Not related to the thread, but I am super curious: What class/ species did the player choose for a solo adventure.
I chose a Dwarf Paladin... I have played the character a few times before, none of the PCs in my campaigns are Pallies, so I decided to try a 5e one out solo.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
I don't use rolled stats these days - just point buy. If I want a more "epic" character game just increase the number of points. Folks will often choose some lower stats for roleplaying reasons anyway so I don't see a big deal with it.
However, some folks mentioned that "Characters with the lowest stats are so much fun to role play". Personally, I have never found this to be the case.
Someone "stuck" with poor stats often does the best they can. They role play an incompetent, they role play the comic relief, they role play whatever the character lends itself to but most of the heroic, epic and fun things get done by other characters since they are competent at these tasks and the one with truly bad rolls is not (based on experiences from previous versions of D&D).
In 5e this situation isn't as bad as in previous editions. A character that starts with 10 as their highest stat can still hit things, can still succeed at skill checks, and in a vacuum without other PCs might have fun playing. However, most characters with have 14-16 or even 18 in significant stats to start and this makes them at least 10, 15 or 20% better at whatever skill check/attack or saving throw is involved in resolving the current role playing situation. Other characters will always be more effective. Some folks have no problem role playing that but others would rather not play at all when faced with such a disparity.
Finally, I find that the differences between characters caused by rolling well or poorly tend to be more of a negative influence on the game than anything else. If you have a skill check to make, do you get the wise and perceptive one to make the check, do you get the intelligent one trained in investigation or does the character with 8 int and 8 wis without proficiency in either skill make the roll? In practice, I've found that the character with low stats tends not to participate since they don't want to inflict the consequences of their poor modifiers and lack of skill on the rest of the party.
As a result, if I wasn't using point buy, I would probably use one of the approaches where every player rolls a set of numbers and then each player can choose which set they want to use from all the sets rolled with duplications allowed. If everyone wants the same set, so be it.
For rolling stats, I would let each player roll a set of stats and then everyone in the group pick a single set for all the characters to use. By having them all use the same set, you prevent a fair number of the balance issues that can be caused by rolling for stats. As well, out of x number of players, one of them will probably roll a decent set so you're less likely to have to worry about how and whether to do rerolls.
When rolling characters, our group gulps and begins rolling. 6 batches of 4d6 and an option that if you want to try a reroll on one stat you can roll 3d6 and have to take whatever that is. It allows us to have some definite variety of character that you don't get with Arrays... and also the drama of rolling a character. And even figuring out what to do with it afterwards. Our current party has a low Wis Warlock and it has made for some very interesting situations... sure, there have been times we hoped he didn't do something terrible, but at the same time, he is roleplaying it so well that we laugh even when he makes terrible terrible choices. I really enjoy it when a player embraces a flaw or bad stat and makes it part of the character. And there have been games where you look at the party stats and go "Wow! No one put anything into Intelligence or Investigation... this is going to go well..." but even a bad stat can pull a rabbit out of a hat once in a blue moon.
I would allow a player to reroll their array if they had 3 or more stats under 10. I wouldn't make them do it, the other numbers might be good. But 3 penalty stats can sometimes be harsh.
On the plus side, I haven't yet had a player roll like that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"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?"
I don't allow die-based character creation, but if I did, I have been considering going even further than the poll - telling players that if they roll, they get one chance, and the rolls they get are theirs for the duration of the gampaign.
I detest "Oops, I got low rolls, I guess that character dies in the next combat so I can roll again."
I don't actually do this in the game because I think that while it sounds good in my head ("If you are willing to roll then you should be willing to accept the consequence of bad rolls"), it would be pretty bad in play at the table.
We once used 3d6 for stats, and kept them in order, purely because we were having a break from the main campaign and creating some city guard characters for some light relief for a couple of game sessions. We had much more fun with the incompetent city guard than with our main characters :-)
Rolling for stats has always felt like thinly-veiled powergaming to me. Everyone keeps the roll when they do great and begs to reroll when they do poorly. We stick to point buy, but if I ever rolled I'd go with the person who lets anyone at the table use anyone else's spread as my primary concern is party imbalance.
However, some folks mentioned that "Characters with the lowest stats are so much fun to role play". Personally, I have never found this to be the case.
Same. No one likes being all-around bad at adventuring, especially next to your buddy that rolled two 17's and nothing under 12.
If you like roleplaying your weaknesses, you can RP an 8 in a stat exactly as you would a 4 and have just as much fun with it.
Someone "stuck" with poor stats often does the best they can. They role play an incompetent, they role play the comic relief, they role play whatever the character lends itself to but most of the heroic, epic and fun things get done by other characters since they are competent at these tasks and the one with truly bad rolls is not (based on experiences from previous versions of D&D).
Frodo and company would beg to differ! Though part of D&D for many people is power fantasy, which I guess isn’t inherently a bad thing.
I generally use the standard array or point buy to avoid this.
However, I would be reluctant to let anyone reroll a bad set unless I was also going to make someone reroll a particularly amazing set. If you are going to allow someone to keep their amazing 18/17/17/16/15/13, then it is difficult to justify letting someone reroll terrible stats. You wanted to gamble, you take what you get.
I have heard of mitigating rules. You could allow them to choose the standard array if they prefer it to what they roll, or you could change it so they roll 2d6+6 for each score. However, I think you are better off just using an array or point buy if players are not willing to accept the possibility of a bad roll.
So the party is balanced I tend to go with point buy. I would be open to rolling as long as the party is reasonably balanced but most ways of doing this result in power creep which the DM needs to be aware of. On average rolling gives better stats than point buy / standard array and re-rolling poor rolls brings it up more unless you also re-roll very good rolls (which the player would hate).
Allowing any player yo you another players dice rolls provides balance but increases the player power significantly. 5 players rolling 4d6d1 for their stats means there is a 50% chance of an 18 being available and having your main stat at 20 from level 1 gives no room for improvment. One way I like to partially offset this is rolling 3d5+3. Reduces the chances of getting high scores but also sets the floor at 6, I think being any lower than that would make a character unable to function at least as an adventurer.
Having 1 low stat especially as a mental stat can be fun to play for example a wizard who spent all his time in the lab and is socially awkward or the barbarian with no schooling (Grog in Critical role), but you need to have soething you are good at. Therefore I was allowing re-rolling it would be based on lack of high scores rather than having low scores. For example if a player has no more than one score above 13 I would probably allow a re-roll.
Someone "stuck" with poor stats often does the best they can. They role play an incompetent, they role play the comic relief, they role play whatever the character lends itself to but most of the heroic, epic and fun things get done by other characters since they are competent at these tasks and the one with truly bad rolls is not (based on experiences from previous versions of D&D).
Frodo and company would beg to differ! Though part of D&D for many people is power fantasy, which I guess isn’t inherently a bad thing.
Whoever said that Frodo and company have "bad stats" or are even remotely incompetent? They have amazing constitution to start with ... good dexterity, good intelligence, good wisdom, decent charisma ... maybe the only lower stat is strength due to small stature. None of them are "average" hobbits to start with since they all leave the shire which most hobbits never would.
I realize this is 100% subjective but I've never pictured any of the characters in the Lord of the Rings as anything but "above average" compared to typical examples. The fellowship of the ring would seem to me at least to have above 10 if not significantly above 10 in most stats (where 10 is the average) but opinions can vary :) ... and this isn't really on topic :) (Merry and Pippin might have a bit lower int/wis but it is hard to tell since when they are being serious they can accomplish quite a bit like showing the Ents what is going on and convincing them to help their friends against Saruman).
I generally use the standard array or point buy to avoid this.
However, I would be reluctant to let anyone reroll a bad set unless I was also going to make someone reroll a particularly amazing set. If you are going to allow someone to keep their amazing 18/17/17/16/15/13, then it is difficult to justify letting someone reroll terrible stats. You wanted to gamble, you take what you get.
I have heard of mitigating rules. You could allow them to choose the standard array if they prefer it to what they roll, or you could change it so they roll 2d6+6 for each score. However, I think you are better off just using an array or point buy if players are not willing to accept the possibility of a bad roll.
Rolling stats is how we used to play when I first started. However, I have seen so many campaigns go sideways because players just weren't invested in "useless" characters that were essentially baggage compared to the awesome character that had improbably high rolls (that were made in front of everyone so there was no issue with legitimacy). The fighter with 14 strength was nothing compared to the one who rolled 18/00. (I've seen it happen).
The "You decided to roll, you accept the consequences" can work for a session or two but when faced with a campaign with a character that isn't fun to play, many players choose to bail on the game (though they may not indicate why they are leaving) or might just play on their phone or otherwise not pay attention since anything they might think to do, another character can do better (they are just there to socialize, not play, since playing their character isn't much fun).
As a result, although it sounds like the proper approach to take (forcing people to accept the consequences of their choices), I've found that in practice (for playing D&D) it doesn't really work. So, I switched to point buy and if I was going to use rolled stats I would try to come up with a system that would not leave anyone with a poor character. (Few characters are unplayable but how much fun a character is to play varies widely and the point of this game is for the DM and the players to have fun).
As a result, although it sounds like the proper approach to take (forcing people to accept the consequences of their choices), I've found that in practice (for playing D&D) it doesn't really work.
I agree, TBH. Luckily I have never had to deal with this so far.
I'm a fairly inexperienced DM, so I would probably not allow rolling stats for now unless playing with experienced players I trusted who understood and accepted the risk. Point buy and standard array are much fairer and avoid having to deal with this problem altogether.
Someone "stuck" with poor stats often does the best they can. They role play an incompetent, they role play the comic relief, they role play whatever the character lends itself to but most of the heroic, epic and fun things get done by other characters since they are competent at these tasks and the one with truly bad rolls is not (based on experiences from previous versions of D&D).
Frodo and company would beg to differ! Though part of D&D for many people is power fantasy, which I guess isn’t inherently a bad thing.
Whoever said that Frodo and company have "bad stats" or are even remotely incompetent? They have amazing constitution to start with ... good dexterity, good intelligence, good wisdom, decent charisma ... maybe the only lower stat is strength due to small stature. None of them are "average" hobbits to start with since they all leave the shire which most hobbits never would.
I realize this is 100% subjective but I've never pictured any of the characters in the Lord of the Rings as anything but "above average" compared to typical examples. The fellowship of the ring would seem to me at least to have above 10 if not significantly above 10 in most stats (where 10 is the average) but opinions can vary :) ... and this isn't really on topic :) (Merry and Pippin might have a bit lower int/wis but it is hard to tell since when they are being serious they can accomplish quite a bit like showing the Ents what is going on and convincing them to help their friends against Saruman).
I see you, although I tend to disagree. Even if their stats weren’t strictly worse, the hobbits were about 10 levels behind everyone else, which is a far bigger penalty! (Pippin, I’d argue, has one of the higher Intelligence stats in the Fellowship, at least in the book.) The point is more that a relatively weak character can still do big heroic things.
But yeah, let’s not take this too off topic. (In any case, my bigger argument in favor of keeping rolls is “if you want to roll and have a chance at big numbers, you gotta not be a wimp when you get little numbers,” harsh as that sounds.)
But yeah, let’s not take this too off topic. (In any case, my bigger argument in favor of keeping rolls is “if you want to roll and have a chance at big numbers, you gotta not be a wimp when you get little numbers,” harsh as that sounds.)
Power is relative to the rest of the party as the DM will increase the CR or enemies and the dc of checks to for a suitable challenge. If I play is safe and go with standard array only to find someone decided to roll ended up with 18+2, 18, 17+1 , 16, 14, 12 I'm going to feel pretty underpowered.
The aim is for everyone to have fun and if someone rolls really poorly they will probably not have fun (unless everylone rolls poorly), if you force them to play with it a much weaker character than the rest of the party either they are verey likely to quit, kill off their character or act in a way that makes the game less fun for everyone (e.g. not paying attention during the game). Rolling for stats in D&D isn't like real life gambling if you bet your savings away you have to live with the consequences if you roll really badly the character might have to live with the consequences but the player can dis-associate themselves from the character.
The aim is for everyone to have fun and if someone rolls really poorly they will probably not have fun (unless everylone rolls poorly), if you force them to play with it a much weaker character than the rest of the party either they are verey likely to quit, kill off their character or act in a way that makes the game less fun for everyone (e.g. not paying attention during the game). Rolling for stats in D&D isn't like real life gambling if you bet your savings away you have to live with the consequences if you roll really badly the character might have to live with the consequences but the player can dis-associate themselves from the character.
Which is the whole reason for the standard array or points buy systems. They prevent rolling really badly, and also prevent one person rolling 18, 18, 17, 16, 14, 12 and the other rolling 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 6 - thus having two massively differently powered PCs in the same party.
Quote from Jegpeg>>The aim is for everyone to have fun and if someone rolls really poorly they will probably not have fun (unless everylone rolls poorly), if you force them to play with it a much weaker character than the rest of the party either they are verey likely to quit, kill off their character or act in a way that makes the game less fun for everyone (e.g. not paying attention during the game).
Serious question: Has this actually happened to you? I see this argument against rolling stats come up pretty much every time the topic comes up, but in almost 40 years of D&D, always rolling for stats for every character in every edition at a lot of different tables, I’ve never had this problem. Not personally with my character (and there have been some duds), nor had anyone at the table complain about their characters being weaker. I refuse to believe that I’ve been at tables full of uncommonly mature gamers (because I know we were/are not).
Does it actually happen to people?
PS I’m not picking a fight, this is a genuine question.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I chose a Dwarf Paladin... I have played the character a few times before, none of the PCs in my campaigns are Pallies, so I decided to try a 5e one out solo.
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), and you can reroll if the total of the scores is 70 or less.
I don't use rolled stats these days - just point buy. If I want a more "epic" character game just increase the number of points. Folks will often choose some lower stats for roleplaying reasons anyway so I don't see a big deal with it.
However, some folks mentioned that "Characters with the lowest stats are so much fun to role play". Personally, I have never found this to be the case.
Someone "stuck" with poor stats often does the best they can. They role play an incompetent, they role play the comic relief, they role play whatever the character lends itself to but most of the heroic, epic and fun things get done by other characters since they are competent at these tasks and the one with truly bad rolls is not (based on experiences from previous versions of D&D).
In 5e this situation isn't as bad as in previous editions. A character that starts with 10 as their highest stat can still hit things, can still succeed at skill checks, and in a vacuum without other PCs might have fun playing. However, most characters with have 14-16 or even 18 in significant stats to start and this makes them at least 10, 15 or 20% better at whatever skill check/attack or saving throw is involved in resolving the current role playing situation. Other characters will always be more effective. Some folks have no problem role playing that but others would rather not play at all when faced with such a disparity.
Finally, I find that the differences between characters caused by rolling well or poorly tend to be more of a negative influence on the game than anything else. If you have a skill check to make, do you get the wise and perceptive one to make the check, do you get the intelligent one trained in investigation or does the character with 8 int and 8 wis without proficiency in either skill make the roll? In practice, I've found that the character with low stats tends not to participate since they don't want to inflict the consequences of their poor modifiers and lack of skill on the rest of the party.
As a result, if I wasn't using point buy, I would probably use one of the approaches where every player rolls a set of numbers and then each player can choose which set they want to use from all the sets rolled with duplications allowed. If everyone wants the same set, so be it.
For rolling stats, I would let each player roll a set of stats and then everyone in the group pick a single set for all the characters to use. By having them all use the same set, you prevent a fair number of the balance issues that can be caused by rolling for stats. As well, out of x number of players, one of them will probably roll a decent set so you're less likely to have to worry about how and whether to do rerolls.
When rolling characters, our group gulps and begins rolling. 6 batches of 4d6 and an option that if you want to try a reroll on one stat you can roll 3d6 and have to take whatever that is. It allows us to have some definite variety of character that you don't get with Arrays... and also the drama of rolling a character. And even figuring out what to do with it afterwards. Our current party has a low Wis Warlock and it has made for some very interesting situations... sure, there have been times we hoped he didn't do something terrible, but at the same time, he is roleplaying it so well that we laugh even when he makes terrible terrible choices. I really enjoy it when a player embraces a flaw or bad stat and makes it part of the character. And there have been games where you look at the party stats and go "Wow! No one put anything into Intelligence or Investigation... this is going to go well..." but even a bad stat can pull a rabbit out of a hat once in a blue moon.
I would allow a player to reroll their array if they had 3 or more stats under 10. I wouldn't make them do it, the other numbers might be good. But 3 penalty stats can sometimes be harsh.
On the plus side, I haven't yet had a player roll like that.
"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
I've considered something like a lifepath system to allow random but still generally balanced stats.
I don't allow die-based character creation, but if I did, I have been considering going even further than the poll - telling players that if they roll, they get one chance, and the rolls they get are theirs for the duration of the gampaign.
I detest "Oops, I got low rolls, I guess that character dies in the next combat so I can roll again."
I don't actually do this in the game because I think that while it sounds good in my head ("If you are willing to roll then you should be willing to accept the consequence of bad rolls"), it would be pretty bad in play at the table.
We once used 3d6 for stats, and kept them in order, purely because we were having a break from the main campaign and creating some city guard characters for some light relief for a couple of game sessions. We had much more fun with the incompetent city guard than with our main characters :-)
Rolling for stats has always felt like thinly-veiled powergaming to me. Everyone keeps the roll when they do great and begs to reroll when they do poorly. We stick to point buy, but if I ever rolled I'd go with the person who lets anyone at the table use anyone else's spread as my primary concern is party imbalance.
Same. No one likes being all-around bad at adventuring, especially next to your buddy that rolled two 17's and nothing under 12.
If you like roleplaying your weaknesses, you can RP an 8 in a stat exactly as you would a 4 and have just as much fun with it.
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
Frodo and company would beg to differ! Though part of D&D for many people is power fantasy, which I guess isn’t inherently a bad thing.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I generally use the standard array or point buy to avoid this.
However, I would be reluctant to let anyone reroll a bad set unless I was also going to make someone reroll a particularly amazing set. If you are going to allow someone to keep their amazing 18/17/17/16/15/13, then it is difficult to justify letting someone reroll terrible stats. You wanted to gamble, you take what you get.
I have heard of mitigating rules. You could allow them to choose the standard array if they prefer it to what they roll, or you could change it so they roll 2d6+6 for each score. However, I think you are better off just using an array or point buy if players are not willing to accept the possibility of a bad roll.
So the party is balanced I tend to go with point buy. I would be open to rolling as long as the party is reasonably balanced but most ways of doing this result in power creep which the DM needs to be aware of. On average rolling gives better stats than point buy / standard array and re-rolling poor rolls brings it up more unless you also re-roll very good rolls (which the player would hate).
Allowing any player yo you another players dice rolls provides balance but increases the player power significantly. 5 players rolling 4d6d1 for their stats means there is a 50% chance of an 18 being available and having your main stat at 20 from level 1 gives no room for improvment. One way I like to partially offset this is rolling 3d5+3. Reduces the chances of getting high scores but also sets the floor at 6, I think being any lower than that would make a character unable to function at least as an adventurer.
Having 1 low stat especially as a mental stat can be fun to play for example a wizard who spent all his time in the lab and is socially awkward or the barbarian with no schooling (Grog in Critical role), but you need to have soething you are good at. Therefore I was allowing re-rolling it would be based on lack of high scores rather than having low scores. For example if a player has no more than one score above 13 I would probably allow a re-roll.
Whoever said that Frodo and company have "bad stats" or are even remotely incompetent? They have amazing constitution to start with ... good dexterity, good intelligence, good wisdom, decent charisma ... maybe the only lower stat is strength due to small stature. None of them are "average" hobbits to start with since they all leave the shire which most hobbits never would.
I realize this is 100% subjective but I've never pictured any of the characters in the Lord of the Rings as anything but "above average" compared to typical examples. The fellowship of the ring would seem to me at least to have above 10 if not significantly above 10 in most stats (where 10 is the average) but opinions can vary :) ... and this isn't really on topic :) (Merry and Pippin might have a bit lower int/wis but it is hard to tell since when they are being serious they can accomplish quite a bit like showing the Ents what is going on and convincing them to help their friends against Saruman).
Rolling stats is how we used to play when I first started. However, I have seen so many campaigns go sideways because players just weren't invested in "useless" characters that were essentially baggage compared to the awesome character that had improbably high rolls (that were made in front of everyone so there was no issue with legitimacy). The fighter with 14 strength was nothing compared to the one who rolled 18/00. (I've seen it happen).
The "You decided to roll, you accept the consequences" can work for a session or two but when faced with a campaign with a character that isn't fun to play, many players choose to bail on the game (though they may not indicate why they are leaving) or might just play on their phone or otherwise not pay attention since anything they might think to do, another character can do better (they are just there to socialize, not play, since playing their character isn't much fun).
As a result, although it sounds like the proper approach to take (forcing people to accept the consequences of their choices), I've found that in practice (for playing D&D) it doesn't really work. So, I switched to point buy and if I was going to use rolled stats I would try to come up with a system that would not leave anyone with a poor character. (Few characters are unplayable but how much fun a character is to play varies widely and the point of this game is for the DM and the players to have fun).
I agree, TBH. Luckily I have never had to deal with this so far.
I'm a fairly inexperienced DM, so I would probably not allow rolling stats for now unless playing with experienced players I trusted who understood and accepted the risk. Point buy and standard array are much fairer and avoid having to deal with this problem altogether.
I see you, although I tend to disagree. Even if their stats weren’t strictly worse, the hobbits were about 10 levels behind everyone else, which is a far bigger penalty! (Pippin, I’d argue, has one of the higher Intelligence stats in the Fellowship, at least in the book.) The point is more that a relatively weak character can still do big heroic things.
But yeah, let’s not take this too off topic. (In any case, my bigger argument in favor of keeping rolls is “if you want to roll and have a chance at big numbers, you gotta not be a wimp when you get little numbers,” harsh as that sounds.)
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Power is relative to the rest of the party as the DM will increase the CR or enemies and the dc of checks to for a suitable challenge. If I play is safe and go with standard array only to find someone decided to roll ended up with 18+2, 18, 17+1 , 16, 14, 12 I'm going to feel pretty underpowered.
The aim is for everyone to have fun and if someone rolls really poorly they will probably not have fun (unless everylone rolls poorly), if you force them to play with it a much weaker character than the rest of the party either they are verey likely to quit, kill off their character or act in a way that makes the game less fun for everyone (e.g. not paying attention during the game). Rolling for stats in D&D isn't like real life gambling if you bet your savings away you have to live with the consequences if you roll really badly the character might have to live with the consequences but the player can dis-associate themselves from the character.
Which is the whole reason for the standard array or points buy systems. They prevent rolling really badly, and also prevent one person rolling 18, 18, 17, 16, 14, 12 and the other rolling 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 6 - thus having two massively differently powered PCs in the same party.
Serious question: Has this actually happened to you? I see this argument against rolling stats come up pretty much every time the topic comes up, but in almost 40 years of D&D, always rolling for stats for every character in every edition at a lot of different tables, I’ve never had this problem. Not personally with my character (and there have been some duds), nor had anyone at the table complain about their characters being weaker. I refuse to believe that I’ve been at tables full of uncommonly mature gamers (because I know we were/are not).
Does it actually happen to people?
PS I’m not picking a fight, this is a genuine question.