As a gamer I know that the time honored tradition of using the D6 in generating attributes and I have nothing but respect for it’s origins. Truth be known, the system of using 3d6 or 4d6 (dropping the lowest) really seems to be inadequate for today’s gaming standards. Back in 1st edition and 2nd edition (before Skills and powers) creating a character was fast and didn’t require much building so character death was not a big deal. Now in days however creating characters who are heros and champions seem to be the goal whether or not you optimize or not. A good majority of us even invest a lot of time into a good background history. However, often it is very common when a player had spent a great deal of time creating a character including both character build and background history only for it to be dashed away by getting killed early on due to bad attributes or poor luck. This often can be devastating because a player could be easily feel cheated in proportion to the amount of time that was invested. Now it has been argued that attributes don’t matter that much in the end but it does matter in the beginning. So as RPG er’s we all tend to want above average to exceptional attributes for our characters, which leads me to the six sided die. The six sided die has always been in my opinion, as well as the opinion of others, to be a very un-reliable die and so I contend not use it anymore for attribute generation.
Using point buy seems more reliable but often the numbers you can produce are often not very appealing but at the very least they are consistent. You do however loose the random flare of being blessed with good attributes because then you enviably produce stats that look min-maxed and lets be honest they are.
The alternate methods I propose may not be new and odds that they are not, but I don’t seem to see it mentioned very often or at all. I would like to invite everyone to give their feedback on using such a system and to help me test the results. What I am hoping for are stats that are above average in all areas but with some stats that are near or at maximum potential for a level one character.
1st Method:
For each attribute roll 2d4 +10
My results:
Generation 1: 16/15/15/16/15/16
Generation 2: 18/16/13/16/13/15
Generation 3: 15/14/14/17/14/16
Generation 4: 18/18/13/16/18/12
Generation 5: 15/13/17/14/15/13
Generation 6: 15/15/16/14/13/14
Generation 7: 13/14/14/17/15/16
Generation 8: 15/13/16/16/15/16
Generation 9: 13/15/16/13/16/16
Generation 10: 13/17/16/16/14/14
2nd Method:
For each attribute roll 1d8 +10
My results:
Generation 1: 11/14/13/14/18/13
Generation 2: 16/15/17/12/17/15
Generation 3: 14/17/12/15/17/13
Generation 4: 13/14/15/16/15/16
Generation 5: 18/18/15/12/11/11
Generation 6: 14/12/18/17/17/13
Generation 7: 18/17/13/13/17/12
Generation 8: 12/17/13/15/15/12
Generation 9: 14/18/13/12/15/14
Generation 10: 12/12/14/11/12/14
So far the results are encouraging, but I would love some help to see if this methods is viable for good stats but still allow for that random feeling. Plus any feedback is more than welcomed.
Point Buy is standard anymore. Rulebooks hang on to dice roll rules for nostalgic gamers.
Here's a link to a thread about alternate generation techniques.
I'm currently using the card draw.
You take two suits of cards #s 4-9 and shuffle them up and draw two cards for each stat. you do not preplace those cards in the deck as you pull. It seems to churn out above average stats.
here are some examples of draws: (total bounus of modifiers)
15.13.13.9.13.15 (+6)
15.17.12.11.11.12 (+7)
15.17.14.10.11.11 (+7)
17.11.13.10.16.13 (+8)
16.15.17.11.8.11 (+7)
17.17.13.13.9.9 (+6)
17.17.14.12.9.9 (+7)
15.14.13.12.10.8 (+5)(Standard array for comparison)
It seems like a good way to do random stats with out having those players who roll really good rolls, and the players with really bad rolls.