Hey, new DM here. I have tried a modified stat rolling. The "Yahtzee" approach follows the rolling scheme of rolling 4d6 drop the lowest for each stat. Then you can reroll dice up to seven times. Any advice to see if I could improve this?
I use roll 4d6 keep highest 3, universally for all players. This does introduce some extremes, and I encourage my players to embrace those - low or high.
But fundamentally, part of playing D&D is about rolling dice - some with short term effects, some with long term effects (IMO).
Nothing against other build methods, but I've always preferred the excitement of dice rolls over more predictable methods.
But I also roll the hp for their individual opponents - even when it is 10 goblins - their hitpoints will often range right from 2 to 12 - which again create an element of unpredictability, which in turn creates an element of excitement (again IMO)
I just wanted to pick other's brains on having your players roll their character stats. Do you always just use standard array? Roll 4d6 keep the highest? reroll 1?
Recently I have been using a fairly unique style of rolling stats. I've been having them roll 20d6 drop two lowest and have a pool of 18 dice to assign 3 to each stat. The results have been surprisingly good and not over powered or anything. Seems to encourage a lot more thought from my players in how they design their character too. I wonder, does anyone else use this unique system?
I used to love rolling stats. However, in a game I DM - a player, who was rolling up a gnome rogue, got some ridiculously lucky rolls. I mean an 18, three 17s, and a 16, and then a 15 or 14? Naturally she put the 18 into DEX, then a 17 into STR, and then everything else where ever... the reason STR sticks out is another player rolled a (Red) Dragonborn Barbarian... and got a high STR also (16 or 17?). And there was a session where he'd tried to lift a sewer gate to sneak into a city - and asked for a STR check, he failed the DC. So the Rogue, said I'd like to try. And I said, "OK, since he's failed once, the DC is 1 higher." She said, "Sure." And rolled a 16, which I think I had the DC at 15 by then. So she opened the gate. I could instantly see in the players eyes - that this towering Dragonborn barbarian just got shown up by a gnome rogue for a strength check. He never complained to me. But I felt like that was a small turning point of how sometimes, randomness can stab away at another player's enjoyment. (And maybe it was just me... maybe it didn't bug him... but I thought I saw some disappointment) :D
So all that to say, I do point buys - so if someone complains about a sucky roll, it's up to them to have spent the points where they did, rather than random chance of dice.
Ind8vidual Ability checks are very random. In reality if a keen body builder can not lift something it is almost certain someone who rarely work out would be able to but if the rogue had +0 strength they would beat a +3 barb 34% of the time and tie another 4%.
The problem with rolled stats is the rogue outperforms the barb on average. The players as soon as they know the modifiers may get the rogue to make all the strength checks to maximise their chance of success. They might wait until their characters would realise but in either case it is not fun for the barb.
Regarding Overchords approach that does give the players the option to min max to the extreme. Most of the time they would be able to start with an 18 +2 stat but a dump stat could be -3 or even -4.
I started playing AD&D way back when, when rolling was 3d6, down the board, no swapping, no choice, no mitigation. But if you hated the character, you could roll a 2nd, from scratch. We only had 1 set of dice, and it took forever; also there was inevitably 1 (or more) player who simply didn't enjoy their character.
Equally though, D&D is about taking a chance, and rolling dice, so I dislike standard array or point buy (they have their place as they're easy, but just... boring to me).
Besides, rolling the attributes can lead to some interesting strengths and weaknesses - but they have to be ones the player is happy with - after all, it's more their game than mine (same goes if a player REALLY wants to min/max). IMO the only time it's really an issue is interactions within the group, not between the group and the outside world. It's no fun being that guy with attribute total of <60, when the gal next to you has total 90+; but if everyone's broadly similar, then either of those can be fine.
I do a Session Zero for the basics of character creation, and party balance.
Where I've moved to over the last few years is for 7 rolls of 1d4, 1d6 and 1d8; and keep the results in a table (if The Lady is scowling at our table, I'll allow an 8th set). 1s can be rerolled (once) with dice of 1d3, 1d4 and 1d6. 2s can be rerolled (once) with dice of 1d2, 1d3 and 1d4 (and keep whichever is higher from the 2 rolls).
There's the pool of rolls for every character. Every attribute then has to has 1 result from the d4 column, 1 result from the d6 column and 1 result from the d8 column (my... discouragement to min/max).
Technically the attribute range is then 3-18 with an average of 12.1; with scores of 3-5 being virtually unheard of; crucially no-one is coming in over-powered compared to their comrades, and everyone will generally have different strengths and weaknesses, meaning that the party have to work as a team.
I allow my players to choose 4d6 drop lowest, standard array, or point buy. If you roll particularly bad, I allow a reroll.
Personally, when making characters, I like using the normal 4d6 drop lowest method. I'm not a huge fan of meticulously building my own special perfect OC, and prefer to let the dice decide.
I've experimented a little with a houserule method, which is less powerful than the usual 5e character, but it can be pretty fun:
1: Roll 3d6 (or 4d6 drop lowest if your DM is feeling nice today)
2: Immediately assign the total to an ability.
3: Repeat until all 6 ability scores are filled.
It's kind of a midway point between the old-school "roll 3d6 down the line" method and the newer "roll your scores and assign as you see fit". I don't use it for my games though, because a couple of my players are very "I should have full control over what character I play and their scores".
I saw an alternate method in, I think it was 13th age, that looked pretty cool. Start with a 13 in everything. Roll 6d6 and assign each one a letter (A,B,C etc.)
Then you do stats like:
13+A-B
13+B-C
And the final one is13 +F-A
I’ve not tried it, but it seemed pretty cool for getting some randomness without much chance of crazy good or bad scores.
And I heard of another 2d6+6. Still nice and random, but ups the average score and flattens the bell curve a bit.
If you want random but fair stat allocation, your best bet is generally going to be some sort of pool allocator. For example:
Assign stats a number from 1-6 (e.g. 1=str, 2=dex, 3=con, 4=int, 5=wis, 6=cha)
Roll 12d6, and count the number of dice matching each of those values, then in place of species ASIs give each character the same number of bonus dice (this makes human (not variant) quite a bit stronger, but I doubt that's a real problem). Then assign stat values, as follows:
0 matches: 7 (if you're going to have a dump stat.. might as well make it a DUMP stat)
1 match: 11 (odd numbers because... might as well tempt people to use ASIs later)
2-6 matches: 11 + N
7+ matches: 14 + N/2 (reroll any odd numbered dice)
This is generally slightly higher average than point buy, but produces inefficient stat values so there isn't a balance issue.
This is usually equivalent to a 30 point buy, but almost always produces inefficient stats, so it's decently balanced. Roll a few more dice for more powerful characters. You can replace normal species ASIs with just giving PCs 3 bonus dice to place however they like (this might mean people actually put those bonuses in low stats... but that's fine).
I just wanted to pick other's brains on having your players roll their character stats. Do you always just use standard array? Roll 4d6 keep the highest? reroll 1?
Recently I have been using a fairly unique style of rolling stats. I've been having them roll 20d6 drop two lowest and have a pool of 18 dice to assign 3 to each stat. The results have been surprisingly good and not over powered or anything. Seems to encourage a lot more thought from my players in how they design their character too. I wonder, does anyone else use this unique system?
I used to love rolling stats. However, in a game I DM - a player, who was rolling up a gnome rogue, got some ridiculously lucky rolls. I mean an 18, three 17s, and a 16, and then a 15 or 14? Naturally she put the 18 into DEX, then a 17 into STR, and then everything else where ever... the reason STR sticks out is another player rolled a (Red) Dragonborn Barbarian... and got a high STR also (16 or 17?). And there was a session where he'd tried to lift a sewer gate to sneak into a city - and asked for a STR check, he failed the DC. So the Rogue, said I'd like to try. And I said, "OK, since he's failed once, the DC is 1 higher." She said, "Sure." And rolled a 16, which I think I had the DC at 15 by then. So she opened the gate. I could instantly see in the players eyes - that this towering Dragonborn barbarian just got shown up by a gnome rogue for a strength check. He never complained to me. But I felt like that was a small turning point of how sometimes, randomness can stab away at another player's enjoyment. (And maybe it was just me... maybe it didn't bug him... but I thought I saw some disappointment) :D
So all that to say, I do point buys - so if someone complains about a sucky roll, it's up to them to have spent the points where they did, rather than random chance of dice.
In your skill test example ... the gnome doesn't even need good stats to do this. The gnome sorcerer with 8 strength rolls a 19, modified to 18, passes the DC of 16 and lifts the grate while the barbarian with 18 strength, proficiency in athletics rolls a 3 for a modified 10 (assuming tier 2). However, the barbarian's passive athletics is 17 while the gnome's is 9.
This is why I use passive skills as a factor in figuring out this sort of challenge. Is there any reason the barbarian could not try to lift the grate more than once? (i.e. there is a time constraint?) Are there consequences for failure? (does failing to open the grate trigger a trap, cause some other event to occur etc).
The barbarian's passive athletics is 17, when I run it this means that they WILL succeed at a DC15 athletics check if there are no time constraints or consequences for failure. The question is not success but how long it will take. On the other hand, the gnome is unlikely to succeed. Passive does not result in a success so they have to rely on the die roll.
This approach rewards the barbarian for being good at the things they are good at while allowing the rare occasion for the gnome to unexpectedly succeed.
The fairest approach is either some form of standard array or point buy.
If you want randomness and fairness to the players while everyone gets to roll dice then have every player roll 4d6k3 and then allow the players to choose which of all of the sets of die rolls they want to use for their character. They could all wind up choosing the same but with any luck there will be both sets with a high score and sets that are more balanced resulting in players choosing the set that is best for their character concept.
Another approach is for the DM to decide on some number of points and then make up several different arrays with the same point value and allow the players to choose whichever array they like from those provided.
I like t see y layers enjoy their hero’s as being above ad beyond the “normal” adventurer so I have the roll but they roll u til they get a set with no rolls below 10 and at least 3 rolls of 13+ so that they can multiclass fairly easily (most of my players like multiclasses)
I use Standard Array more often than not, but whatever we decide applies to everyone at the table. If they want to roll 3d6 in order, they don't reroll and there must be a witness. Point Buy is fine too so long as everyone's on the same level with power; if they all want to min-max, that means I can put out harder encounters without constantly knocking one character down.
It's really up to the players, but there has to be unanimous agreement as to how character generation is going to be done.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
i my last campaign, I gave my players 75 points (plus any racial modifiers), minimum of 8 on any one stat.
This would only work if you also specified a maximum of 16 in each stat - otherwise it is way too easy to get to 20 at level 1, and 18 in another starting stat too (bumped to 19? by race)
All methods have their values but I find for a long term campaign where people really connect in and invest, point buy or standard array are the best. Yes you can occasionally have a group that rally's around a character with a 6 or 7 in some stat but for the most part after a while the "so and so always fails at" starts to catch up. And even if they don't fail at it consistently, the lingering specter of that really low stat always lingers. I mean, in theory a character with an 8 in a stat is only -1 worse than one with a 10 which is -1 worse than 12. Those all translate to roughly a 5% difference at each step.
Yet.... YET.. there is the perception that can really wear on players.
As to the other extreme, I once ran a game at a youth center where a kid showed up with "totally honestly rolled character ask my dad" that was also an Arrakrokra Monk. With 16 or higher in all physical stats plus INT. It was.... not fun.
I roll 4d6, keep the 3 highest. Repeat that 7 times, keep the 6 highest. That's how I usually do it. That is a really interesting way of rolling stats though. Before I played officially and was just rolling hit, miss, crit, I'd roll 1d20 for each stat. I know some people that still use this method. I do not recommend it though, as it's very hit and miss.
Point buy is absolutely horrible as it currently stands. It's way too limited, and doesn't offer the ability to really get into a build with feats, as you need to spend all your ASI into stats.
And that is coming from games barely going above level 10. So if you play a monk or a race with natural weapons, you're not going to see any sort of progress if you also need feats for your build.
Hey, new DM here. I have tried a modified stat rolling. The "Yahtzee" approach follows the rolling scheme of rolling 4d6 drop the lowest for each stat. Then you can reroll dice up to seven times. Any advice to see if I could improve this?
I use roll 4d6 keep highest 3, universally for all players.
This does introduce some extremes, and I encourage my players to embrace those - low or high.
But fundamentally, part of playing D&D is about rolling dice - some with short term effects, some with long term effects (IMO).
Nothing against other build methods, but I've always preferred the excitement of dice rolls over more predictable methods.
But I also roll the hp for their individual opponents - even when it is 10 goblins - their hitpoints will often range right from 2 to 12 - which again create an element of unpredictability, which in turn creates an element of excitement (again IMO)
I used to love rolling stats. However, in a game I DM - a player, who was rolling up a gnome rogue, got some ridiculously lucky rolls. I mean an 18, three 17s, and a 16, and then a 15 or 14? Naturally she put the 18 into DEX, then a 17 into STR, and then everything else where ever... the reason STR sticks out is another player rolled a (Red) Dragonborn Barbarian... and got a high STR also (16 or 17?). And there was a session where he'd tried to lift a sewer gate to sneak into a city - and asked for a STR check, he failed the DC. So the Rogue, said I'd like to try. And I said, "OK, since he's failed once, the DC is 1 higher." She said, "Sure." And rolled a 16, which I think I had the DC at 15 by then. So she opened the gate. I could instantly see in the players eyes - that this towering Dragonborn barbarian just got shown up by a gnome rogue for a strength check. He never complained to me. But I felt like that was a small turning point of how sometimes, randomness can stab away at another player's enjoyment. (And maybe it was just me... maybe it didn't bug him... but I thought I saw some disappointment) :D
So all that to say, I do point buys - so if someone complains about a sucky roll, it's up to them to have spent the points where they did, rather than random chance of dice.
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Ind8vidual Ability checks are very random. In reality if a keen body builder can not lift something it is almost certain someone who rarely work out would be able to but if the rogue had +0 strength they would beat a +3 barb 34% of the time and tie another 4%.
The problem with rolled stats is the rogue outperforms the barb on average. The players as soon as they know the modifiers may get the rogue to make all the strength checks to maximise their chance of success. They might wait until their characters would realise but in either case it is not fun for the barb.
Regarding Overchords approach that does give the players the option to min max to the extreme. Most of the time they would be able to start with an 18 +2 stat but a dump stat could be -3 or even -4.
4d6, keep the best three. If the total of all six abilities is really bad, I let them reroll.
Otherwise if someone is just a bit behind the group, I give them an extra feat or two, to compensate the lower stats a bit.
I started playing AD&D way back when, when rolling was 3d6, down the board, no swapping, no choice, no mitigation. But if you hated the character, you could roll a 2nd, from scratch.
We only had 1 set of dice, and it took forever; also there was inevitably 1 (or more) player who simply didn't enjoy their character.
Equally though, D&D is about taking a chance, and rolling dice, so I dislike standard array or point buy (they have their place as they're easy, but just... boring to me).
Besides, rolling the attributes can lead to some interesting strengths and weaknesses - but they have to be ones the player is happy with - after all, it's more their game than mine (same goes if a player REALLY wants to min/max). IMO the only time it's really an issue is interactions within the group, not between the group and the outside world. It's no fun being that guy with attribute total of <60, when the gal next to you has total 90+; but if everyone's broadly similar, then either of those can be fine.
I do a Session Zero for the basics of character creation, and party balance.
Where I've moved to over the last few years is for 7 rolls of 1d4, 1d6 and 1d8; and keep the results in a table (if The Lady is scowling at our table, I'll allow an 8th set).
1s can be rerolled (once) with dice of 1d3, 1d4 and 1d6.
2s can be rerolled (once) with dice of 1d2, 1d3 and 1d4 (and keep whichever is higher from the 2 rolls).
There's the pool of rolls for every character.
Every attribute then has to has 1 result from the d4 column, 1 result from the d6 column and 1 result from the d8 column (my... discouragement to min/max).
Technically the attribute range is then 3-18 with an average of 12.1; with scores of 3-5 being virtually unheard of; crucially no-one is coming in over-powered compared to their comrades, and everyone will generally have different strengths and weaknesses, meaning that the party have to work as a team.
I allow my players to choose 4d6 drop lowest, standard array, or point buy. If you roll particularly bad, I allow a reroll.
Personally, when making characters, I like using the normal 4d6 drop lowest method. I'm not a huge fan of meticulously building my own special perfect OC, and prefer to let the dice decide.
I've experimented a little with a houserule method, which is less powerful than the usual 5e character, but it can be pretty fun:
1: Roll 3d6 (or 4d6 drop lowest if your DM is feeling nice today)
2: Immediately assign the total to an ability.
3: Repeat until all 6 ability scores are filled.
It's kind of a midway point between the old-school "roll 3d6 down the line" method and the newer "roll your scores and assign as you see fit". I don't use it for my games though, because a couple of my players are very "I should have full control over what character I play and their scores".
[REDACTED]
I saw an alternate method in, I think it was 13th age, that looked pretty cool.
Start with a 13 in everything. Roll 6d6 and assign each one a letter (A,B,C etc.)
Then you do stats like:
13+A-B
13+B-C
And the final one is13 +F-A
I’ve not tried it, but it seemed pretty cool for getting some randomness without much chance of crazy good or bad scores.
And I heard of another 2d6+6. Still nice and random, but ups the average score and flattens the bell curve a bit.
If you want random but fair stat allocation, your best bet is generally going to be some sort of pool allocator. For example:
Assign stats a number from 1-6 (e.g. 1=str, 2=dex, 3=con, 4=int, 5=wis, 6=cha)
Roll 12d6, and count the number of dice matching each of those values, then in place of species ASIs give each character the same number of bonus dice (this makes human (not variant) quite a bit stronger, but I doubt that's a real problem). Then assign stat values, as follows:
This is generally slightly higher average than point buy, but produces inefficient stat values so there isn't a balance issue.
This is usually equivalent to a 30 point buy, but almost always produces inefficient stats, so it's decently balanced. Roll a few more dice for more powerful characters. You can replace normal species ASIs with just giving PCs 3 bonus dice to place however they like (this might mean people actually put those bonuses in low stats... but that's fine).
In your skill test example ... the gnome doesn't even need good stats to do this. The gnome sorcerer with 8 strength rolls a 19, modified to 18, passes the DC of 16 and lifts the grate while the barbarian with 18 strength, proficiency in athletics rolls a 3 for a modified 10 (assuming tier 2). However, the barbarian's passive athletics is 17 while the gnome's is 9.
This is why I use passive skills as a factor in figuring out this sort of challenge. Is there any reason the barbarian could not try to lift the grate more than once? (i.e. there is a time constraint?) Are there consequences for failure? (does failing to open the grate trigger a trap, cause some other event to occur etc).
The barbarian's passive athletics is 17, when I run it this means that they WILL succeed at a DC15 athletics check if there are no time constraints or consequences for failure. The question is not success but how long it will take. On the other hand, the gnome is unlikely to succeed. Passive does not result in a success so they have to rely on the die roll.
This approach rewards the barbarian for being good at the things they are good at while allowing the rare occasion for the gnome to unexpectedly succeed.
The fairest approach is either some form of standard array or point buy.
If you want randomness and fairness to the players while everyone gets to roll dice then have every player roll 4d6k3 and then allow the players to choose which of all of the sets of die rolls they want to use for their character. They could all wind up choosing the same but with any luck there will be both sets with a high score and sets that are more balanced resulting in players choosing the set that is best for their character concept.
Another approach is for the DM to decide on some number of points and then make up several different arrays with the same point value and allow the players to choose whichever array they like from those provided.
I like t see y layers enjoy their hero’s as being above ad beyond the “normal” adventurer so I have the roll but they roll u til they get a set with no rolls below 10 and at least 3 rolls of 13+ so that they can multiclass fairly easily (most of my players like multiclasses)
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I use Standard Array more often than not, but whatever we decide applies to everyone at the table. If they want to roll 3d6 in order, they don't reroll and there must be a witness. Point Buy is fine too so long as everyone's on the same level with power; if they all want to min-max, that means I can put out harder encounters without constantly knocking one character down.
It's really up to the players, but there has to be unanimous agreement as to how character generation is going to be done.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
i my last campaign, I gave my players 75 points (plus any racial modifiers), minimum of 8 on any one stat.
This would only work if you also specified a maximum of 16 in each stat - otherwise it is way too easy to get to 20 at level 1, and 18 in another starting stat too (bumped to 19? by race)
All methods have their values but I find for a long term campaign where people really connect in and invest, point buy or standard array are the best. Yes you can occasionally have a group that rally's around a character with a 6 or 7 in some stat but for the most part after a while the "so and so always fails at" starts to catch up. And even if they don't fail at it consistently, the lingering specter of that really low stat always lingers. I mean, in theory a character with an 8 in a stat is only -1 worse than one with a 10 which is -1 worse than 12. Those all translate to roughly a 5% difference at each step.
Yet.... YET.. there is the perception that can really wear on players.
As to the other extreme, I once ran a game at a youth center where a kid showed up with "totally honestly rolled character ask my dad" that was also an Arrakrokra Monk. With 16 or higher in all physical stats plus INT. It was.... not fun.
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I roll 4d6, keep the 3 highest. Repeat that 7 times, keep the 6 highest. That's how I usually do it. That is a really interesting way of rolling stats though. Before I played officially and was just rolling hit, miss, crit, I'd roll 1d20 for each stat. I know some people that still use this method. I do not recommend it though, as it's very hit and miss.
Dang but you lot are too easy on your players! 3d6 straight down the line. Don't like it? Tough. Play at some other table! <grumble, grumble>
:-D
I kid. Current game I used the 4d6, drop the lowest, arrange how you like method.
Point buy is absolutely horrible as it currently stands. It's way too limited, and doesn't offer the ability to really get into a build with feats, as you need to spend all your ASI into stats.
And that is coming from games barely going above level 10. So if you play a monk or a race with natural weapons, you're not going to see any sort of progress if you also need feats for your build.
And why am I here?