefling cleric of a trickster god* who spent very nearly her entire pre-campaign life locked in a single bedroom watching her mama boink, and her starting numbers were...16 | 17 | 15 | 12 | 17 | 12. Charles Atlas himself must've spent time as Jester's personal trainer in her little bedroom. For much of the campaign, their pastry-scarfing five-foot-nada bubblegum-brained Penis Cleric has been their most physically capable character, often overshadowing the tribal wasteland raider-survivalist barbarian. It is bloody weird, and only the fact that the CR crew are fantastic friends as well as extremely talented actors and roleplayers both has kept this from being an Issue.
If you're building a Critical Role-style game where characters are carefully hand-built to work within a narrative and provide the DM with a plethora of interesting narrative hooks to pull the party along, you shouldn't be rolling numbers. Or if you are, you have to roll the numbers first then build to suit them, which means more work for the DM to vet your rolls. Your stats should reflect the narrative you're building, which means you should be working with a fixed-array system like SA or point buy to allow you the control you need to create that perfect game world. Much like a bespoke suit, your numbers should fit.
Anyways. I've rambled on long enough. What do you folks think?
Please do not contact or message me.
I have been rolling stats for D&D since 1993 and we have never once felt like it impeded our ability to create the kinds of narrative games you mention.
You know how you frequently say that people do their skill checks backwards? Well, if a player writes their backstory and plans where their character arc should go before actually building their character, then they’ve done it backwards. And the DM doesn’t need to “vet” rolls, they just need to see the rolls to make sure that they were legit and not invented.
Yes, a player should always build their PC first and then create the character for that PC. If you create the character first then you’ll always be stuck trying to force D&D to fit that character. If you roll stats and choose your race&class to suit, then develop your character concept afterwords not only will you likely develop characters you normally wouldn’t develop, you’ll also get closer to the way they do it on Crit Roll.
Those are actors trained at improv. They absolutely build their PCs first and develop those characters with rich backstories afterwords. Rolling isn’t terrible for that style of play, in fact it’s rather quintessential.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Kinda misses the point a bit, Sposta.
Just like some people get their energy and jazz for working on characters from rolling the numbers and using them as a springboard, some people get their energy and jazz by conceiving of the character seed they want to play and fitting the mechanics to that idea. If the numbers simply don't allow for it - and rolled stats rarely do - that player will be left as glum and unengaged as the numbers guy forced to use Standard Array.
I'll admit that I do not care for "Discover Your Character At The Table". When you eliminate backstory entirely from character creation, you also eliminate a character's connection to the world and their reasons for adventuring, beyond "I'm playing D&D so my character will do the thing because I wanna keep playing". In effect, you create a batch of completely disposable Legendary Heroes - this set of 4-6 Legendary Heroes is no more or less desirable than the last, the campaign could work with any set of Legendary Heroes. These are just the ones you happen to have so they'll have to do. My own gaming group tends to agree, which is one of the reasons we've moved away from rolled stats. If you can get the entire table involved in creating the adventuring party, then the adventure can be about your adventuring party instead of random impersonal world happenings that you're simply the ones in a position to deal with.
Heh, but that's the sort of thing I'm hoping people will do. Not just go by rote, say "rolls are good let's always use them!" or "rolls are bad let's never use them!" but to analyze the kind of game they want to play and fit their character generation method to that game.
Please do not contact or message me.
I never said to eliminate backstories from character creation, I just said to do that part last.
And starting with a concept and then forcing D&D to match your idea is exactly why you have so many issues with the D&D character creation system, because it is designed with the intention of doing it the other way ‘round. It’s like insisting that you put your shoes on first and then your socks and complaining that your socks keep getting muddy. If you want to start with your character and then build a PC to match it then there are other games designed specifically with that in mind. D&D is not one of them.
And the story is always about the Party and not the world’s happenstances. But again, D&D is designed to have a rough idea of “character” and to figure the rest out during levels 1-3, you know, the levels you like to skip.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
What you're arguing for is "Discover Your Character At The Table", simply with a bit more time to refine what one finds via the dice attached. Again, there's nothing wrong with that style of game. A lot of people love it, and I'm not averse to trying it should an opportunity ever drop into my lap to do so, but I would go into that game with the understanding that no decision I made about whichever character the dice gods decide to hand me matters and nothing about that character will have any impact on the game world.
Some people love that. I enjoy it more when the DM and the players can all work together to create a party of Fated Heroes that's truly anchored to the world they live in, with plenty of room for the DM to remind players of decisions and events in their characters' past. I will avoid personal anecdotes, but I will say that it's a matter of knowing your table. Everybody should be on the same page, and I'd go a step further and say everybody should know why they're on that page rather than doing it just because, without understanding.
Please do not contact or message me.
That’s the part that makes absolutely no sense at all. That will only be the case if you predefined it to be the case like you just stated. That’s all in your head my friend, and has nothing to do with reality whatsoever. You seem to conceive of the entire character from start to finish, from 1st-0th in its entirety and then make the game fit that and get charged when it doesn’t.
Do you think the Crit Role cast does it that way?!? Absolutely not. I guarantee you that they conceive of who that character is from backstory to the 1st-level PC they just created and then strap in for the ride to discover the journeys those characters will go on. And I guarantee you that those players are still occasionally surprised about what those characters discover about themselves even into later levels. They’re in it for the ride, not the destination. Do those characters not have merit?!? Are their actions meaningless in that world?!? Of course not. Every character has impact on the game world. Players in my game world will inevitably meet NPCs that were the PCs of my friends and I back in the day. Future players will eventually meet the current PCs one day.
Lemme guess, if your PC died in the next battle, you’d be pissed. Right? You would be super upset that your “fated heroine” turned out to be not so “fated” after all. Wouldn’t you? But the Crit Role cast has no such problems with PC death. It may be sad, it may be upsetting, but then they would roll a new character and learn about someone new. That “crit role play style” that you keep talking about seems, like, 180 degrees from the way they seem to do it on the show. And I watch the show. I know what I see and there are definitely times when they have absolutely no idea if a character will actually be resurrected or not. They clearly get surprised by twists and turns for their characters.
Do you think Liam wanted Vax to pick up Paladin levels and so he went to Mercer and Mercer did the whole Raven Queen story arc for Vax?!? Heck no. Mercer clearly dropped that vestige for Vex since she was the one who always wanted to fly and it was purely due to the completely improvised, ad lib “sibling rivalry” between those two characters that Vax got that armor instead of Vex. When Liam beseeched that “*****” to “take [him] instead,”’you could see the surprise on Mercer’s face. Mercer had an ongoing story, and he had a player who’s PC was obsessed with flight. He used the story arc to drop a cool magic item in the game that would let that PC fly. The players’ characters surprised the crap out of everyone, including Liam and Laura, watch everyone’s faces and body language. The story then changed and because of that, Liam decided that becoming a Paladin to the Raven Queen was appropriate for Vax and what was supposed to be an excuse for Vex to get wings turned into this whole other story arc that leads to actual tears at the finale of season 1. All because of one failed save, and one impassioned plea.
You think that was planned?!? Heck no. That was an exercise of taking the characters you get the chance to develop from what the dice gods give us, and then discovering where the journey will go.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
"D&D 5e is built with the 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 10 | 8 standard array in mind."
Meh. Any DM can run LMoP or DoIP in a way that destroys your average party if they want, or equally easily in a way that makes it a breeze to get through, or anything in between. Which is a good thing, because using the standard array in no way assures an expected level of effectiveness - not on individual PCs' accounts, and certainly not on the party as a whole's account. CR is nebulous math with unreliable results.
The pro of using the standard array is that it guarantees everyone equal opportunity. It's the equity option. That's it. Any other quality ascribed to it is a delusion.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
All of this.^^^
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
You mistake my words, Sposta. I'm not speaking of in-play moments and progression beyond campaign start, but merely the act of creating characters. While I enjoy experimenting and fiddling with Future Trunks-ish daydream sheets, I never nail down a fixed, unchanging plan for character progression past campaign start and I don't recommend anyone else does, either. That way lies frustration, bitterness, and regret. Instead, I'm more trying to raise awareness of the different pros and cons of "Discover At Table" (which is emphasized by rolling stats and accepting what you get, whether True Superhero or Village Idiot) or "Bespoke Creation" (emphasized by fixed arrays and maximum control over character generation).
The former places the emphasis on what happens at the table - whatever happened to your character before campaign start doesn't matter. Your character has no story before campaign start, they spring from the ground to take up the mantle of Fated Hero and go about their Fated Hero business.
The latter is asking the DM to weave the narrative paths and hooks of the other players into their tale. I actually consider it the more difficult approach to GMing and would recommend most tables start with a variation of Discover At Table to keep their starter learning adventure simpler and easier to both run and follow, but I do love when a DM can incorporate the characters into the world beyond simply the direct results of their adventures. The ultimate example, since we're discussing CR so heavily, is Percival and the Whitestone arc of Campaign 1. Taliesin (who is a ******* master player I admire greatly, just for the record) wrote a very simple story of how Percival
witnessed the events of his family's destruction at the hands of strangers, barely escaping with his life and leaving behind everything he ever knew. Percival's DM wove that backstory into the best arc of Campaign 1, an absolutely haunting Gothic fantasy interlude that had tremendous impact on both the character and the world they inhabit. I will never be that good a DM, but **** if that isn't the pinnacle of what I'd want to achieve if I were ever to run a long campaign game again.
It's that sort of deep interweaving of 'GM Plot' and 'Character Plot' I love to see/experience. Rolled stats don't prevent it, but they certainly don't help it, and if a GM is doing the Matt Colville thing of "Discover Your Character At The Table", they can't do it at all because those characters don't have any backstory to turn into exciting plot twists later in the campaign.
Again - I don't mind it when players prefer that. Some folks hate having to slog through other people's backstories; they're in it to play the game in front of them, not the game Linda wrote eight months ago when she turned her character sheet in to the DM for vetting. But more and more players these days are really hoping for that kind of engagement, and I truly think they'd be better served being able to control their character's start points in life properly when shooting for that sort of game.
Please do not contact or message me.
Speaking to this specifically for a moment before I have to take off for a bit.
A DM can obviously do this, yes. However, my point was more that newer DMs who are still figuring out how the Game Master thing works have an easier time of it if they can use all the prewritten numbers in the prewritten adventures and those numbers will be mostly correct for their game. Someone running their first campaign with a batch of relatively new players they're putting through Phandelver will have an easier time doing so if their players are all relatively even in expected performance, as opposed to Alice playing a 95-point literal superhero while Blake struggles with his 58-point Village Idiot. A good DM can find a way to manage that discrepancy, but even Good DMs find that obnoxious, and not all DMs are good. That's the conceit too many folks cling to in this forum - the idea that the DM is always an exceptionally well-practiced, competent one that can easily fix any issue the players have without fail.
New DMs exist. Merely average DMs exist. DMs without the time to become Matt (whether Colville or Mercer, take your pick) exist. They deserve to be able to run games too, and they could benefit from knowing what kind of game they hope to run and how to best fit their characters to that game.
Please do not contact or message me.
The numbers will be mostly correct for parties with CritRole stats as well. Stats aren't nearly as important as how they are used to create a character, as how characters are put together in general, or as party composition is. The Mighty Nein are not such a solid crew because of their stellar stat arrays, but because there's seven of them as opposed to the more usual four or five, they cover all bases well between the lot of them, they have two clerics (even if one doesn't heal much) and they deal with situations creatively (and because Matt draws a pretty well-placed line when it comes what he allows them to do and what's out of order).
As for dealing with power discrepancies, that's the exact one thing I said the standard array is good for.
As a DM, and this has been true from day 1 of being a clueless DM who barely even had any experience playing to day I-lost-count-a-decade-ago of being a DM who has fewer fingers on both hands than year+ long campaigns under his belt, the numbers have never been a big issue. Coaching new players to be creative and stake their claim of the spotlight is much harder. So is managing potential tension in groups, or making sure everyone's expectations are being met, or creating interesting and engaging storylines, or any of a dozen other things. The difference between running a group of standard array type characters and one where the average ability is 14-15 is pretty minimal.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I rolled stats for my current character, decided on Druid for my class and arranged my stats accordingly, then created my backstory for this character before we ever started session 1 of our campaign.(edit: I rolled a 4 and put that in CHA so decided that I was a hermit living in the mountains [Circle of the Land:Mountain] and incorporated that in my backstory) I don’t know if I’m missing something in your explanation, Yurei, but it seems that a DM could then take that backstory and weave it into their campaign just the same as if I used the standard array. I would just be picking Druid first, arranging stats and creating my background.
I also played “back in the day” in the early 80’s where we rolled 3d6 in order and played what we got. And for the longest time I wanted to play a monk but couldn’t because they had such high stat requirements you had to roll very well to be able to choose it. So an array back them would have been helpful in that circumstance.
People can generate characters either way but I don’t see how one keeps a player from making a backstory or a DM using it. Rolling means it just not be the exact character you had anticipated at first.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Yurei, why would it have to be either/or?!? That’s all in your imagining, not in any way a reality. There is nothing restricting that interweaving if you write your backstory after creating your character. Seriously, it just seems you cannot become invested in a backstory you write for a PC as opposed to a PC built to suit your predetermined backstory. You seem to keep getting hung up on the order of operations, but again, that’s all you and has nothing to do with rolled stats or D&D or anything other than how invested you feel you can get into that story.
The real question is, why can you become invested in a backstory before you write that PC, but you cannot become invested in a backstory inspired by that PC? Because I guarantee you that the Crit Role cast frites their characters after rolling their PCs.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
1) I pretty much skipped this, because to be honest I can't even understand why you'd think this. But even whatever rationale you have aside, you do see that you're saying that to build a CritRole style game we shouldn't do exactly what CritRole does, right? You're literally saying something doesn't work well while in the same breath bringing up an example of it working great.
2) Generating abilities first is, in my experience anyway, the most common approach. I know it's not the suggested order of things in the PHB, but the far greater majority of my players doesn't decide on any aspect of their character until they know the stat array they'll be using. They usually have some ideas and options they're interested in, but actually picking race and class? Not until they know what their abilities will look like. As for this taking more work for the DM, how much work is it to watch someone roll half a dozen fistfuls of dice? This doesn't seem like it's a meaningfil impediment at all.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
They don’t mean “vet” as in confirm that the rolls were random, they mean confirm that they’re good enough to play. Because if our rolls aren’t good enough they have to tell you to make a new character or something. 🤷♂️
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Presumably they have predefined requirements for that, they're not looking at them and deciding yay or nay based on some subjective gut feeling. That seems to be the case for every single example of such a method I've seen people bring up, anyway. Unless players keep rolling shitty arrays, this shouldn't make the proceedings meaningfully convoluted or time consuming.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Their “predetermined requirements” are an enhanced point-buy and all floating Ability Bonuses from Race/Species/Whatever. Anything “less than” a standardized point-buy with total control over all three “bonus” points is restrictive to player agency to realize the pre-envisioned character they came up with. That’s why it has to be that way, to validate the character they decided to play before they even knew what they were working with. So therefore, the only proper way is to know exactly what you are always working with and have total control.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I'm almost certain that rolling for stats happens long after character seeds are floated/decided on for the CR team. I know for an absolute fact that such is the case for Jester, and having watched a number of interviews with the cast, most of them have stated that they create their seeds first and then fit the mechanics and numbers to those seeds, including deciding on character concept prior to selecting class and species.
As for 'vetting rolls', I more meant that the DM has to find time to meet with each individual player to observe their roll. That is nothing for some groups, but finding time for everyone to meet can be an annoying impediment for busier groups. Many DMs I've seen have also espoused a sharp resentment for having to 'babysit' the character creation process - they want PCs to come to the table with sheets ready to go, not have to spend an entire four-hour session in Character Workshop.
I've been trying to avoid personal anecdotes as they have an unfortunate tendency to derail threads around here, but I've outright turned down arrays with too-high numbers for the character I'm building before. I rolled an 89-point array for a short adventure a friend was building, with no score lower than 12 and the chance for a level 1 (or 3, in this case) 20 in my casting stat. I told the DM I'd shave a point off each high score and spike the lowest number down to a 6 to water down that ludicrous result; he had to work to convince me to keep those rolls and succeeded only because he didn't want to open up the genie of Fudging With Your Numbers to the rest of the game. I'm not arguing this from a powergamist perspective; I'm arguing this from the perspective of someone who uses the numbers to guide and reinforce the tale I'm trying to set up with a given character. '6' is one of my favorite stat numbers, and arrays totaling much of anything over eighty points make me feel guilty.
Nevertheless. There are many a time I use specific arrangements and/or values of numbers to reinforce a story. I cannot do so, however, when I am given rolls and instructed "Those are your numbers! Fill out your sheet, we start the game for real in ten minutes! I'ma go get a beer before we start, have fun ladies!" Or rather, I can, but at that point I'm playing a sheet with nothing but mechanics on it that I have no attachment to and no reason to continue with save to continue playing. That sheet has only the loosest, foggiest idea of any sort of background or anchoring to the world, and it will never have a better idea because the DM has chosen to exclude that phase of character creation.
Which is still deep in the weeds. The original intent of the first post was simply to try and point out some of the underlying pros and cons of different generation methods, as I believe very strongly in knowing why one is doing a thing and what that choice nets you over others. I prefer fixed generation and bespoke character creation; others clearly prefer to meet their character for the first time at the same time everyone else does. Neither method is bad, but tables should know which way to go without just doing it at slapdash random because Tradition.
Please do not contact or message me.
I agree with the idea that randomized stats is a deeply embedded tradition in D&D that works well for some people's playstyles and not as well for others. I think it does work better for styles that have their characters develop as a response to a simulated world and while I deeply respect people who like to have their characters develop as an emergent gameplay experience, but that is not my playstyle at all. I prefer to come to the table with a character that has a well developed signature style, if nothing else.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Haha, this reminds me of one scene where as it happened Yasha attacked Sam's character and once she did roll for damage, his comment was, jokingly, "Huh, Yasha is not that powerful". 99% of this was Sam being his usualy loving self but there was a kernel of truth to that.