My players' sheets have been a mystery to me since they rolled their characters. I'm not a DM who demands everyone's papers at the end of the night. However, I got a Master Tier subscription here and the PHB, so I've encouraged them to upload their sheets to take advantage of the tools.
Holy kumquats. I'd forgotten just how badly they had rolled during creation.
I'd let them roll 6d6 8x, dropping the highest and lowest d6 and the highest and lowest total. Somehow the ranger rolled four 14s while the barbarian only had one score above 11. The others have similarly smelly scores or HP. My question is: would it be a good idea to let them reroll some or all of their scores and HP on their next level up to 5? What do y'all think would be fairest? Permanent buffs wouldn't derail the game for them, since I can still make encounters challenging, but the barbarian might not roll so many Zeros on CHA saving throws.
Opinions?
DM Carrion
[I deleted the previous version of this thread when I noticed I'd titled it "Refilling Characters." *head_desk.gif*]
I mean, I'm sure you could find a gas station and- oh, right.
Smarmy comments aside, I think this is probably a pretty significant issue for the campaign if you go forward with this, because it means that you have pretty huge balance issues, particularly for the Barbarian who got cursed by the dice. I think there are a couple options you could do here:
Give the standard array. If the outcome is that bad, just give your player the choice to take the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8). I always give my players, even if they've already rolled stats, the chance to take standard array- it guarantees a baseline of not-suck.
Reroll scores below an X value. This may mean a lot of rolling, but basically you can say something like "If the sum of your scores is less than a certain number (say, 66) or the sum of your total attribute modifiers is less than a certain number (say, +3), you can roll again." I've seen people use this to prevent particularly bad dice luck, or even allow rerolls for individual attributes if a player winds up with a 3 or 4. My only caution here is that if the player then gets a great roll, it can go from being weak but relatively balanced to incredibly powerful, and on the rare occasion I've had players just straight up ask to change their scores. I wouldn't normally allow tampering with dice rolls beyond maybe changing one particularly weak attribute up to something more reasonable, like a 5 to a 7 on a block fairly average otherwise, and just adjusting the scores can lead to some jealousy or balance issues. More veteran players tend to be reasonably understanding, but newbies can feel like it's playing favorites, especially if it winds up making a character numerically stronger than their compatriots.
Use a different rolling method. Although your method should usually trend towards stronger results, because it eliminates both positive and negative outliers it can mean very average scores. That's great if you get mostly 12-13, which is what the average roll should be on 4d6 (since you're dropping the highest and lowest, you're essentially just rolling 4d6 but biasing towards the average of 12.5), but that also means that your more spectacular results, both low and high, are automatically removed. Although the statistical average of your method is actually something like .25 higher than 4d6 keep 3, you appear to have gotten particularly poor results. Now, this is most likely just chance- if you rerolled you might get something more consistently in the 12-13 range, but your method should tend to make a pretty homogeneous stat block. If your goal is to make sure that all of a character's scores are pretty close, then this is a good method- your characters should have attribute arrays that are pretty similar across the board, even if it might be slightly off center from 12-13. However, that means that you can get hit with a whole lotta suck if you're a standard deviation below or a whole lotta nice if you're a standard deviation above- see your ranger and your barbarian (who, to be fair, are probably more than a standard deviation away from center). To avoid things where you have consistently good or bad stat blocks, rolling fewer dice is actually helpful- there's more randomness there if you're not dropping the outlier scores. This means that blocks might be more varied, but it also means you usually avoid just absolute suck arrays. Doesn't mean it will be balanced, but it might make players with a below average array feel less screwed if they have at least one high roll, or a strong character feel more dependent on others if they have a bad attribute or two.
I would let the ones who rolled horribly either re-roll immediately or choose to take standard array, before you even consider playing more. Speaking from experience with groups who rolled badly, the players are just not going to enjoy the game, might end up wanting to leave or will just complain the whole way. Imo every player should have at least one +3 modifier, one +2 and one +1, as that means they have at least one good ability score, probably the casting stats for casters or Str/Dex for fighters, and two more that make their character not just a one-trick pony.
I would let the ones who rolled horribly either re-roll immediately or choose to take standard array, before you even consider playing more. Speaking from experience with groups who rolled badly, the players are just not going to enjoy the game, might end up wanting to leave or will just complain the whole way. Imo every player should have at least one +3 modifier, one +2 and one +1, as that means they have at least one good ability score, probably the casting stats for casters or Str/Dex for fighters, and two more that make their character not just a one-trick pony.
Most people that say they like rolling stats only like it if they roll well(apparently you felt this way also). They think they will beat the odds of rolling average or poorly. Just save everyone time and trouble and use point buy or arrays right from the start.
Most people that say they like rolling stats only like it if they roll well(apparently you felt this way also). They think they will beat the odds of rolling average or poorly. Just save everyone time and trouble and use point buy or arrays right from the start.
If it was one veteran player and their character, I probably wouldn't be concerned, but it's half the party, and for most this is their first campaign. I'd like them to enjoy it, and I don't want to nerf encounters and bore the stronger players.
When I first started playing D&D, we only rolled stats, other options weren't even really a consideration. This resulted in some really good characters, some average characters and some mediocre and just bad characters. Stats are the basis for everything that the character can do mechanically in D&D. No matter how you roleplay, without some sort of stats to support it, it ultimately goes nowhere. Roleplaying a wizard with an intelligence of 11 sounds fun for a while until you can't affect opponents with any of your spells due to the low DCs.
5e is actually much better than previous editions in this regard. Stats are still important but not as crucial as earlier editions. In 1e wizards were incapable of casting 9th level spells without having a very high int and 1e had no mechanism to regularly boost stats.
For this reason, although I loved using rolled stats when I rolled well, I've moved to using point buy for character creation. Players can choose the stats that the want to be good and the ones they don't. They create the character they want to play. Rolled stats is somewhat like saying I have this person, what are they good and bad at, what kind of character can I create from this collection of stats that would be fun to play. On the other hand, point buy works from the other side ... what kind of character do I think would be fun to play ... how do I arrange the stats to support that concept. This makes more sense from the point of view of playing a character that made certain life choices in part because their stats helped make that an obvious choice. The stats are selected to fit the character backstory and character development.
---
Anyway, to the OP, I'd suggest allowing everyone to redo their stats if they want just to keep it fair. The barbarian with the highest score of 11 may not know exactly how bad they are if they are a new player. However, they will eventually notice if they haven't already that they hit things far less frequently and do significantly less damage than the characters with a 16 in their attack stat. If you want to allow them to re-roll then go ahead but I would also use the standard array as a floor - they can choose their die rolls or the standard array. In addition, you may well have someone go from rolling really badly to exceptionally well, the barbarian going from nothing higher than an 11 to nothing lower than 14 with a couple of 18s and some other players might feel that is unfair too (unless you are all good friends and don't mind allowing the character to shine). So I would have a discussion with the players, outline the issue and get their feedback on redoing character stats, what system they would want to use and give them the option to keep what they have or redo it. (However, if they decide to redo it they should have to keep the new numbers (or standard array/point buy) ... it isn't an opportunity to try to get better stats with no down side.
Remove the highest and lowest die from each set of 6d6, narrowing it down to the 4d6 in the middle
Remove the lowest of that 4d6 to get your final score
Remove the two highest scores
For example:
I roll 6d6 eight times. My first set is a 6, 6, 4, 3, 1, 5
I remove a 6 and the 1, getting my set down to 6, 4, 3, 5
I remove the 3, getting my set down to 6, 4, 5, so a total of 15. All eight totals are 15, 12, 6, 16, 9, 4, 11, 13
I remove the 4 and the 16. My final set is 15, 12, 6, 9, 11, 13
Is that right? I'm not a stats guy, but the samples I'm looking at on my computer are skewing hard toward the mediocre, erring on bad. I'd change your approach. If you want the excitement of random rolls, just do 4d6, drop lowest. You'll get more dynamic results. If you don't like bad results, set a minimum average, or give the players an 18 and have them roll the rest of their stats randomly. If you don't care about randomness, just give them the standard array, and if you want the results to be more spectacular, just upgrade that.
Not quite. Skip step 3 in your list; the idea is to roll 6d6 and keep the middle 4. Thus, it's possible to roll six 6's and get a final sum of 24 (rounding down to 20 for the game) or roll six 1's and get a final sum of 4. It was the method my first DM used during our character creation, and I didn't know D&D had official rolling rules (roll 4d6; drop the lowest) until well after my current group had started playing.
I agree with RWinnie for the most part. The more dice you use, the more likely you are to see average rolls. Taking out the high and low rolls does even more to push values to average.
Rolling 4d6 dropping the lowest value doesn't provide more dynamic results, it provides a higher average dice roll by eliminating a bad roll. Here is why:
When you roll 3d6 each die has a 50% Chance of being above or below average. The average is (1+6)/2= 3.5, which makes more sense with multiple dice. Since we need an actual possible die roll, 3 is below average and 4 is above.
When you roll 4d6, it allows 2 rolls to count towards one result. A 50% chance on 2 dice still means that each die could go high or low BUT, 1 should be higher and 1 should be lower than average. This is basically making a d6 roll with advantage.
Roll 4d6 and discount the lowest 1d6 7 times - giving you 1 spare roll and allowing you to drop the one you don't want. Completely ignore any roll where the total is less than 7 before racial mods and do not allow them to pick a race with a racial mod that would bring a stat below 7. As you are currently in play I would just say any stat that ends up below 7 becomes a 7.
There are no shortage of ways of rolling characters, but aside from pool allocators (you're rolling dice for how you spend a limited pool of upgrades, so everyone gets the same total number of boosts) or linked abilities (roll two or more traits at a time; the higher the first stat, the lower the other stats) they all suffer from some characters being just better than others.
So my players didn't level up for... reasons (I offered them a healthy fight with goblins; they chose to run away. I had an NPC tell them there were 30 gobs when in reality there were 11). In the meantime, I'm rolling an NPC centaur monk for them to meet, and I'm using my standard rolling method. First three rolls came out 14-13-17, but roll #4 was a 20 and then roll #5 was...
1-1-1-1-2-2
Drop the highest and lowest, and that's a 5 total.
So you see how some crazy rolls can create a problem if you get more than a couple of them. Likely, both of these will be the high/low that I drop, but still, if the dice are running against you, low stats can happen.
Carrion
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My players' sheets have been a mystery to me since they rolled their characters. I'm not a DM who demands everyone's papers at the end of the night. However, I got a Master Tier subscription here and the PHB, so I've encouraged them to upload their sheets to take advantage of the tools.
Holy kumquats. I'd forgotten just how badly they had rolled during creation.
I'd let them roll 6d6 8x, dropping the highest and lowest d6 and the highest and lowest total. Somehow the ranger rolled four 14s while the barbarian only had one score above 11. The others have similarly smelly scores or HP. My question is: would it be a good idea to let them reroll some or all of their scores and HP on their next level up to 5? What do y'all think would be fairest? Permanent buffs wouldn't derail the game for them, since I can still make encounters challenging, but the barbarian might not roll so many Zeros on CHA saving throws.
Opinions?
DM Carrion
[I deleted the previous version of this thread when I noticed I'd titled it "Refilling Characters." *head_desk.gif*]
Okay, it still says "Refilling Characters" as the title so **** it. We're refilling our characters.
I mean, I'm sure you could find a gas station and- oh, right.
Smarmy comments aside, I think this is probably a pretty significant issue for the campaign if you go forward with this, because it means that you have pretty huge balance issues, particularly for the Barbarian who got cursed by the dice. I think there are a couple options you could do here:
Give the standard array. If the outcome is that bad, just give your player the choice to take the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8). I always give my players, even if they've already rolled stats, the chance to take standard array- it guarantees a baseline of not-suck.
Reroll scores below an X value. This may mean a lot of rolling, but basically you can say something like "If the sum of your scores is less than a certain number (say, 66) or the sum of your total attribute modifiers is less than a certain number (say, +3), you can roll again." I've seen people use this to prevent particularly bad dice luck, or even allow rerolls for individual attributes if a player winds up with a 3 or 4. My only caution here is that if the player then gets a great roll, it can go from being weak but relatively balanced to incredibly powerful, and on the rare occasion I've had players just straight up ask to change their scores. I wouldn't normally allow tampering with dice rolls beyond maybe changing one particularly weak attribute up to something more reasonable, like a 5 to a 7 on a block fairly average otherwise, and just adjusting the scores can lead to some jealousy or balance issues. More veteran players tend to be reasonably understanding, but newbies can feel like it's playing favorites, especially if it winds up making a character numerically stronger than their compatriots.
Use a different rolling method. Although your method should usually trend towards stronger results, because it eliminates both positive and negative outliers it can mean very average scores. That's great if you get mostly 12-13, which is what the average roll should be on 4d6 (since you're dropping the highest and lowest, you're essentially just rolling 4d6 but biasing towards the average of 12.5), but that also means that your more spectacular results, both low and high, are automatically removed. Although the statistical average of your method is actually something like .25 higher than 4d6 keep 3, you appear to have gotten particularly poor results. Now, this is most likely just chance- if you rerolled you might get something more consistently in the 12-13 range, but your method should tend to make a pretty homogeneous stat block. If your goal is to make sure that all of a character's scores are pretty close, then this is a good method- your characters should have attribute arrays that are pretty similar across the board, even if it might be slightly off center from 12-13. However, that means that you can get hit with a whole lotta suck if you're a standard deviation below or a whole lotta nice if you're a standard deviation above- see your ranger and your barbarian (who, to be fair, are probably more than a standard deviation away from center). To avoid things where you have consistently good or bad stat blocks, rolling fewer dice is actually helpful- there's more randomness there if you're not dropping the outlier scores. This means that blocks might be more varied, but it also means you usually avoid just absolute suck arrays. Doesn't mean it will be balanced, but it might make players with a below average array feel less screwed if they have at least one high roll, or a strong character feel more dependent on others if they have a bad attribute or two.
I would let the ones who rolled horribly either re-roll immediately or choose to take standard array, before you even consider playing more. Speaking from experience with groups who rolled badly, the players are just not going to enjoy the game, might end up wanting to leave or will just complain the whole way. Imo every player should have at least one +3 modifier, one +2 and one +1, as that means they have at least one good ability score, probably the casting stats for casters or Str/Dex for fighters, and two more that make their character not just a one-trick pony.
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Most people that say they like rolling stats only like it if they roll well(apparently you felt this way also). They think they will beat the odds of rolling average or poorly. Just save everyone time and trouble and use point buy or arrays right from the start.
If it was one veteran player and their character, I probably wouldn't be concerned, but it's half the party, and for most this is their first campaign. I'd like them to enjoy it, and I don't want to nerf encounters and bore the stronger players.
I don't think you understand the point.
Free rolling can be better for more advanced players who will play with the stats that they get dealt AND enjoy it.
Point buy and using standard stat arrays can be better for new players or those who want to guarantee their character will have good stats.
When I first started playing D&D, we only rolled stats, other options weren't even really a consideration. This resulted in some really good characters, some average characters and some mediocre and just bad characters. Stats are the basis for everything that the character can do mechanically in D&D. No matter how you roleplay, without some sort of stats to support it, it ultimately goes nowhere. Roleplaying a wizard with an intelligence of 11 sounds fun for a while until you can't affect opponents with any of your spells due to the low DCs.
5e is actually much better than previous editions in this regard. Stats are still important but not as crucial as earlier editions. In 1e wizards were incapable of casting 9th level spells without having a very high int and 1e had no mechanism to regularly boost stats.
For this reason, although I loved using rolled stats when I rolled well, I've moved to using point buy for character creation. Players can choose the stats that the want to be good and the ones they don't. They create the character they want to play. Rolled stats is somewhat like saying I have this person, what are they good and bad at, what kind of character can I create from this collection of stats that would be fun to play. On the other hand, point buy works from the other side ... what kind of character do I think would be fun to play ... how do I arrange the stats to support that concept. This makes more sense from the point of view of playing a character that made certain life choices in part because their stats helped make that an obvious choice. The stats are selected to fit the character backstory and character development.
---
Anyway, to the OP, I'd suggest allowing everyone to redo their stats if they want just to keep it fair. The barbarian with the highest score of 11 may not know exactly how bad they are if they are a new player. However, they will eventually notice if they haven't already that they hit things far less frequently and do significantly less damage than the characters with a 16 in their attack stat. If you want to allow them to re-roll then go ahead but I would also use the standard array as a floor - they can choose their die rolls or the standard array. In addition, you may well have someone go from rolling really badly to exceptionally well, the barbarian going from nothing higher than an 11 to nothing lower than 14 with a couple of 18s and some other players might feel that is unfair too (unless you are all good friends and don't mind allowing the character to shine). So I would have a discussion with the players, outline the issue and get their feedback on redoing character stats, what system they would want to use and give them the option to keep what they have or redo it. (However, if they decide to redo it they should have to keep the new numbers (or standard array/point buy) ... it isn't an opportunity to try to get better stats with no down side.
Okay, can you confirm your method? Is it:
For example:
Is that right? I'm not a stats guy, but the samples I'm looking at on my computer are skewing hard toward the mediocre, erring on bad. I'd change your approach. If you want the excitement of random rolls, just do 4d6, drop lowest. You'll get more dynamic results. If you don't like bad results, set a minimum average, or give the players an 18 and have them roll the rest of their stats randomly. If you don't care about randomness, just give them the standard array, and if you want the results to be more spectacular, just upgrade that.
Not quite. Skip step 3 in your list; the idea is to roll 6d6 and keep the middle 4. Thus, it's possible to roll six 6's and get a final sum of 24 (rounding down to 20 for the game) or roll six 1's and get a final sum of 4. It was the method my first DM used during our character creation, and I didn't know D&D had official rolling rules (roll 4d6; drop the lowest) until well after my current group had started playing.
I agree with RWinnie for the most part. The more dice you use, the more likely you are to see average rolls. Taking out the high and low rolls does even more to push values to average.
Rolling 4d6 dropping the lowest value doesn't provide more dynamic results, it provides a higher average dice roll by eliminating a bad roll. Here is why:
When you roll 3d6 each die has a 50% Chance of being above or below average. The average is (1+6)/2= 3.5, which makes more sense with multiple dice. Since we need an actual possible die roll, 3 is below average and 4 is above.
When you roll 4d6, it allows 2 rolls to count towards one result. A 50% chance on 2 dice still means that each die could go high or low BUT, 1 should be higher and 1 should be lower than average. This is basically making a d6 roll with advantage.
Roll 4d6 and discount the lowest 1d6 7 times - giving you 1 spare roll and allowing you to drop the one you don't want. Completely ignore any roll where the total is less than 7 before racial mods and do not allow them to pick a race with a racial mod that would bring a stat below 7. As you are currently in play I would just say any stat that ends up below 7 becomes a 7.
There are no shortage of ways of rolling characters, but aside from pool allocators (you're rolling dice for how you spend a limited pool of upgrades, so everyone gets the same total number of boosts) or linked abilities (roll two or more traits at a time; the higher the first stat, the lower the other stats) they all suffer from some characters being just better than others.
So my players didn't level up for... reasons (I offered them a healthy fight with goblins; they chose to run away. I had an NPC tell them there were 30 gobs when in reality there were 11). In the meantime, I'm rolling an NPC centaur monk for them to meet, and I'm using my standard rolling method. First three rolls came out 14-13-17, but roll #4 was a 20 and then roll #5 was...
1-1-1-1-2-2
Drop the highest and lowest, and that's a 5 total.
So you see how some crazy rolls can create a problem if you get more than a couple of them. Likely, both of these will be the high/low that I drop, but still, if the dice are running against you, low stats can happen.
Carrion