>Rolling for Stats Why? I could understand in a one-shot or a game with throw-away characters, but this has no place in a long running campaign. Especially in a game where stats have a huge effect on your character.
Every time this happens someone ends up with the short end of the stick and the GM just ends up throwing gear/equipment at the underpowered players until they match up with the strongest, which only furthers the question, why roll for stats? Randomness is fun in certain places but chargen is not one of them.
It's fun* to get a random pile of stats and forge a memorable character out of them. However, as you said, >Especially in a game where stats have a huge effect on your character This is why D&D 3.5 doesn't use rolling for stats, despite the memes. In AD&D, the difference between a Strength score of 12 and 17 was a meager +1 to attack and an increase in your weight allowance. In 3.5, it meant almost a 20% increase in the chance of a successful attack.
It's fast, easy, and gives you an impression of your character right away. It's good if you don't have a specific character concept in mind and just want to get the ball rolling.
Plus, some people find the randomization aspect enjoyable.
Levi Jones
I tend to agree with you, but it's important not to indulge in badwrongfun nonsense.
Some groups really enjoy random stats in long running campaigns. I find it very hard to understand why, but that doesn't make their enjoyment any less valid.
In system design terms, though, pointbuy is just better for the vast majority of games. The only things I've seen make it work are brutal dungeon crawls where characters are disposable and stats don't matter, or comedy things like Maid RPG where low stats are just as funny as high ones.
Ayden Miller
Str: 4 Dex: 10 Con: 10 Int: 11 Wis: 13 Cha: 16
Take 1 round of aging and play a halfling to get these stats: Str: 1 Dex: 11 Con: 9 Int: 12 Wis: 14 Cha: 18
Perfect.
Jackson Gonzalez
>Why? I could understand in a one-shot or a game with throw-away characters, but this has no place in a long running campaign. Especially in a game where stats have a huge effect on your character.
Not so much in older editions, especially if the group tends toward "combat as war" approaches
James Williams
Especially if character death is actually a thing - if you're one of those people who MUST have their snowflake survive to campaign end then you're probably not going to want randomized stats.
Jacob Garcia
>LITERALLY EVERYTHING is 3.5's fault >Problems aren't problems when they're smaller problems than other problems Nope, sorry. Still pointless and dumb even in AD&D. You can't "forge a memorable character" with D&D stats. They're too broad to force any interesting characterization. It's not like, say, Call of Cthulu where you need to create a backstory that accounts for why your nimble thief type character has an 87 in education. "Oh no! I rolled up a character who's strong AND smart! What a contradiction, how will I ever make a believable character out of this? Oh right, by playing him as strong and smart
