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Let one player roll stats and have everyone use those stats. By that you get non-optimised stats while still having the same kind of fairness as point buy.
Or have every player roll a set and everyone gets to choose which set to use.
But I have to say that the PCs I build tend to have rather different stats. So I am a little surprised that your players had such similar stats over several games.
As someone who loathes rolling this is probably the best suggestion and something I would be comfortable with.
I personally can't stand having stats below 10 on my characters. So while it might be optimal to drop my warrior's Cha and Int to 7, I will never do it. Other people will. So our cookie cutters will be different.
While there's a certain romance to having PCs have average or less than average numbers in some abilities and having them overcome these drawbacks to become heroes, I prefer my heroes to be on the "superhero" side of things. Like TOZ, I don't like stats below ten.
That variance in player preference should ameliorate the cookie-cutter-ness, I would have thought.
I wonder if those groups who continually see all the same stats are dominated by one or two gurus with strong views about what stat allocations are 'best'. I know my group will tend to bow to the expertise of whoever has the deepest rules knowledge of our current system.
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That variance in player preference should ameliorate the cookie-cutter-ness, I would have thought.
I wonder if those groups who continually see all the same stats are dominated by one or two gurus with strong views about what stat allocations are 'best'. I know my group will tend to bow to the expertise of whoever has the deepest rules knowledge of our current system.
I am curious too. despite having a chargen session, I dont even know what the other players stat allocation is in our recently started Jade Regent. To think of it I went through kingmaker, Carrion Crown, half of serpent skull as either GM or player and couldnt tell you the stat allocation of the players other than my own if my life depeneded on it. What I can tell you is the race/class and personality of each PC. /shrug
Here's what I do:
Roll 2d6+6 7 times, drop the lowest roll.
So far,no complaints.
Recently, I convinced my gaming buddies (currently very focused on Pathfinder and used to quite high stats as more or less the norm) to try Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. As most of you probably know, it is an old school-style that tries to emulate pre-D&D fantasy literature. In essence, it is a retroclone full of twists and cool mechanics. We rolled a bunch of 0-level characters (3 per player) with no class, only a commoner-style randomly-generated occupation, and stats rolled with the old merciless "3d6 in order". I thought that, used to characters with superhero stats, a developed background and the marks of heroism already at 1st level, they would hate DCC and their bunch of 0-level commoners. Quite the contrary! We had a blast rolling them and watching them unfold one roll at a time! Despite my advice to not get too attached to them, they began making plans for them and guessing which class would the survivors take when graduating to 1st level!!!
Next session, our horde of 18 commoners will face "the Funnel" and we'll see which of them have the luck, skill and guts to become a real adventurer! My players are eager...
My group uses 2d6+6. Mitigates the problems of minimal rolls, but I also look at nearly every set rolled and say "That's playable" or "Eeww." And sometimes I say "Crap that's awful," and the player will go "Yeah, but I think I'll play it anyway." We also tend towards higher-powered campaigns as a general rule, so the 2d6+6 works well for that.
This is the method I've settled on as well, along with giving one free 16 and no rerolls unless most of the stats rolled are 8 or 9, and even then the rerolls are limited to one or two of the middle stats rolled, not the ones on either end. This tends to make reasonably well balanced parties with everyone having stats that can support some kind of viable character. It also retains a sense of organic development where strengths and weaknesses are at least somewhat random.
I personally also tend to have a couple of different character ideas in mind when I start in a campaign that rolls for stats; one that works well with only high stat (15 or 16 counts for this purpose), which even the strictest of DMs usually find a way to work in, and one that would be fun to play if the dice gods are nice and give me the stats to support it properly. This way I can take advantage of a particularly good roll, but can still make a perfectly viable and fun character it the rolls tend to be more average or worse.
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I used to hate point buy but after using it for so long I prefer it...it helps with balance issues in a game that already has significant balance issues.
It actually exacerbates the balance issues, when you look at it. The most powerful classes all also happen to be SAD. Whereas the weaker classes are all somewhat MAD.
Point buy let's the SAD classes pump their needed score up to the max, and keep everything else at a decent level. However, the MAD classes end up having to sacrifice some ability scores to keep theier most important ones at a decent level.
I've known too many GM's who if they saw a tendency for a person to play super characters with an Achilles heel would ruthlessly exploit it whenever they could. Often for weeks of real time on end without any breaks to play to the character's strong points.
Sounds like they're compensating for something.
I used to hate point buy but after using it for so long I prefer it...it helps with balance issues in a game that already has significant balance issues.It actually exacerbates the balance issues, when you look at it. The most powerful classes all also happen to be SAD. Whereas the weaker classes are all somewhat MAD.
Point buy let's the SAD classes pump their needed score up to the max, and keep everything else at a decent level. However, the MAD classes end up having to sacrifice some ability scores to keep theier most important ones at a decent level.
Raising the point buy value helps the MAD classes more than the SAD classes. You can't raise an ability score beyond 18 no matter how high the point buy is, but you can have more of the above average ability scores that a MAD class wants with a higher point buy.
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2- Everyone rolls a set of stats and you can pick the set you wish to use from among everyones sets. This IS even fairer than point buy and is perhaps the fairest method I have ever seen.
As someone who loathes rolling this is probably the best suggestion and something I would be comfortable with.Let one player roll stats and have everyone use those stats. By that you get non-optimised stats while still having the same kind of fairness as point buy.
Or have every player roll a set and everyone gets to choose which set to use.
But I have to say that the PCs I build tend to have rather different stats. So I am a little surprised that your players had such similar stats over several games.
I agree; if ya have to roll, use the potluck method!
Letting everyone roll a set of stats is most fun because it gives everyone more options -- the monk player can take the set of straight-14s, while the wizard player can take the set with the 3 and the 18. In big groups, the potluck method is likely to result in very high stats all around, so the DM might want to have each player only roll a single score or two.
Oh and don't forget to write those scores down, in the event of new PCs joining later on!
I am curious too. despite having a chargen session, I dont even know what the other players stat allocation is in our recently started Jade Regent. To think of it I went through kingmaker, Carrion Crown, half of serpent skull as either GM or player and couldnt tell you the stat allocation of the players other than my own if my life depeneded on it. What I can tell you is the race/class and personality of each PC. /shrugThat variance in player preference should ameliorate the cookie-cutter-ness, I would have thought.
I wonder if those groups who continually see all the same stats are dominated by one or two gurus with strong views about what stat allocations are 'best'. I know my group will tend to bow to the expertise of whoever has the deepest rules knowledge of our current system.
Yup, same experience here. Character =/= stats, so I don't remember the particular numbers.
One of the guys I introduced to the hobby didn't want anything below a 10 from day 1. Had no reason to fear that I was going to be firing at any 'achilles heel,' he just didn't like seeing negatives on his character sheet.
What are MAD and SAD classes?
I personally can't stand having stats below 10 on my characters. So while it might be optimal to drop my warrior's Cha and Int to 7, I will never do it. Other people will. So our cookie cutters will be different.While there's a certain romance to having PCs have average or less than average numbers in some abilities and having them overcome these drawbacks to become heroes, I prefer my heroes to be on the "superhero" side of things. Like TOZ, I don't like stats below ten.
This is certainly also true. And it is the source of the unfairness in point buy. If two players are playing the same concept and one of them doesn't wish to buy down their stats while the other one is eager to buy down his stats it results in a situation where the player buying down has more points to spend on his primary attributes than his sidekick who didn't.
What are MAD and SAD classes?Multiple Attribute Dependent or Single Attribute Dependent.
More simply put, MAD characters need lots of stats to function properly, while SAD characters can get by with one huge stat and decent or average stats in everything else.
MAD characters also tend to be physical characters (since they tend to need at least two of the three physical stats plus possibly a mental one) while SAD characters tend to be casters (who can just pump up their casting stat, and put a token offering in CON).
I'll use point-buy if I have to, but I won't like it. I'm a dice junkie, pure and simple. I like the random! I usually play smart enough that I'm able to deal with the so called "below the rest of the party".
Seriously, that comment confuses the heck outta me. Ability scores only really last for the first bunch of levels. Around level 8 or so, depending on the class, ability scores really stop adding too much to your schtick...
Besides. Play it smart, and you can take a character with all 10s and be just as effective. Environment, support, expendable items, etc. I once had a character where my highest stat was 14 AFTER racial modifiers, with three rolls of 10, one dropped to an -8, and there was one 12. Played a sorcerer, and managed to take him all the way to the end of the campaign. Everyone else died at least once (One dude had to re-roll 4 times thanks to really bad luck).
That said, I've started using an array in my home games. 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10. You get 1 ability point at every level, 2 points at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20. So far I've had no complaints, and all it's really done is pad characters from dying to Shadow Demons and the like. Note, you cannot put a point in an ability score twice in a row, so at most it's +10 points in a score since char gen.
Seriously. The scores with that method kind of just taper off around 12th level.
We've done roll 4d6, drop the lowest, 6 times(sometimes 7) for years, and it's been all good. If someone got abysmal stats(3 or more below 10), we just let them reroll.
I'm not a fan of point buy, but it has it's place. It's great for organized events, new groups, etc. To each their own.
I'm also not a fan of the "Dice Pool" method my current group uses; go down each stat in order, and choose how many d6's from your pool(24-30 or so) to roll for each one(keep the best 3). So, in theory, a Fighter would roll a bunch for his STR, and maybe 2 or 3 dice for his mental attributes.
But, the rolls have been wonky as hell. Some stats I've rolled in upwards of 8 dice for, and came out with a 8 in the stat. My character's WIS and INT scores(which I do not need, being an Incarnate melee type) I rolled 3 dice, and scored 17 on one, 18 on the other. A player tried to roll up a wizard and wound up with a 7 INT out of 10 dice(lots and lots of 1's). Wonky. As. Hell.
I've been looking over the PCs from several of my previous campaigns that I ran, and all of them had one thing in common. Very very similar ability scores.
Are they all playing the same class and concept? Points buy means that, for example, all optimized melee-focused clerics are likely to be fairly similar. But I don't see how they'd be similar to oracles, paladins, wizards, or non-melee clerics.
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This is certainly also true. And it is the source of the unfairness in point buy. If two players are playing the same concept and one of them doesn't wish to buy down their stats while the other one is eager to buy down his stats it results in a situation where the player buying down has more points to spend on his primary attributes than his sidekick who didn't.
How is that unfair, unless the players did not know the consequences of their actions? They both had the same opportunity to suck or suck worse.
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You know people. They play carbon copies of previous characters.
We have a guy, he likes playing rogues, which he plays terribly. And when he plays a different class, he plays it like a rogue.
Most others are the same.
One is a blank, another is a rigid psycho and the third is always a pun character. Bah, maybe I should change my gaming group.
Yup, I've known gamers like that. I think I was one of those gamers at one point. Sometimes players play the same character over and over again because campaigns fizzle and die, so they never get to really play out the archetype they want.
But assuming that's not the case, Hama, I think the best way to shake players out of the same-old-same-old is...by talking to them. You're an honest guy -- tell them you're tired of DMing the same characters over and over again. To get their feet wet, run a one-off adventure in which they're not allowed to play the race or class that they're accustomed to. Tell the joker he has to play a serious character just this once. If nothing else, you'll get a game day or two of refreshing characters.
They might end up going back to their old standby carbon-copy characters afterward, but rolling stats could easily end up with the same results. For example, the rogue player might end up with a slightly different set of stats, but he'll probably still play a rogue. His highest stat'll still be Dex, followed by Int, or whatever his usual priorities are. Different numbers, same character.
DCC!
DCC!
I've got my group playing Dungeon Crawl Classics on 'off' days, and like your group the loved the funnel (16 commoners went in: 6 adventurers came out). They're having a great time building up their characters - lousy stats and all.Highly recommended; for a change of pace if nothing else.
I wholeheartedly agree. There's a lot to recommend in DCC beyond the character creation process. The cool and simple Mighty Deeds of Arms makes playing a fighter (or a dwarf) a blast, without burdensome and constraining feat mechanics. The magic is weird and not always reliable, clerics feel like they receive their power from their god and he/she/it may not always be happy with the cleric's abusing it. Caster-martial disparity is obliterated. Cool system, but I admit it's not for everyone (nor it tries to be).
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While, yes, point buy is there to mitigate injustice and make PCs relatively similar in ability, it gives them a sort of uniformity which is beginning to annoy me.I am seriously considering of going back to the old system of roll 4d6, drop the lowest, 6 times than distribute as desired. Re-rolling all of them if the combined bonus of all the stats is +3 or less.
Any thoughts?
my prefered method is every player (even the DM) rolls 4d6, drop lowest. reroll stats under 7, write all arrays on a sheet of paper.
every player is then free to use any of the stats array rolled around the table and asign the stats in order they like. given a typical table of 4 players (+1 DM), there's usually one excellent array, one more spreaded out array for MAD classes, one array with one good stat and one terrible one etc. NPCs created by the DM uses these arays for that campaign too.
this way, players get the thrill or rolling, that player than can't roll a character to save his life still get a decent array, fairness among players is preserved and limited degrees of choice and control is allowed.
´findel
(...)
While, yes, point buy is there to mitigate injustice and make PCs relatively similar in ability, it gives them a sort of uniformity which is beginning to annoy me.I am seriously considering of going back to the old system of roll 4d6, drop the lowest, 6 times than distribute as desired. Re-rolling all of them if the combined bonus of all the stats is +3 or less.
Any thoughts?
my prefered method is every player (even the DM) rolls 4d6, drop lowest. reroll stats under 7, write all arrays on a sheet of paper.
every player is then free to use any of the stats array rolled around the table and asign the stats in order they like. given a typical table of 4 players (+1 DM), there's usually one excellent array, one more spreaded out array for MAD classes, one array with one good stat and one terrible one etc. NPCs created by the DM uses these arays for that campaign too.
this way, players get the thrill or rolling, that player than can't roll a character to save his life still get a decent array, fairness among players is preserved and limited degrees of choice and control is allowed.
´findel
Oooooooh.
I actually like this a little better than "everyone roll an array, GM chooses one or two and players all use the selected set(s)". It leaves the same variance of rolling, and breaks the reliance on personally having lucky rolls, but also doesn't strap all the characters into a single option or a set of very few.
I wholeheartedly agree. There's a lot to recommend in DCC beyond the character creation process. The cool and simple Mighty Deeds of Arms makes playing a fighter (or a dwarf) a blast, without burdensome and constraining feat mechanics. The magic is weird and not always reliable, clerics feel like they receive their power from their god and he/she/it may not always be happy with the cleric's abusing it. Caster-martial disparity is obliterated. Cool system, but I admit it's not for everyone (nor it tries to be).DCC!
DCC!
I've got my group playing Dungeon Crawl Classics on 'off' days, and like your group the loved the funnel (16 commoners went in: 6 adventurers came out). They're having a great time building up their characters - lousy stats and all.Highly recommended; for a change of pace if nothing else.
I have not yet had a chance to play DCC but I purchased the rules just on the strength of the cool magic system. However, I am not a fan of the 0-level funnel concept to character creation because you can end up with a beet farmer (named Dwight?) who is suddenly transformed into a wizard after just one short adventure. I prefer to think of PC's as having lengthy training periods in the profession they are going to pursue.
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(...)
While, yes, point buy is there to mitigate injustice and make PCs relatively similar in ability, it gives them a sort of uniformity which is beginning to annoy me.I am seriously considering of going back to the old system of roll 4d6, drop the lowest, 6 times than distribute as desired. Re-rolling all of them if the combined bonus of all the stats is +3 or less.
Any thoughts?
my prefered method is every player (even the DM) rolls 4d6, drop lowest. reroll stats under 7, write all arrays on a sheet of paper.
every player is then free to use any of the stats array rolled around the table and asign the stats in order they like. given a typical table of 4 players (+1 DM), there's usually one excellent array, one more spreaded out array for MAD classes, one array with one good stat and one terrible one etc. NPCs created by the DM uses these arays for that campaign too.
this way, players get the thrill or rolling, that player than can't roll a character to save his life still get a decent array, fairness among players is preserved and limited degrees of choice and control is allowed.
´findel
OOOOH neat. I'm gonna use that from now on. It's an awesome idea ^^
I have not yet had a chance to play DCC but I purchased the rules just on the strength of the cool magic system. However, I am not a fan of the 0-level funnel concept to character creation because you can end up with a beet farmer (named Dwight?) who is suddenly transformed into a wizard after just one short adventure. I prefer to think of PC's as having lengthy training periods in the profession they are going to pursue.
I also need to deal with the issue of the instant transformation from zeroes to heroes, and the easiest solution is to chalk it up to previous training. That is, if Dwight the beet farmer manages to graduate into Dwight the 1st-level wizard, it is assumed that Dwight had spent most of his previous life dabbling into forbidden tomes and trying to contact otherworldly patrons (the main source of magic in DCC), and only after the grueling experience of "the funnel", all the mental pieces click together. Also, I'm planning to leave a considerable downtime period between the funnel and the first full-fledged adventure, so as to further explain the change.
Frankly, I despise the character funnel concept enough that I can't get past it see if the system has any other strengths. It's everything I hate about "old school" gaming distilled and concentrated into one mechanic and I assume the same attitude infects the rest of the system.
This is said as someone with very fond memories of AD&D and in many ways a preference for it over 3.x.
But I prefer characters with personalities and actual life to them, not disposable tokens.
It is not a game for everybody, that's for sure. However, if your main beef is the funnel, bear in mind that it is entirely optional. The author recommends trying it at least once, but it is perfectly possible to play DCC in a more conventional manner, creating 1st level characters. The main idea behind the funnel is that you do not begin play as a hero: you have to earn it.
But as I said, it is optional. I thought my players would display a similar opinion than yours, but we had a lot of fun during the creation session, and all those disposable tokens began acquiring a life and a personality of their own in the process or rolling their stats. It was a pleasant surprise, and that's why I recommend anyone interested in DCC to give a fair, open-minded try to the funnel concept... you could be surprised as well. That said, I'm not planning to use the funnel in every new DCC campaign we start. I think it's a great introduction to the system, but I have the feeling it would grow old really fast.
All in all, it is a matter of tastes. I enjoy PF, and creating 1st level heroes with pages of detailed backstory and a pre-planned build as much as everyone else, but at the same time I have a lot of fun seeing how far can I get with my 9 Con (sorry, Sta), 13 Dex, 15 Luck gravedigger-turned-thief.
(...)
While, yes, point buy is there to mitigate injustice and make PCs relatively similar in ability, it gives them a sort of uniformity which is beginning to annoy me.I am seriously considering of going back to the old system of roll 4d6, drop the lowest, 6 times than distribute as desired. Re-rolling all of them if the combined bonus of all the stats is +3 or less.
Any thoughts?
my prefered method is every player (even the DM) rolls 4d6, drop lowest. reroll stats under 7, write all arrays on a sheet of paper.
every player is then free to use any of the stats array rolled around the table and asign the stats in order they like. given a typical table of 4 players (+1 DM), there's usually one excellent array, one more spreaded out array for MAD classes, one array with one good stat and one terrible one etc. NPCs created by the DM uses these arays for that campaign too.
this way, players get the thrill or rolling, that player than can't roll a character to save his life still get a decent array, fairness among players is preserved and limited degrees of choice and control is allowed.
´findel
..... *Swipes it and steals off with it into the night!... To that table, right over there in the back of the shop, on the left*
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Anyone ever tried the grid method?
I haven't done it but I find it to be fascinating. Everyone gets to use the same array, but it provides for a little more flexibility.
Mark a 3 by 3 grid. Across the top, it goes STR DEX CON.
Down the side it goes INT WIS CHA
Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest, 9 times. Start in the top left box and go left to right, top to bottom.
For each ability, you choose one stat from the corresponding row. Once chosen, it's out of play for the other stat row it would be in.
Our group likes the array method (we just use 3d6 so the stats aren't that high in our case). I wouldn't recommend it for people who begin with a character concept though - although you get nine numbers instead of six to play with, there's only two stats you can allocate your best roll too. It's not uncommon to have three poor options for one stat, even though the numbers overall tend to be higher.