I would simply see what the point buy equivalent of their rolls are, and allow a reroll if they are under a 15 or 20 point buy.
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IIRC from my v.3.5 days, we rerolled if none of the scores was at least 14, or if the total modifiers didn't up to at +6 [the average total with a 13 on everything].
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Back in the days of Dungeons & Dragons versions 3.0 and 3.5, the official, default method for ability score generation was 4d6-and-take-the-best-3... but with one additional bonus. If the ability score array you roll is too low (before racial adjustments), you may scrap it and roll a new array. Your ability scores are considered "too low" if your total modifiers are 0 or less, or if your highest score is 13 or lower.
This, incidentally, will raise the average roll from about 12.2 to about 12.5. I wrote about how I determined that fact in the following thread:
I like using a lower generation method but let everyone roll a set and then use whichever set they like best. So if one rolls well, they have all rolled well.
I like dice rolling stats, even when ridiculous. Point buy has just never been fun for me in a dice based system.
I get this, but we had way too many players either instantly trashing, or quickly killing off a character whose stats were too low for them, basically giving them unlimited re-rolls until they had "good" stats.
forcing people to stick to a rolled set, when less than desirable, led to unhappy players and eventually campaigns would crumble due to this.
for our local groups, the switch to point buy solved all this. suddenly characters had "good" stats, and no character got purposely killed off just so the player could get a free re-roll.
I also seem to remember from the original roll 3d6 in order, that if your stat was too low to play the character, then the stat was raised to meet the class minimum. (don't feel like looking it up)
You just have the players stick to the sets that were rolled at the beginning of the campaign. So if you die you could at most switch from one rolled set to another. In my experience using this method, there always seems to be one top set that everyone uses for that campaign though. I originally expected harder choices. But this lets everyone roll and you can have non-standard arrays.
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I’ve decided to my next campaign to do the traditional 4d6 and drop the lowest for stat generation.
What’s a fair reroll for my players? I was thinking if you get less than or equal to a combined of 66 points they can reroll.
Have you considered using the "Heroic" method of ability score generation? Roll 2d6 and add 6.
That automatically sets a minimum of 8 in any stat, and the mean (13) is just a bit more than the "4d6 drop lowest" mean of 12.25.
And here's MY personal opinion: The reason for rolling rather than using point buy is for greater variation. With point buy, the players have greater ability to min-max, possibly resulting in effectively using the same ability score array again and again.
I repeat that's my personal opinion. Maybe yonman17's reasons are completely different; I don't know.
I haven't seen a rolling vs point buy thread in a long time.
I've played with many rolled ability score methods over the years. Never run using them myself, but I've certainly played using them. Sometimes, they work out fine. Sometimes, you get weird anomalies. Rather often, when talking about the issues of rolled ability scores, people will bring up the time that they or someone they cared about at a table rolled very poorly, and then suffered for months or years because of rolls in that moment (or alternatively, became detached from the character and just tried to get them killed as quickly as possible so they could roll again and do better because they were so far on the low end of variance). I do think those are good reasons not to, but I think that the other extreme can be just as bad.
I played with 4d6 drop lowest once, and ended up with absurd ability scores. 18, 18, 17, 17, 16, 15 (or the equivalent of a 77 Point Buy). Sure, it was unlikely, but it happened. I never felt good about it, though. No one else at the table had rolled poorly, but for that entire campaign, every other character ended up feeling like a side character to my character at times. None of the suggested rules that allow someone who rolls particularly poorly to redo their rolls would have prevented this (indeed, the very table this happened at was using such rules). Why is this ever a desirable outcome?
(And if the answer to that is to add a rule that prevents ability scores from being too high, why not just use a system that always results in fairly normalized ability scores like Point Buy?)
As Azothath said, if everyone at the table is fine with having different ability scores anyway and it's an environment where you're friendly with each other and trust each other, just let everyone pick what their ability scores are. People will have the freedom to have whatever strengths or weaknesses they choose.
Alternatively, if you want them rolled to just not have the spreads of numbers showing up everywhere, you could have people do Point Buy and randomly add or subtract 1d3-1 from every ability score at random to introduce noise and shake things up a bit, while never ending up at the extreme high or low end.
The biggest thing I always disliked about point buy is if you want to play say a monk that needs, dex, strength, wis, and con it's really hard to end up with a rolled set of stats that makes it reasonable. Whereas the wizard player really just needs one high stat in int, and that's easier to guarantee. There's also the issue on "unfair" rolls between players.
If you're set on rolling, I would let everyone in the group you any set of rolls. That way everyone at least has an "even" field for what they can select as their pool of rolls. In this case you probably don't need to even allow a complete reroll because there will be other sets above whatever threshold you would set. Now, that still doesn't remove the first issue I mentioned but it makes it more likely you'll have a good stat distribution for MAD characters. However a player could always choose a different class based on the available stat rolls. But the big thing is it removes the discrepancy between players, which can lead to some feeling like sidekicks.
You just have the players stick to the sets that were rolled at the beginning of the campaign. So if you die you could at most switch from one rolled set to another. In my experience using this method, there always seems to be one top set that everyone uses for that campaign though. I originally expected harder choices. But this lets everyone roll and you can have non-standard arrays.
if everyone winds up with the same set of scores, you're basically playing with the Array method. jut set some base stats at the beginning and don't worry about Dice.
You just have the players stick to the sets that were rolled at the beginning of the campaign. So if you die you could at most switch from one rolled set to another. In my experience using this method, there always seems to be one top set that everyone uses for that campaign though. I originally expected harder choices. But this lets everyone roll and you can have non-standard arrays.if everyone winds up with the same set of scores, you're basically playing with the Array method. jut set some base stats at the beginning and don't worry about Dice.
This is more to address the "rolling is fun" issue. There's just something exciting about rolling up those ability scores. And it's nice for the numbers to be more organic without a slopy or staggered progression of numbers. My solution lets you do rolling, while making sure no one suffers from bad rolls. And it changes the super lucky guy with an overtuned set of rolls into the hero of that activity who helped everyone have better rolls.
And you can combine it with any rolling method to achieve a rough baseline of where you want the players to be. Use 3d6. Heck, use 3d6 in set orders, so first 3d6 is strength and so on. You can use very unusual rolling methods and make them work in a way that's much more fair to everyone at the table.
It gives you all of the upsides of rolling and almost none of the downsides. Honestly, the biggest downside is just the minor bookkeeping of maintaining that list of arrays throughout the campaign.
Just for comparing rolling numbers, I rolled up some quick stats. First, using pure 3d6:
#1: 12 | 5 | 14 | 12 | 16 | 9
#2: 10 | 13 | 10 | 13 | 7 | 13
#3: 14 | 14 | 10 | 11 | 5 | 13
#4: 4 | 11 | 14 | 12 | 11 | 11
#5: 11 | 6 | 6 | 14 | 12 | 12
#1 is probably the most tempting. But is only a sub-14 point buy equivalent. This would be a more challenging game, but the character is still very playable, able to succeed at their focus.
So, Let's try some 4d6 Drop 1:
A: 11 | 14 | 15 | 17 | 14 | 8
B: 14 | 12 | 16 | 14 | 13 | 9
C: 8 | 14 | 12 | 14 | 17 | 11
D: 16 | 9 | 10 | 16 | 11 | 10
E: 10 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 14 | 6
A is the equivalent of a 29 point buy character. This would be a more "heroic" game where the heroes aren't just good at their focus, but adequate at most other things too.
And someone mentioned 2d6+6:
F: 12 | 12 | 14 | 18 | 11 | 14
G: 12 | 12 | 12 | 10 | 11 | 13
H: 12 | 16 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 12
I: 9 | 10 | 11 | 15 | 13 | 12
J: 12 | 11 | 16 | 13 | 12 | 11
F got lucky and has the coveted 18. F is the equivalent of a 32 point buy character.
Just for comparing rolling numbers, I rolled up some quick stats. First, using pure 3d6:#1: 12 | 5 | 14 | 12 | 16 | 9
#2: 10 | 13 | 10 | 13 | 7 | 13
#3: 14 | 14 | 10 | 11 | 5 | 13
#4: 4 | 11 | 14 | 12 | 11 | 11
#5: 11 | 6 | 6 | 14 | 12 | 12#1 is probably the most tempting. But is only a sub-14 point buy equivalent. This would be a more challenging game, but the character is still very playable, able to succeed at their focus.
So, Let's try some 4d6 Drop 1:
A: 11 | 14 | 15 | 17 | 14 | 8
B: 14 | 12 | 16 | 14 | 13 | 9
C: 8 | 14 | 12 | 14 | 17 | 11
D: 16 | 9 | 10 | 16 | 11 | 10
E: 10 | 15 | 14 | 12 | 14 | 6A is the equivalent of a 29 point buy character. This would be a more "heroic" game where the heroes aren't just good at their focus, but adequate at most other things too.
And someone mentioned 2d6+6:
F got lucky and has the coveted 18. F is the equivalent of a 32 point buy character.F: 12 | 12 | 14 | 18 | 11 | 14
G: 12 | 12 | 12 | 10 | 11 | 13
H: 12 | 16 | 10 | 10 | 12 | 12
I: 9 | 10 | 11 | 15 | 13 | 12
J: 12 | 11 | 16 | 13 | 12 | 11
So 1 out of 5 tries is something decent in each group. most of the others border on unplayable, especially if you want to do a MAD class. sooooo, should we be allowing one of the methods, but allw 5 sets pickign the best?
Yeah, it's weird how that seems to work out every time I do this experiment. It really shows the "dangers" of doing stat rolling without allowing shared set picking. And there are a nigh infinite number of ways to generate scores to get the rough power level you desire.
If you want something between 3d6 and 4d6 drop 1, then you might try 3d6 reroll all 1s.
I: 15 | 10 | 13 | 12 | 14 | 11
J: 15 | 12 | 17 | 12 | 10 | 15
K: 9 | 14 | 10 | 13 | 11 | 10
L: 10 | 8 | 11 | 10 | 13 | 14
M: 10 | 15 | 8 | 12 | 8 | 9
J looks like the main winner in this set, worth a 31 point buy
But as we can see above, there can be outliers in any rolling method. With dozens of rolls any of these methods could generate some overpowered arrays. I remember old video games where you'd spend the first 10 minutes just hitting reroll over and over on 3d6 sets until you got the high stats you were looking for.
If you wanted to add extra danger to your campaign, then add a rule where you can't use a set you've previously used when you reroll a character, and if you somehow go through all sets then you are stuck on that last set you used.