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I like rolling stats when the DM lays the law down and doesn't just make it an exercise in rolling until you get what you want.
When I game with Kirth, I roll my set. If it's not bad enough to be a mulligan, I live with it.
If the players don't want to deal with that risk, they need to use point buy or stat array.
I'm a skill-monger GM. If you leave your Int and Cha low, you will suffer for it. But I agree with the previous sentiment: if you're just rerolling until you're Superman, it defeats the purpose. Even characters with gaping flaws are fun to play, assuming it's not just a mindless dungeon crawl with no real social interactions.
In the upcoming game I'm running the PCs will assign stats according to the following guidelines:
1. All stats start at a base of 10.
2. Players then get 18 extra points to assign to stats on a one-for-one basis. No stat can go higher than an 18.
3. Players can lower a stat below 10 to get extra points, but only a maximum of two stats can be lowered below 10 and no one stat can be lowered below 8.
4. Apply racial modifiers once all points are spent.
Hey Xexyz, got to say though, stats of 7 or below can really make a character memorable and give them a weakness that makes them stand out in the party, and provide a challenge to overcome. Currently, playing a scout with a dex of 7. His ac is terrible, but he can still be a great archer with the zen archery feat and a nice wisdom. Some players though, they will never accept or even try a low dex. They are too used to a high dex, con and will, all the save ability scores never being deficient. Low wisdom is another fun one.
Dragon had an old article, so you rolled a 3. It was great and stock full of ideas.
I've decided that, from now on, my players can either take 25 point buy or roll 4d6, drop lowest six times, reroll the lowest score, then assign stats as desired. I think it's a nice compromise between the advantages of rolling and the advantages of point buy, especially for people like me who prefer point buy, but are sometimes in the mood to roll stats (I sometimes like to roll in order and take whatever I get).
I also like 4d6 drop the lowest IN ORDER. But then it is a sliding set of statistics.
So for example if you roll... 17, 12, 14, 13, 7, 10
So here you have six possible actions from one set of scores... but they must remain in order though they slide
S 17
D 12
C 14
I 13
W 7
C 10
AND
S 10
D 17
C 12
I 14
W 13
C 7
S 7
D 10
C 17
I 12
W 14
C 13
AND
S 13
D 7
C 10
I 17
W 12
C 14
AND
S 14
D 13
C 7
I 10
W 17
C 12
AND
S 12
D 14
C 13
I 7
W 10
C 17
Sometimes I have let players choose order and then place a single 14. Mix this with racial abilities and I find you can play most classes.
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If the players don't want to deal with that risk, they need to use point buy or stat array.
I like point-buy, both as a player and a GM (as a player, my dice have betrayed me on character generation more times than I care to count-- as a GM, I've seen some player's exceptional luck combined with some other player's poor luck result in too great a disparity between characters to easily be tolerated, too many times for me to be okay with it as an occasional event). The closest I've come to tolerating the dice method as a GM was to give every player one shot at the dice (usually 4d6/best 3, 6 times, arrange as you like), and then you can keep your rolls, or take a pt buy (whichever you prefer)-- thus giving players a chance to get lucky, but ensuring that there was a minimum level of competence and playability amongst the PCs.
I'm a skill-monger GM. If you leave your Int and Cha low, you will suffer for it. But I agree with the previous sentiment: if you're just rerolling until you're Superman, it defeats the purpose. Even characters with gaping flaws are fun to play, assuming it's not just a mindless dungeon crawl with no real social interactions.
Heh. I'm okay with characters having gaping flaws though-- don't get me wrong. I just don't like characters who feel like 'average joes' or of rather unheroic basic ability.
When using pt buy, a lot of my "skill-monkeys" and "casters" wind up with fairly low strength and con, since I need to emphasize other things and plan to stay out of the line of fire more, rather than rely on durability. The last three PF characters I built (2 Oracles and a Sorcerer) all started with 14 Int, because I needed more skill points. It doesn't matter what type of character I'm building... I may leave a 10 in Charisma, but I never use Charisma as a total dump stat.
For the last 10+ years the default me and mine has been roll 4d6 drop lowest rerolling 1s six times forming a six by six grid. From there take either a vertical or horizontal line and after that you assign the numbers to the states you want.
I have to admit I am torn. Traditionally our group has rolled 4d6 dropping the lowest 7 times dropping the lowest of the 7. We always like this I don't see how it promotes min maxing more than point buy. We started playing a new campaign and using heroforges generator . . . suddenly I noticed the stats I entered were the equivelent of 34 point buy. I am thinking of going 20 point buy next time. The biggest thing I do not like about point buy is that it is debilitating to max out your principal stat. If you have an 18 you also have a 6.
In my current face-to-face game, I gave the players the following options:
My random race table is heavily skewed towards base races, with a 40% chance of rolling human, but does include all "reasonably humanoid" races, including templates, from the Bestiary, up to CR 3.
This game ended up with 2 humans, 1 half-elf, 1 halfling, and 1 aasimar (who still, at level 8, has not revealed to the other characters that he is not human.); As I recall, the half-elf is the only one who didn't roll a random race.
My group started another campaign at the same time, with one of the other players as GM. We used the same roll options, but he used a modified reincarnation table for the random race. That party was dwarf, goblin, half-orc, gnome, and morlock.
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Hey, I looked at Ezren and Valeros and the other PFRPG characters in the back of Serpent Skull last night because this thread made me curious as to what kind of ability scores L1 characters PAIZO uses/recommends.
I could immediately see that all thier stats totaled to 74. What system would this infer?
Hey, I looked at Ezren and Valeros and the other PFRPG characters in the back of Serpent Skull last night because this thread made me curious as to what kind of ability scores L1 characters PAIZO uses/recommends.
I could immediately see that all thier stats totaled to 74. What system would this infer?
If all of them have exactly the same total that implies, to me, that they used a stat array or a set of stat arrays deliberately designed to have the same total.
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As a player I prefer the rolling of dice for character generation, but have used point buys numerous times as well.
As a GM in my last two campaigns I had the players roll 3d6 staight down the list. A set of stats had to avg 12. And players had to stay with the first usable set they rolled. They then chose an NPC class. After a session or two they then received 10 pts to spend per normal point buy rules to adjust their stats as they saw fit. Then they chose their PC class and gestalted that with their NPC class for 1st level.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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My usual method is like this:
You can choose to either build a set of stats using 20 point buy, or roll 4d6 drop lowest 7 times, and pick 6, arrange as desired.
After you roll, if you don't like what you get, you can instead choose to go back to Point Buy -- but with only 18 points. So there is a small incentive to stick with what you rolled, but if your roll is terrible, the point buy will still be better.
My group typically uses 4d6, re-roll ones, drop the lowest. I don't like point bye and I don't think anyone in my group does either. I don't tell them specifically they can't use one method vs another. I might try the 18D6 method sometime.
I have been toying around with a 5D4, re-roll ones, drop the lowest. I am kind of sick of first level characters with 20 attribute scores, for that matter I don't much like 18 either. It doesn't give you something to work up to. It probably won't happen because I can't imagine the players going for it.
SGH
Thanks for all the informative replies. I figured there would be a lot of different mechanisms, but I am surprised by how many there are. I had sort of expected my group's technique to be pretty standard, but it turns out our system is on the lower end of stat producing techniques.
I am surprised to see so many "4d6 drop lowest, reroll 1s, seven times pick best six" That seems very generous to me. That's like three different ways to get a better score than just rolling 3d6.
The end result is that it appears that most games are being run with players who are at least at the 20 point buy, and maybe even 25 point buy level.
I'll bounce that off my group for future reference.
I ran some Monte Carlo simulations on a few different rolling systems, to determine the equivalent point-buys. This should have all of the ones from this thread which don't involve splitting the dice up according to player desires. Here are the results.
5: -9 pts
4: -12 pts
3: -16 pts
3d6: 3 point buy <-Basic array
3d6, roll 2 sets and keep best: 9 point buy
3d6, roll 3 sets and keep best: 12 point buy
3d6, keep best 6 of 9: 15 point buy <-Elite array
4d6 keep 3: 19 point buy.
4d6 keep 3, best 6 of 7: 24 point buy
4d6 keep 3, roll 2 sets and keep best: 25 point buy
4d6 keep 3, roll 3 sets and keep best: 28 point buy
4d6 keep 3, re-roll ones: 30 point buy
4d6 keep 3, re-roll ones, take 6 best of 7: 35 point buy
4d6 keep 3, re-roll ones, roll 2 sets and keep best: 36 point buy
2d6+6: 26 point buy
3d4+6: 29 point buy
1d10+8: 34 point buy
1d8+10: 43 point buy
1d4+1d20+1: 62 point buy*
20: 26 pts
21: 31 pts
22: 37 pts
23: 43 pts
24: 50 pts
Note that a 35 point buy equivalent is not the same as giving an actual 35 point buy, which allows the statistically improbable 18,18,17,7,7,7 array; high point-value dice methods are extremely unlikely to have dump stats. Keeping in order vs. arranging obviously doesn't change point-buys, though it clearly has an important effect on character creation.
The methods which keep less than 3 dice will be significantly less center-balanced; in 1d10+8, 18 is no less likely than 9.
If anybody has any other wholly-random method they want me to evaluate, just ask.
Stat array: 18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10.
(36 pt-buy equivalent: so, pretty high-powered.)
Every 4 levels the players may add +2 to one ability score of their choosing. This replaces the standard +1.
My group likes it.
@thenobledrake: It's complicated, because it's up to the player to decide how to distribute the rolls. Using your example, the same set of rolls yields the equivalent of a 28 point buy in the first distribution, and an 11 point buy in the second distribution. The value depends on how the player does it. I could run it assuming the player goes for the highest point buy available, which would be to make as many 18's as possible, and leave as many 8's as possible. I don't know how representative that would be.
As I was thinking about it, I realized that the average (mean) of point buys is not actually the most relevant statistic here; the median is more relevant; that is the value that 50% of rolls are greater than, and 50% less than. I think the 5th and 95th percentiles are also interesting; these are the values that only 5% of rolls are less than, and only 5% of rolls are greater than, respectively. Put another way 90% of rolls will be within the range of the 5th and 95th percentiles.
3d6: -14, 4, 22
3d6, roll 2 sets and keep best: -4, 10, 26
3d6, roll 3 sets and keep best: 1, 13, 28
3d6, keep best 6 of 9: 2, 16, 33
4d6 keep 3: 2, 19, 39
4d6 keep 3, best 6 of 7: 9, 25, 44
4d6 keep 3, roll 2 sets and keep best: 11, 26, 43
4d6 keep 3, roll 3 sets and keep best: 16, 29, 46
4d6 keep 3, re-roll ones: 14, 30, 39
4d6 keep 3, re-roll ones, take 6 best of 7: 19, 35, 54
4d6 keep 3, re-roll ones, roll 2 sets and keep best: 22, 36, 53
2d6+6: 11, 26, 45
3d4+6: 16, 29, 46
1d10+8: 14, 35, 59
1d8+10: 24, 44, 56
1d4+1d20+1: 1, 54, 96
I think this illustrates the main problem with rolling dice. The narrowest gap between the point-value of the 5th percentile and 95th percentile is for 4d6 keep 3, reroll 1s, and that is still a 25-point spread.
I like rolling dice, because it introduces an element of fun randomness, and prevents min-maxing of ability scores. I think it makes a more organic character. However, maybe some kind of constraint on the minimum and maximum allowed point-buy equivalent is worthwhile. I ran into this in a PbP I am GMing; I'm allowing 20-point buy or 4d6 keep 3, better of 2 sets. So far, everyone is rolling; one got a 15-point buy, another got 45.
Has anyone ever tried something like "4d6 keep 3, reroll until your calculated point buy value is in the range 15-25?"
I give my players a choice between a dice pool or point buy.
Each ability has a base of 2 points.
Dice pool 30d4 drop lowest 6.
Players assign as many dice as they wish to each ability score the only real guidelines being no ability scores below 6 or above 18 before racial/age modifiers. No ability scores below 5 or above 20 after racial or age modifiers.
It allows for the flexibility of a point buy while using more lower sided die then the standard d6 dice pool.
I'll bump up the point buy based on tiers of the classes slightly or lower/raise the drop lowest dice also dependent on the tiers just to keep things more in balance.
The only re-rolls I allow are for non-legal characters. If you want to play with luck on character creation you get no do overs.
Stat array: 18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10.
(36 pt-buy equivalent: so, pretty high-powered.)
Every 4 levels the players may add +2 to one ability score of their choosing. This replaces the standard +1.
My group likes it.
Heh, I bet they do. :)
I've done arrays before, but I did 16, 14, 14, 12, 12, 10. It went over ok, but my players preferred to roll instead. They didn't like that everything was even. Offered to make it 16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 10, but they didn't like that either. :)
Hey Xexyz, got to say though, stats of 7 or below can really make a character memorable and give them a weakness that makes them stand out in the party, and provide a challenge to overcome. Currently, playing a scout with a dex of 7. His ac is terrible, but he can still be a great archer with the zen archery feat and a nice wisdom. Some players though, they will never accept or even try a low dex. They are too used to a high dex, con and will, all the save ability scores never being deficient. Low wisdom is another fun one.
Dragon had an old article, so you rolled a 3. It was great and stock full of ideas.
Sorry, but I just really dislike stat dumping. Furthermore, I've never seen a character who I thought was interesting or memorable simply because it had a low stat - interesting characters are the result of good roleplayers, and good roleplayers will make any character interesting.
Besides, stat dumping is always about min-maxing. How do I know? Because in every game I've ever run, whenever a player has asked to take a compensating penalty beyond the rules or restrictions I've laid out, I've offered to let them take the penalty if they really wanted it, but just without the accompanying bonus/points/stats/whatever. I've been gaming for 20 years, and I have yet to have a player take me up on that offer.
Besides, stat dumping is always about min-maxing. How do I know? Because in every game I've ever run, whenever a player has asked to take a compensating penalty beyond the rules or restrictions I've laid out, I've offered to let them take the penalty if they really wanted it, but just without the accompanying bonus/points/stats/whatever. I've been gaming for 20 years, and I have yet to have a player take me up on that offer.
I'm not really for stat dumping, but that's kinda silly. Who wants to have anything taken away without having anything given in return? Would you go to work if you weren't going to get a paycheck (obviously volunteering is different)? Would you buy a game for yourself, but not actually get to play it? Life in general, easily translated to RPGs, is about weighing options and making decisions. If you want a more relate-able example, would you have a character take the Vow of Poverty without getting any of the benefits? Or have to burn feats on TWF, but not get any of the penalties reduced? Unlikely, because even while you might be able roleplay a concept just fine, that doesn't mean it's fun to play. Your "test" is more one of human nature, not really exclusive to min-maxing - thus useless.
Maybe a player wants to dump stats for the bonuses. Who knows, the player might take off with it and learn to be a better roleplayer. If he doesn't, then he still has created a weakness in himself - use that knowledge as a GM and challenge him.
I'm not really for stat dumping, but that's kinda silly. Who wants to have anything taken away without having anything given in return? Would you go to work if you weren't going to get a paycheck (obviously volunteering is different)? Would you buy a game for yourself, but not actually get to play it? Life in general, easily translated to RPGs, is about weighing options and making decisions. If you want a more relate-able example, would you have a character take the Vow of Poverty without getting any of the benefits? Or have to burn feats on TWF, but not get any of the penalties reduced? Unlikely, because even while you might be able roleplay a concept just fine, that doesn't mean it's fun to play. Your "test" is more one of human nature, not really exclusive to min-maxing - thus useless.Maybe a player wants to dump stats for the bonuses. Who knows, the player might take off with it and learn to be a better roleplayer. If he doesn't, then he still has created a weakness in himself - use that knowledge as a GM and challenge him.
Yes, it's not the most honest question, but it still gets the point across - stat-dumping is about min-maxing, not roleplaying. But that's beside the point; I don't dislike stat-dumping because I think it means a person is a bad roleplayer. A player's ability to roleplay is mostly separate from their propensity to min-max or optimize; like I said before good roleplayers will roleplay their characters in an interesting fashion pretty much regardless of their stats.
I dislike stat-dumping because it goes against my sense of conceptual aesthetics, for lack of a better discription. It's for the same reason I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever have a race of cat-people in any game I run. I despise the very concept, so no amount of logic or reasoning will change my mind.
Besides, stat dumping is always about min-maxing. How do I know? Because in every game I've ever run, whenever a player has asked to take a compensating penalty beyond the rules or restrictions I've laid out, I've offered to let them take the penalty if they really wanted it, but just without the accompanying bonus/points/stats/whatever. I've been gaming for 20 years, and I have yet to have a player take me up on that offer.
I'll min-max when building a character often, but at the same time if you didn't apply any benefits from taking a 7 or 6 in an ability score I'd still take it.
Sometimes it's just fun to have a barbarian with 6 intelligence. Just to have a mechanical basis for roleplaying him as dumber than dirt. Failure is just as much a part of the game as success and for some character concepts I want my character to fail consistently at certain things. I'd prefer picking up the boon other areas to keep a game balance with that, but it's not a deal breaker.
One of my players *always* rolls low. Seriously, she had a character with a 6 and an 8 once, with a high of 15...on 4d6 drop the lowest. On the other hand, I have a player who *always* rolls high. I don't think I've ever seen a character of his without at least two stats of 16 or higher.
This even goes if they roll for each other, which we've tried.
So I'm looking at changing things up for the next campaign. Going to try a matrix--there are six players at the table (counting the GM). Everyone rolls a set of stats (according to whatever method you desire). Arrange in a matrix:
P1a P1b P1c P1d P1e P1f
P2a P2b P2c P2d P2e P2f
P3a P3b P3c P3d P3e P3f
P4a P4b P4c P4d P4e P4f
P5a P5b P5c P5d P5e P5f
P6a P6b P6c P6d P6e P6f
Then, allow each player to choose whatever row or column (or diagonal, if you want to get crazy) they wish.
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I'm not really for stat dumping, but that's kinda silly. Who wants to have anything taken away without having anything given in return? Would you go to work if you weren't going to get a paycheck (obviously volunteering is different)? Would you buy a game for yourself, but not actually get to play it? Life in general, easily translated to RPGs, is about weighing options and making decisions. If you want a more relate-able example, would you have a character take the Vow of Poverty without getting any of the benefits? Or have to burn feats on TWF, but not get any of the penalties reduced? Unlikely, because even while you might be able roleplay a concept just fine, that doesn't mean it's fun to play. Your "test" is more one of human nature, not really exclusive to min-maxing - thus useless.
If a player wants something for the roleplaying experience, then he doesn't need any mechanical benefits for it. If not getting a benefit makes him no longer want to do it, he doesn't want it that badly.
I too would remove the ability to lower ability scores for more points, because I want 10 to be the minimum score before racial mods when I use non-random methods.
If a player wants something for the roleplaying experience, then he doesn't need any mechanical benefits for it. If not getting a benefit makes him no longer want to do it, he doesn't want it that badly.
I too would remove the ability to lower ability scores for more points, because I want 10 to be the minimum score before racial mods when I use non-random methods.
To me, that sounds like "If you want to roleplay [this specific thing], you can take the penalties for it, but receive no benefit, aside from the satisfaction of roleplaying it."
Which is basically penalizing roleplay, even if a very specific kind.
Take Raistlin from Dragonlance for example (who was originally neither Weis nor Hickman's character but was indeed a tabletop RPG character created by a mutual friend of the two). There might be official stats out there him, but everyone who is even slightly aware of who he is would agree he has a low Constitution. However, he makes up for it with his genius level IQ, so a high Intelligence. I'm not saying the player set out to create this or simply min-maxed and went with the concept. I'm not saying anything about the intents. The fact is, he had a low score and a high score.
This is incredibly common in fictional characters.
I think it's just as silly for a Raistlin-esque wizard to roleplay being all sickly, but has a 10 Con, simply because he wasn't going to receive any extra points to put to other stats (such as Int or Dex or even Wis/Cha).
Again, I'm not advocating min-maxing. I think it's annoying when people do it for a mechanical benefit. However, I do think that there are plenty of ways to deal with it as a GM, and there are just as many ways for the player to make it his own and roleplay it out.
My GM doesn't outright disallow it, but he makes it clear there really should be some serious roleplay point behind it, which is usually discussed before a character enters the campaign. Personally, I don't even go that far - I can see the numbers on their character sheet, and if it turns out a player is just going to try to "minimize his min" and ignore the fact he has a weakness, I would make sure something comes of it.
Please not the Raistlin argument again.
He's the magical equivalent of MinMax from The Goblins comic.
Basically, I give up the ability to feed myself in exchange for free spontaneous maximize spell on all my spells.
I give up the ability to breath normally every day without a special medicine in exchange for a +5 DC on all my spells saves.
I give up the ability to wipe myself after going to the bathroom in exchange for nifty eyes that have true-sight at all times (oh and there's a fluff thing about me seeing everything dieing all the time).
I buy Follower so I have someone (my brother) to be my b***h and take care of me.
Using Raistlin as an example of why people should be allowed to gimp their character for an uber buff is really an argument for banning all such activity.
We used point buy for a short period, but most of us prefered the randomness of rolling.
We currently roll 2D6+6 (six times).
3d6 per Ability Score. Assigned in the order rolled. Bwahahahaha
Seriously though. Does anybody ever do that anymore?
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To me, that sounds like "If you want to roleplay [this specific thing], you can take the penalties for it, but receive no benefit, aside from the satisfaction of roleplaying it."
Yes. I believe the satisfaction of the roleplay is enough a reward. You can roleplay that concept with or without dropping the ability score.
Which is basically penalizing roleplay, even if a very specific kind.
As some others say around here, the lack of a bonus is not a penalty.
Take Raistlin from Dragonlance for example
I'd really prefer not to. ;)
The fact is, he had a low score and a high score.
Did he? Or did he simply have a character trait? If you want to make a fact of it, I'll need more than your word.
I think it's just as silly for a Raistlin-esque wizard to roleplay being all sickly, but has a 10 Con, simply because he wasn't going to receive any extra points to put to other stats (such as Int or Dex or even Wis/Cha).
That's fine, you don't have to play my way. Nor do we need to agree on this.
As a GM, I just do point buy. Used to be 15, probably will do 20 for next game.
Games I'm in currently -- one was 5d6 keep best 3, plus we could do 1 free reroll of the whole set if we didn't like the first set of stats. (In other words, all stats were rolled, and then if we didn't like the numbers, we could scrap the whole thing and start over once).
Other was standard 4d6 keep best 3. I naturally rolled a 15 point buy in that one. ;p
I would try something like a point buy plus random element --- I personally don't like full rolling just because I've ran or been in too many games where you have one person with 3 18s and 1 person with nothing above 12 and it just becomes a pain in the rear to manage. But I dig the concept of wanting to deal with what's been handed you to a degree. Maybe something like 10 or 15 point buy, but then you add 2d3 or 1d4 to each stat--in order. Or something. Been reading through this thread for ideas.
After all the responses to this question, I have to admit I'm questioning if our group wants to continue with the 15 point buy or even the current random rolling techniques since the 15 point buy and the "traditional" roll 4d6, drop lowest six times, both seem to be well on the lower end of stat generation compared to other folks.
And I believe Pathfinder Society play uses 20 point buy as well, correct?
For pbp games whatever the gm says like point buy but don't tend to max out stats just tend to spam a lot of 14s
As a gm 20 point buy if more than 4 players and 25 point buy if less than 4 players.
Take either the 25 point buy or this array 16,15,14,13,12,11. The array totals to 28 points but 4 of them are making even numbers odd.
I used a 18,16,15,14,13,11 array for a while but it was overpowered, it was fun though for the players.
Along time ago back in 2e days we did 4d6 drop lowest reroll 1's and pairs of 2's.
Once used 3d6 take the middle value number and turn it into a 6, this way the only way to get an 18 was by rolling three 6's but the lowest was 8 and got a good mix of numbers.
If anyone is interested, I ran a sim on how these rules compare to point buy, based on 1,000,000 rolls each. I don't have a good way to test the 18-24d6 methods.
Using Anydice by any chance?
24d6 Drop lowest 6:
Average: 12.19
Std Dev: 1.23
18d6:
Average: 10.08
Std Dev: 1.24
12+30d4 Drop lowest 6:
Average: 13.02
Std Dev: 1.00
12 + 24d4:
Average: 11.58
Std Dev: 0.96
4d6 drop lowest:
Average: 12.24
Std Dev: 2.85
2 + (5d4 drop lowest):
Average:13.23
Std Dev: 2.24
6+2d6:
Average: 13.00
Std Dev: 2.42
8+1d10:
Average: 13.50
Std Dev: 2.87
As a GM I'm generally inclined to try and keep the players roughly around the same power level. A game with a player with no ability scores lower than 15 and one with no ability scores over 13 creates imbalance. To that end I prefer point buys, but am comfortable including rolls of the dice during character creation, but I'd like to minimize standard deviation as much as possible to avoid issues of balance.
I'm also not fond of the idea that an unlucky dice roll can theoretically result in a character with a 3 in an ability score and after racial modifiers can push that to a 1.
So for me the only two methods I really prefer are 2d6+6 or 2+5d4 drop lowest since it keeps the minimum score at either a 6 or an 8 before racial modifiers.
When deciding between the two check the graph in anydice of both 2d6+6 and 2+5d4 drop lowest with 4d6 drop lowest as a point of reference:
Link
What's nice about 2+5d4 drop lowest is both the very low standard deviation, but also the lower chance to roll below a 12 and higher chance to roll above a 13 than 2d6+6 while still remaining close to an average of 13 and preventing any score being lower than a 6.
Another method that's not too shabby if you don't like anyone's scores lower than 10 is 2+5d4 drop lowest, reroll 1s. Alternatively 3d4+6 reroll 1's also results in a lack of scores below 10 as well.
Something I think would be interesting for those who want to have races make more meaning to their stats instead of using +2/-2 is to use 4+1d12 for low stats, 6+2d6 for normal stats, and 8+3d4 for high stats.
Please not the Raistlin argument again.
He's the magical equivalent of MinMax from The Goblins comic.
Basically, I give up the ability to feed myself in exchange for free spontaneous maximize spell on all my spells.
I give up the ability to breath normally every day without a special medicine in exchange for a +5 DC on all my spells saves.
I give up the ability to wipe myself after going to the bathroom in exchange for nifty eyes that have true-sight at all times (oh and there's a fluff thing about me seeing everything dieing all the time).
I buy Follower so I have someone (my brother) to be my b***h and take care of me.
Using Raistlin as an example of why people should be allowed to gimp their character for an uber buff is really an argument for banning all such activity.
If that is an actuality, then I take back my example. It would be definitely poorly used.
I have never seen a Raistlin character sheet, I have only read all the books, including a bit (either a forward or an afterthought, don't remember) about how Raistlin came to be. That made it really sound like it was all about the roleplay for him. If he actually traded all that stuff for the powers he gets throughout the books, then I definitely disagree with that. I assumed either the authors added in the powers or the character received them throughout a campaign as he leveled up.
I don't like min-maxing. But I do see it as a possible means for a roleplay outlet. It's much more immersive to play a weak character with a low Strength score - as opposed to having a 10 and going, "Well, I am actually weak." And once again, if you propose the offer of taking the low score without getting anything back, it pushes people away from wanting to even consider it. You might have a guy who is so dedicated that he's willing to do it, but for the most part, it will only offer a reason not to create a stat weakness that could manifest itself in roleplay.
I rolled stats on a monk once, using one of my above listed methods. I landed with really good physical stats and Wisdom, but I got a really low Int and Cha. That character is probably the most memorable out of all of my characters, simply because I took off with the low stats and made a character out of it. It's not the only way to do it. It's definitely not the best way. But it is a way, and I don't really see a reason why to block that path.