Dannym, I admit to being curious. I use dice in my own 3.5 campaign, for various reasons, but I'll be the first to admit that most dice systems aren't fair, that is to say, they don't create a table of characters of equal strength.
So, I've got to ask, how do you understand rolling dice (where one character might have much better statistics than her companion) to be "more fair" than a point-buy?
Rolling is fairer when comparing single-attribute dependent (SAD) classes and multi-attribute dependent (MAD) classes and when working with both optimizers and players who don't optimize.
When you've got a SAD class, you can pump it to 18 and give up relatively little while the MAD is spreading the points around. That gives the SAD class a bit more modifier in their primary offense. When you roll, the 17s and 18s are a lot more rare and the SAD class usually won't have better than a 16 to start with. That keeps them a bit closer to the MAD class.
All that also assumes a little bit of optimization as well. Hard core optimizers usually push the point buy to its limits of efficiency while the random distribution, while still allowing some optimization, forces optimizers to "make do". In the end, they may actually do pretty well with random rolls and, if their lowest roll isn't as low as they'd dump a stat, give them a better rounded, less brittle character.
I also feel that the way saving throws work is better with random rolls as well. Again, anything over a 16 is actually fairly rare while 12-14 come up fairly often. The difference between a rolled optimized offense modifier (+3) and rolled defense modifier (+1) tends to be lower than point buy (+4 vs +0 or +1). The disparity between the fighter's low Will save and the wizard's spell DCs thus tends to be a little lower.
Now, all of these are tendencies and specific cases may run counter to them depending on how the dice fall. But I'm convinced that rolling works better for 3e and promotes better game balance than point buy does.
Rolling all the way (4d6 drop lowest)
Most of the time the game is about overcoming adversary.
Some times its monsters or villains or traps.
Some times its you ( the PC )
It also mixes things up nicely, you don;t always get what you want so it force more creative approach to the external adversaries.
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The reason my group stopped rolling stats is because a few of the players felt that they were weak in comparison to players with lucky rolls at character generation versus themselves.
And to me saying "reroll 1's" would require a "reroll 6's" rule for continuity. If you want random, and your players enjoy it then go for it but it isn't for everybody.
For example the last time we rolled, I sat and watched one player roll up 2 18's, 3 16's and a 12. The next player rolled no stat above 13... so yeah point buy helps level the field.
Also THIS
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My 1e and 2e method was close to that.... roll 3d6, the lowest becomes a 6.
Since rolling a 1 for hp always sucked, we dropped the die 2 steps and gave a +4 to the result... d8 became d4+4. Special cases were d6's and d4's. d6 was d3+3. d4 was d2+2. Now we generally assign the die's average... possibly with a bonus for elite or heroic games.
When I played 4e we used point buy which worked fine for the time being, but it eventually devolved into just picking your class and chossing 'pick optimal' for ability scores. So to me point but is pretty boring. In our current group we use 3d6 and re-roll 1's.
I much prefer rolling before point buy.
I have noticed on the boards a lot of people seem to opt for the point buy method of generating stats rather than the old fashioned method of getting the d6's out.
Am I the only one who uses the 4d6 method? Or am I an anarcronistic relic of an earlier age?
Whilst I wait for answers I will retire to the drawing room to put on my smoking jacket, wind up the gramophone and listen to that newfangled "Jazz" music that has all the ladies aflutter at the tennis club.
There was a thread on this a few weeks ago. I will try to find the link.
I am the rolling dice thread that ask the same question. Click me.
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Being old school, I use one of two ways:
3d6, reroll 1's. I noticed roccojr does same, cool.
4d6, drop the lowest. No rerolling of 1's.
<sometimes i allow 3 as minimum - preferred, but only with expert players>
Hit points, one of three ways:
Max at first level, half max rounded up every level thereafter.
Max at first level, roll for every level thereafter.
Max at first level, choice of rolling or taking half max rounded up. Must state choice before rolling.
I roll my stats whenever I'm allowed to. I like rolling over point buy because with rolling there's a chance that I won't have to have a "dump stat" as I see so often with point buy, which actually seems to encourage it.
You all are going to HELL.
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I had my players roll for my current Pathfinder Ravenloft game, but it's probably the last campaign I'll do rolled stats in. I just appreciate the fine-tuned control of point buy too much to care about the random swinginess of random chargen anymore. None of my preferred non-Pathfinder systems have random chargen (Savage Worlds and Mutants & Masterminds), so I don't see why I should bother with it in Pathfinder either since there's a reasonable point-buy scale.
Jeremy Puckett
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In my latest campaign, the players wanted to roll so we did the usual 4d6 times 6, drop any sets with less than a +1 net bonus. The result (which always seems to happen with 6PCs) is that there is a range in point buy values between 15 and 30 among the rolls.
I told people that if they got me a short description of their character and a stat block before the game started, I would give them bonus feats that fit their description. I decided that for each 5 points they were below the max, they would get a feat, using traits as half-feats.
I picked uncommon feats like Acrobatic or Stealthy or Spell Focus for the Bard that picked 3/7 enchantment spells.