How much randomisation should exist in character generation?

It should NEVER be mandatory.

Unless you are playing a horror-themed game or one that actively uses the concept of random group of people working together (say, Twilight 2000), there is literally no point of character randomisation at all.
The whole concept of rolling for your character is pants-on-head retarded, because rather than playing a character you want to play, you end up stuck with a character you have to play. Re-rolling for stats is even more retarded, because at this point you might as well ignore the whole randomisation altogether. Also, random stats encourage a lot of bad practices, since you are going to squeeze as much as possible from the stats you've got and it only goes worse in a class-n-level systems, where you not only are confined by your random stats that might be completely unfit OR completely OP, but then also have to cram them into a mold that is designed for perfectly optimalised character in the first place.

tl;dr rolling characters in almost all cases is a god-awful game mechanics

Random elements should be optional and should never contain the potential for imbalance.

Pretty much this. To use a personal example
>Making a pally
>1d10+ con (2)
>Rules stipulate you may roll or use an average of 6
>Base level 1 HP of 9
>proceed to roll 1 (3)-3(5)-2(4)-2(4)-1(3)-10(12)
>38HP
Not exactly frontline fighter numbers there. I feel shafted and hostile toward the gm who insisted on keeping these rolls instead of taking the average

I think the option for randomizing character creation is handy to have for oneshots or if you just don't feel like thinking of something original and want to call on the dice to help.

Randomizing the powerlevel for characters that you play over a longer period of time and grow attached to is kinda silly in my opinion however.

Like all things that came from D&D, it's pure cancer. D&D poor game design was justified in late 70s and early 80s, when this shit was new and they still were doing a lot of things semi-blind and just guessing.
But world moved from there looooong time ago, and D&D didn't.

>stats are bad, you can't play the character you want to play because you are stuck with only a few stats
>hit points are bad, instead of playing the immortal deity you want to play you have a chance of losing
>rules are bad, instead of doing the thing you want, you have to play by how the book tells you

Go play a free form rpg or a video game

So many powergaming faggots on Veeky Forums

Except none of those make any sense or have anything to do with the original point?

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Come with a concept, build that concept.

Rolling for stats only encourages powergaming. Either you end up OP through random chance, or you're forced to only pick the optimal options because you've already started so far behind. Player driven chargen gives you the freedom to pick the options that best suit your character without worrying about being mechanically crippled.

I agree with you for the bad versions of D&D (3e onwards). They make the stats way too important and it is at the point where you are useless without meta stats... but they are shit games which people shouldn't play.

I guess I should cut people some slack about the powergaming considering most people play those shitty blights on ttrpgs

It's also worth remembering you're only talking about a very specific niche. In most games that use stats, those stats are significant in how they impact a characters capabilities, throughout the whole RPG space.

It is not so much of a niche. Randomized character gen is better in:

Any OSR game, Traveller, SWN, Pendragon, Any horror game, Every SW game (that i have played), Any WH game, Zweihander.

That leaves bad D&D + Pathfinder, PBTA, and BiTD as your free choice games. Bad D&D has a big market share but the rest does not.

...No, that's pretty much a niche, as the games you list outside of it is a tiny, tiny fraction of what's actually available. And the only thing I'd really accept without argument is OSR stuff, which is honestly what I'm referring to. All the latter ones, in my experience, work best without randomised stat values. Pointbuy was the most common optional rule, in my experience, for the various d100 based warhammer games.

Interestingly enough, it's not an either or proposition. Much like the best games have elements of chance but are guided by rules and a GM, I've found that the best systems let you roll for stats (with guidelines to ensure every character is viable) and then use building points/flaws to customize to some limited degree.

Having that random element means much like a game of poker, it's more interesting figuring out how to play a hand you're dealt. Players have strengths and weaknesses they have to contend with. You will almost never play the same character twice, which is pretty exciting, but even more so, nobody else will ever make a character exactly the way you did either. Your statblock is pretty unique, and the way you customized it and what you made of it is definitely unique without even getting into personality and deep roleplaying questions.

With random rolls you get to break the mold so to speak, and play more unusual characters by definition. You have the chance to get strong wizards, charismatic fighters, wise rogues, and dexterous clerics. You have the chance to have a real flaw in the character which usually makes for a deeper more interesting roleplaying experience instead of yet another one dimensional flawless hero, or worse than onedimensional, a character who is hyperspecialized to do one thing great at the expense of everything else simply because it's optimal. In pure point buy you have several builds and there are usually one, two, or three optimal way to set up their statblock, so everyone is going to have if not identical then very similar versions of the same character archetype. You see this pretty often in many Veeky Forums threads, where people talk about builds instead of characters.

I suppose pure point buy is ok if you're doing some sort of wish fulfillment power fantasy stuff, but personally I've always found that kind of boring.

I just fundamentally don't agree with your premise. I play in pure point buy groups, and we see all the unusual archetypes you described, and we enjoy the opportunity to choose and build flaws into our characters intentionally.

If you can't trust your players to build interesting characters and need the system to force them to, I guess I can see the merit, but that just seems like a case of having shitty players.

None, people should be able to play the characters they want to and not get fucked by bad rolls.

None at all
The more creative control players have over their characters, the more likely they are to like and relate to the character, which makes game more fun for everyone involved and drives better stories.

Players should be able to create whatever they fucking please within the hard bounds of setting/genre/themes/campaign/power level and optionally balance, it's healthiest for everyone involved.

Depends on the game. If you're playing Paranoia and state that you should be allowed to make your character however you wish, the GM should just laugh at your face and possibly award perversity if it was actually funny.

>How much randomisation should exist in character generation?
Unless you're playing disposable pawns whose presence is inconsequential to the overall plot of the story and/or the setting is so deadly that you have a rotating cast of characters anyways, rolling for stats is fine.

For games where players are given more importance and agency over the plot and/or the players are expected to play the same character over a large stretch of time, rolling is shite because you have to live with the consequences of a bad roll for much longer, which can cause some people to lose interest in both the campaign and even the system.

>Here, let me count all the games that use random generated characters in single sentence
>Let me throw in a genre that entirely relies on unreliable performance of characters
>See how this is not a niche? It has grand total of 6 titles in it and one genre!
Are you are least aware that lion share of games on the market use point-buy system or allow open customisation based on limited supply of initial "funds", rather than giving you X of Y-sided dices to roll?

I'm not sure that you ever played a point-buy game, or simply any tabletop RPG at all.
Because absolutely none of your points makes any connection to reality

5 days ago

I'm personally a fan of the way Mongoose Traveller does it, randomization with choice.