I could have fun having such ability rolls. You can play a rogue with almost any ability scores. And I like challenges.
But I hope you didn't ninja your players with the method, like playing the same day of character creation and telling them on that day, that could be quite shocking.
On the other hand, 3d6 with your assigned ability scores is harsh, I would have gone for 4d6, or a pool of dice you can assign to whatever ability score you want or something.
But still, I would be fine playing that way, no matter what my ability scores turn out to be, as long as you scale the adventures a little bit to the results.
I'm using 4d6, choose the best three but 1s count, of late. Works, but not all stats are high.
Congrats TriOmegaZero, looks like a good time to try out something with MAD.
1: I actually do 4d6 drop the lowest. Re-roll 1s and nothing below 10 unless you want it. Also make 2 columns and pick the one you like best.
2: 3d6 is standard for me when gaming under the my mother. Never had a problem with it for her. I rather enjoy the randomness for rolling, but for her your roll is your roll.
As a note aside from the nothing below 10 the rules I use are the ones my mom always used and taught me for making characters. So far I've had no problems with my system as players seem to enjoy that if they don't have high stats they are at least average.
Start with 3d6 for each, and 1 level in commoner, but re-rolls enabled. Truly the beginnings of a great story.
One six in 18 rolls? Wow.
One six in 18 rolls? Wow.
Thats not that uncommon. (About 13.5% of the time)
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So I just played in a session of Dungeon Crawl Classics last night, which uses 3d6 in order for character generation. All of the PCs start off without class levels, and so they have very few hitpoints and no skills etc. To compensate, each player brings 3-4 of these NPC's to the table. They're able to protect the ones they like, and use the ones with crappy scores as cannon fodder. I'm pretty sure that this 'funnel' method would work well as a means of CharGen in Pathfinder. It gives all of the fun of an old school dungeon, with the random method of Character generation, and it allows one a few chances with the 3d6 to get a good set of rolls. Also it's awesome when the cool character you like survives through to gain a character level.
1. Point buy, because playing what is akin to a 10 PB, while another is a 39 PB royally sucks.
2. Yes. My opinion is that if you are lucky, you have more fun. The reverse may or may not be so true, but not everyone plays the same.
I agree with Jarl. Don't roll for attributes.
I have a strange obsession about rolling ability scores, and currently am not satisfied with any of the common methods out there at the moment.
Since this thread was so deliciously trafficked and contentious, I thought folks might be interested in looking at my "Organic Point Buy" method to try to mix luck, point buy, and balance all in one system. Tell me what you think:
1) I use 4d6 drop lowest for adventure paths and 4d6 reroll 1s for my homebrew campaign. I never liked point buy for D&D/Pathfinder, but I use it in other games.
2) I have not used 3d6 in order before. I considered it once, and may consider it again for a future campaign idea I am nurturing...
My players enjoy the thrill of rolling dice for their ability scores. They also have a very adaptive to bad abilities and just go with it, so it's not really a problem.