D&D 5E So the DM Let me roll stats ...

[overgeeked]

Another group playing also had rolled stats no idea what they were but DM she said no to one drastically overpowered set.

I always insist on rolled stats. 4d6, drop the lowest. Arrange to taste. It’s lame the referee banned a set she asked for them to roll.

One thing for me is that if I’m rolling, I don’t walk in with any sort of a plan of what to play. Low stats are going to push me in a very different direction than high stats.

Exactly. That’s one reason I have players roll. See what you get and work with what you roll.

 

[Zardnaar]

I always insist on rolled stats. 4d6, drop the lowest. Arrange to taste. It’s lame the referee banned a set she asked for them to roll.

Exactly. That’s one reason I have players roll. See what you get and work with what you roll.

Tgey didn't roll in front of the DM. Fudged dice perhaps.

I've see player roll 20 scores, use 1E UA, make up stats etc at home.

 

[aco175]

I did manage to roll an 18 on 3d6 for an OSE game, first roll so I knew it would be a fighter type, ended up making a dwarf. Only other good score was dex which was just above average getting me a +1 bonus.

My brother had a dwarf in the same place and rolled 00 for exceptional strength. As a dwarf though he could only have 18.99 so got screwed a bit. It was one of our first games, but remember being screwed by the rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I find rolling stats (in front of the DM) does not automatically make a better set of stats. It would likely be worst with just rolling 3 dice instead of the general 4 dice drop one. I find the problem is with players and one getting crap stats and another getting great stats. Then there becomes rules for rerolling until you get better stats or suiciding your character so you can make a better one.

Lately we've been having my daughter roll one set of stats for the whole party, which each of us arrange as desired. Not my preference, but it's a good compromise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For practically every story of above average stats there's a story of below average stats, frequently far below average stats. But we rarely hear about those except when it was Skippy the Baggage Carrier rolled a 20 that one time and saved the day. What we don't hear about is the other 99% of the game where they contributed far less in and out of combat mechanically (RP is independent of stats) than Gorgeous the Handsome and Strong who had the significantly higher ability scores. Also throw in that Skippy had a better life expectancy since he was rarely attacked since he hid in the back and wasn't ever a significant threat.

Ah well, off my soapbox. Rolling is great if it works for you, I've seen too many times when we just re-rolled until we had above average scores. It's not something I'd want for anything other than a one-shot.

I would argue part of the problem here is system. 5e strongly,  strongly encourages pushing for the highest stats possible, because they're vitally important to the mechanics of play. They effect virtually every roll you make, and the bonuses go up too fast IMO. TSR's shallower curve made it more reasonable to play with lower stats.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I did manage to roll an 18 on 3d6 for an OSE game, first roll so I knew it would be a fighter type, ended up making a dwarf. Only other good score was dex which was just above average getting me a +1 bonus.

My necromancer I end up with a 17 intelligence but that was only because I took 4 points off my strength to get +2 Int. Technically only needed a 16 for the xp bonus, but figured I'd boost int to 17 because I wanted to.

Both of these characters otherwise have pretty average stats, not sure if any had a penalty, but only the dwarf was left with 2 stats of 13+

I'm a fan of trade-offs. Let's you massage the numbers after you roll fairly.

 

[soviet]

I would argue part of the problem here is system. 5e strongly,  strongly encourages pushing for the highest stats possible, because they're vitally important to the mechanics of play. They effect virtually every roll you make, and the bonuses go up too fast IMO. TSR's shallower curve made it more reasonable to play with lower stats.

I agree. I quite like random stats as a way of creating characters that don't always fit the same mould, but this is contingent on the mechanical impact of those stats. If stats don't mean a lot, or each stat is valuable for each character type, then having a fighter with a high INT is a cool variation. In all WotC versions of D&D that INT score is either a necessary prerequisite for a particular feat, or a waste of points that would have been much better spent elsewhere.

This is so endemic to WD&D that random stat rolls themselves won't solve the problem because people will feel (or be) punished for those suboptimal arrays; you would need to accompany it with some sort of house rules (or other informal allowances in play) that make the unusual array at least slightly worthwhile.

 

[soviet]

I like the way Rolemaster has always done it. You have ten stats rolled on d100. Each class has two prerequisites (so for a fighter it's STR and CON). You can replace your prerequisites with a 90 (equivalent to about a 16).

So there is an interesting tension if you roll any stats higher than 90. You can put that 93 into STR and be a better fighter than the regular, or you can put that 93 into some other stat (thus having three high stats rather than two) and have more flexibility/overall 'stat points'.

Accompanying this is the idea of potential and maximum stats, which is that every time you level up you roll to see if any stats go up or down. Low stats are more likely to go up. So the character that maybe got punished by variance on initial generation can easily have it mitigated over the course of play.

 

[Cruentus]

I don't play with rolled stats because I have never, not once, seen anyone who does play a character with all (or most) stats below 12, but I certainly have seen them play a character with all (or most) stats above 12.

I feel like people who say the "like random" only seem to like random when it works out in their favour.

In our recent campaign, where one of our players who had never Dm'd in 40 years wanted to DM B/X (after several years of playing in 5e), I rolled up a Fighter - S: 12, Int: 9, Wis: 9, Dex:10, Con: 10, Cha: 11. It was 3d6 x6, two columns, but I think he allowed us to assign. This was my "better" column. Not a single bonus to be seen.

He made it to 5th level with his +1 Sword before the campaign stopped.

I know that stats and bonuses nowadays are inflated from B/X, but I had a blast playing a bog-standard fighter who wasn't going to bash his way out of much, so I had to get creative.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

In our recent campaign, where one of our players who had never Dm'd in 40 years wanted to DM B/X (after several years of playing in 5e), I rolled up a Fighter - S: 12, Int: 9, Wis: 9, Dex:10, Con: 10, Cha: 11. It was 3d6 x6, two columns, but I think he allowed us to assign. This was my "better" column. Not a single bonus to be seen.

He made it to 5th level with his +1 Sword before the campaign stopped.

I know that stats and bonuses nowadays are inflated from B/X, but I had a blast playing a bog-standard fighter who wasn't going to bash his way out of much, so I had to get creative.

Cool story (sincerely), but how often do you see that happen? Mathematically, it should happen often. But IME everyone who "rolls" for stats has some method or another for throwing out any really bad ones, and therefore the "randomness" becomes lost for "higher" stats.

Though, I suspect that part of the fun of modern OSR play, in particular in that whaddayacall thing where you make a whole bunch of characters and then most of them die in your first session called? Anyway, I suspect that you'll see more poorly-rolled characters in that, and in OSR overall than you actually did back in the day, or in other D&D-style play.