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I've been browsing through the forums and it seems to me that a lot of people just assume that everyone uses point buy like them. I've seen a few posts of people bashing people's characters for stupid placement of point buy only to have the person announce that they rolled, and it seems people are surprised. I like rolling stats.
I just started a game with six players and I made all of them roll there stats in order and then build a class from that. So if their first roll was a 16 then that was their strength. I know this is a bit extreme, but everyone liked it, and it made choosing your race interesting. If you wanted to be an elf you couldn't just buy your con up to offset the con minus you took.
I'm curious as to who else still rolls there stats. Is rolling your stats dead?
Search the forums. There have been at least 3 disscussions on this before, I think one hit 1000 posts. In the end, lots of people prefer one way over the other for lots of different reasons. I prefer rolling myself, but use point buy when discussing things on the board because its easy to come to a standard to talk about and a 20 point buy is roughly equivalent to rolling 4d6 drop low.
I've been browsing through the forums and it seems to me that a lot of people just assume that everyone uses point buy like them. I've seen a few posts of people bashing people's characters for stupid placement of point buy only to have the person announce that they rolled, and it seems people are surprised. I like rolling stats.
I just started a game with six players and I made all of them roll there stats in order and then build a class from that. So if their first roll was a 16 then that was their strength. I know this is a bit extreme, but everyone liked it, and it made choosing your race interesting. If you wanted to be an elf you couldn't just buy your con up to offset the con minus you took.
I'm curious as to who else still rolls there stats. Is rolling your stats dead?
If that's what your group likes, then it's just fine. I only hope you let 'em do 4d6 DTL. :)
Personally, I like to roll and assign wherever I want.
I currently use a very generous point buy, but if the players asked for it I'd go for rolling without problem.
I started playing young, with AD&D and some of the harder rolling systems (3d6, in order). This is how I never got to play a ranger and always ended up as a wizard.
After playing with some more established groups after 3.0 I've come to like the 4d6, drop the lowest, put the scores wherever you want method.
I prefer it over point buying.
Still Roll them here. 4D6, drop the lowest and place the 6 scores where you like. We all still like to roll, like we've always done for years.
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Just about all of the groups I've ever played with rolled a d20 seven times and dropped the lowest number. Then assigned the numbers to the whichever stats they wanted.
I've become so accustomed to this and so many of my players like high/epic fantasy, I've just stuck with the d20 for stats. We do this most of the time anyway.
If I have a certain level of magic/power in mind for the campaign/adventure I will either use pre-gens or give them a sheet of pre-assigned stats and let them pick which set of stats they want. To keep them from all picking the same set of stats they have to mark off the one they use.
Other than those exceptions, we just stick with the d20 stat roll.
I do 4d6, drop lowest, assign as you like.
I will allow them to roll four complete sets of the six stats with this method and pick the set that they like best but I've only had a player do that once, and he still wasn't happy with what he got because he's just never happy.
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In the game I play in the most, it's 4d6, drop the lowest. Order to taste. I usually roll two or three different characters, develop them, then pick the one that either fits the party's need or, if the bases are covered (like in a five or six player group), which ever one seems like it would be most fun.
Point buy for PFS. Most of the other games I've played have used the 20 point buy.
If I run a game, I let the players decide between 20 point buy or 4d6, dtl.
We still roll.
In the PF games I run, I have the players roll up two sets of stats using 4d6, drop lowest, arrange as they see fit. Then they pick the preferred set.
In the 3.5 game a friend runs, he has us roll 6 stats using 4d6, drop lowest. Then we can choose to roll a 7th to replace one of the 6 already rolled or roll a second set of 6.
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My table is trying a hybrid of a linear-cost 15 point buy with 5 dice to determine where 5 other points go after you've set your stats and race. These 5 random dice can push a stat above maximum.
Note: These random dice each assign one point to a random stat, so only 5 points extra total.
This ends up roughly a 25+ point buy since characters focus on an average of 2 stats by maxing them (or nearly so).
If it ends up too high-power we'll lower the initial buy to 73 and the random dice to 4.
<--
For my last game I had everyone roll 4d6 drop the lowest 6 times, and then averaged everyone's highest score, second highest score, etc. down the line. It's a tad bit more work at character creation, but I thought it was kind of fun and worked out really well.
For Pathfinder I would never want to use point buy; I don't feel it's a good fit with the 3.x system.
I use the standard rolling method still. Players can reroll if they're unhappy with their scores, under the guideline of, "Don't be a cheating dick about it."
I've suggested point buy once or twice when everyone was rolling poorly, but that was shouted down. It seems my players would rather have lousy ability scores than not roll.
For that matter, I also still roll for hit points. Certain things will always be rolled in my games.
I've been browsing through the forums and it seems to me that a lot of people just assume that everyone uses point buy like them. …
I have my players roll stats.
I think one of the reasons you see point buy in discussions here is because it gives a baseline for the sake of discussion about PCs. That's why I'll explain my POVs on PCs with point buy even though in RL my group rolls.
We roll like men at my table. Point buy is for [expletive deleted]. And oh yeah, organized longitudinal games.
We roll stats for our PF games, unless you elect to use point buy...its person by person choice.
I roll well, ususally, and therefore prefer luck to point buy.
We have some folks in our group that can't roll over an 8 on 4d6 to save their lives...
We use the stat array option with the following array: 14, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. In addition each player gets 1 stat point to place on a stat of his choice (usually one of the 14s).
My standard is normally 2d6+6, raise the highest to 18 and arrange how you will. But...I started a game that I vowed would be relatively normal and decided to go with a 20 point buy, 25 if they gave me a character history. We'll see if they survive.
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I alternate between 2d6+6 (or +8) as desired and 4d6 drop in order with one switch. I don't care that much for weighted point buy since it doesn't scale well, and is generally only good for very specialized characters (as point buy generally pigeon holes folks into 1-trick ponies).
As a GM, most of my NPC's get 16,14,14,10,8,8 for base-line stats.
I've always rolled, except for our current campaign. Just getting to play once a month (if that), it just made more sense for us to do point buy and just not worry about rolling it, or who you are rolling it in front of, or whatever.
Which is better? I dunno. I like the idea of rolling but at least you don't get screwed with point buy :)
-S
As far as rolling for stats and getting screwed goes, I believe even the 1E DMG suggested to keep rolling for stats until an agreeable array was reached. (of course info in the DMG was meant to be off-limits to players back then)
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I'm toying with an idea for my next campaign that uses a scaled point buy to help those players who choose a MAD class. They would have three options...
(1) Use Epic Fantasy, but have a maximum score limit of 14 (before racial adjustments)
(2) Use High Fantasy with a max of 16
(3) Use Standard Fantasy with a max of 18
This would allow a MAD class to get more points to use, while still allowing a non-MAD class to get a 20 (after racial adj). Overall, it should keep things balanced. Either you can do a lot of things well with few/no flaws or you can be great at 1-2 things and have some obvious flaws. Thoughts?
The group I'm in rolls too: 4d6 drop the lowest, assign as desired.
If the player beat the odds and none of the ability scores are above 11, there's a discussion within the context of the campaign, i.e. will the character be interesting or will the character die right out of the gate. A reroll may be allowed in the latter case.
We use epic fantasy, but mainly as a legacy for a previous awesome campaign, and for some feat prereq.
The power level is not so high, though.
We still roll 4d6 drop the lowest, have been looking at using 2d6+6 or the point buy but the group likes rolling. the jury is still out on using 2d6+6 currently I think they like 4d6 its what we have always used since we started in 2e.
My current DM uses 4D6, re-roll 1's...make 2 columns of 6 pick a column and arrange as you like. Then add 3 where ever you like.
My game generally has only three PCs, so I usually use a highly overpowered rolling system to compensate: 6 + 3d6 drop the lowest. Ability scores are rolled in order, but I permit one swap. I strongly prefer rolling to point buy both as a DM and as a player.
I think the reason you see so many people using point buy on rules discussion threads is because 15 or 20 point buy is about low-average to generous-average of what any given character's stats are always going to be. They provide an even baseline working theoretically on how different abilities work and what various given builds will probably look like.
I think at the actual table, as many people use point buy as they do die rolling--and particularly here you have a lot of longtime gamers who use die rolling because that's what they've always done (and it's fun!). As a GM I use point buy because I have too many times seen people with wildly disparate stats from rolling and thus have different characters with effectively different power levels, which is too hard for me as a GM to try and prepare for.
It is not the right or wrong way, it is just the way I prefer.
ETA: Because I always have to do this in every thread that talks about die rolling, here's my oldskool 3d6 in order roll for the prospective character I will never play:
Str:
Dex:
Con:
Int:
Wis:
Cha:
(I know it used to be in a different order but I don't remember what it was.)
Good lord, I don't know what the heck I could do with that. I think a race where I can get an Int or Wisdom bonus and try for Wizard or Druid.
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I used to love rolling. I still do. My only problem as a GM. When you have literally every one of your players come up with an 18, and majority of them have multiple 18's (Just enough to cover their main stats) and this isn't isolated to one group, it seems when I play with brand new groups this issue comes up over and over. I became disenfranchised with rolling. It seems a large majority of people can't resist cheating or trying to fool the GM. So, now to avoid the "you guys have to be cheating" argument I just start out point buy and I never have to worry about it again.
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So, now to avoid the "you guys have to be cheating" argument I just start out point buy and I never have to worry about it again.
We had this come up in our original v3.0 game and had everyone re-roll their stats at the table during the first session. We used 4d6, re-roll one's, and drop the lowest. The paladin got five 18's and 16...with my dice!!! We were amazed. Especially since I wound up with two sub 10's, including a 6, and nothing higher than a 15. Rolling immediately after, with the same dice. Ever since, we've used point-buy.
I'm curious as to who else still rolls there stats.
We only roll, and will do so for as long as we play this game.
CEO
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We just started our Kingmaker campaign and the players decided to roll 4d6 and take the 3 highest rolls, and then assign them to stats in the order rolled. Then, the players could swap stat rolls with another player if they wished. The strange thing is that I didn't ask them to do this, they just thought it would be a fun way to roll up new characters.
-Lisa
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We just started our Kingmaker campaign and the players decided to roll 4d6 and take the 3 highest rolls, and then assign them to stats in the order rolled. Then, the players could swap stat rolls with another player if they wished. The strange thing is that I didn't ask them to do this, they just thought it would be a fun way to roll up new characters.
-Lisa
That does sound entertaining. Almost enough for me to forgo my normal anti-rolling mentality.