popular arrays to use


Gamer Life General Discussion


I'm going to be DMing a table-top campaign hopefully on Saturdays. The problem is that the people who want to play range anywhere from ages 13-30.

And well, the 13's don't know how to optimize a character. I started out with 20 point buy and realized the young kids don't want to spend too much buy into one stat, in fact, he was a fighter, he had 3 14's, and his highest was str at 15. Cha was at 7. But with his well rounded jack-of-trades stats, he would get killed easily. I realized if I DM this for kids or people are new and most of the group who wants to is new, they won't know how to be even suboptimal with the buy points, they will get killed in no time flat.

The solution:
Use and array and tell them which stats are most important for the class they are playing. Like tell him for a fighter your best stat is str and your worst is cha, so he can optimally put the 18 there and the 8 there, then put the stats elsewhere where he chooses. Players won't have to bother with buy points stuff is there for them.
I was thinking: 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8. And when I calculate buy, that comes out to 32 buy points. I was also thinking: 18, 15, 14, 12, 10, 8. When calculated, it comes out to 29 buy points.
I have also thought: 18, 14, 14, 12, 12, 8 and is 29 buy points.

Also I'm doing a Pre-gen Adventure for this. It might not be a pathfinder Pre-gen, but it will be a pre-gen. Ie. It might be another Pre-gen converted over as converting the monsters is easy. Instead of using the 4th addition vampire use the pathfinder vampire when you encounter one, so yes it is easy to convert. And the skill checks are easily converted as well. The DC might be lessened or hardened depending upon if skills are higher in pathfinder.

But mainly, I need advice on what arrays to use, so that people don't get killed but not make it too easy either.

Scarab Sages

Whatever else you wind up doing, all I'll say is you shouldn't be punishing players (much less inexperienced ones) for "well rounded jack-of-trades" stats (or min-maxing, for that matter, if such is a player's proclivity). A Fighter with those scores is a great starting point for all kinds of characters - and to hear that your youngest players are tilting AWAY from the narrow-minded bean-counter mold that's sprung up over the past 10 years or so is very encouraging in itself.

Remember that RPGs are all about ultra-interactive storytelling. It's why they were invented. The mechanics are nothing but an interface for the story - graven idols, if you will. The question of how powerful you want your PCs to be starts with the question: "What kind of story do I want to tell?" If you want it to be like The Adventures of Tin-Tin, for instance, that's probably a 10-point game (or "random roll 3d6, require minimum cumulative bonus of +3" or something like that). 20 Points is more in the vein of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The array you suggest is powerful, alright, but gods know I don't object overmuch to high-powered games. The Core Rulebook designates 25 point-buy as "Epic Fantasy" and is as high as they list (implying they wouldn't recommend going higher).

It sounds like you wouldn't mind pushing it up to 11, however, so let me suggest random rolling of one of the more generous 3-18 models out there (2d6+6, 3d4+6, 4d4+2, 1d10+8, etc), and allowing players to roll 3 sets of 6 each, then picking which of the 3 sets they like most. You could also impose safeguards like "no more than one score of 8 or lower per character, reroll extras" and/or "no more than 2 total 17s and/or 18s per character, reroll extras," until you get a satisfactory result. A cruder way I've heard of is to say, "you're guaranteed one score of 18, the rest is random or semirandom rolling or lower-end point-buy."


Not that I would intentionally punish anyone for making suboptimal characters, but I am using pregens. In other words, the adventure is punishing people for making suboptimal characters. The only way not to punish players is to power down the monsters/traps etc.

but yeah, I though about the rolls, the problem is with rolls, player A has 10 more stat points than player B or 13 more buy points than player B. Even with 2d6+6. It doesn't make the game fair.

Not to mention, if players can handle it without dying or coming to close to dying, I like to add extra monsters in some combats so they can gain extra experience, so they can level up faster. The faster you level up the better the game is. It is awesome when you end up a whole level ahead of the Pregen. Not that fast leveling is the only thing that makes a good game, but it is one of them.


I like to have games about characters that seem exceptional. (It also means I have more leeway to take risks when planning encounters). To that end, I offer an array of 18 16 15 14 13 11. I do rolled stats (3d6, drop lowest, reroll 1s +6), but allow choosing the array after the rolls.

I used the array in an introductory game of my own, and found it to be helpful in terms of giving characters oomph, and smoothing out the rough edges that new players don't even know to watch for, let alone how to avoid.

Shadow Lodge

It seems extreme that the adventure is going to kill a character with a high stat 15 and low stat 7 on a 20 point buy in "no time flat".

That should allow a pretty reasonable array for a player who actively wants average-across-the-board stats.

Having said that, if you're sure the adventure is (much?) harder than usual, all you can really do is give them some strong encouragement/guidance. Ultimately it's their character, not yours.

The only other point worth noting is that 15 is a strange high stat in any array for new players - make sure they have an even number in that high stat, otherwise even an average array will be stung hard.


Do I know for sure that he will get killed, no, not till probably much later. But he has his con at 12. I am playing a Module right now that isn't PFS here on PBP where players were created at level 14, with level 14 gold, with a 20 point buy. I have 13 con, including equipment bonuses and I have the favored class bonus as HP, and I'm wishing I had more HP not realizing how hard the fire giants are, as I'm lucky I haven't died yet. I haven't looked ahead, but if other books are as harsh, they will be punished later on down the road for not having enough con as a fighter.

Cha he didn't need, so I approved of statdropping.


What module? We steam roll APs all the time and "jack of all trades insta death" is my go to array I guess. Let them stat it up and go. Players gotta learn sometime, amirite?


Tomb of Iron Medusa, though I wonder if that is like a superdungeon.


So I went with the idea, that players use one of 3 arrays for this as I always think of an array as a replacement for rolling.

when I joined a 3.5 homebrew we did roll 24d6 and reroll all 1s once. The we choose our stats out of a dice poll. Our highest roller came out to 88 total. I came out with 86 total, and our lowest person came out with I think 77 total. I figured if the dice poll was done without relrolling all 1s once dropping the lowest 6 dice, the scores would be lower, but not by much, because there weren't that many 1s to reroll and not all the rerolled dice ended up with numbers higher than the lowerst onces.

Array 1: (18, 15, 14) (12, 12, 8): good high stats, good low stats
Array 2: (18, 17, 16) (10, 10, 8): awesome high stats, bad low stats
Array 3: (16, 14, 14) (14, 13, 10): bad high stats, awesome low stats.

when calculated, the first two arrays do 79, while that last one has 81, but not a single 18, when looking at the 3, I left some notes. And in every array, I left one odd number so that at level 20 players can make all even numbers if they want. Since you get 5 increases, have one to even out the odd number and the other 4 to pump your best stat.

Shadow Lodge

The rule for con is generally 14 ideally, 12 minimum.

Since PFS went quite a bit more high-powered, I've changed that personally to 16 ideal, 14 minimum, but some people have scoffed at me when they hear 16.

So as long as they don't have a 10 con, it shouldn't be a huge deal.

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