We had a lab rat rule in 1st edition AD&D. If you character could be taken out easily by a rat you got re-roll. The idea came from the concept of in Lab environment where the character fought a rat one on one would the rat win on average or would character win on average. We'd never play it out we would just judge it based on our knowledge and the GM would give the ok or not.
Personally I hate rolling stats. Nothing worse that having cool concept you could build with point buy but being forced to roll and getting stats that just don't support that.
We had a lab rat rule in 1st edition AD&D. If you character could be taken out easily by a rat you got re-roll. The idea came from the concept of in Lab environment where the character fought a rat one on one would the rat win on average or would character win on average. We'd never play it out we would just judge it based on our knowledge and the GM would give the ok or not.
Personally I hate rolling stats. Nothing worse that having cool concept you could build with point buy but being forced to roll and getting stats that just don't support that.
Dice rolling in PF doesn't force you to assign numbers to stats as you roll them. All of the dice rolling options let you roll your dice and assign where you see fit.
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Running and hiding is a vastly underappreciated skill.
We call it 'Plan Alpha'.
Dice rolling in PF doesn't force you to assign numbers to stats as you roll them. All of the dice rolling options let you roll your dice and assign where you see fit.
If you want to play an intelligent fighter, and only roll one good stat, your stats aren't supporting the concept you want to play. That's the danger of rolling.
If you want to play an intelligent fighter, and only roll one good stat, your stats aren't supporting the concept you want to play. That's the danger of rolling.
Bah. More rp opportunities, I say. Put your good stat in INT and put your next best stat in strength. Maybe your guy aspires to be a fighter but is really just a nerd trying to be tough. :D
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Running and hiding is a vastly underappreciated skill.We call it 'Plan Alpha'.
Dice rolling in PF doesn't force you to assign numbers to stats as you roll them. All of the dice rolling options let you roll your dice and assign where you see fit.If you want to play an intelligent fighter, and only roll one good stat, your stats aren't supporting the concept you want to play. That's the danger of rolling.
On the first part: Note well, young padawans.
On the second part: "Concept first, stats afterward" is a viable way to play. So is "Stats first, concept afterward." The latter strategy was served (and in many ways enforced) by the Dice Roll method. The former strategy is served and enforced by the Point Buy method. The best method will depend on what you want for yourself, and for your game.
Heck, I've played lots of RPGs back in the 80s that required far more dice rolling for character generation than D&D. Pre-d20 Gamma World? Your number and kind of mutations get chosen for you. Cyberpunk? Traveller? Let's see what happens in your lifepath. Palladium? All sorts of things.
Sometimes, I like the freedom of my own choices. Sometimes, I like the challenge of working with something given to me. It's all good, and it's all valid.
Dice rolling in PF doesn't force you to assign numbers to stats as you roll them. All of the dice rolling options let you roll your dice and assign where you see fit.We had a lab rat rule in 1st edition AD&D. If you character could be taken out easily by a rat you got re-roll. The idea came from the concept of in Lab environment where the character fought a rat one on one would the rat win on average or would character win on average. We'd never play it out we would just judge it based on our knowledge and the GM would give the ok or not.
Personally I hate rolling stats. Nothing worse that having cool concept you could build with point buy but being forced to roll and getting stats that just don't support that.
But your rolls impact what character you want to make. Like if you roll 18,12,11,10,9,8 (20 pt build equivalent) and I wanted to be a monk, no way that will happen but I could make good Wizard with those stats.
2D6 + 6
Point Buy with a 1:1 ratio all the way. (18 takes 8 point, 7 gives you 3, etc).
But your rolls impact what character you want to make. Like if you roll 18,12,11,10,9,8 (20 pt build equivalent) and I wanted to be a monk, no way that will happen but I could make good Wizard with those stats.
They can affect the character you want to make, but that's not the game doing that. It's your preferences doing that. You want to have certain mechanical benefits when you build a character with your rolled stats. Exactly what those are depends on your own personal standards.
And you're right, those stats don't produce a stellar monk, but a 4d6-drop low method produces monkable arrays pretty frequently, more frequently than the array you've actually got.
But your rolls impact what character you want to make. Like if you roll 18,12,11,10,9,8 (20 pt build equivalent) and I wanted to be a monk, no way that will happen but I could make good Wizard with those stats.Dice rolling in PF doesn't force you to assign numbers to stats as you roll them. All of the dice rolling options let you roll your dice and assign where you see fit.We had a lab rat rule in 1st edition AD&D. If you character could be taken out easily by a rat you got re-roll. The idea came from the concept of in Lab environment where the character fought a rat one on one would the rat win on average or would character win on average. We'd never play it out we would just judge it based on our knowledge and the GM would give the ok or not.
Personally I hate rolling stats. Nothing worse that having cool concept you could build with point buy but being forced to roll and getting stats that just don't support that.
Eh, you could still pull off a monk with those stats. 18 in Wis, 12 in dex, and the 11 in str. If you play a human, half-elf or half-orc you can bump one of those lower stats. You may not be Bruce Lee, but you could pull it off.
Our group usually uses 4d6, re-roll 1s, drop the lowest. Though the most recent group I'm in has used a 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 10 array.
I find that 4d6-DTL, in order, can be palatable. Having said that, when I DM, I have no problem allowing players to A.) sort the rolls in any way that they like and B.) if someone gets complete shiat, it needs to be addressed.
What I don't want to see is a couple of 30+ PB equivalents being played with a couple of 10 PB arrays. I wouldn't want to be on the short end of that stick, so I think it's unfair of me to ask other people to do it.
/it may be interesting to note that in our Second Darkness campaign, 3 players did have 33+ PB arrays and 2 others had less 12+ PB arrays. The low-array players were asked if they would like to change their stats and both declined. Fun was had by all.
// in addition, one of the low-array characters (a LN Monk) paired up with one of the high-array characters (a CN Fighter) and the two worked wonders together. The Monk acted as the moral compass for the Fighter.
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I think what the OP points out is a difference not in how you generate characters, but how you generate character concepts. As another poster noted, the stats rolled probably could have been turned into a palatable character... just not necessarily an awesome viking. But if your heart is set on playing a Viking... then there's a problem.
If I'm stuck with having to randomly roll stats, I try not to go into a game with a strong character concept. I might have a few vague ideas rolling around in my head, sure, that I might be able to flesh out later, but nothing I have built up so strongly in my head that I set myself up for disappointment. THEN when I roll stats, I come up with the character that fits the stats---rather than the other way around. You can actually come up with some pretty cool character concepts that way.
I usually save my really well fleshed out concepts I've written several pages of background for the characters I can build with point buy (or if I have a character concept in reserve and I just so happen to be able to pull off rolling stats.
Heck, I've actually been disappointed by rolling stats too high because I actually wanted a character to have a deficiency in a certain area for one reason or another. A character good at everything can be bland in its own way (even if mechanically more satisfying to play). Not that I think gimping a build intentionally is a good idea, of course.
But it is possible to have fun with rolling stats, you just have to set your expectations differently.
My largest preference for point buy--which is my definite preference--is from a GM's perspective. I would rather run with PCs all built from the same pool than have to deal with PCs who all fell at various edges of the bell curve with their die roll luck. I'd prefer not to have the "challenge" of finding ways to help the character with all 6s shine in the same party as the character with all 17s. Some folks I guess would find that interesting but that's not my kind of fun, personally.
I have nothing against people using point buy methods but for me I really like the idea of rolling up my stats at random and seeing how those stats inspire me.
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The problem I always ran into with dice rolling for stats is that there's really nothing stopping anyone from rolling multiple sets of stats until they get what they want.
It's easy enough to make a houserule that says you only get to roll once per character or X amount of sets, but that always led to either character suicide or players who just decided not to play.
Arrays and point buys might take some of the random fun out of the game, but I'd rather have people at my table playing the classes and races they want to play and not what they felt they had to play because they got a bunch of crappy rolls.
The problem I always ran into with dice rolling for stats is that there's really nothing stopping anyone from rolling multiple sets of stats until they get what they want.
It's easy enough to make a houserule that says you only get to roll once per character or X amount of sets, but that always led to either character suicide or players who just decided not to play.]
I call that the "Don't get angry, get kamikaze" technique. :)
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THE FOLLOWING IS A TRUE STORY, ACTORS HAVE BEEN USED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT :)
I remember my very first character I played for ADnD in 1979.
I imagined him as a great Viking Warrior, muscles bursting out of his scalemail armour, a battleaxe and large round shield, he was going to be "Awesomeness" personified ... ERIK the Viking, there would be tales written by the Skalds of his adventures
Then I rolled my stats 6 x 3d6, with the stats being allocated to whichever stat you liked ...
S 12, I 9, W 10, D 11, Co 10, Ch 9
I almost cried ... meanwhile, another fighter (a friend of mine playing his Jamaican based fighter, Ceti Wayo) rolled his dice:
S 18/92, I 10, W 9, D 16, Co 18, Ch 10
He had rolled two 18's and a 16, the then rolled 3 x 10's for HP and at 3rd level (our starting level for this game) gave him 42hp.
I tried to let the disappointment roll over me and I rolled my HP, 4 + 3 + 2 for a starling 9hp ;(
This story does have a happy ending however, we were playing Bone Hill and a Ghoul wiped the whole party and we rerolled characters ... I then got one 17 and a hand full of average numbers and made myself a Cleric who went on to retire at level 16 ...
I just hope this points out how destructive randomly generating stats can be... when they are great, it's great -- but when you roll bad, it is truly awful.
Points buy is the best system as it allows all players to be fantastic in a stat, pretty great in a couple of stats or well rounded in all stats ...
Just my 1 copper piece worth - though if you want it, it's down in the pit with Erik and the Ghoul ... :)
I call total BS....2 18s, Max hit point rolls over 3 levels, and I don't recall whether AD&D stats at 18 gave a +4.... I can make up a million stories where everyone in my group rolled and came up with the exact same stats.
The whole point of rolling is to create a flawed character who shores up his weaknesses and plays to his strength. Early D&D was more about survival than it is now. Just surviving adventures was a feat....|
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I've used a couple of hybrid systems that allow for randomness, while still preventing the me-huge-you-puny problem.
The first is called Stat Draft, in which a large pool of possible scores are generated, then the players pick them in a draft format.
Another one I use in PbP games is Random Array. I'll say I'm taking five PCs, then randomly roll 5 arrays. Players are welcome to submit PCs for any array, but I will choose my favorite from each array. Thus, it's easier to get in if you use a less popular array.
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I allow the group to pick any player's set to avoid this exact problem.But that defeats the purpose of rolling stats, which is to ensure that some players are at a permanent systematic disadvantage.
Toz-- while I accept your comments on rolling stats;
Thac20-- I also think you have a good point. I'd like to say you're making a joke... but unfortunately I have too much experience in games 'back in the day' where that was the nearly-inevitable result of randomly rolled stats.
(I also think this is one of those thread topics that just keeps getting repeated-- over and over and over and over-- in the last month or two I've given my opinion of dice rolls for stats-- in detail-- so many times over, I'll just give the short version here: been there, done that-- really don't like rolling for stats, NOT AT ALL interested in random character generation, thank you very much; much more interested in building characters based on concept, than coming up with concept to fit the numbers/capabilities the dice gods have blessed me with-- been playing RPGs for a long time, so I have done plenty of gaming with most, maybe all, of the major variations in character creation.)
To each their own, but my group rolls stats. Always have, most likely always will. Call me crazy, but I think we just like rolling lots of dice at a time. We like the randomness. Point-buy does have some awesome advantages for sanctioned events such as PBP, PF Society, etc. So I'm not bagging on point buy in general, we just like dice randomness.
In our current World's Largest City/Dungeon mash-up game, we just had a near TPK(one survivor), so the rest of us are rolling up new characters. I rolled a mulligan 3 times(all my bonuses added up to less than +1 total), so on my 4th time rolling, I get the following: 14, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17. One of my fellow players has two 18's. The DM is BRUTAL, so we're not the least bit worried about being overpowered. I've lost count of the characters that have died in the dungeon so far, I think I'm on my 5th or 6th at least.
Honestly, we're just really loose and casual with stat rolling. Roll 4d6 DTL x7, then drop the lowest of the 7. Put them wherever you want. If one of us happens to roll crappy stats, but not low enough to count as a mulligan, the DM's usually just let you reroll. Fun is the name of the game, so no sense in forcing someone to play a character with sub par stats if they don't want to.
Sometimes I like a challenge and keep a bad set of stats, but this time I'm actually rocking some good ones, so I'm gonna live it up.
I had a long post, but realized it came down to this for me:
Awesomeness + creativity > random dice rolls
If I had all my players over one night to create characters where we just sat and did creation, then dice rolls work. But when everyone is at their house, coming up with their characters, point buy keeps them honest.
When stats are rolled randomly it makes sense to see what your character is or could be after rolling the dice rather than deciding ahead of time what he will be. E.g. instead of deciding ahead of time that you'd play Erik the Viking muscle-man, look at what stats that you had and go with that.
Also stats matter less in earlier editions. Everything from about 7-15 is mechanically the same for mosts stats (unless the stats was your class' prime requisite).
I prefer awesomeness + creativity + random dice rolls.
The concepts aren't mutually exclusive.
They aren't, but they're more important to me. This is one of those things that's purely personal opinion. I play with people who sometimes make a poor mechanical choice in the interests of more interesting characters. With a 20 point buy I made a paladin with a 14 Intelligence, because he did double duty as a church scribe and group historian. One of his skills was spent on Craft: Caligraphy, not exactly the most useful skill for an adventurer.
Random dice might have allowed me to do that the way I wanted, but maybe not... because dice are random. I might have needed to make a bigger or smaller sacrifice or just not been possible. If I rolled a 16, 16, 9, 9, 9, 9, I wouldn't have played that concept. A paladin with a 9 Intelligence wouldn't make sense as the local scribe/historian, and a paladin with a 9 strength and 9 dexterity wouldn't exactly contribute a whole lot in combat.
You could easily come up with a table that tells you the character's stat strengths and weaknesses and what their general role should be and then just apply those results to how you do point buy.
Roll 1d6 twice, pick one result to be your weakness and the other your strength. Pick one of the two options from each roll.
1-2: Str/Dex
3-4: Con/Int
5-6: Wis/Cha
I'm not opposed to randomness, but it needs to take a third row backseat to Awesomeness and Creativity for me.
I hate point buying stats, but I'm sadly coming around to thinking that it's the best way of doing things. Having said that, when I suggested 'low point buy for the next campaign' to my players there was a mass walk out.
I think the importance of stats in 3.X/PF is such that it (to my mind) distorts play. Nothing must get in the way of the next upgrade of your gauntlets of strength/headband of intellect. I may dislike this, but it is, so what stats a character starts with are of great (if not overwhelming) importance. If you roll stats and one character gets substantially better than another then (particularly at low levels) they are going to be far more effective. You can't fix this by changing the monsters they are going to face, character B is always going to be stuck with being 'not as good' as character A. Different players will respond to this differently and some aren't as competitive as others, but it has the potential for marring (or even spoiling) the game. Hence, reluctantly, point buy.
I still prefer rolling, but that's partly because of an (irrational) belief that I will always roll better than average and thus have a 'better' character. Having said that, one of my favourite characters rolled a 4 which I put in Wisdom (I always dump wisdom if I have to). He was great fun to play, he saw the world as an epic saga in which he was the hero and everyone else (including the other players) was a walk on spear bearer. Happily, his other stats were really good, which meant that he often *could* pull of the fantastic coups that he thought he was capable of.
Whatever system makes the players happy, and doesn't break things for me as a GM makes me happy.
My preference is for point buy these days, but chucking dice worked well enough for a few decades.
The more I go over the 2nd Ed Warhammer rules the more I like them. The completely random nature of the character creation was refreshing. Roll only for everything. After a couple of year of build to taste, random generation was fun.
I don't doubt that the player rolled those stats, I have seen it happen. With the vast number of characters generated over the years, it is inevitable.
I WATCHED a player roll nothing less than 16's, including an 18 on 4d6 drop lowest. Funny part was she hadn't decided what to play and thought rolling would give her an idea. The dice gods can be cruel.
(Of course, it went on to generate a wee bit of tension as one of the other players rolled pretty badly and rightly suggested there was something wrong with the "roll for stats" idea.)
I'm gearing up to run a Pathfinder game later this year, and was originally planning on doing point buy, but some of the arguments here are making me reconsider. It does seem like point buy forces players to do what's most efficient, and you don't get some of the quirks that result from rolled stats. And some of the most memorable characters I've encountered, both as a player and a DM, have been the results of stats the player wouldn't have chosen (Ninjas with high Charisma, wizards with high Strength or low Wisdom, uncannily Intelligent fighters...)
The oddball character phenomenon only really happens when players roll in order, and have limited or no ability to swap scores around. Otherwise, stat swapping allows players to optimize their stats as they would with point buy -- it's just that rolling adds an element of imbalance.
As a counter-suggestion, why don't you find or write a 20 list to help inspire your players? The list could be character motivations, backgrounds, or personality quirks. Even better, have a few 20 lists so players can roll a few d20s and then try to make sense of the results!
(I don't recommend making this mandatory though; some players like random inspiration, some know what they want to play.)
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I'm gearing up to run a Pathfinder game later this year, and was originally planning on doing point buy, but some of the arguments here are making me reconsider. It does seem like point buy forces players to do what's most efficient, and you don't get some of the quirks that result from rolled stats. And some of the most memorable characters I've encountered, both as a player and a DM, have been the results of stats the player wouldn't have chosen (Ninjas with high Charisma, wizards with high Strength or low Wisdom, uncannily Intelligent fighters...)
This really depends on the people you game with. Point buy does not force the player to do anything.
If you have players whose #1 concern is creating an interesting role-playing concept, building it, and then playing it in the game-- you might be surprised at some of the builds and choices you see. I wouldn't expect anyone to deliberately build a character who wasn't effective, but at the same time-- you'll probably see more characters built that are not completely min-maxed and given the "ultimate optimization" treatment for a particular role.
Each of the things you've selected as examples of characters that the players rolled, but wouldn't have built on pt buy-- I've seen built on pt buy by other players, who thought those sorts of things were interesting concepts they wanted to play.
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I prefer awesomeness + creativity + random dice rolls.
The concepts aren't mutually exclusive.
True. They are not mutually exclusive. However, they are quite different approaches to the process of character building nonetheless; and some of us do find that one of the methods interferes with our preferred creative process for character building.
(Yes-- there are some people who find that point buy methods interferes with their preferred creative process, too.)
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I just hope this points out how destructive randomly generating stats can be...
I am very sorry to hear that as a result of these middling ability scores, your house exploded and your car melted down to cinders. I sincerely hope you were able to replace the Players Handbook, that I assume it is safe to say, was reduced to ash by your unspectacular rolls.
Your obliterated dice are a testament to the evils of random generation, as is your fractured psyche.
I can only apologize for those friends of mine who enjoy random generation after decades of using it. I am sure if they knew how your every personal relationship was left in utter chaos after this event, they would immediately quit the practice.
I cannot account for any bad grades or dependencies you may have encountered after this fantastically calamitous event, as prevailing attitudes towards such phenomena are that the responsibility rests with the individual. However, I hold no illusions that the experience had a real hand in setting you on a ruinous course.
On behalf of anybody who still enjoys a quick, rolled-up game where we let the dice fall where they may and live with it, and on behalf of those who still labor under the delusion that a baseline must exist to guide character creation, and that 3d6 is as good a tool for introducing the elements of said creation as anything else, please accept my humblest apologies for our years - nay, decades of ignorance of your plight, and our sincerest wishes for your eventual recovery and financial success.
I have used the point buy system exactly once in my games as all it did was lead to a large amount of min/maxing with every character using Charisma as their dump stat. In a game where there was to be a lot of NPC interaction, this was a VERY BAD THING.
Back in 3.5th ed I used to regularly have my players either use 4d6 drop the lowest, but the conditions were that the stats had to be rolled in order, and any one stat could be re-rolled, but the second roll stood even if it was worse; or if we needed the characters quickly we'd just use the "heroic spread" - 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8; assigned as desired.
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I have used the point buy system exactly once in my games as all it did was lead to a large amount of min/maxing with every character using Charisma as their dump stat. In a game where there was to be a lot of NPC interaction, this was a VERY BAD THING.
I have used the rolling system exactly once in my games as all it did was lead to a large amount of min/maxing with every character using Charisma as their dump stat. In a game where there was to be a lot of NPC interaction, this was a VERY BAD THING.
It's not the method that makes cha-dumping a problem. It's the relative uselessness of charisma itself. Give charisma extra non-social bonuses and the problem will diminish.
It wouldn't be such a problem if it didn't take so long to go through and put together an effective character which increases with level, especially when one is somewhat lacking in game mastery, especially since the rules in Pathfinder can get complex at times.
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I just hope this points out how destructive randomly generating stats can be...
I am very sorry to hear that as a result of these middling ability scores, your house exploded and your car melted down to cinders. I sincerely hope you were able to replace the Players Handbook, that I assume it is safe to say, was reduced to ash by your unspectacular rolls.
Your obliterated dice are a testament to the evils of random generation, as is your fractured psyche.
I can only apologize for those friends of mine who enjoy random generation after decades of using it. I am sure if they knew how your every personal relationship was left in utter chaos after this event, they would immediately quit the practice.
I cannot account for any bad grades or dependencies you may have encountered after this fantastically calamitous event, as prevailing attitudes towards such phenomena are that the responsibility rests with the individual. However, I hold no illusions that the experience had a real hand in setting you on a ruinous course.
On behalf of anybody who still enjoys a quick, rolled-up game where we let the dice fall where they may and live with it, and on behalf of those who still labor under the delusion that a baseline must exist to guide character creation, and that 3d6 is as good a tool for introducing the elements of said creation as anything else, please accept my humblest apologies for our years - nay, decades of ignorance of your plight, and our sincerest wishes for your eventual recovery and financial success.
I find this kind of sarcasm and dismissive attitude to be detrimental to a community where we share ideas and allow people to express themselves. Your hyperbole served no purpose except as an exercise in rhetorical masturbation.
Much more useful (as others have done in this thread) is to present your side with helpful advice, such as how to be creative with bad stats instead of being insulting and sarcastic.
One of my favourite methods is where everyone rolls one set of stats together. We had a small group with only 3 players. Everyone rolled two stats. And then combined them to make a set. We all new we were on a level playing field and it was something we had done together.
I have always perfered rolling stats to point buy. I just see too much cookie cutter out of point buy I find it boring that I am willing to risk a poor rolled character to the sameness that point buy produces.
The oddest rolling method I have ever used and seen was...
step 1: roll 24d6
step 2: reroll ones once(if it come up as a one again you don't reroll it)
step 3: drop the six lowest
step 4: place the dice how you want them.
Every time I used it has created for the most part balanced characters, with a couple of good stats, and people had the stats to play what the wanted.
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One of my favourite methods is where everyone rolls one set of stats together. We had a small group with only 3 players. Everyone rolled two stats. And then combined them to make a set. We all new we were on a level playing field and it was something we had done together.
I'm moving to just such a system myself in my next campaign.
I suppose one way to make 3d6 work would be to A.) set 7 as the minimum allowed value and B.) add up the PB value of each set of stats.
9, 8, 8, 11, 11, 4>7 (-7)
5>7, 9, 11, 10, 11, 7 (-7)
7, 13, 12, 7, 10, 11 (-5)
11, 11, 13, 9, 14, 14 (+14)
Now we can determine average PB, which in this case is -1.25. I think it would be fair to go as far as round that up to a 0-PB value.
The three players who go the sucky sets can now raise their arrays up to a total 0-PB! That's quite the advantage, right? They get to disperse points any way they like. How hot is that?
Personally I don't think it's very hot at all. :( I guess you could apply the same formula to 4d6-DTL, that would be better.
I suppose one way to make 3d6 work would be to A.) set 7 as the minimum allowed value and B.) add up the PB value of each set of stats.
9, 8, 8, 11, 11, 4>7 (-7)
5>7, 9, 11, 10, 11, 7 (-7)
7, 13, 12, 7, 10, 11 (-5)
11, 11, 13, 9, 14, 14 (+14)Now we can determine average PB, which in this case is -1.25. I think it would be fair to go as far as round that up to a 0-PB value.
The three players who go the sucky sets can now raise their arrays up to a total 0-PB! That's quite the advantage, right? They get to disperse points any way they like. How hot is that?
Personally I don't think it's very hot at all. :( I guess you could apply the same formula to 4d6-DTL, that would be better.
2D6+6 or 1D12+6 kinda fix the minimum stat thing.
I have always perfered rolling stats to point buy. I just see too much cookie cutter out of point buy I find it boring that I am willing to risk a poor rolled character to the sameness that point buy produces.
The oddest rolling method I have ever used and seen was...
step 1: roll 24d6
step 2: reroll ones once(if it come up as a one again you don't reroll it)
step 3: drop the six lowest
step 4: place the dice how you want them.
Every time I used it has created for the most part balanced characters, with a couple of good stats, and people had the stats to play what the wanted.
Sounds nice too.
Though I understand why people hate dice rolling. i have a friend who reguarly rolls bad for everything. I mean when rolling a set he is happy to have a 15. I even have rolled his set for him...I have to ask him to leave the house or store when I do so and pretend these rolls are not for him.
You can't even let him touch your dice....as they will roll bad for the rest of the night. That is how much of a dice jinx he is.
Oddly enough he perfers rolling for stats than point buy.