I wasn't sure which Forum this would fit into, but what is your favorite way to roll/assign stats? Personally I prefer Point Buy, but if I must roll, 4d6 (drop the lowest) reroll 1s, if you don't like the first set you can roll again. You can roll a maximum of 3 times for stats and pick whichever total set you like the best. How does your table do stats or how would you like them to do stats?
I prefer (4-1)d6. Since we're all new to the game and in a small party, I allow rerolls to ensure that the party can keep up strength. While I won't allow infinite rerolls, I'm fairly lenient. We focus more on the story telling aspect than the combat anyway. Once we're more experienced and/or in a larger party, then I'll be stricter. If players wanted to use Point Buy or Standard Array, I'd be willing to let them.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I wasn't sure which Forum this would fit into, but what is your favorite way to roll/assign stats? Personally I prefer Point Buy, but if I must roll, 4d6 (drop the lowest) reroll 1s, if you don't like the first set you can roll again. You can roll a maximum of 3 times for stats and pick whichever total set you like the best. How does your table do stats or how would you like them to do stats?
The entire table rolls 4d6, drops the lowest, and then the entire table picks one set of those stats to use. Those are the stats that are used for any characters in the entire campaign. Someone is gonna roll decent, and it prevents "Well someone has god tier stats", because everyone has the same literal numbers.
Last two games have used set array of 16 15 14 13 12 10. Yes, I prefer heroic stats. I am contemplating using the 'everyone rolls 4d6' and group picks the set they want to use.
My tables do it a few different ways, and also depend on who is running the game. We've never elected to do point buy, but have done standard array for campaign meant to be and stay in lower levels.
I and our table's primary DM most often roll 5d6, dropping the lowest two on the roll but we aren't allowed re-rolls on any 1's. We're allowed to do this seven times, to drop overall lowest total score which is then put into a community/pool. The dropped score can be "saved" until the end of the next go'around at the table. This kind of helps if someone rolls particularly bad (like perhaps rolling two sixers in a row, yikes!~). After that we are allowed to chose which numbers go to which attributes. Few of our players have had a starting stat below ten (I've rolled two toons with stats at nine and eight) but it sets a baseline with this method that seems fair and doesn't break the game. We usually do this for heavy combat Homebrew campaigns. As a safeguard, our DM will let us take an eight in a stat if we happen to roll really poorly across the board and the lowest dropped total in the pool is also particularly bad.
Sometimes we'll do 5d6 and allow re-rolls on 1's, but we'll only roll six times. When I run this option, I allow my players to choose which stats they want to place in which attributes. One of our other DMs makes us do this "down the line" (we don't play a lot of his games, he's one of those DM vs. Players types) so that we must roll our stats in the order they appear on the sheets we're given. Our primary DM has said there's a positive catch to this variation (which our not-as-good optional DM clearly doesn't know either), but none of us have rolled so poorly that he's had to explain it, so if I ever figure out what it is, I'll edit this post!
Most recently, for a much more lore heavy homebrew campaign setting, we did 5d6 (dropping the lowest two), and 5d8 two times (dropping the lowest two) and were allowed to re-roll 1's. The cap is still 18 even with the d8's if you happen to get mostly or all eights. After which we're allowed to put our stats in any attribute of our choosing. Our DM just wanted to try something out and I'm not sure what his goal was, and he said it's a secret. I saw him recording all of the stats we rolled, so maybe he's got something up his sleeve for later.
With these methods our tables still manage to come out with fairly decent toons overall. Only one of us has ever had a character with more than three stats under a ten, and only one of us (myself coincidentally) has ever had more than three 18s to sit on. our Primary DM likes it when we use feats, because he says it really adds to the campaigns he runs, and I don't disagree, but that's why we roll the way we do most of the time. All-in-all we actually do get pretty average stats but the dice roll as they will!
This is the method I specified for my players to generate "heroic" stats that could be customised. It is important in this method to keep a record of the individual die results in a "dice matrix" which has six rows, one for each stat.
Roll 3d6 six times. Record each of the die results in a row of the dice matrix.
Roll 6d6 and record the results in the "dice bank." (I allow rerolling of 1s for these dice).
You make take a die result from the dice bank and add it to a row of the dice matrix.
Each row of the dice matrix can have no more than 5d6 (and no less than 3d6 obviously).
After all the bank dice have been assigned, your stat array is the highest 3 dice results from each of the six rows.
It sounds more complicated than it is, it's pretty simple once you try it out. Here's an example array:
I wasn't sure which Forum this would fit into, but what is your favorite way to roll/assign stats? Personally I prefer Point Buy, but if I must roll, 4d6 (drop the lowest) reroll 1s, if you don't like the first set you can roll again. You can roll a maximum of 3 times for stats and pick whichever total set you like the best. How does your table do stats or how would you like them to do stats?
My favorite is modified point buy to simulate rolling (the actual PHB's method provides you a worse statline than average rolls will, which I find dissatisfying, and has distinct extremes - a lower max and a higher min - which is also absurd). Here's an example way to do that. https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/116521/is-there-a-way-to-duplicate-the-range-power-of-rolling-stats-with-a-homebrew-p As a bonus, you can use the core arithmetic of it without changing the min stat to 3 or the max to 18, so you can set them to whatever you feel is appropriate.
I use the usual rolling (4d6-1) for all the games I DM for, but I have a scope for balancing where if you roll a stat under 6 or over 15 than you reroll that stat. We've found that this works pretty well, no one gets entirely ****** by a super low roll but can still roll pretty low and on the flipside stops someone rolling absolute god stats and maxing stats by level 4 (which is crazy imo). I came up with doing it this way as it felt like a fun middleground between the equality and balancing of the point buy/standard array but with the fun of relying on rolls and potential low stats of rolling.
Personally: I usually use the ye'olde "4d6 drop the lowest, assign as desired", albeit often with the additional caviot of adding "re-roll 1s".
Personally: I find that the PHB standard array and point buy are a bit on the weak side by comparison; so I've also experimented with offering a higher starting point-buy value or more generous alternative standard arrays more in line with the average you'd tend to get with the 4d6 drop the lowoest method. (Incidentally; the "average" there is somewhere between 13 and 14)
The way I see it: if "10" represents "average person" then well: basically all adventurers ought to be above that for most of their stats; considering that the townsfolk with 9s,10s and 11s across the board are NOT the ones who are going to be chasing the raiding bandits back to their camp; they're going to be the ones staying home to rebuild the burned village. Your PC by in large IS an "exceptional specimen" in that they are willing to take this course of action at all.
Then again: that's if you are aiming for a "heroic" story of epic quests and adventures. If your game leans more toward brutal realism, horror/vulnerability or survival; then an overall weaker stat pool for players might actually be perfectly appropriate.
I'm a fan of rolling 4D6 and dropping the lowest die, but I think every game I've played in over the past 4+ years has used point buy or standard array.
We use point buy. If I were to roll, I'd use the method Spidey posted. I don't have problems with the high/low scores of rolling except that it can produce extreme imbalance between players at the table. Everyone using the same array fixes that.
The actual dice that are rolled varies, but I quite enjoy making my players roll in order! >:)
Sometimes I do 2d20kh1, sometimes 3d6kh1+6, sometimes 2d6+6, sometimes 4d6dl1, may or may not reroll 1's. I like experimenting, might run something with 3d6 at some point. Might try the dark sun method some time. I've also done expanded point buy (bigger pool).
Player-wise myself, I like point buy because it's safe I guess. But also I like rolling. Such is the dichotomy.
Our group has stuck to point buy, but i would love to push for rolling. I'd like to try the 4d6-1 and roll 2 sets, picking one to go with, OR roll the 4d6-1 and eiiher use them or point buy. Something to make sure if you roll absolute crap, you aren't stuck with a mechanical nightmare. Rolling gives the chance for heroic stats out of the gate and an overall more potent character, but point buy is more than sufficient to make anything viable. Heck, I am running a Halfling Barbarian using point buy and base racial boosts. Certainly not ideal, but he's good enough at his role to not feel like dead weight to the party lol.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I use a Set Array of 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 before racial adjustments.
Woah, I really like this idea. Did you lower the floor to make the pc weaker to counteract the higher cap?
I lowered the floor so the characters actually have somethings they were not really good at while having a couple of areas they excel in. It also means the PCs cannot do it all and will need to rely on each other to cover their weak points (teamwork!). A nice side effect is my players are coming up with some more interesting backstories to explain away those low stats. And the optimizer players love the fact that the ASI/Feat choice is a tough decision now. (We call this array the specialist array; because you will be a specialist in one or two things but not an expert in everything).
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I wasn't sure which Forum this would fit into, but what is your favorite way to roll/assign stats? Personally I prefer Point Buy, but if I must roll, 4d6 (drop the lowest) reroll 1s, if you don't like the first set you can roll again. You can roll a maximum of 3 times for stats and pick whichever total set you like the best. How does your table do stats or how would you like them to do stats?
I prefer (4-1)d6. Since we're all new to the game and in a small party, I allow rerolls to ensure that the party can keep up strength. While I won't allow infinite rerolls, I'm fairly lenient. We focus more on the story telling aspect than the combat anyway. Once we're more experienced and/or in a larger party, then I'll be stricter. If players wanted to use Point Buy or Standard Array, I'd be willing to let them.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The entire table rolls 4d6, drops the lowest, and then the entire table picks one set of those stats to use. Those are the stats that are used for any characters in the entire campaign. Someone is gonna roll decent, and it prevents "Well someone has god tier stats", because everyone has the same literal numbers.
Last two games have used set array of 16 15 14 13 12 10. Yes, I prefer heroic stats. I am contemplating using the 'everyone rolls 4d6' and group picks the set they want to use.
My tables do it a few different ways, and also depend on who is running the game. We've never elected to do point buy, but have done standard array for campaign meant to be and stay in lower levels.
I and our table's primary DM most often roll 5d6, dropping the lowest two on the roll but we aren't allowed re-rolls on any 1's. We're allowed to do this seven times, to drop overall lowest total score which is then put into a community/pool. The dropped score can be "saved" until the end of the next go'around at the table. This kind of helps if someone rolls particularly bad (like perhaps rolling two sixers in a row, yikes!~). After that we are allowed to chose which numbers go to which attributes. Few of our players have had a starting stat below ten (I've rolled two toons with stats at nine and eight) but it sets a baseline with this method that seems fair and doesn't break the game. We usually do this for heavy combat Homebrew campaigns. As a safeguard, our DM will let us take an eight in a stat if we happen to roll really poorly across the board and the lowest dropped total in the pool is also particularly bad.
Sometimes we'll do 5d6 and allow re-rolls on 1's, but we'll only roll six times. When I run this option, I allow my players to choose which stats they want to place in which attributes. One of our other DMs makes us do this "down the line" (we don't play a lot of his games, he's one of those DM vs. Players types) so that we must roll our stats in the order they appear on the sheets we're given. Our primary DM has said there's a positive catch to this variation (which our not-as-good optional DM clearly doesn't know either), but none of us have rolled so poorly that he's had to explain it, so if I ever figure out what it is, I'll edit this post!
Most recently, for a much more lore heavy homebrew campaign setting, we did 5d6 (dropping the lowest two), and 5d8 two times (dropping the lowest two) and were allowed to re-roll 1's. The cap is still 18 even with the d8's if you happen to get mostly or all eights. After which we're allowed to put our stats in any attribute of our choosing. Our DM just wanted to try something out and I'm not sure what his goal was, and he said it's a secret. I saw him recording all of the stats we rolled, so maybe he's got something up his sleeve for later.
With these methods our tables still manage to come out with fairly decent toons overall. Only one of us has ever had a character with more than three stats under a ten, and only one of us (myself coincidentally) has ever had more than three 18s to sit on. our Primary DM likes it when we use feats, because he says it really adds to the campaigns he runs, and I don't disagree, but that's why we roll the way we do most of the time. All-in-all we actually do get pretty average stats but the dice roll as they will!
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I use a Set Array of 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 before racial adjustments.
This is the method I specified for my players to generate "heroic" stats that could be customised. It is important in this method to keep a record of the individual die results in a "dice matrix" which has six rows, one for each stat.
It sounds more complicated than it is, it's pretty simple once you try it out. Here's an example array:
My favorite is modified point buy to simulate rolling (the actual PHB's method provides you a worse statline than average rolls will, which I find dissatisfying, and has distinct extremes - a lower max and a higher min - which is also absurd). Here's an example way to do that. https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/116521/is-there-a-way-to-duplicate-the-range-power-of-rolling-stats-with-a-homebrew-p As a bonus, you can use the core arithmetic of it without changing the min stat to 3 or the max to 18, so you can set them to whatever you feel is appropriate.
I use the usual rolling (4d6-1) for all the games I DM for, but I have a scope for balancing where if you roll a stat under 6 or over 15 than you reroll that stat. We've found that this works pretty well, no one gets entirely ****** by a super low roll but can still roll pretty low and on the flipside stops someone rolling absolute god stats and maxing stats by level 4 (which is crazy imo). I came up with doing it this way as it felt like a fun middleground between the equality and balancing of the point buy/standard array but with the fun of relying on rolls and potential low stats of rolling.
Personally: I usually use the ye'olde "4d6 drop the lowest, assign as desired", albeit often with the additional caviot of adding "re-roll 1s".
Personally: I find that the PHB standard array and point buy are a bit on the weak side by comparison; so I've also experimented with offering a higher starting point-buy value or more generous alternative standard arrays more in line with the average you'd tend to get with the 4d6 drop the lowoest method. (Incidentally; the "average" there is somewhere between 13 and 14)
The way I see it: if "10" represents "average person" then well: basically all adventurers ought to be above that for most of their stats; considering that the townsfolk with 9s,10s and 11s across the board are NOT the ones who are going to be chasing the raiding bandits back to their camp; they're going to be the ones staying home to rebuild the burned village. Your PC by in large IS an "exceptional specimen" in that they are willing to take this course of action at all.
Then again: that's if you are aiming for a "heroic" story of epic quests and adventures. If your game leans more toward brutal realism, horror/vulnerability or survival; then an overall weaker stat pool for players might actually be perfectly appropriate.
I'm a fan of rolling 4D6 and dropping the lowest die, but I think every game I've played in over the past 4+ years has used point buy or standard array.
We use point buy. If I were to roll, I'd use the method Spidey posted. I don't have problems with the high/low scores of rolling except that it can produce extreme imbalance between players at the table. Everyone using the same array fixes that.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
The actual dice that are rolled varies, but I quite enjoy making my players roll in order! >:)
Sometimes I do 2d20kh1, sometimes 3d6kh1+6, sometimes 2d6+6, sometimes 4d6dl1, may or may not reroll 1's. I like experimenting, might run something with 3d6 at some point. Might try the dark sun method some time. I've also done expanded point buy (bigger pool).
Player-wise myself, I like point buy because it's safe I guess. But also I like rolling. Such is the dichotomy.
Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda.
UwU
Woah, I really like this idea. Did you lower the floor to make the pc weaker to counteract the higher cap?
4d6, drop the lowest :)
Our group has stuck to point buy, but i would love to push for rolling. I'd like to try the 4d6-1 and roll 2 sets, picking one to go with, OR roll the 4d6-1 and eiiher use them or point buy. Something to make sure if you roll absolute crap, you aren't stuck with a mechanical nightmare. Rolling gives the chance for heroic stats out of the gate and an overall more potent character, but point buy is more than sufficient to make anything viable. Heck, I am running a Halfling Barbarian using point buy and base racial boosts. Certainly not ideal, but he's good enough at his role to not feel like dead weight to the party lol.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I lowered the floor so the characters actually have somethings they were not really good at while having a couple of areas they excel in. It also means the PCs cannot do it all and will need to rely on each other to cover their weak points (teamwork!).
A nice side effect is my players are coming up with some more interesting backstories to explain away those low stats.
And the optimizer players love the fact that the ASI/Feat choice is a tough decision now.
(We call this array the specialist array; because you will be a specialist in one or two things but not an expert in everything).