Rolling for Stats

>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.

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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.

Rolled 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 6, 2, 5, 3, 2, 3, 2, 2, 6, 1, 4, 3, 6, 6, 3, 6, 4 = 74 (24d6)

Did someone say roll for stats? Let's do this.

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.

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.

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.

>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

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.

>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

...

I don't mind having weak characters what sucks is when some uncreative Chad rolls five 18s and a 14.

The longest running game I've ever been in used rolls in 3.5. There were three ways you could roll in your session zero with one obviously mathematically superior, one of several really stupid basic math mistakes in the campaign, but overall it wasn't that bad.

It wasn't fun like ad&d either, where you came up with your char based on roll order and didn't accidentally find a resurrection scroll if your snowflake died going in. It's a lot more fun to not play a superman and also to really risk losing, but faggots today don't get that and think rp is being a demigod with no fear of death.

Stop memeing this retarded shit.

>LITERALLY EVERYTHING is 3.5's fault
That's like, the exact opposite of the post you linked to.

And Unisystem is a terrible system that should have been left in the 1990s.

What if there was a really fair system for creating chars without going through stupid loopholes like drawing shit ton of cards?

Oh wait, there is already! If you this god damn bothered about the randomness of stat rolls, USE THE GOD DAMN POINT BUY YOU MONGREAL.

>That's like, the exact opposite of the post you linked to.
The whole reason the "rolled stats weren't a problem in AD&D" exists is because it's cool to hate 3.5
>And Unisystem is a terrible system that should have been left in the 1990s.
But, a far more interesting use of rolled stats than any D&D type system

>It's a lot more fun to not play a superman and also to really risk losing, but faggots today don't get that and think rp is being a demigod with no fear of death.
None of that has anything to do with random stats.

>The whole reason the "rolled stats weren't a problem in AD&D" exists is because it's cool to hate 3.5
No, it wasn't a problem because >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.

Down-the-line is about the only way you'll get gamists to accept suboptimal secondary stats or party comps, so it can be pretty key to breaking the mold with them.

But that's a lie

Optimal stats (secondary or not) and party comps don't make you superman. The GM can throw whatever they want for whatever reason.

If anything some one getting 5 18s and a 14 is going to be superman throughout the whole game while everyone else will be struggling. GM can only balance so much around a character having great stats and the rest of the party with mediocre stats without targeting the player who rolled high. But then again, if you have to have special measures for the guy who rolled high or rolled low, why roll at all?

To reiterate
>Problems aren't problems when they're smaller problems than other problems
Just because my tire has a hole in it and not a complete blowout doesn't mean I don't have a flat tire. Saying it was less of an issue in AD&D doesn't invalidate the criticisms of it, and the only reason someone would pretend that wasn't the case is so they can go on pretending the TSR editions were perfect and everything wrong with the world is 3.5 players fault.

If you absolutely NEED random stats why not take a stat array and just roll 1d6 to see where each stat goes?

It's balanced and random

>I don't know jack shit about managing players OR GNS theory!

Being fair here, I think it pays to be specific.

Old school D&D wasn't perfect, but it did very well support a particular playstyle, where many of those flaws either didn't matter or were seen as features.

3.5, meanwhile, failed to support that playstyle while introducing a load of other flaws that meant it also failed to support the new playstyles it was part of creating.

>This character will die due to 0 Str at old age
Best way to go.

I'm not defending 3.5 here. It really was worse than AD&D in most respects. But none of that has any bearing on whether rolled stats are a good mechanic. Once again,
>Problems aren't problems when they're smaller problems than other problems

Funnily enough, I was actually thinking the exact same thing.

But eh, I've mainly been running Mutants and Masterminds anyway, so I'm really just here for a laugh at these poor people.

I wanted to play a fighting man but my 5 got assigned to strength and my 16 got assigned to charisma.

Fuck that gay shit.

This is only if you absolutely must play with random stats. I'm all in favor for choosing where stats go. The players don't have total control of anything in the game so why take away the one thing they do have total control over?

It honestly seems to be a playstyle thing. These days, most people assume player driven character creation, where you decide the character you want to play, then start making them. If you're doing things that way, random stats don't make any sense.

RNG driven character creation is rather niche and not something you see that often these days outside the OSR, especially in more serious games. It works well in comedy stuff though, like Maid RPG.

>or a game with throw-away characters, but this has no place in a long running campaign
You act as if those two were mutually exclusive.
See youtube.com/watch?v=X9vECzikqpY

I still play 3.5/p.5 with rolled stats. Almost everyone wants to roll a character up in my games. There is something iconic about it. I give the player the option between a point buy (15) or roll stats (4d6 take the top 3) before. I started a new campaign last night. Out of the 6 player only one rolled lower then the point buy and not even that much lower. I think it doesnt really matter.

I think there are some traditions we need to keep as dms and rolling stats is one of them.

If the game wasn't such a time investment I wouldn't mind playing something random. OSR games from my understanding of them, never were narrative driven. I can play a dungeon crawl with Jim the 12 STR Fighter in 3.5 just fine. It's funny if he somehow makes it through a bunch of dives and makes it out a powerful and rich man. If he dies, haha he sucked I'll make a new one.

Narrative driven games become a much larger investment for the player and for me it's harder to get invested in something I had no choice in.

It's iconic or traditions don't really strike me as a good enough reason to keep it in games where it doesn't fit anymore. Like a video game having save passwords or no saves at all because "that's how it used to be". What are the pros of having random stats? What are the cons of having random stats?

Even at a quick glance there are many more cons than pros. That by itself is enough of a reason for me to dislike rolling for stats.

Because the average of 3d20 is the best stat array and you know it.

Rolled 17, 10, 18, 16, 6, 1, 11, 6, 2, 2, 5, 7, 12, 3, 9, 5, 19, 9 = 158 (18d20)

I'll try that

I think it's also important to point out the differences the kinds of games being played by him and the majority of people complaining about rolled stats.

Dungeon Crawls don't expect much investment from the player. There is much less emphasis on narrative and roleplaying in TSR from my experience. Any sort of characterization is thought up on the fly and have little bearing on the events around them. Sure I could have 7 different characters that I'd like to play and not care if any of them died.

In more modern narrative driven games, players are expected to be invested in the setting, the plot hooks, and their characters. Personally, this level of investment is hard to reach if I don't like the character I'm playing as,both mechanically and roleplaying wise. If I had to roll on a table of random character backgrounds and had to adhere to it like you have to adhere to your stat numbers, I wouldn't want to play in that game. Here players are supposed to care about their characters but at the same time are being told caring about their characters is bad.

>There is something iconic about it.
>there are some traditions we need to keep as dms
This perfectly encapsulates most of what's wrong with D&D now. Blind and unquestioning adherence to brand and tradition. Second-hand nostalgia. Who cares about the why and how and whether, if it's TRADITIONAL? Why fix what ain't broken? Why fix what IS broken?

t. Power gamer

truth be told that's pretty bad luck. Honestly 5d20 averaged would probably be better. Regardless
Str 15
Dex 8
Con 6
Int 6
Wis 8
Cha 11

paladin time I guess.

Rolled 20, 15, 8, 10, 14, 8, 13, 16, 4, 4, 8, 15, 9, 20, 13, 2, 17, 10, 20, 17, 19, 7, 5, 14, 5 = 293 (25d20)

I'll do that anyways, see if it improves it a bit.

Randomly rolled stats feel more natural. However, many people misuse them.

If you roll for stats, you generally get an array or two of random results and you use them as you want to fit your character. If I get a 12-10-18-14-15-13 array it doesn't mean I have 12 str, 10 dex, etc. It means I have these numbers to use however I want.

However, some other people use it to form their character and actually do write them down as they go. But this means stats come before the concept, and it's generally a different approach. Powergamers seem to think that rolling for stats always means this.

There's not a single group that I've played D&D with (or ran) (ANY edition) that didn't want to roll the stats at the table.

Why is it impossible to like a mechanically sound character and enjoy roleplaying? I just want the character to be able to do what they are supposed to do competently and fill out a niche in the party. What is fun about playing a fighter with 12 STR and 10 CON where rouge if a better fighter than you on top of filling out their own niche? Your character contributes nothing for 2/3rds of the game (Combat and Exploration) and outside of some lucky rolls you won't be doing anything helpful in social situations if your DM is the type to make you roll for opening your mouth. What impact on the narrative does this character have?

Str 11
Dex 9
Con 13
Int 13
Wis 10

Hey. Guess like it's wizard town.

I just give my races base stats and then you can allocate 18 points as you see fit.

Humans have an 8 in everything, Elves have bonuses to Dex and Cha but penalties to Str and Con, Half Orcs (and full Orcs) have higher Str and Con but lower Int and Wis and Cha.

Why not just use the standard point buy (30) at that point?

Whatever impact you cause the character to have.

I once played a middle aged commoner (9 9 10 12 11 12) and talked and speared my way into a kingdom. I had to act smartly, found a way to kill monsters without my party (oil, alcohol, and alchemist fire is mean). I stabbed a vampire in the chest with a stake simply for the fact that he underestimated me.

A good role player can make a crap character into a good and mobile story piece.

Because I homebrewed races to be far more distinct, and this also means stats are on average lower than with point buy.
Although I should note you can come up with a background and give +2 and +1 to related attributes of choice, so it's technically an extra 21 on top of base attributes.

Orcs and to a lesser degree Half Orcs also gain bonus attributes and height as they age/ level up.

The GM taking pity on you isn't an argument

All of that is at the behest of a GM giving you many liberties to make your commoner work. Oil, Alcohol and fire are no where near that powerful without GM fiat.

With that much GM fiat, why not just play a normal character?

Thank you.

The stats in this game are not the main point. Yes stats could make a better character mechanically. This would effect a dungeon crawl/ one shot the most where everyone is just a grinding murder hobo. Im a long term game with any kind of real role play the pc should be able over come this challange. Rolling low should be seen more as a challange then a handy cap.
In these games roleplay first and stats second.

But that's a stupid false dichotomy. The actions you take are part of your roleplaying, and the stats on your sheet are one of the most commonly used tools for interacting with the world. Trying to separate them like that is meaningless.

No you guys didn't play that campaign, there was no fiat. The vampire thought I was dead, I basically was dead. The thing that changed that fact was the fact that I had put a wand of lesser vigor in my pants. We were all basically bleeding out and my points in sneak made the difference and I got him.

Oil and alchemist fire are pretty nuts in core what are you smoking?

I started with alchemy and moved to Wands and nasty poisons.

>why not play normal character?
Because it's fun to actually use my brain.

So you become totally incapable of being creative when you're not playing a mediocre character? Man, that sounds like an awful disability. I feel sorry for you.

If your STR drops below 1 you die?
Like your body is so frail that it just gives out?

No ive been playing lots of extremely compent characters and still do. I was just feeling like Magnus the red from the newest TTS episode and felt like making it a bit harder on myself.

I feel like you are reaching.

Then you've undermined your own point, and there's no reason to play a mediocre character.

The stats mean nothing if you can't apply them properly. A shitter can have all 18s and still get fucked because hes a retarted player. Having shit stats might make you think out side the box more and make you become an over all better roleplayer.

I've done no such thing. I believe that a normal character can be fun in certain situations, however having to be resourceful is fun as well.

Again reaching.

But that's stupid and doesn't make any sense, because bad stats don't make you a worse roleplayer.

That's a bad player. A good player with good stats will think outside the box and perform better than your character with low stats. Not everyone has to be forced to think in order to think.

Being resourceful is not tied to poor stats.

Why is the only defense for shit stats is that it MIGHT cause you to try a different plan? All of my characters have been resourceful and intelligently planned but with decent stats.

Why check for traps when you can just magic your problems away?

Why study alchemy when it's just worse magic?

Why run from a fight when you are rocking a d12+4 hitdice.

Being a subpar character makes you think outside of the box.

Ture but the only people that ever cry about subpar stats are power gamers and most of the time power gamers are weak roleplayers.

No, that's retarded.

In a team game, you want people to be balanced so everyone can contribute. That's the problem with shit stats.

Although shit stats is far from the only problem with rolled stats.

Do you lobotomize everyone who rolls above a certain stat threshold in your games? What stops a good player from thinking outside of the box?

People get different stats in real life all the time. Life isn't put into balance boxes. If a dude has an 18 and another has a 16 it doesn't matter.

What does matter is what that character does. Which is why unoptimized characters can be equal to or greater than optimized.

However the only advice I can give is to not play d&d.

Real life is also fucking irrelevant to playing a roleplaying game

Gambling

>Why check for traps when you can just magic your problems away?
A cleric with 12 wis can do that. No where near "optimized". And there's whole class features for trapfinding that work with shit stats.
>Why study alchemy when it's just worse magic?
There's an alchemist class. Clearly someone wants to play an Alchemist(Read:me I love alchemists but that has nothing to do with stats)
>Why run from a fight when you are rocking a d12+4 hitdice.
Because the opposition is too strong or not worth the effort/time. I've done it many times when I've been rocking "d12+4" hit dice.

>Being a subpar character makes you think outside of the box.
Not really. You didn't name a single "outside the box" action. Those are all very basic things.

One pc having a 10str and the other having a 18str does not mean the 10str player cant add to the game.

>What stops a good player from thinking outside of the box?
Nothing good player also can roll with punches and dont need midmaxing to have fun in a role playing game.

Here's one.

First level as a peasent I took a feat that gave me a level 1 psionic power. Now I was not playing a psion, nor had any intention to play one.

Now that was by all accounts a bad pick especially because I picked minor creation. I however took that power because
1)
It gives me the ability to make poison to counteract the fact that I had 4 hp
2)
It gave me the ability to use my second feat to get a psionic familiar which boosted my craft check and gave me a second pair of eyes.

A normal character wouldn't do that.

But it does if they have to perform a feat of strength. And if the player with lower stats has them across the board, then they are inherently disadvantaged in contributing to the game and have to work harder to catch up. And nothing stops the players with better stats doing that themselves, making it impossible for them to catch up or meaningfully contribute.

Also, stop with the fucking strawman of minmaxing. That's not why people object to rolled stats. Fuck, if anything rolled stats forces you to minmax as you've got no mechanical wiggle room to play with. The real shit thing about rolled stats is that most people go into a game with a character they want to play, rather than wanting to let the dice decide. Player driven character creation is the norm these days.

...What the fuck are you talking about?

>Real life
>In a game of pretend with floating eye masses that disintegrate you and octopus men that mind control people and suck their brains straight out of their skulls
O K
18 and 16 is not a huge deal,but still annoying. That's actually how I made an "overpowered" character by making a Fighter with 18 STR and no one else prioritizing the stat they'll be using the most. In a game where it's all or nothing with the rolls, every +1 counts, especially at low level.

>Any sort of characterization is thought up on the fly and have little bearing on the events around them.
Why? Spontaneous characterization doesn't mean temporary characterization. It is informed by the surrounding events and can have as much or as little bearing on subsequent events as a pre-written backstory.

>players are expected to be invested in the setting, the plot hooks, and their characters
These are three distinct types of investment. Why do you treat them as if they were one and the same and contigent on liking a PC?

>Here players are supposed to care about their characters but at the same time are being told caring about their characters is bad.
No, the point is that caring about your character too much is bad. Having multiple characters doesn't mean that they're completely disposable. You can still be invested in seeing them reach their goal, you're just not supposed to invest your entire life in a single character.
This also extends to the game as a whole. If a campaign is narratively or mechanically built in a way that losing a single character would mess everything up, the threat of death becomes either campaign-shatteringly heavy or permanently meaningless as the GM cannot afford to pull the trigger.

The threat of death is a crutch for bad GMs anyway.

The issue is a normal character COULD do it. And a friend of mine did take a feat for poison making in pathfinder so his ninja could poison people.

A familiar is always a strong choice no matter the character and only becomes a better option in the hands of more powerful characters. You really aren't proving anything.

There are perfectly good reasons to not have saves in a video game just like there are perfectly good reasons to roll for stats. Just because YOU don’t understand or know the reasons doesn’t mean they don’t exist or make sense.

Why do retards always think that mechanical competence makes you braindead?

There are no reasons not to have saves in a videogame.

Limited or controlled saves? Sure, ironmodes have value. No saves at all? Complete horseshit.

Rolled stats are fine for one shots, games where stats don't matter or comedy games. Everything else is better off without them.

Because it lets them feel superior to people who actually want to play with the mechanics instead of constantly finding ways to avoid them.

>Strawman of minmaxing.
The vasy majoiry of players will chose a character long before they even roll stats because they are irrelevant. I have never seen a player change what he wants to play because of the rolled stats. I have seen players bitch because they dont have optimal stats because they one to be the best at the table.

>so everyone can contribute.
Pc a has a 10
Pc b has a 18
Both hit and roll a 4 on a 1d6 mace
Pc a does 4
Pc b does 8
>not
Pc a does 0
Pc b does 8

So, due to pure RNG, I'm half as useful as someone else? Gee, that sounds really fun.

And you yourself pointed out why rolled stats suck. Give people the power to choose their stats so they can properly represent the character they want to play, instead of relying on RNG. Player driven character creation is just as important for roleplaying as it is for optimisation.

Are there saves in MS solitaire you dumb shit?

The threat of death is what D&D is built around.

It has an undo button which loads a previous savestate. Dumb shit.

nu/tg/ is all about condemning people for badwrongfun.

Yes.

It's an old tradition that makes sense in oneshots or throwaway characters.

What I've done in my oneshots is have everyone roll, the best rolling guy gets a single rusted dagger, everyone else gets a single weapon, and the worst stat character gets a suit of armor.
Every levelup, everyone below max stats gains +1 stat until they reach the maximum roller.

>badwrongfun is new
Let me guess, you're

I guess I've been using it wrong all these years then. Getting people invested in a world and a story, making them care about the things in it and having real stakes and tension from those being at risk is entirely possible in D&D. A fight can be about an objective just as easily as it can be about living or dying, and the former also allows you to vary up the combat dynamic significantly instead of every battle just being a direct 'who can kill the other guy faster'.

>I have never seen a player change what he wants to play because of the rolled stats.
That's exactly the problem I have with rolled stats. Heaven forbid I want to play something that requires more than 1 good stat(all martials) and I roll like shit, I have to make a spellcaster instead.

It's not about badwrong fun for me. It's about joining 3 different games where I had to roll for stats,race,class or some combination of the three. I get stuck playing some shit character I don't want to and the GM acting surprised when I'm not pleased with this character I'm supposed to play in a long running campaign that feels like I had no say in.

I wouldn't want to play in a long campaign pregenned character either.

Because I like roleplaying. Sometimes someone else is roleplaying a character that's stronger/faster/smarter than my character, and that's ok. We don't have to be perfectly balanced people if we're here to work together anyway. And just because someone is smarter doesn't mean that I can't bring my own plans and knowledge to the table. If someone's stronger, I can still help them lift/break/carry things. If someone's more wise, I can still bring up my ideas to help them shape their advice. Just because I'm not the spotlight doesn't mean I'm useless, and even with bad stats it's not likely that everyone else in the party can do my jobs so well that no specialization I have is the best among us. It's ok to contribute even if you're numbers aren't the highest. I'll never understand the people in these threads that act like if someone else has 1 or 2 more points in speech than me, I have to never talk to an NPC ever. Because God forbid I believe an NPC's lie and get the party tangled up in a misADVENTURE.

Because all you're doing is making excuses rather than pointing out any actual advantages it brings. All you have is 'It's not bad', without any real point as to why it's good or what it adds to the game.

>Because I like roleplaying.
Nothing to do with rolled stats.

All of that also applies to point buy or a stat array. Try again.

Holy shit all of you people defending rolled stats sounds like people who hit their kids
>It happened to me and I turned out fine
>Kids (players) won't listen (think) If I don't hit them
>It's tradition!
>It builds character!

>>Problems aren't problems when they're smaller problems than other problems
This statement only works because you view rolled stats as a problem which is subjective. Rolled stat are fine but there are bad ways to implement it and 3.5 did so while AD&D did it betterm while not shafting people for not getting that extra integrr.

I like the traveller school of thought where rolled stats can give better bonuses at the risk of killing or crippling your character during chargen.

>This statement only works because you view rolled stats as a problem which is subjective.
>It's not a problem because it's just your opinion that it's a problem
>Continuing to assert that problems aren't problems when they're smaller problems than other problems
Will you people ever come with reasons rolled stats are good and the criticisms of it aren't valid, or are you just going to keep repeating the same faulty platitudes over and over?

I think the random element (properly mitigated by a reasonable DM) sparks a lot of creativity in character creation.