I generally prefer rolling, yeah. However I have two players that tend to roll very well - with me observing or not, so I don't think cheating to blame - and at least one player who has terrible luck, so I tend to go with PB just to make things fairer.
Also, nobody I know rolls their stats "in order". They typically roll the stats, pick the character they want to play, then arrange their stats appropriately.
There have been a zillion other threads on this exact topic, so I'm pretty sure you're not alone.
:-)
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Nope my group and I prefer to roll as well, since it tends to create more varied characters than a point buy gets you. I understand why people that like point buy like it, it insures you can play a character exactly the way you want them(from a attribute stand point that is). But if memory serves this topic has been brought up several times before. :)
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I've played in a few "Iron Man" games before, and had a great time.
Iron Man = Roll your stats in order.
You are not alone!
I roll the bones as soon as I get a concept, and let the numbers refine said concept. My current DM enhance the base though by allowing the infinite re-roll of ones. That does make it a sweeter option.
I prefer point buy in my older wiser age. ;)
My problem with the rolling of stats are that they are too random for such a permanent number.
I've had people who were extremely luck with rolls in the same group with people who barely get a stat over 13. Of course as a GM, I've allowed those people to reroll, etc.
Im also way past (and have no tolerance for) the superhuman character phase that some people can't seem to live without. For this reason, I prefer point buy. Also from a GM standpoint, having to DM characters with most stats 16-18 (if they get that lucky, which also has happened through the years) is tedious because I now have to adjust almost every encounter upward to challenge them.
So yeah, Point buy for future games.
Also from a GM standpoint, having to DM characters with most stats 16-18 (if they get that lucky, which also has happened through the years) is tedious because I now have to adjust almost every encounter upward to challenge them.
Yep. I have one player who tends to roll a bunch of 16s with the occasional 17/18 on one side and rare 12-14 on the other. I've seen her roll an 11 or less ONCE. It's as frustrating to her as it is to me though, and she's been pretty okay about jumping over to PB when requested.
Always enjoyed rolling. I prefer the randomness to the "fairness" I suppose.
The randomness is the fairness. Everyone has the same odds, after all. :)
Since I've had campaigns where people rolled up something akin to 40-point buy characters, unbalancing the whole thing, I've come over the way of thinking that point-buy is the way to go. I've tried 15 point-buy, but found it a bit too restrictive. Going for 20 point buy next campaign, maybe with the caveat that no stat may be higher than 16 ( before racial adjustments ).
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I have had folks try to advocate rolling to me before, and I haven't done it for years.
First off, I can be a bit of a character creation madman, generating stacks of characters at times, even without a reasonable expectation of using them. For that, point buy is the only way to go, as it puts everything on the same basis.
Secondly, while hardcore stat roll may be a nice notion, you have to accept that folks with certain stats would not take up an adventuring career. that might 6 Constitution should indicate someone whose ambitions extend more towards surviving to see another day instead of running out and looking for trouble.
and then there is the time element. At least for my group, we meet and play after work. With point buy we do not have to burn a session on rolling stats.
and another good question for the diehard stat rolling folks. How do you all handle character deaths?
"Wow, this Rondor the Barbarians rolls are total weak sauce."
"CHARGE!" <Dies>
... lets see how my next rolls go next....
"Gentlemen, this is Rondor the Barbarian Two."
I always prefer rolling because I have good 'dice luck'.
In games I run, I usually allow a choice between a dice method or a point buy, players preference.
I am currently playing two active PF characters who were rolled. One ended up with the equivalent of a 16 point buy, the other with the equivalent of a 31 point buy.
So I'm pretty good with rolling. :)
Of course if I had rolled poorly, I might have a different opinion.
I do think point buy is fine, and I have characters that were built in point buy only campaigns, and they are perfectly playable, so if a GM wants to use point buy, I have no problem with it.
But, yeah, I prefer rolling the stats.
Also, I use point buy or stat matrices for virtually all of my NPCs when I run a campaign.
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Roll them point buy encourages to much min/max ing from my experience.
The players have enough edges.
I did a video on this very subject after many months of play on YouTube.
Theoutsiders68
See what you think.
You might want to provide a link to the video in question. I have watched some of your video's in the past. But I went and looked for one about rolling vs random point buy and couldn't find one.
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Always enjoyed rolling. I prefer the randomness to the "fairness" I suppose.Here's the real question and answer honestly. Do you enjoy the sucky sets of numbers as much as the lucky ones?
Personally I do, some of my all time favorite characters where ones that had a number of low scores. Which encouraged me to come up with interesting flaws for the characters to explain them. Now obviously a character with only low scores pretty much can't be done. But if you have at least one high or a couple of above average ones then it can in my experience be fun to play those characters.
To be "completely honest" the GMs I play with who allow (or even encourage) rolling have a rule that if the character has a net zero or negative modifier sum then the player can reroll.
For my witch, my first attempt came out with a net negative of -3 I think. So he suggested a reroll, and the reroll was one of the best character attribute rolls I've had in my entire three decade gaming career.
If I had to play the net negative character I think I would have enjoyed it too, but I can't lie and say that having a character with multiple strong attributes hasn't been fun.
It definitely has been. Plus it allowed me to give the witch a very high charisma, making him the party "face" and giving him an edge up on "Use Magic Device" which has been very nice indeed.
Do you guys not allow mulligans if a character's entire set are bad? I have never had a DM that wouldn't allow a re-roll if the set was low and the player asked. I know this can lead to abused character rolling, but if the DM gets the say, I am fine with it. When I DM, if your highest stat is 13, re-roll granted. Have an 18 but a 3 and a 4 are sitting next to it? Play it if you want, but I will allow a re-roll too. This is obviously going to be up to your DM's judgment, but isn't everything?
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I'm all for rolling, even for NPCs if I have the time. Much more fun and dramatic, and feels more organic. I occasionally run "3d6 roll in order" games when I want something grittier, but my usual rule is 4d6 re-roll one group of dice. The DMG re-rolls for low modifiers/total apply.
My next game, I'm thinking 3d6 and assign, or 4d6 in order. No re-rolls except for the core rule exceptions. I'll see how that goes.
I have one player, my youngest brother, that rolls ridiculously well, all in view of the DM. He's had two characters with a 38 and 42 point-buy (3.5) equivalency.
In cases where one player has rolled REALLY well, I used to give other players a boost if they wanted it, but I haven't done so for years.
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As others have pointed out, there have been MANY threads on this :)
I think the bottom line is LOTS of people like point buy and LOTS of others like to roll. Heck, I'll bet if someone did a well done poll, the ratio would be close 50/50 ...
I personally NEVER use point buy. All the players in any group I have EVER played in roll stats. I'm not against point buy, and would certainly do so if I got into a group did prefered it. However, I would much rather roll those bones and see what happens!
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We never use point buy unless the whole system is point buy...ala GURPS
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Do you guys not allow mulligans if a character's entire set are bad? I have never had a DM that wouldn't allow a re-roll if the set was low and the player asked. I know this can lead to abused character rolling, but if the DM gets the say, I am fine with it. When I DM, if your highest stat is 13, re-roll granted. Have an 18 but a 3 and a 4 are sitting next to it? Play it if you want, but I will allow a re-roll too. This is obviously going to be up to your DM's judgment, but isn't everything?
I have never needed to give multiple mulligans based on rolling. What I have players do is roll up 2 sets, 4d6 drop lowest, and pick the set they prefer. I have yet to have to go beyond that. One of the two is usually up to snuff, though not free of all warts. I had one player who had trouble deciding between the two results because one had a modest high of 15 or 16 and a few 13/14s but nothing lower than 8, while the other had an 18 and a 5.
I did one have a player who said his character generation rolls were always low, so I had him roll but subtract from 21 (for the exact same distribution). I'll be darned if he wasn't right. His dice rolled low and he ended up with good stats.
I stopped liking dice roll stat gen after playing Palladium for many years. Seeing Human dice explosion stats were disgusting.
For reference, in Palladium, any 3d6 stat that resulted in an 18 being rolled had a dice explosion of an additional d6. If that was a 6, you got another d6, for a maximum of 30 on any stat. On top of this, all modifiers from stats were linear increases per point from 16 on. If your stat was below 16, you had no bonus. This frequently resulted in Human characters that VASTLY outperformed monster races with 4d6+3 stats in exchange for a 2d6 or 1d6+2 elsewhere (Werewolves come to mind).
Point Buy has tremendous advantages in terms of keeping a level playing field.
Gotta have everyone be equal I see, bc the world is full of equal people, everyone is equally fast, strong, smart, good looking, wise...there is absolutely no variation in the real world and thus we should bring that over to our games... Idk...smacks of socialism creeping into my RPG's... no thanks enough of that in America for me... fortunately my whole game group agrees... point buy leads to little or no variation and thus reduces flavor for us...
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I've taken to option Twenty-million-and-two:
I have all my players roll stats. I take ALL those stats, add them up for each player, and average the result. Everyone gets that many straight out stat points, 7-18, spend as you wish.
Otherwise it is exactly as stated: One person ends up with 2 18s and one person ends up with one 13 and nothing else above 11.
I have personally rolled a character with 3 18s, two 17s and a 15 (the best I ever did) using the 4d6 drop lowest method. I "rolled" one up on the old computer character creator with five 18s and a 17. Yeh. Uh huh. Anyway, I find it gives everyone a bit more wiggle room if they don't have to do complicated math (2 pts for 1 stat above blah blah blah, etc...). Our current campaign is 85 points average. Which is a very powerful campaign. But we are a player short of the modules, so I figure it is fine for now.
(75/5 = 5 15's and one 10, though we went more for an 2 18's, 2 14s an 11 and a 10 (one went 16, 15, 10, 8 instead).
PB vs Roll? Both.
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Gotta have everyone be equal I see, bc the world is full of equal people, everyone is equally fast, strong, smart, good looking, wise...there is absolutely no variation in the real world and thus we should bring that over to our games... Idk...smacks of socialism creeping into my RPG's... no thanks enough of that in America for me... fortunately my whole game group agrees... point buy leads to little or no variation and thus reduces flavor for us...
Get your political crud out of the General Discussion and back in Off Topic where it belongs, please.
Even with everyone using the exact same stats, they are not equally fast, strong, smart, whatever.
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I think people put too much significance on the "horrors" of stats that are beyond a 15, 20 or 25 point buy. Yesterday my wife ran her Second Darkness game and we TPK'd. This was despite the fact that the entire group with rolled stats were well in excess of a 30 point buy each.
It really doesn't matter that much. Equipment, feat choices, party composition and tactics are far more significant than what stats people have.
I allow 3 sets of 4d6 allowing sets that are between a 20 and 40 point buy. Above 40 and below 20 are illegal sets. If you have a legal set out of your first 3 then no rerolls are allowed, if not the player keeps rolling until he gets a legal set. I have seen no issues with this system at my table.
Gotta have our weekly "Rolling is better than Point Buy" undead horse beating.
And I prefer Point Buy. But to monitor so-called "min/maxing", I have restrictions.
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It really depends on whether we're playing a short-run game vs. a long campaign and also how comfortable the players are with the system. (Also what system we're using)
For long campaigns of pathfinder/D&D, I wholeheartedly prefer point-buy. It ensures that nobody gets shafted by the dice and that we don't have certain players dominating certain areas. I always do 15-point buy because it encourages specialization in the PCs, which makes for better parties, IMHO.
FallofCamelot speaks truth.
Racial mods, differing stat assignments, equipment, and feats will make characters varied enough even with a single array of stats given to each player.
I concur, to a point. In our 4e campaign every character was started with the identical attribute array. We created our characters at level 8, so were able to apply some attribute bonuses on top of the stat array.
Now at level 22 it would be impossible to look at our stats and conclude that they initially all had the same array. There have been too many adjustments.
In PF you have even more opportunity to adjust stats. (4e does not support magic items which provide enhancements to stats, nor can you use magic spells or items to increase base stats, while PF does.)
However, especially at low levels, randomizing stats does provide a more varied result than you can get with a standard array. Is that "better" than the standard array? Does that mean that it is easier to role play differences? Does it make the game richer?
Probably not. But I like it anyway.
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Well, I guess we are playing a 45 pt campaign (by points). By rolls one of us would have been a a 51 point and the other two would have been 28 and 29. Still a lot higher than any 25 point system.
I think a 51 point is a pretty obvious OUTLAYER compared to a 28.5 pt average otherwise... 45 brings that down a bit and the others up. And maybe I should have weighed it a bit more towards the 28.5... and will develop some scientific formula for doing so in the future (like counting points instead of actual stats). If I had done that we would have come out at 37 points. Still a high power campaign.
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I don't think I'll ever play using rolled stats in Pathfinder.
I'd rather turn my back to a game group than roll my char.
What I could see me doning is have one player roll and everyone uses those stats, asigning them as they see fit.
That way it's random and fair.
In other games I never had a Problem with rolled stats but Pathfinder and D&D is all about optimising and without the right stats a lot of characters are near useless.
If I play Call of Chtuluh (the original not D20 or something) I don't care about my PCs stats. He will die during the first few adventures regardless of what he can.
We once played a game where the GM statted the whole population of a small village in the early days of the united states. If one PC was killed or went mad the player just took the next resident and played him/her from then on. That was great fun and we solved the riddles and saved the world with just the pary and two other townspeople left.
In games like that I don't care about stats at all.
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Some of us don't roll worth shit.
4, 7, 10, 10, 12, 13 isn't a fun array. Swap out one with a 16 and its still mediocre.
I did the random thing in my youth. I got over the one sided romance of it.
I roll on a curve, usually. I've done 1d8+8, applied to your choice of stats, or i'll get everyone to roll and use whoever rolled the highest as the baseline. Once i figure out the baseline, i use that for the pointbuy limit. That way, if three of them roll Joe Nobodies and one of them rolls Hank the Tank they can adjust up.
Lately, though, i've really enjoyed the 1d8 + 8.
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Good luck getting my group to go with point buy. We tend to do heroic rolling (2d6+6) in high powered homebrew campaigns. (Most encounters are APL +2, APL +4 for boss fights) The one time we did a module which required point buy to keep it balanced it was met with several groans.
I’m starting a new campaign soon, and my players will be rolling their stats. They may discard and reroll up to twelve times.
This method was inspired by a several comments (#1,#2) made by Gary Gygax in a Q&A on EN World where he noted that they kept rolling until they got the stats they needed for their characters.
Point buy is easy, fair and most importantly allows a player to build from concept to character very easily, which means people playing the idea they have come up with in their head and are wanting to play.
I like rolling, but last time we did it my players all got stats that were only really suitable for ranged and weapon finesse-using melee fighters (high dex for all four, abysmally low in everything else. We did 3d6 six times in order for ability scores). My players are now sour on the idea of rolling stats. They didn't enjoy having half the group killed the first time their "four rogues" party ended up a heavy-hitting melee enemy.
On a more positive note, they no longer complain about 15 point buy being limiting.
I miss rolling for 'em. My current group went with PB because we only get to play once a month- if that- and wanted to start the first game running rather than doing character creation in person and PB was the easiest way to deal with it.
Before that, I'd rolled every character I ever had.. its definately a different way to do it.
I miss rolling ;)
-S
I really like rolling stats.. But that feeling usually only last for a short time. Not that I have a tendency to roll low, but there is always something that doesn't really fit for the character I would like to play.
But I also prefer having time to get my character idea together, and write up a couple of pages background story. For me to be able to do that, we would need to meet beforehand just to roll our ability scores.
Point buy isn't flawless. Personally it can annoy me to have 1 or 2 players who can seem to live without that starting 20 in their casting stat (eventhough when we use 15 pt).
But for better and for worse, point buy is what I prefer for a game that is going to run for more than a couple of sessions.
Alternatively I am all for having set ability score arrays to choose from.
When I am behind the screen, we roll dice.
I like the "Organic" method laid out in 3rd edition. It's random, you don't get to put all your scores where you want em:
Organic:
Roll six times recording in order using the best 3 of 4d6. Re-roll any one ability score taking the best of the two. Then switch any two scores.
You can still choose what class you want, but nearly everyone will get a score or two that's unusual for their class: a wizard with a high strength score, a strong, bulky-yet-oversized high-Con but low-Dex fighter, etc.