To set a bit of backstory/setting, The campaign started at LVL3 and the party is now lvl 5 a few weeks into the campaign. The backstory seems to shift and change almost ever week, and they are playing a monk and have already asked to change (and I made the change after reviewing it with them) their monastic tradition.
The player has now come to me asking to re-roll their stats which are:
STR: 10
DEX: 16
CON: 12
INT: 12
WIS: 14
CHA: 14
My policy is Roll 4d6 keep the highest 3 and all the values must add up to above 70. With that her rolls were 76 base without any increases.
The rest of the parties base totals are: 75, 84, 79, 46
I'm almost sure the player is just trying to game the system at this point and time and push to see just how far they can get.
I'm just reaching out to the community to see if my hunch is right and to get advice on how to handle the player.
It seems the player isn't happy about something about her character, but is having problems expressing what. I would suggest asking more about what she is feeling is wrong. Maybe the version of Monk she chose isn't panning out as she thought? Maybe other players, some of whom have higher stats than her, are sort of encroaching on what she thinks of as her character's duties because they have slightly better bonuses? Maybe there is some other reason that she is unhappy with her character.
Stat-wise, the monk has a +3 and a couple +2's to work with and no stat that grants a negative penalty, so it's pretty solid.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
If she has not played monk before, and especially if she is a fairly new player then this may just be an attempt to get to grips with changing ideas of how she would like the character to develop, so allowing a few changes during the first level or 2 seems reasonable, but at some point things do need to get locked in. So I would have a conversation and hear her out on why she wants to make the changes, if she gives a good reason then allow the reroll (or maybe just reorder her current roll) but make it clear that this is the last adjustment. If she can't give a good reason then stick with the current stats.
I would also ask for a finalised typed up backstory before next session, that will then also be set in stone. All the cool ideas she gets after that can be put aside for other characters later on.
I have a standing rule in my games, you can change anything about your character up to level 5, once past level 5 your character is in it's final state. The only thing I don't allow the player to change is their stats, they can rearrange them but they cannot re-roll them. I get that some players have an idea and they find out later that the idea isn't quite what they wanted. Sometimes a player realizes that their choice of character could be adjusted to better fit the roles of the group playing. Sometimes it's just that the player really dislikes the play style of the class and needs to change it. There's many reasons I can think of that people have approached me with asking to change their character some how, and normally I'm pretty receptive.
There are, however, the outliers who simply want to make their character into something to "win D&D". To those people, make the boundaries, stick to the boundaries, and if the player can't accept those boundaries, it's on them.
My style has always been to allow any changes that the players can sufficiently explain. My favorite question is very simple: why? This always leads to dialogue which helps set the course for solving the real problem.
About half the time the results are entirely different than what they requested initially and are usually far more satisfying.
Glad things got sorted out. That is ALWAYS good news.
For those following and looking for solutions to similar problems at their tables, another possibility for this situation might be multiclassing.
The players are Level 5, IIRC. This gives the Monk class some more good stuff with which to continue forward from this point. Might be time to branch out into Warlock, or Cleric, or Barbarian, or Rogue, you name it. It would take time to catch up and might put the player behind the eight ball with their character for a short while as they build their new class up, but this might be a way for them to explore something new and also to mix and mingle and make a truly individual and memorable character.
To set a bit of backstory/setting, The campaign started at LVL3 and the party is now lvl 5 a few weeks into the campaign. The backstory seems to shift and change almost ever week, and they are playing a monk and have already asked to change (and I made the change after reviewing it with them) their monastic tradition.
The player has now come to me asking to re-roll their stats which are:
STR: 10
DEX: 16
CON: 12
INT: 12
WIS: 14
CHA: 14
My policy is Roll 4d6 keep the highest 3 and all the values must add up to above 70. With that her rolls were 76 base without any increases.
The rest of the parties base totals are: 75, 84, 79, 46
I'm almost sure the player is just trying to game the system at this point and time and push to see just how far they can get.
I'm just reaching out to the community to see if my hunch is right and to get advice on how to handle the player.
It seems the player isn't happy about something about her character, but is having problems expressing what. I would suggest asking more about what she is feeling is wrong. Maybe the version of Monk she chose isn't panning out as she thought? Maybe other players, some of whom have higher stats than her, are sort of encroaching on what she thinks of as her character's duties because they have slightly better bonuses? Maybe there is some other reason that she is unhappy with her character.
Stat-wise, the monk has a +3 and a couple +2's to work with and no stat that grants a negative penalty, so it's pretty solid.
If she has not played monk before, and especially if she is a fairly new player then this may just be an attempt to get to grips with changing ideas of how she would like the character to develop, so allowing a few changes during the first level or 2 seems reasonable, but at some point things do need to get locked in. So I would have a conversation and hear her out on why she wants to make the changes, if she gives a good reason then allow the reroll (or maybe just reorder her current roll) but make it clear that this is the last adjustment. If she can't give a good reason then stick with the current stats.
I would also ask for a finalised typed up backstory before next session, that will then also be set in stone. All the cool ideas she gets after that can be put aside for other characters later on.
I have a standing rule in my games, you can change anything about your character up to level 5, once past level 5 your character is in it's final state. The only thing I don't allow the player to change is their stats, they can rearrange them but they cannot re-roll them. I get that some players have an idea and they find out later that the idea isn't quite what they wanted. Sometimes a player realizes that their choice of character could be adjusted to better fit the roles of the group playing. Sometimes it's just that the player really dislikes the play style of the class and needs to change it. There's many reasons I can think of that people have approached me with asking to change their character some how, and normally I'm pretty receptive.
There are, however, the outliers who simply want to make their character into something to "win D&D". To those people, make the boundaries, stick to the boundaries, and if the player can't accept those boundaries, it's on them.
My style has always been to allow any changes that the players can sufficiently explain. My favorite question is very simple: why? This always leads to dialogue which helps set the course for solving the real problem.
About half the time the results are entirely different than what they requested initially and are usually far more satisfying.
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner lol
You nailed it. I told her lets start a clean slate and I led with what you suggested. We've gotten everything smoothed and figured out now.
Glad things got sorted out. That is ALWAYS good news.
For those following and looking for solutions to similar problems at their tables, another possibility for this situation might be multiclassing.
The players are Level 5, IIRC. This gives the Monk class some more good stuff with which to continue forward from this point. Might be time to branch out into Warlock, or Cleric, or Barbarian, or Rogue, you name it. It would take time to catch up and might put the player behind the eight ball with their character for a short while as they build their new class up, but this might be a way for them to explore something new and also to mix and mingle and make a truly individual and memorable character.
Thank you.
ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
Those stats are what you could get with a regular human using point buy (well, you could bump that strength up to 11).