The only reason I ever did point buy was for Adventurers League and I'm not a fan. People will only take the race and class combo that is optimal, and if you don't you will get steamrolled by those that do at AL tables. There are some builds you just can't do because of MAD unless you're doing 4d6 and drop the lowest. You'll never get a viable build and lag behind. For my current campaign I have a bard that I rolled a bit too high and rerolled to bring stats a bit back down to earth and I would expect a DM to do the same the other way. The randomness is great and exciting, but you can't hold a person to crappy stat rolls for a multi year campaign as they won't have fun. A stat or two that's low is fun, but nothing over a 14 isn't, same with rolling 3 18's and overshadowing everyone. I'm a fan of feats as well so having higher ability scores that will take only 1 or maybe even none to max out your primary leaves room for more feats and flavor. Most of the time 4d6 and drop will lead to above average scores which is good since you are an adventurer and not the average person. You are supposed to be heroic, have stats that reflect it.
So you have to look at game balance, and the fun for the players. So in 1st ed and 2nd ed, only one class (in possibly a couple in 2e) were basically 'available to anyone'. Otherwise, you had to get specific rolls on stats to get more powerful classes. Ranger was straight up better than fighter in 2e, and Paladin was GODLY OP vs Ranger. Stats from 8-14 basically were identical, so having over a 14 was awesome (and in the case of any of the fighter classes) 18/00 meant you were a battlefield god til the wizard hit lvl 5. So rolling to get into OP classes was a feat in of itself.
Also part, much of the gameplay is what I will call meta Roleplay. Because there wasnt CR tables or anything, the DM might throw an Ancient Black Dragon in the way of a lvl 3 party. So the characters would have to overcome the obstacle likely without fighting, and since non weapon proficiency (a blend of feats and skills) were an optional rule in 2e that many people didnt even use, and your stats likely sucked, your best bet was to overcome the problems without combat or rolling dice, which meant this weird way of almost but not quite meta gaming. People with high stats could hide rolling wisdom or dex possibly, but your team was only as good as your worst member, so there was a lot of fun to be had in having a crappy character.
So in those old editions, rolling allowed a person to far outclass their party members, but that was fine, people were okay with the team winning, even if their character was crap, and it created a fun playstyle.
3.5, 4, and ESPECIALLY 5e, the classes and subclasses are generally balanced well, but since everything is based on mainstats, or stats in general, it matters more what your stats are in 5e, and less what decisions you make after char gen. I want to say I once did a DPS compairason between identical fighters stats wise, and like even a fighter without any subclass at lvl 20 is still like 80% as effective and many builds using S tier subclasses. And fighteres generally do similar damage to wizards, warlocks, sorcs, bards, druids, etc. There are obviously some broken as hell builds (magic missile evoker for instance there is a net build for to do over 300 damage in a single turn).
Also these days, each person wants to feel valuable in general. It feels kinda crappy to be the person that cant take hits, does less damage than everyone, and isnt good at skills. Try playing a character with straight 12's in a game with normally build characters and youll understand what i mean. Since the classes are generally balanced, you need a fair way of giving everyone stats so each person can shine, while allowing other people to have areas they can shine in.
Lastly, the few builds that are MAD are WAY OP if you allow 4d6, and someone rolls well, meaning it had compounded the issue.
So its not that I hate 4d6 drop the lowest (or better yet, 1d12+6), but not for this edition, and generally not for these players. That said, if thats how you like to play (and I suggest playing a game with straight 8s while someone else has straight 18's so you can really get a feel for what it can feel like in 4d6 games), then play how you want.
As I said on another thread, many players view characters as an optimization problem to solve, and anyone who does, will detest the 4d6-drop method because it prevents optimization.
Note, some games are explicitly designed to prevent anyone from optimizing, like DCC -- and I suspect that most optimizers would not want to play that game, ever. I, on the other hand, think it sounds like a blast and would love to try it.
But then, although I do some optimization of my characters, I do not view them as an optimization problem to solve, and never really have. In fact, I have a long history of taking supposedly "weak" character types, like the MA/SR Scrapper in City of Heroes, and playing them well (and to a degree, proving everyone wrong about them being weak, which MA/SR is most certainly NOT, if you know what you are doing).
So... some people view taking what you are given and playing it well the fun challenge. Others do not want to be "given" something, but view the optimization itself as the fun challenge. The former have no problem with 4d6-drop as a method... the latter will hate it.
As I said on another thread, many players view characters as an optimization problem to solve, and anyone who does, will detest the 4d6-drop method because it prevents optimization.
4d6 drop 1 does not prevent optimization. You still order your stats (highest to lowest) in the same way you would order them for a standard array. It just makes some characters better because they have higher numbers to work with, or worse because they have lower numbers to work with
I don't use rolled stats for my games. Not because I don't like it, I personally find the rolled stats to be liberating and allows for me to play off the wall characters because if my stats suck I can try to be whatever I want, but because my players don't. The people that I play with prefer to be able to assign stats to their characters so that's what I let them do. If they wanted to use rolled stats for a game, I would be shocked, but I would also let it happen.
I know its a bit superstitious, but 2 of my players (and myself) always roll really garbo for our stats when we make characters even outside of dnd, while one player is actually blessed. Again, I know its superstitious but by allowing people to assign stats they can make what they want and it mitigates that superstition.
That being said I also use a custom version of point buy, where your ability score total must equal 72, before racial bonuses. This would allow for 12s across all stats which is technically lower then standard point buy which is 75 total with 3 12s and 3 13s, but it allows for much more specialization and allows for races that have negatives to be good at things they would otherwise not be good at. IE Orc Wizard. My players know that if they want to have 20 in a stat upon character creation, they are probably going to have some bad negatives as a part of that.
Also these days, each person wants to feel valuable in general. It feels kinda crappy to be the person that cant take hits, does less damage than everyone, and isnt good at skills. Try playing a character with straight 12's in a game with normally build characters and youll understand what i mean.
That's actually not bad at all. +1 with everything is pretty good.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Part of it depends on the feel of the game the DM is going for. If the idea is that this group of plucky youngsters is flying by the seat of their pants and figuring things out as they go along, then lower scores are to be expected, and probably Point Buy would service that best. If the DM has no preference, then anything could work. 4d6 drop low, Point Buy, Standard Array, whatever.
Or, if the tone you're going for is a set of highly capable and experienced veterans on a mission to change the course of history, perhaps do something more outlandish. Roll 28d6, reroll any result less than 3, then drop the lowest 10 dice and arrange them into groups of 3 how you please. It inflates the possible stat scores, but that might be the tone the DM is going for with their campaign.
As I said on another thread, many players view characters as an optimization problem to solve, and anyone who does, will detest the 4d6-drop method because it prevents optimization.
4d6 drop 1 does not prevent optimization. You still order your stats (highest to lowest) in the same way you would order them for a standard array. It just makes some characters better because they have higher numbers to work with, or worse because they have lower numbers to work with
It does prevent optimization, because it creates a situation in which it's possible, and actually extremely likely, that the player won't achieve the optimal allowed state (18s across the board). Expanding the range of allowed states while also gating the optimal states behind RNG (rather than player choice or strategy or what have you) is probably very annoying for optimizers.
That said, BioWizard presents a false dichotomy. Especially given 5e's broadened demographic, I imagine that most people who prefer point buy prefer it because they simply want to be able to choose what character they want to play rather than leaving very important parts of the process to chance. It's not about optimization, it's about characterization.
It does prevent optimization, because it creates a situation in which it's possible, and actually extremely likely, that the player won't achieve the optimal allowed state (18s across the board).
That's not what optimization is. Optimization is getting maximal value out of whatever resources you are provided with, not just starting with more resources. All 18s is power gaming, which is a completely separate issue (actual power gamers prefer to roll dice ... creatively).
If you're curious, the mean point value of fairly rolled characters is 30.2 (assuming cost for stats below 8 is -1 per, and above 15 is +2 per).
It does prevent optimization, because it creates a situation in which it's possible, and actually extremely likely, that the player won't achieve the optimal allowed state (18s across the board).
That's not what optimization is. Optimization is getting maximal value out of whatever resources you are provided with, not just starting with more resources.
That depends entirely on when you imagine the process beginning. If you think you don’t start optimizing until after you roll ability scores, then sure. But very few people think that way, because it’s silly.
“Optimizers” want to optimize the entire process, which includes the acquisition of resources. With point buy, optimizing is always possible because the value function they’re trying to maximize is deterministic. With rolling, achieving a local maximum, if you will, can always be done, but optimizing globally is almost impossible.
That depends entirely on when you imagine the process beginning. If you think you don’t start optimizing until after you roll ability scores, then sure. But very few people think that way, because it’s silly.
“Optimizers” want to optimize the entire process, which includes the acquisition of resources. With point buy, optimizing is always possible because the value function they’re trying to maximize is deterministic. With rolling, achieving a local maximum, if you will, can always be done, but optimizing globally is almost impossible.
Unless you classify 'haranguing the DM', "roll until I get a super character' or 'outright cheating' as a legitimate part of character creation, yes, you start optimizing after rolling dice, because there aren't any optimization opportunities earlier in the process. You can't optimize fairly rolled dice -- there is no strategy for doing so.
That depends entirely on when you imagine the process beginning. If you think you don’t start optimizing until after you roll ability scores, then sure. But very few people think that way, because it’s silly.
“Optimizers” want to optimize the entire process, which includes the acquisition of resources. With point buy, optimizing is always possible because the value function they’re trying to maximize is deterministic. With rolling, achieving a local maximum, if you will, can always be done, but optimizing globally is almost impossible.
Unless you classify 'haranguing the DM', "roll until I get a super character' or 'outright cheating' as a legitimate part of character creation, yes, you start optimizing after rolling dice, because there aren't any optimization opportunities earlier in the process. You can't optimize fairly rolled dice -- there is no strategy for doing so.
Um... that makes absolutely no sense. The fact that you can't optimize rolling dice in no way prevents optimization -- it just prevents optimization at the 'acquisition of resources' step, which step also cannot be optimized on point build.
That's not what optimization is. Optimization is getting maximal value out of whatever resources you are provided
I mean... yes, but...
If you read a lot of the threads here, what the optimizers want to do is not only get the most out of the provided resources, but are looking to have what you might call the "theoretical maximum" one could possibly have for their chosen class/subclass/whatever.
Case in point: the thread about the +2/+1 racial bonus going into "any stat." Using your entirely reasonable definition, the "available resources" could well be the gnome with the +racial bonus in Intelligence being played as a ranger, and optimizing within that set of resources (the higher Int). If you read the thread, the discussion wasn't about optimizing that -- it was about the choice of a gnome ranger with a +2 Int bonus being below the theoretical maximum that one could have if the racial bonuses were placed elsewhere. So folks are optimizing not against what they start with, but against all possible starting conditions and wanting the best one.
The dice example is the same thing... sure if I rolled badly, and had only a 12 max stat and lots of 6s and 7s, and the DM made me play it, and I didn't outright quite over being made to play it... I could still "optimize" that particular build, and make a 12-6-7-7-6-7 character who was amazing for a character with those stats, and the character would, using your reasonable definition, but "optimized."
But that is not the type of optimization many people here mean. By rolling stats you could end up with stats that are below the theoretical optimum which you could achieve if you manually assign points so that every number, in every stat, is exactly where it needs to be within the parameters of the starting conditions (i.e., that you can't just make the numbers literally anything -- they cost "points"). This is why some folks can't bear the thought of playing a Wizard whose +2 racial bonus went into anything but Int -- not because they can't optimize within that imperfect build, but because an Int without the +2 bonus is below the theoretical maximum that could be had if you picked "the right race" or were able to move bonuses around.
There is a difference between "making the best of what you have" and "achieving the theoretical maximum possible for this character type."
4d6 drop lowest may be an amazing system of creating character. However I've never seen it used without some bollocks like "If Mars is ascendant and your total ability score bonuses are +3 or less you may howl at the moon and re-roll N stats where N is the number of the month."
Usually this means that you might as well choose your ability scores for all the good the randomness does.
Or, if the tone you're going for is a set of highly capable and experienced veterans on a mission to change the course of history, perhaps do something more outlandish. Roll 28d6, reroll any result less than 3, then drop the lowest 10 dice and arrange them into groups of 3 how you please. It inflates the possible stat scores, but that might be the tone the DM is going for with their campaign.
Rerolling 1s and 2s just seem like a huge hassle. 2D6+6 is a much quicker way to do it. Or if you want to be really epic, (3D6, drop the lowest)+6.
I want to point out, btw, that for my current campaign, we used a stat array. So I'm not defending 4d6 because I use it or anything. I just don't see it as a "problematic" way to come up with stats for a character.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Or, if the tone you're going for is a set of highly capable and experienced veterans on a mission to change the course of history, perhaps do something more outlandish. Roll 28d6, reroll any result less than 3, then drop the lowest 10 dice and arrange them into groups of 3 how you please. It inflates the possible stat scores, but that might be the tone the DM is going for with their campaign.
Rerolling 1s and 2s just seem like a huge hassle. 2D6+6 is a much quicker way to do it. Or if you want to be really epic, (3D6, drop the lowest)+6.
It does prevent optimization, because it creates a situation in which it's possible, and actually extremely likely, that the player won't achieve the optimal allowed state (18s across the board).
That's not what optimization is. Optimization is getting maximal value out of whatever resources you are provided with, not just starting with more resources.
That depends entirely on when you imagine the process beginning. If you think you don’t start optimizing until after you roll ability scores, then sure. But very few people think that way, because it’s silly.
“Optimizers” want to optimize the entire process, which includes the acquisition of resources. With point buy, optimizing is always possible because the value function they’re trying to maximize is deterministic. With rolling, achieving a local maximum, if you will, can always be done, but optimizing globally is almost impossible.
If choosing between SPA/Point Buy or rolling 4D6, drop the lowest is part of your optimization process then rolling for stats would be to optimize, since that allows for better stats across the board and teh risk of getting worse stats than SPA/Point Buy are very low.
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The only reason I ever did point buy was for Adventurers League and I'm not a fan. People will only take the race and class combo that is optimal, and if you don't you will get steamrolled by those that do at AL tables. There are some builds you just can't do because of MAD unless you're doing 4d6 and drop the lowest. You'll never get a viable build and lag behind. For my current campaign I have a bard that I rolled a bit too high and rerolled to bring stats a bit back down to earth and I would expect a DM to do the same the other way. The randomness is great and exciting, but you can't hold a person to crappy stat rolls for a multi year campaign as they won't have fun. A stat or two that's low is fun, but nothing over a 14 isn't, same with rolling 3 18's and overshadowing everyone. I'm a fan of feats as well so having higher ability scores that will take only 1 or maybe even none to max out your primary leaves room for more feats and flavor. Most of the time 4d6 and drop will lead to above average scores which is good since you are an adventurer and not the average person. You are supposed to be heroic, have stats that reflect it.
So you have to look at game balance, and the fun for the players. So in 1st ed and 2nd ed, only one class (in possibly a couple in 2e) were basically 'available to anyone'. Otherwise, you had to get specific rolls on stats to get more powerful classes. Ranger was straight up better than fighter in 2e, and Paladin was GODLY OP vs Ranger. Stats from 8-14 basically were identical, so having over a 14 was awesome (and in the case of any of the fighter classes) 18/00 meant you were a battlefield god til the wizard hit lvl 5. So rolling to get into OP classes was a feat in of itself.
Also part, much of the gameplay is what I will call meta Roleplay. Because there wasnt CR tables or anything, the DM might throw an Ancient Black Dragon in the way of a lvl 3 party. So the characters would have to overcome the obstacle likely without fighting, and since non weapon proficiency (a blend of feats and skills) were an optional rule in 2e that many people didnt even use, and your stats likely sucked, your best bet was to overcome the problems without combat or rolling dice, which meant this weird way of almost but not quite meta gaming. People with high stats could hide rolling wisdom or dex possibly, but your team was only as good as your worst member, so there was a lot of fun to be had in having a crappy character.
So in those old editions, rolling allowed a person to far outclass their party members, but that was fine, people were okay with the team winning, even if their character was crap, and it created a fun playstyle.
3.5, 4, and ESPECIALLY 5e, the classes and subclasses are generally balanced well, but since everything is based on mainstats, or stats in general, it matters more what your stats are in 5e, and less what decisions you make after char gen. I want to say I once did a DPS compairason between identical fighters stats wise, and like even a fighter without any subclass at lvl 20 is still like 80% as effective and many builds using S tier subclasses. And fighteres generally do similar damage to wizards, warlocks, sorcs, bards, druids, etc. There are obviously some broken as hell builds (magic missile evoker for instance there is a net build for to do over 300 damage in a single turn).
Also these days, each person wants to feel valuable in general. It feels kinda crappy to be the person that cant take hits, does less damage than everyone, and isnt good at skills. Try playing a character with straight 12's in a game with normally build characters and youll understand what i mean. Since the classes are generally balanced, you need a fair way of giving everyone stats so each person can shine, while allowing other people to have areas they can shine in.
Lastly, the few builds that are MAD are WAY OP if you allow 4d6, and someone rolls well, meaning it had compounded the issue.
So its not that I hate 4d6 drop the lowest (or better yet, 1d12+6), but not for this edition, and generally not for these players. That said, if thats how you like to play (and I suggest playing a game with straight 8s while someone else has straight 18's so you can really get a feel for what it can feel like in 4d6 games), then play how you want.
As I said on another thread, many players view characters as an optimization problem to solve, and anyone who does, will detest the 4d6-drop method because it prevents optimization.
Note, some games are explicitly designed to prevent anyone from optimizing, like DCC -- and I suspect that most optimizers would not want to play that game, ever. I, on the other hand, think it sounds like a blast and would love to try it.
But then, although I do some optimization of my characters, I do not view them as an optimization problem to solve, and never really have. In fact, I have a long history of taking supposedly "weak" character types, like the MA/SR Scrapper in City of Heroes, and playing them well (and to a degree, proving everyone wrong about them being weak, which MA/SR is most certainly NOT, if you know what you are doing).
So... some people view taking what you are given and playing it well the fun challenge. Others do not want to be "given" something, but view the optimization itself as the fun challenge. The former have no problem with 4d6-drop as a method... the latter will hate it.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
4d6 drop 1 does not prevent optimization. You still order your stats (highest to lowest) in the same way you would order them for a standard array. It just makes some characters better because they have higher numbers to work with, or worse because they have lower numbers to work with
I don't use rolled stats for my games. Not because I don't like it, I personally find the rolled stats to be liberating and allows for me to play off the wall characters because if my stats suck I can try to be whatever I want, but because my players don't. The people that I play with prefer to be able to assign stats to their characters so that's what I let them do. If they wanted to use rolled stats for a game, I would be shocked, but I would also let it happen.
I know its a bit superstitious, but 2 of my players (and myself) always roll really garbo for our stats when we make characters even outside of dnd, while one player is actually blessed. Again, I know its superstitious but by allowing people to assign stats they can make what they want and it mitigates that superstition.
That being said I also use a custom version of point buy, where your ability score total must equal 72, before racial bonuses. This would allow for 12s across all stats which is technically lower then standard point buy which is 75 total with 3 12s and 3 13s, but it allows for much more specialization and allows for races that have negatives to be good at things they would otherwise not be good at. IE Orc Wizard. My players know that if they want to have 20 in a stat upon character creation, they are probably going to have some bad negatives as a part of that.
Edit: Specificity
Buyers Guide for D&D Beyond - Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You - How/What is Toggled Content?
Everything you need to know about Homebrew - Homebrew FAQ - Digital Book on D&D Beyond Vs Physical Books
Can't find the content you are supposed to have access to? Read this FAQ.
"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
That's actually not bad at all. +1 with everything is pretty good.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
You've clearly never played a game with 12's across the board.
Buyers Guide for D&D Beyond - Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You - How/What is Toggled Content?
Everything you need to know about Homebrew - Homebrew FAQ - Digital Book on D&D Beyond Vs Physical Books
Can't find the content you are supposed to have access to? Read this FAQ.
"Play the game however you want to play the game. After all, your fun doesn't threaten my fun."
Part of it depends on the feel of the game the DM is going for. If the idea is that this group of plucky youngsters is flying by the seat of their pants and figuring things out as they go along, then lower scores are to be expected, and probably Point Buy would service that best. If the DM has no preference, then anything could work. 4d6 drop low, Point Buy, Standard Array, whatever.
Or, if the tone you're going for is a set of highly capable and experienced veterans on a mission to change the course of history, perhaps do something more outlandish. Roll 28d6, reroll any result less than 3, then drop the lowest 10 dice and arrange them into groups of 3 how you please. It inflates the possible stat scores, but that might be the tone the DM is going for with their campaign.
It does prevent optimization, because it creates a situation in which it's possible, and actually extremely likely, that the player won't achieve the optimal allowed state (18s across the board). Expanding the range of allowed states while also gating the optimal states behind RNG (rather than player choice or strategy or what have you) is probably very annoying for optimizers.
That said, BioWizard presents a false dichotomy. Especially given 5e's broadened demographic, I imagine that most people who prefer point buy prefer it because they simply want to be able to choose what character they want to play rather than leaving very important parts of the process to chance. It's not about optimization, it's about characterization.
That's not what optimization is. Optimization is getting maximal value out of whatever resources you are provided with, not just starting with more resources. All 18s is power gaming, which is a completely separate issue (actual power gamers prefer to roll dice ... creatively).
If you're curious, the mean point value of fairly rolled characters is 30.2 (assuming cost for stats below 8 is -1 per, and above 15 is +2 per).
That depends entirely on when you imagine the process beginning. If you think you don’t start optimizing until after you roll ability scores, then sure. But very few people think that way, because it’s silly.
“Optimizers” want to optimize the entire process, which includes the acquisition of resources. With point buy, optimizing is always possible because the value function they’re trying to maximize is deterministic. With rolling, achieving a local maximum, if you will, can always be done, but optimizing globally is almost impossible.
Unless you classify 'haranguing the DM', "roll until I get a super character' or 'outright cheating' as a legitimate part of character creation, yes, you start optimizing after rolling dice, because there aren't any optimization opportunities earlier in the process. You can't optimize fairly rolled dice -- there is no strategy for doing so.
That’s exactly the point. Finally, you get it.
Um... that makes absolutely no sense. The fact that you can't optimize rolling dice in no way prevents optimization -- it just prevents optimization at the 'acquisition of resources' step, which step also cannot be optimized on point build.
I mean... yes, but...
If you read a lot of the threads here, what the optimizers want to do is not only get the most out of the provided resources, but are looking to have what you might call the "theoretical maximum" one could possibly have for their chosen class/subclass/whatever.
Case in point: the thread about the +2/+1 racial bonus going into "any stat." Using your entirely reasonable definition, the "available resources" could well be the gnome with the +racial bonus in Intelligence being played as a ranger, and optimizing within that set of resources (the higher Int). If you read the thread, the discussion wasn't about optimizing that -- it was about the choice of a gnome ranger with a +2 Int bonus being below the theoretical maximum that one could have if the racial bonuses were placed elsewhere. So folks are optimizing not against what they start with, but against all possible starting conditions and wanting the best one.
The dice example is the same thing... sure if I rolled badly, and had only a 12 max stat and lots of 6s and 7s, and the DM made me play it, and I didn't outright quite over being made to play it... I could still "optimize" that particular build, and make a 12-6-7-7-6-7 character who was amazing for a character with those stats, and the character would, using your reasonable definition, but "optimized."
But that is not the type of optimization many people here mean. By rolling stats you could end up with stats that are below the theoretical optimum which you could achieve if you manually assign points so that every number, in every stat, is exactly where it needs to be within the parameters of the starting conditions (i.e., that you can't just make the numbers literally anything -- they cost "points"). This is why some folks can't bear the thought of playing a Wizard whose +2 racial bonus went into anything but Int -- not because they can't optimize within that imperfect build, but because an Int without the +2 bonus is below the theoretical maximum that could be had if you picked "the right race" or were able to move bonuses around.
There is a difference between "making the best of what you have" and "achieving the theoretical maximum possible for this character type."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
4d6 drop lowest may be an amazing system of creating character. However I've never seen it used without some bollocks like "If Mars is ascendant and your total ability score bonuses are +3 or less you may howl at the moon and re-roll N stats where N is the number of the month."
Usually this means that you might as well choose your ability scores for all the good the randomness does.
Rerolling 1s and 2s just seem like a huge hassle. 2D6+6 is a much quicker way to do it. Or if you want to be really epic, (3D6, drop the lowest)+6.
I want to point out, btw, that for my current campaign, we used a stat array. So I'm not defending 4d6 because I use it or anything. I just don't see it as a "problematic" way to come up with stats for a character.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Or you can just roll 0d6+18.
If choosing between SPA/Point Buy or rolling 4D6, drop the lowest is part of your optimization process then rolling for stats would be to optimize, since that allows for better stats across the board and teh risk of getting worse stats than SPA/Point Buy are very low.