Hi GMs and math lovers!
Myself and my players enjoy rolled stats, and rolling them publicly as part of our Session Zero is always an exciting part of character creation.
The current method I prefer tries to keep the party balanced amongst themselves. I can always up the encounter difficulty if they get good rolls, but it sucks when one player gets a great stat spread and someone else is struggling.
I have everyone roll for their set of six attributes, and then any player can take any spread that any other player rolled. (When rolling, I have everyone use the 'roll 4d6 drop the lowest and roll 7 times and drop the lowest' rules but that part doesn't matter as much here).
What I want to do is combine the rolling of stats into playing games at the Cheat the Devil and Take His Gold tournament! I think it will give us an excuse to roleplay more of the tournament and practice bantering in-character while we get excited about everyone's stat rolls.
I'm wondering what you all think of this idea. What's the percentages, if I should tweak some numbers, or how you'd do it. Or if someone just wants to steal this idea in the future, go for it!
Right now, I'm thinking having the rolling of a stat (4d6) represent how that character did in a round of gambling. I'm deciding between two options for 'winning' the hand and moving on to the next 'circle of hell.' The quick and dirty method: you need to roll a stat above a set amount (say, above a 14) to win the hand and move on. The more convoluted method I could use to simulate gambling wins or losses. In this method you're trying to 'come out ahead' where a 1 or 2 on any dice is falling behind, 3 or 4 is neutral, and 5 or 6 is ahead. The net on your four dice needs to be 'ahead' and you move on with your winnings. But if the net is behind or even, those can affect your character's gambling winnings too!
I suppose a final issue would be that there are not enough stats for the circles of Hell listed in the 'contract' the players receive. But also, the tournament is destined to be interrupted, so maybe that's fine. We can just see who gets the furthest in the time they have!