Here is an idea I had for creating ability score arrays during session zero.
Point-buy systems and standard arrays are great for making sure players in a group start-off with similar, balanced ability score arrays. But they are kinda boring.
Rolling dice is more traditional and also more fun. But dice rolling ability scores comes with its own problems. Because each score is independent of every other score, it is possible to get a group of scores that are mostly all low for one character and mostly all high for another. The problem isn’t so much that you get individual scores that are too high or too low. You want variability in your individual scores. You want your characters to be good at some things and less good at others. But if the overall group of scores for a character is unbalanced, you can get some characters that are good at everything while others that are good at nothing.
This method is meant to combine the play balance of point-buy or standard arrays with the fun of traditional dice rolling. It is intended for 4-6 players but can be scaled up or down as needed.
Step 1: Each player rolls six ability scores using 4d6, keep the best three. Re-roll anything under 8.
For example, assume we had six player characters in our group. Each player rolls the six ability scores for their character as follows:
Notice that player 3 has an ability score array 18-19 points higher than players 4, 5, and 6. Player 3 has 9-10 more ability modifier points to work with than these other players. Player 3 is set to dominate the game, leaving the other players with very little to do. This is al because these ability arrays are very unbalanced. Let’s fix that.
Step 2: Players write each ability score on an index card; one score per card. Gather all the cards together and sort them by score in descending order, from highest to lowest.
Step 3: Beginning with the player that rolled the highest score (player 1), deal one card to each player, moving around the table in a clockwise manner. Then, beginning with the last player, deal each player a second card moving in the opposite, counter-clockwise direction until you get back to player 1. Continue this process, dealing from player 1 to player 6 on the odd rounds, and from player 6 to player 1 on the even rounds until each player has six cards.
In this example, after step 3, each player’s ability scores look like this:
Using this method, the average ability array will contain a total of around 75 points. While the average total score for some parties may be higher or lower, arrays within the party should be within 2-3 points of each other.
Step 4: Finally, players are free to trade ability scores with each other using their cards as tokens.
Has anyone ever tried anything like this? If so, how did it work out?
It sounds a bit long winded - why not have each player roll one set of 4d6 and they choose which dice to drop; do this until you have 6 numbers - all players use those same 6 numbers.
I said the player gets to choose which dice to drop, so if they've all made high numbers, the last player could choose to get a lower score (why? RP maybe, to be vindictive, or some other reason), or maybe the first player wants lower to keep things interesting.
One campaign I'm in uses a variation of this that's a little quicker.
Everyone rolls a set of numbers, then those numbers are dropped (unsorted) into a row on an Excel spreadsheet. If there are fewer than six people in the party, the DM or someone else rolls until there are six sets of numbers, making a 6x6 grid
Then, by whatever order you want to use, each player chooses their set of stats by selecting a row, a column, or even one of the two diagonals
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Yeah. It is maybe a bit long. Certainly having everyone use the same set of numbers fixes the problem of having some characters with way better scores than others. That is the main point of using a standard array, after all.
The 'reverse pick order after round 1' is an interesting variant (and something many board games do to balance otherwise unequal starting positions) but IMO rolling dice doesn't create actually interesting characters unless you're forced to keep the attributes in order. Possibly roll a pool of characters, and give a bonus to people who pick later.
Yeah. It is maybe a bit long. Certainly having everyone use the same set of numbers fixes the problem of having some characters with way better scores than others. That is the main point of using a standard array, after all.
Yes, what this does is come right back around to what Standard Array does anyway, except inflated.
Removing the downside of rolling for stats is also removing the reason for doing it in the first place. People want to get those crazy good (or sometimes crazy bad) arrays. They want to see that they did better or worse than their friends. They want to feel that their character's strengths and weaknesses are due to rolls they themselves made.
A method I have heard of, not used but might do at some point uses a pack of playing cards, there are a couple of variants.
Select from the pack all the 6s, all the 5s, all the 4s 3 of the threes and 3 of the 2s.
Give the "pack" of 18 card to the player and ask them to shuffle them
Get them to deal the top 6 cards in a row in front of them (face up)
Option 1 get them to deal the next 6 cards in order on below the first 6 cards, and then the last 6 cards below them
Option 2 let them turn over the 7th card and place it below any of the first 6 of their choice, and repeat for each card, they can not place a card on the third row until the second row is complete
The sum of the cars in each column are theri stats.
This gives a set of ability scores that total 75.
Option 1 gives scores that are rather close to the average. Only about 50% of players will have a 16 or more and only about 50% will have a negative modifier
Option 2 gives players the abilty to choose to have a high primary stat. If they go all out for an 18 (get a 6 on the first row and only put a card underneath it if it is another 6 or the last card in the row) they have over a 50% chance of getting it.
I think a middle option of deal out two rows in order but choose where to put the final row might be best.
While card-based options do result in a fixed attribute total, 18/14/14/10/10/6 is clearly superior to 12/12/12/12/12/12. There are ways to reflect this but tricky to implement well.
I used Farling's method to start my current campaign. Everyone starts with the same array but gets to assign them as they wish. Then racial modifiers are applied. This creates enough variation.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I used Farling's method to start my current campaign. Everyone starts with the same array but gets to assign them as they wish. Then racial modifiers are applied. This creates enough variation.
It's get away from the published standard array to a campaign-specific standard array :)
I used Farling's method to start my current campaign. Everyone starts with the same array but gets to assign them as they wish. Then racial modifiers are applied. This creates enough variation.
This is going to sound sarcastic, and I really don't mean it to. How is that different than standard array?
The whole card system seems a bit over-designed to me considering how relatively simple point-buy, standard array, or roll 4d6 drop the lowest is.
Personally: I just wrote my own, slightly more generous standard array and offered that as a back-up to players who didn't roll that well for my last game.
I used Farling's method to start my current campaign. Everyone starts with the same array but gets to assign them as they wish. Then racial modifiers are applied. This creates enough variation.
This is going to sound sarcastic, and I really don't mean it to. How is that different than standard array?
Standard Array uses the numbers 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8
The roll 4d6 six times for the party results in a separate set of 6 numbers, which could include an 18 and/or a 3, or they could all be 12 (or any other number).
It mostly means that the party won't be carbon-copies of the previous campaign's ability scores :-)
I used Farling's method to start my current campaign. Everyone starts with the same array but gets to assign them as they wish. Then racial modifiers are applied. This creates enough variation.
This is going to sound sarcastic, and I really don't mean it to. How is that different than standard array?
Standard Array uses the numbers 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8
The roll 4d6 six times for the party results in a separate set of 6 numbers, which could include an 18 and/or a 3, or they could all be 12 (or any other number).
It mostly means that the party won't be carbon-copies of the previous campaign's ability scores :-)
If I had taken the time to realize that your username is Farling instead of just looking at pictures and reading replies, I could have realized that he didn't mean something that is generally called Farling's Method. I'm just a dummy I suppose.
Here is an idea I had for creating ability score arrays during session zero.
Point-buy systems and standard arrays are great for making sure players in a group start-off with similar, balanced ability score arrays. But they are kinda boring.
Rolling dice is more traditional and also more fun. But dice rolling ability scores comes with its own problems. Because each score is independent of every other score, it is possible to get a group of scores that are mostly all low for one character and mostly all high for another. The problem isn’t so much that you get individual scores that are too high or too low. You want variability in your individual scores. You want your characters to be good at some things and less good at others. But if the overall group of scores for a character is unbalanced, you can get some characters that are good at everything while others that are good at nothing.
This method is meant to combine the play balance of point-buy or standard arrays with the fun of traditional dice rolling. It is intended for 4-6 players but can be scaled up or down as needed.
Step 1: Each player rolls six ability scores using 4d6, keep the best three. Re-roll anything under 8.
For example, assume we had six player characters in our group. Each player rolls the six ability scores for their character as follows:
Player 1: 17 + 16 + 13 + 13 + 10 + 9 = 78
Player 2: 17 + 15 + 14 + 12 + 11 + 9 = 78
Player 3: 16 + 16 + 16 + 15 + 14 + 11 = 88
Player 4: 16 + 14 + 13 + 9 + 9 + 8 = 69
Player 5: 16 + 12 + 12 + 11 + 11 + 8 = 70
Player 6: 15 + 13 + 12 + 12 + 9 + 9 = 70
Notice that player 3 has an ability score array 18-19 points higher than players 4, 5, and 6. Player 3 has 9-10 more ability modifier points to work with than these other players. Player 3 is set to dominate the game, leaving the other players with very little to do. This is al because these ability arrays are very unbalanced. Let’s fix that.
Step 2: Players write each ability score on an index card; one score per card. Gather all the cards together and sort them by score in descending order, from highest to lowest.
Step 3: Beginning with the player that rolled the highest score (player 1), deal one card to each player, moving around the table in a clockwise manner. Then, beginning with the last player, deal each player a second card moving in the opposite, counter-clockwise direction until you get back to player 1. Continue this process, dealing from player 1 to player 6 on the odd rounds, and from player 6 to player 1 on the even rounds until each player has six cards.
In this example, after step 3, each player’s ability scores look like this:
Player 1: 17 + 14 + 14 + 11 + 11 + 8 = 75
Player 2: 17 + 15 + 14 + 12 + 11 + 8 = 77
Player 3: 16 + 15 + 13 + 12 + 11 + 9 = 76
Player 4: 16 + 15 + 13 + 12 + 10 + 9 = 75
Player 5: 16 + 16 + 13 + 12 + 9 + 9 = 75
Player 6: 16 + 16 + 13 + 12 + 9 + 9 = 75
Using this method, the average ability array will contain a total of around 75 points. While the average total score for some parties may be higher or lower, arrays within the party should be within 2-3 points of each other.
Step 4: Finally, players are free to trade ability scores with each other using their cards as tokens.
Has anyone ever tried anything like this? If so, how did it work out?
It sounds a bit long winded - why not have each player roll one set of 4d6 and they choose which dice to drop; do this until you have 6 numbers - all players use those same 6 numbers.
I said the player gets to choose which dice to drop, so if they've all made high numbers, the last player could choose to get a lower score (why? RP maybe, to be vindictive, or some other reason), or maybe the first player wants lower to keep things interesting.
One campaign I'm in uses a variation of this that's a little quicker.
Everyone rolls a set of numbers, then those numbers are dropped (unsorted) into a row on an Excel spreadsheet. If there are fewer than six people in the party, the DM or someone else rolls until there are six sets of numbers, making a 6x6 grid
Then, by whatever order you want to use, each player chooses their set of stats by selecting a row, a column, or even one of the two diagonals
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Yeah. It is maybe a bit long. Certainly having everyone use the same set of numbers fixes the problem of having some characters with way better scores than others. That is the main point of using a standard array, after all.
The 'reverse pick order after round 1' is an interesting variant (and something many board games do to balance otherwise unequal starting positions) but IMO rolling dice doesn't create actually interesting characters unless you're forced to keep the attributes in order. Possibly roll a pool of characters, and give a bonus to people who pick later.
Yes, what this does is come right back around to what Standard Array does anyway, except inflated.
Removing the downside of rolling for stats is also removing the reason for doing it in the first place. People want to get those crazy good (or sometimes crazy bad) arrays. They want to see that they did better or worse than their friends. They want to feel that their character's strengths and weaknesses are due to rolls they themselves made.
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
A method I have heard of, not used but might do at some point uses a pack of playing cards, there are a couple of variants.
This gives a set of ability scores that total 75.
Option 1 gives scores that are rather close to the average. Only about 50% of players will have a 16 or more and only about 50% will have a negative modifier
Option 2 gives players the abilty to choose to have a high primary stat. If they go all out for an 18 (get a 6 on the first row and only put a card underneath it if it is another 6 or the last card in the row) they have over a 50% chance of getting it.
I think a middle option of deal out two rows in order but choose where to put the final row might be best.
While card-based options do result in a fixed attribute total, 18/14/14/10/10/6 is clearly superior to 12/12/12/12/12/12. There are ways to reflect this but tricky to implement well.
I used Farling's method to start my current campaign. Everyone starts with the same array but gets to assign them as they wish. Then racial modifiers are applied. This creates enough variation.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
It's get away from the published standard array to a campaign-specific standard array :)
This is going to sound sarcastic, and I really don't mean it to. How is that different than standard array?
The whole card system seems a bit over-designed to me considering how relatively simple point-buy, standard array, or roll 4d6 drop the lowest is.
Personally: I just wrote my own, slightly more generous standard array and offered that as a back-up to players who didn't roll that well for my last game.
Standard Array uses the numbers 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8
The roll 4d6 six times for the party results in a separate set of 6 numbers, which could include an 18 and/or a 3, or they could all be 12 (or any other number).
It mostly means that the party won't be carbon-copies of the previous campaign's ability scores :-)
If I had taken the time to realize that your username is Farling instead of just looking at pictures and reading replies, I could have realized that he didn't mean something that is generally called Farling's Method. I'm just a dummy I suppose.
We all have an off day now and then. Anyway, whatever works at your table is the right method.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt