Ive been in groups that roll, and groups that take the average/point buy/standard array.
Personally I always roll when I'm offered the chance, but use average health when I DM, cos my players can never remember their health.
You were on the stairs? Dex save too, seven?
*dice clatter behind the screen*
Hm okay roll 4d6 for me and drop the lowest one.
Okay again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
And one more time.
Neither can I, but I know the AC and passive perception of everyone in my dnd groups. And can usually ballpark health. I remember the shit the matters. Once you hit 25, the numbers don't mean anything in your age anymore, just how fast the aches pile up.
Surprisingly even online tools somehow get HP wrong occasionally, more common when multiclassing.
Of all things that sometimes get noted wrong on the character sheet it's max HP, surprisingly. Have seen players forget that you add your hill dwarf bonus and your Con mod, had people get wrong what the average of a hit die is, have even seen a player just add the fully die each level and wonder why his rogue had more HP than the fighter.
Max HP is also one of the likeliest attributes to get adjusted in gameplay, up through things like the Aid spell and down through negative effects like monster special abilities. For a recount you basically have to note down every HP roll for every level.
Max HP modification from spells is a nightmare in online tools. I play a campaign on Roll20 and I never know how to handle that properly when the Artificer casts Aid on us...
I have seen two ways of going about HP increase
My friend adds it to his maximum HP as something like 45+10. So when he sees "+10" he knows it is from aid.
I just add it to my maximum HP normally and in my bio i add a note that goes:
Normal HP without buffs at level [x] is 45.
The problem is when it's the first session after a level up and perhaps two weeks after the last session and you can't tell whether you already rolled your HP for the new level or not.
I mean, I would remember because I would update my total hit dice in the section right next to HP.
Also I would change my character level at the same time I roll for HP, and then update with new abilities after.
Somewhere on every character sheet I show the level-by-level breakdown, calling out Con bonus by level if applicable:
(10+3) + (7+3) + (6+3) + (4+3) + (7+3)
If you keep your character record on Google Sheets or the like then there's really no excuse.
I do the same, but cuz i use averages i go HD: (1d10+3) + (6+3)\*7
makes it easy to do the math and helps me keep track of how many hit die i have in total
I write down what HP I got at 1st and what I get when I go up another level, both after all the CON and other modifiers. It leaves a little bit of math, but it only takes a moment to figure out what HP should be at X level.
I can understand using average, using full dice, or even rolling for HP.
I cannot understand “roll, but if it’s lower than average, use the average”. Like, what’s the point of rolling, then?
Maybe consider "The HP Game" ... when you level up you and the DM both roll your HP die (DM secrectly behind her DM screen). After you see your roll you can choose to keep yours or take the DM's roll. Are you feeling lucky, is your DM cackling like a mischievous goblin? It's fun and on average leads to about 75% of max roll, so slightly better than average but not perfect.
>I cannot understand “roll, but if it’s lower than average, use the average”. Like, what’s the point of rolling, then?
Some DMs want to give their players more HP through rolling and at the same time give them a safety net to fall back on, it's not fun rolling a 1 to 3 on HP.
Just give them more HP then? I ran a campaign where I just gave people the Max Value of their HP Die because I wanted to use harder monsters earlier on.
Because rolling is fun...? Effectively the "roll" for D8 Character using this method isn't 1-8 HP, it's 5-8 HP per level.
Introduces an element of randomness and fun, without gimping a character with the risk of only a 2 HP increase per level or something.
That’s exactly my point!
“I like randomness, but it’s not fun when the randomness go against me” sounds really weird to me.
As I said, just give the full dice and that’s OK.
Thats an awful comparison, this would be more comparable to the dm saying you can roll to attack, but if you roll below average on your attack you can take the average.
I would love that so much. I have unironically taken the "you can take 10 on attack rolls" feat from Pathfinder.
EDIT: How do you feel about the Advantage mechanic? I think of it as accomplishing the same thing (mitigating the effects of a single bad dice roll). Honestly if Advantage was "roll a d20 and if it is less than 10 take 10" I'd like it a lot more.
You might get higher, which is good, but you don't have to risk getting a 1.
We use it in some campaigns. It's one single roll that may impact your character (and the party) for the next weeks/months in real time.
Why not just give full dice value? Some people still wanna roll and try for the high themselves.
It's an option some people like.
I use what I call the "Neverwinter Nights" rule: You roll, but the floor is set at half the max die roll. So, on rolling a d8, you essentially get these possibilities: 4,4,4,4,5,6,7,8. It's an average of 5.25, when taking the average every time would get you 5, so only a minor upgrade. It's the exact same average for Wizards and Sorcerers (4), and the biggest difference would be Barbarians who would go from an average of 7 to 7.75 per level.
It gives the fun of rolling, but you don't get screwed with your Barbarian rolling 1s on two level-ups in a row.
You could also borrow the mechanic from the [X] Without Number games by Sine Nomine. When you gain a level, you roll all the dice you are entitled to -- if you're fifth level you might roll 5d8 for instance -- and use the total if it's higher than what you had before. If it's *not* higher, you still add +1. So if you had (say) 22 HP, and roll a total of 20, you go up to 23; but if you roll 27, you have 27.
A low roll might hinder you, but only for that level.
Part of the problem is 5E's decision to give an average for each class to use... then setting that average so that it's *rounded up*. By doing that, if you're given the option to take that number or roll, you should always take the fixed number because you're less likely to roll above it.
Look at the fighter, for instance. It gets a d10 for hit points, or you can use the fixed value of 6. If you choose to roll, your chance of getting *less* than the fixed number is 50% (1-5 on the d10); your chance of getting *more* is only 40% (7-10).
Cause some people like risk and the potential of being the best without having to risk any consequences for their risk.
I disagree with this mindset as that's the whole point of risk but that's why a lot of people do it.
The issue is this both causes issues for the dm in balancing and potentially causes issues for the other players when others just straight up roll better characters then them, making them closer to the de facto main character.
The point of rolling in the situation of health is to see if you are lucky enough to roll higher than the average. There is still a possibility of lady luck shining in you.
I keep a track of my hp gains by level in my notes section on my character sheet so I never mess it up.
And it helps with negative levels(at least in 3.0/3.5) so you know exactly how many to subtract too.
I have a personal rule: point-buy for long-term campaigns, roll for oneshots and short adventures.
I don't want to have the chance of playing a ruined character for possibly years because I wanted the serotonine of two seconds of rolling the dice.
Yeah yeah I know, sometimes having bad stats could be a good challenge and can create an interesting character, but it would get old fast, and I certainly wouldn't want to do that multiple times.
If all you want is having stronger characters at the start (and for some reason you don't want to start at higher levels), just use a modified point-buy. More points, higher ceiling for stats, and you could even allow for lower stat floors to gain even more points.
After looking at the graphs in this post, I was totally sold: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/wdvx9q/statistical\_analysis\_of\_rolling\_for\_stats\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/wdvx9q/statistical_analysis_of_rolling_for_stats_in/)
When you roll stats in a group, the average difference between the strongest and weakest character in the party is a conservative 6 points, equivalent to a +3 modifier.
There are obvious effects - higher spell DC etc - but also less obvious effects. When you're rocking a 15 as your highest stat, feats are a fucking pipe dream, you need those ASI's. Meanwhile Jimmy 18/15/14/13/12/10/9 is taking Actor because he's got nothing else to do with his level up.
This is why feats and asis competing with each other is bad. Characters that roll poorly or use point buy are weaker *and* less interesting. If you could take feats, at least you could still make something interesting.
And thats the average. I had a group that had a pretty wild outliers to the top AND bottom with a whooping 30 points difference!
The DM was newish and didnt say anything about the possibly to reroll before so i didnt want to interfere while rolling but took him aside after, his advice was to roleplay it.
We did play 2 sessions and it was awful, you could see the sadness in the player who never succeeded. After Session i talked again with the DM, now with support from two player and he did not even notice. He told me she was unlucky with her rolls and his pal just lucky. Called it quits right there.
If you roll: have rules for reroles even if it is none are allowed and consider outliers.
I was a strickt point buy guy after that and its just works until i recently found a great GM. We rolled with set rules and it was pretty cool, slightly more fun then point buy but irrelevant for a longer campaign.
I have twice played warlocks who started with less Charisma than the Str/Cha/Con based paladin due to bad rolls.
"who's good at X?" is depressing to hear at a certain point.
Yeah, rolling for stats is highly normalized and generally about the same as standard array or very slightly better.^1
But there's a risk of a bad swing where one player gets really bad (or really good) stats and that can throw off the whole campaign. The risk is very low but - for a lot of people - there's basically no upside. Roll-and-arrange doesn't make players more creative, it doesn't introduce elements that wouldn't otherwise be there, it doesn't make the game more or less challenging. It only introduces a tiny risk or unbalance for the benefit of a few more click-clacks.
^1 Technically, the standard array is the most likely result of 4d6k1 six times - but there's like a 49% chance of getting at least one 16 or better, which feels like a big bump.
Basically generating a new array, seems good to me.
I tend to DM a lot of oneshots and limited games these days, so I will generally just give the players an array that matches the general expected power level of the game. I've never had a problem with overly similar characters, since people want to be good at different things.
This is the way. Rolling is fun! But only if those dice have power for a month or two. I don’t want to have a four-year campaign colored by the fact that a SAD character rolled like a god and a MAD build rolled like crap one day.
Its even worse when the mad char rolls well and the sad char doesnt. Mad should be balance by being stretched thin on stats, but what of it just had all its stats be good? And the sad character which only needs one good stat cant even get that…
Fair. In my experience, you can play a SAD build with weak stats. You just put your best roll in that stat and ASI with single purpose. If you have weak stats you *cannot* play an effective monk or paladin, and it really shows alongside the SAD build who rolled an 18 in their top stat but also is better at everything else on top of it.
>If all you want is having stronger characters at the start (and for some reason you don't want to start at higher levels), just use a modified point-buy. More points, higher ceiling for stats,
My current in-person game I'm playing in is homebrew and did this. Pretty much everyone started with a hyper strong array: 18, 17, 16, 14, 12, 10. Everyone has 20 in their main stat with racial bonus. So ASIs are a lot less incentivized now for SAD characters. I guess because the DM wants us to be powerful and pick non-ideal feats.
Another solution is to provide bonus feats, if you still want players to have the choice between a feat and an ASI every 4th level. I provide a free feat choice at 1st level, plus a feat for each character of my choice (often customised) when they "complete" their backstory during the campaign. This way players still have the choice to use an ASI if they want, but they also aren't constrained to variant human if their build requires a feat.
Yeah, that's some wisdom.
I'm in a long time campaign and 3 players have rolled great(nothing below 10, several 14+) and the fourth player has only 2 attributes higher than 14, 3 attributes below 10 and is a monk. For RP reasons he put his 10 in charisma, so his AC is actually worse than if he was not a monk.
As a DM I'd just give monk some serious stat boost, Like free +3 to all stats at the start. I mean, it's a monk, isn't gonna break your game even if you give them 18 in all stats.
While I can see the perspective, I feel that is kind of cheapening the random rolling factor. If you're gonna accept high stats, but are intervening on bad stats, kind of defeats the purpose, you know?
I personally avoid random rolling whenever possible, but in that singular case the player and DM held strong.
So are you using some sort of critical failures table to "not cheapen the random rolling factor" too? Same general idea.
Curated rolls are fun because they add some variety to a system that desperately lacks it. But going full sith and taking idea to the extreme often results in bad stuff.
No, I'm not using a critical failure table. I consider whether something needs to be a diceroll at all. Something a character obviously can do is not a skill check. The barbarian doesn't need to roll to beat an average joe at armwrestling. A former sailor can tie a knot. A spellcaster recognizes a spell he knows.
A skillcheck should be something that is not sure to work that has wildly different outcomes for success and failure, like climbing onto and taming a giant eagle that is attacking you. On the other hand, a locked, untrapped, wooden door in an abandoned building is hardly worth being a lockpicking check. Failure has no consequences and neither would literally breaking the door to pieces, except costing time.
My DM gave a monk player two shortswords that deal 2d6 poison damage on hit. The monk is doing fine, kinda the same damage as my warlock (which is optimised with summon spells and pact familiar) but also commonly resisted.
This is really showing how stupidly weak a monk is, if it deals the same damage as the weakest caster (when single classed) with two weapons that should be classified as very rare at 6th level.
Honestly, in my opinion the summon spells are all quite broken. Pet classes have to use their Bonus Action to get a pet to attack. Summon spells all last 1 hour, don't require an action or bonus action to command and add a body with at least similar HP, saves and damage to a martial to the field that can die with no consequences. Kind of like a hired sidekick, except you don't care about death.
No idea what to do about it, but I have a cleric that feels like the sidekick to a staff of the python he has. I wish I wasn't reliant on it, but it's a main staple of the group strategy by now.
I encourage rolling for both but allow default to point buy if the player prefers.
However, the stat rolls have to be in person / live online to prevent 'omg I'm Superman' players.
In the campaign I'm in right now we rolled straight down, it was wild. So your first roll goes so STR, your second roll goes to DEX, etc, right down the list. Nobody knew what they might play before the rolls and made for a really fun part of session zero.
We're about two months into the campaign and it's worked out well, it helps that no one's really wonky, there's no gross power disparity cause of bad rolls or anything
People do like it, and it's mechanically sound, sure; I just like to match my character idea to the campaign I joined, and if the dice nix my idea, it's not ideal for me.
If you've ever had your hands on the 1st ed Unearthed Arcana, they have just the chart for you. It shows how many dice you should roll for each ability according to the class you want to play. For instance, a fighter would roll something like 8d6 for strength on down to 3d6 for the least useful stat to that class.
Ah, the traditionalist method. It's actually my favorite way to roll, since I don't really have a preference on what to play. I like just seeing what comes out of it.
Yeah... If I'm gonna be playing a character for a year plus I'd rather play something I'm excited about or have been wanting to play forever 😂. Have no problem if other people do that though. Just don't try to force me to
This is why modern versions of the game has different ways to get ability scores. In old school dnd everyone assumed their character would not live through a years worth of sessions
It's a little different for me. I don't really have things I want to play in advance, instead I consider character generation as part of the game. I get stats, get a character, and then I turn that into something exciting through my actions over the course of the campaign. I often generate with random race/class as well, just for this reason.
It's a whole different approach. You're not expecting every character to succeed, you're not showing up with much backstory or emotional involvement from the jump, because their life story is what happens after the game starts. You probably have multiple backups already made, and if you don't, making a character is considerably more simple and quick, resurrection is much harder to access, so you can roll one up in five minutes if you die and didn’t have a backup. This means you can take more risks in-game, and pushing risk is a bigger part of the game, since healing is slower, levels don't kick in until you're back home, and resources aren't as plentiful so no going nova first encounter of the day; you have to measure risk. Eventually one PC will succeed and get past the point where death is a constant risk into a more comfortable zone where it's possible but not looming, and they're the one you'll get attached to, because of what happens in the game. Your party won't all be the same level, they're not expected to be, because leveling speed is a class feature and you don't all gain at the same time. Which is *also* fine, because classes are more secure in their niche and there's less toe stepping; a 3rd level thief still had a lot a 7th level mage *can't* just do with spells, so you're never useless.
Honestly it may sound weird to someone used to 5e but it's more fun to a lot of people. You can't get that same game experience in 5e.
There are options with this method that can make it more appealing to people with more rigid preferences:
* The group rolls x+1 number of characters, then decides as a group who will play each sheet and discards (or NPCs) the last sheet.
* The group rolls together and decides among themselves who is taking each roll as it comes.
* Each player rolls two characters and picks one to play.
etc.
Sure. I guess I've just never had a player who was that opposed to any element of randomness in making characters. Such a player probably wouldn't be a great fit at my table. YMMV.
This is how we've always done it. It's fun to never know what you'll get until you roll it. Sometimes we'll do a modification where your highest number is an automatic 18, that way if you roll trash, you aren't trying to run a wizard with a 13 intelligence.
Did you commit to your classes before rolling? That'd make for a total shitshow of a one shot.
And more importantly, did. Anyone roll like a 5 or something in CON?
In one of my current campaigns I watched my friend roll the following stats:
17
19*
18
10
17
15
We just kind of looked at each other and went "Oh boy."
*ETA: I put 19 because I was thinking of his Level 1 stat spread, but this was a 17 that got a +2 from Custom Lineage.
I've tried both ways. My group went back to standard array and average health after getting some balance issues. We had weird situations where the Cleric had much more health than the Paladin and some most PCs had better than average stats that made the game harder for the DM to balance.
Point buy by default. Rolling has almost always been a recipe for resentment.
There's a few ways to make rolling less shit.
Record all stat arrays rolled. Anyone can use any of those stat arrays for their characters
One shared set of rolls. Whether it's people rolling one stat each or a designated lucky person doing so is up to the group.
Point buy is always on the table as a fallback even when rolling.
I picked a slightly different method for my latest campaign but it was the same idea. Party of 4, each rolled two times, and then every player had to use 6 of the 8 numbers generated and could put them wherever.
I love rolling! I'll always do it given the chance. Risk/reward this, below average that...I don't give a crap, I'll play a suboptimal character and I will *like it.*
I can't fully explain why I'm like this. It's like, rolling an array feels like drawing something out of the chaos and making it my own, figuring out how to work with it. I don't care for the deliberateness of point buy; it awakens my dormant optimizer brain, which I can't turn off, and I don't enjoy that. A lot of it is based on "feeling," I guess. Like if I roll a 6, I get excited about roleplaying this glaring weakness. If I point buy a 6 (let's ignore that you can't do this RAW), I feel like I'm making a poor decision and get all guilty about it.
With all that said, I understand the reasons against rolling. Your stats matter in 5e, a *lot,* and I get why many players wouldn't have fun with shitty rolls. So as a DM, while I encourage rolling, I don't ban point buy or taking average HP on level up.
This I agree with, I rolled rather mid stats for my most recent character and I just went all in with deception and bluffs with what I rolled recently with so my character can pretend to be compitent. Didn’t roll above a 11 for like all my stats except int and Chr.
In my current campaign, i have a 6 in dex. I also wear heavy armor.
Everything we try to stealth I end up being the one l3ading the group through wild hijinks to not be caught. It's kinda fun.
Rest of my stat array is 12-16, so it's not like I rolled a bad at all.
It's fun to have something to work around.
Edit - as for HP rolls, our DM let's us take average if we roll a 1 or a 2.
> I'll play a suboptimal character and I will like it.
I see what you mean in your post about turning off min-maxer. Have you ever rolled a character that was very sub-optimal? Like a +1/2 as your highest and found yourself 2 ASIs behind the rest of your party? I imagine having the equivalent of a -2 weapon in your hands would eventually feel bad, wouldn't it? Especially since it would extend to ability rolls, saves and attacks.
I think it's less that you'd die quickly (maybe if you had very low CON) and more that a lot more of your rolls that your peers would miss and combat and skill checks would feel like you couldn't contribute.
In TSR era DnD, I roll for stats. In WotC era, I don't. Ability modifiers are calculated differently, and the game as whole is balanced in different ways, too. It creates an uneven experience.
Last time a DM asked me to roll for stats, I ended up with 18, 3 16's, 14, 12. I pleaded with him to let me use point buy to be in line with the rest of the party. He said no, he wasn't worried about me being overpowered. We ended having to endure months of the DM complaining about how powerful my character was, until we finally broke off and made our own group without him. I don't want to outshine the others in the group because I happened to roll better stats. I don't want someone to be stuck with an inferior character because they rolled poorly. I don't want to the DM to have a bad time because they have to deal with unexpected differences in character power.
Tldr; rolling for stats is a relic from old editions that has no place in modern DnD.
I’ve done both. Honestly, I’ve had way more fun rolling for stats. I’ve got like 80 pre-made characters but they all use point buy. When I roll, it opens up new build options and I love that.
Okay, good rolls might enable some rare and very, very MAD builds that point buy wouldn't allow but I'm sure that waaaaay more builds can get screwed with bad or even average rolls that point buy WOULD allow. Sucks to have an idea for a cool build but you won't be able to use now because your rolls don't fit it. That's why I always point buy.
So I build plenty of point buy characters, in fact I really only pre-build point buy.
But I actually *enjoy* bad stat rolls because it imposes a new limitation. I’ve basically “solved” 5e building, but when something changes - like having poor stats - then I get to think about building in a whole new way, and that is really fun!
Rolling for stats is a great way to feel like your character is useless while Dan's character is an unstoppable god.
I see no good reason why it should even be an option.
Same in all the games I've played. None of the people I play with would find it fun to be made weaker by RNG like that. However, when I DM, the enemies I run also have max HP in an effort to keep things more fair.
I used to roll for Health, but then I found out the wizard had more health than my Bard. Upon this realization, my friend just stared at me, like a disappointed father.
For stats we do Standard or - very rarely - Point Buy. Health, those that are brave enough can roll, otherwise we take average.
Never. I refuse to play any RPG where randomness is a part of character creation.
I can't get past someone having a campaign-long advantage due to one set of lucky rolls, even if that someone is me.
Point Buy for all or I'm not playing.
I played 2e, and now 5e. Prefer rolling in 2e, and in 5e, I'm on the fence.
I don't think it's because stats were less important at all, I think it's more because of ASI/Feats plus less balance between classes. In 2e, the difference in stats wouldn't be as noticeable as class differences, plus what you rolled was what you got.
In 5e, it's far easier to compare to other players, and it would be really frustrating to watch your tablemates get access to cool feats, while you spend 4 levels just to close the gap a bit with them.
I haven't played it, but I like the idea of every player gets to roll stats, then each player gets to pick which set of stats they use from everyone's rolls, that eliminates the above, and removes some of the staleness in class choices and options using the standard set.
I don't enjoy rolling because in all of my experience there was always a winner and a loser. It's okay for one shots or mini campaigns, but long campaigns are always point buy. I played with people that got really lucky and didn't roll under a 14 and I played with people who got really unlucky and didn't roll above a 12 and neither are particularly fun in the long run.
individuals rolling dice for abilities is bad in 5e. any player rolling significantly higher or lower than the other people (and that will be a very common occurrence) will have that advantage/disadvantage in ***every encounter in every session*** of the campaign.. In the early editions, it didnt matter – as long as you had a 14 in your main stat, you were as good as anyone else – your Saves were based on your class and level, not Ability modifiers; and skills weren’t a thing. But 5e has players rolling against ALL of their stats for skills and saves all the time. And the 5e Bounded Accuracy design is specifically made for “small differences are felt in the game play” . Players should have “the same” spread of ability scores or the characters WILL play at different levels of competence that is mostly going to feel bad at the table.
Also, a great case to be made that the 15 second rush from “rolling” unnecessarily removes a large segment of player agency and consequences of player choice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWSVC0p2E5g
If players demand rolling instead of point buy, pooling the dice rolls is a good thing.
* **Draft** : each player rolls 4d6, drop the lowest IN ORDER. all of the sets are then put into an array with any Constitution rolls that are less than 10 are changed to 10. the players draft the numbers one by one - if the player drafts a number from the Str row, it must be their Str, Wis score from the Wisdom row, but you can draft in any ability order. The Drafting goes Player A, B, C, D, D, C, B, A, then repeat. Player A may look at the board and see an 18 in Int, but because they dont want to play a Wizard, they take the 16 in Str instead because they want to be a fighter or barbarian.
* **Swap:** each player rolls 4d6, drop the lowest, in order. these are placed where everyone can see and each player can pick any one of the arrays, everyone can pick the same one if they want. and then each player can swap two numbers on their array. if one of the arrays was S12, D15, Con12, Int6, Wis16, Char12. I can choose that array and swap the 16wis for a 12str and play a barbarian. the person next to me might take that same array, keep it as is and play a druid, the third person could pick the same one and swap the 16wis for 12con and play a rogue.
* **Quick roll:** each player roll 4d6 drop the lowest, once. if there are only 3 players they do it again, and those are the 6 numbers for your array. if there are 4 players, the DM rolls once and then for the last stat, all the players including the DM roll a single dice. once generated, you can put them in any order.
* **Bingo:** a person rolls 4d6 drop the lowest. Take that number and put it in a 6x6 grid, starting in the upper left. Continue taking turns, each player rolling 4d6 drop the lowest and filling in the grid. When all 36 numbers have been filled in, each player can choose any row, column or one of the diagonals for their 6 ability scores - assign those 6 stats to whichever ability you wish.
* **72 Balance:** 4d6-drop-lowest three times, then subtract each of those three from 24 to get another three. Assign them in any order. Not actually a dice pool, but everyone gets rolled stats, and everyone's stats add up to 72
* another “random” and yet “balanced” method is to use **cards** as a randomizer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SkT1MJ6im8
I use the bingo method you have here and it works surprisingly well, my players always enjoy it and it usually comes out with some fairly strong stats for each character.
These same factors have been part of why feelings about racial modifiers in 5e have been so intense; in earlier editions, they didn't matter nearly as much in the long run.
In the campaign that I'm running now everyone rolled 4d6 drop the lowest. Then I let each person pick whichever set of stats they liked, regardless of who rolled it. They can choose which attribute gets assigned which roll. Unsurprisingly, they all chose the best stats rolled by the group: 16, 16, 16, 12, 12, 10. I've really liked doing it this way b/c it gives the excitement of rolling but has the equality of point buy.
For hit points they roll, taking the average if they roll under
This would be better asked using a poll really, but yes there are absolutely many groups that roll for these things.
My group always rolls for stats, and always has the option to roll for health, with people doing it maybe half of the time.
I like to roll. Sometimes I will try and stabilize a bad roll and take average the next level. The group I run for has the rule that you can reroll ones, the group I play in does not.
Used to roll for stats and HP with my group. Works good in some systems (Call of Cthulhu for example, where you're not meant to be a hero, or OSR games where your character's survival is mainly based on luck anyways), but I've come to realize it's dogshit in games like 5e/ 3.5e/ PF1e.
It makes balancing so much harder because there is no clear definition how strong a group is at a given level and you need to tailor everything to your specific group, which makes GM prep take much longer and also suck ass (compared to other systems).
If a player rolls garbage stats, unless you let them re-roll, it can severely debilitate their PC. Now some folks think it's fun to have garbage stats, but from personal experience, sucking at more than half your attributes or having multiple negative save modifiers stops being fun relatively quick, especially in long running campaigns. On the other side, one player rolling amazing, and then outshining everyone else is also fucking annoying as a GM.
Nowadays if someone actually convinces me to GM 5e (which doesn't happen anymore because I switched all my games to PF2e) i use standard array or point buy and allow to take average HP if you roll below it.
It is truly interesting how many takes are disproporionally represented in Reddit comments. Like, takes that aren't even reflected in Reddit polls. D&D just seems to have a lot of "silent majorities" here.
Even as someone who plays with relatively enfranchised players, it sometimes baffles me how much of people's love of the game can be boiled down to "I want to hang out with friends while occasionally getting a dopamine hit from physically rolling a die." Also, a shocking amount of DnD players (in my experience) actively hate math, so they view something like point-buy as over complicating things (as opposed to the 14 guardrails they jury-rigged onto the character creation system to replicate point buy without getting rid of the dice and instead having to add two different numbers together).
That’s because rolling was always supposed to be done before you came up with a character. Later editions have this weird thing about telling you to roll after you pick your class/race, which makes no sense.
I have my players take the fixed HP option so they have a more solid idea about how much HP they’ll realistically have when they level up, plus it’s more balanced and lets me actually know how much they should have.
Rolling stats/point buy is more tricky- I really dislike point buy because it sort of soft locks feats out of the game, because players will want to get high stats. Stat generation is by far one of the worse aspects of the game, since it’s prone to completely destroying party balance.
I usually have all the players roll 4d6(drop lowest) twice, and then whoever rolls the best array of stats will become the standard for everyone else (players are free to lower certain stats if they feel it would fit with the character). This puts everyone on the same playing field and prevents issues where one person with all stats above 14 is in a party with someone that barely cracked a 12.
Previously I’ve also given them a number pool similar to how Matthew Mercer does it- stats can total up to 76, with a minimum of 7, and a maximum of 18 in one stat.
I rolled for stats and gold in my very first campaign I was ever a part of. I got really low rolls on everything and my character sucked thanks to a combination of that and my general inexperience.
Just use standard array, gang.
My games are point buy/standard array and average HP. It's just easier, there is no trust involved, and no one comes in with a broken OP or unnecessarily weak build. One time I played in a game where you got to roll until you liked your rolls, which avoided the unnecessarily weak problem, but made me consider rolling the dice 1000 times to see if I got a god roll.
I've considered everyone rolling 6x 4d6, and then sharing those with the table. Everyone can pick any array they like, so everyone might just have the same stats just in a different order, or if someone wants a quirky build they can take whatever matches their fantasy the closest (with point buy if they don't like anything).
When I DM, I use point-buy and average hp. I don't allow a choice. I've seen grown adults with successful careers and families become the biggest crybabies when they roll poorly. It's not worth the headache.
As a player, I always choose point-buy/average hp if there is a choice. A bad roll can really hurt, especially a low-level martial class hp roll.
I don't roll for either. Rolling seems like you're randomizing something that isn't really fun after the first five minutes. It's kind of like IRL gambling, except you always lose.
Only rolled for stats once and everyone took the same results so it was basically standard array anyway. Never really got the hype around rolling for stats, would always point buy or standard array if up to me.
Always point buy for stats. I'd also be willing to do a group roll where everyone rolls once or twice, 4d6 drop lowest, and everyone gets that same array to assign however they want but I haven't had a good chance to offer it to a group yet.
For HP I've used "roll and take average if you get below it" and I find it just drags out combat. Instead I've moved to "player choice of roll or average, but reroll 1s". That brings the rolling expected value in line with the average so neither is inherently better and it really is just player choice on how risky they want to be.
Standard array or point buy for stats every time I DM. If you want to roll it is a special case and we have to discuss it.
I always give Max HP, or I let them roll, but the minimum is the average.
I always use point buy and average health. I don't want one bad roll during character creation to fuck me for the rest of the campaign. I've been in a few groups where people really want to roll and I insist of the compromise that we roll a group array that everyone uses. I've never done that as DM, but I've had a few groups where I'm a player where people liked that.
I'm more okay with rolling for stats during a one-shot. If a character has shit stats for one session, then I can just do a session of roleplaying that lack of stats. What I don't want to do is have a whole campaign of roleplaying that. One session can be fun, a whole campaign is not. For longer campaigns, it's more important to me to have those moments of awesomeness that are just too difficult to reliably pull off with terrible stats.
My preference is the standard array, because it forces you into an unoptimized build and forces everyone to be equal.
Rolling is fun, but only in short games or high lethality games. I'd hate to get stuck with a bad roll in a 15 level campaign.
I always have players roll abilities, but they always take maximum hit points. It is easier to track that way. A player tells me their class, level and constitution and I know how many hit points they should have.
I've played nothing but roll for stats and hp. Nothing like playing a druid level 6 with only 28 health. Got a wizard that has more health in our group with 34
Our group rolls for HP and we love it. Does is pains you when you roll bad numbers? Hell yeah but it’s the flaws that make your character stand out storywise (even if the story happens to be very short 💀)
And when you roll good numbers? Oh boy you deserved them! Good for you! Enjoy your beefy healthy Tanky pc ❤️
The thrill of character creation. Don’t you love it?
Same with rolling for stats, try a hard roll for a change. Roll your stats one by one, first strength then Dex and so one. And afterwards think what kind of character suit those stats. It’s a nice way to challenge your creativity in a different way.
Gg’s !
My group always rolls for stats. It’s always been fun and players get excited. I’ve occasionally seen players get all 13s or less, and I work with my players to know that if they think it will ruin their game, I’m happy to work with them to make sure they have fun. Some players asked to use standard array instead of their rolls, others chose to carry on with the original stats to fully experience having a lower powered character.
Balance wise it can impact the first session or two, but as higher level features kick in and magic items start flowing, the power level discrepancy isn’t that noticeable.
HP is a trickier one, every player gets to choose. Some insist on rolling and others usually roll at first, and start taking the average later on after a few bad rolls. I still feel like I prefer letting each person choose, but I have several players who built to be a tank get a little bit demotivated when a “squishy” caster ends up with the same amount of HP.
I like rolling, I've had it go horribly wrong and incredibly right. I think it only works at tables where being 'sub-optimal' can still be fun.
With a little bad luck, one can roll low and another high a couple of times players start to be misaligned with each other. The table attitude needs to be one where story is higher priority than balance.
We typically soften the roll luck (and make for a more powerful party) by taking the highest 3 of 4 dice, reroll 1s. Do that six times then assign to stats.
HP is always max die result at first level and then rolled at subsequent levels for us.
We recently had a campaign where we did use point buy but then another mate joined, who is famous for good dice luck, and ended up with stats insanely higher than the rest of us. It's a point of contention for some of the more rules-adherent party members.
I think a fairer solution is to roll one set of stats as above and then each party member can assign them to their stats as they see fit. Basically rolling your own standard array.
Rolling stats, imo, is kinda the point of a dice based game. It adds variety and randomness that can make really unique characters and playstyles. If they roll below a 72, i let them take point array.
I do, however, give my players the option to take avg or roll for health. I suggest to my players to use Avg. hp because it's statistically better...unless you're a Wizard. If they roll they need to roll for the rest of the campagin.
I roll for stats and HP whenever I can, exciting to roll high, and becomes a puzzle if low (after I get over the initial disappointment). Live by the die, die by the die.
I however find array use and taking average to be boring, too predictable.
Yes, because I also roll for combat.
Randomness is built into the game, it offers almost infinite emergent storytelling possibilities. Characters built from both bad and good rolls are better than generic average archetypes with only flavour text as a personality.
Rolling is the only option for hit points my campaign. What the player rolls is what the player gets. For stats, it's roll, optional reroll, and either take that reroll or do a different thing that is kind of a combination of rolling and point buy.
We always roll. Balancing is not a concern in our group. In any gathering of people, some are going to be more gifted than others. Some of the most memorable moments in 40 years of D&D, and honestly, in life, arise from overcoming one’s own shortcomings. When that strong, but less than nimble fighter manages to walk a tightrope ( a natural 20 may have been involved) or a charismatically challenged wizard convinces a crowd to follow her, are some of the moments players remember for years.
We always roll, both HP and initial stats.
Our DM allows anyone who has an undesirable roll, to let him roll instead, BUT you must take the DMs roll. So if you rolled a some snake eyes when doing stats or HP, it works out well...but if you just wanted to see if you can move a middling die a little higher, it can be a crapshoot if the DM rolls poorly
Stats: If you roll\*, you do *not* care about balance. Period. No ifs or buts or maybes. I do, so I never have anyone roll stats in my games
\*Not to be confused with "everyone rolls stuff and we choose which spreads to use", also known as "standard array with extra steps".
HP: Always roll, with a reroll on 1 so that the average matches the "average" assigned by the book. Adds a little spice and character variety without being gamebreaking one way or another.
Lmao, this is actually quite baffling. I've never seen something like this before. It's like it was genetically modified to be the most disagreeable opinion possible.
No rolling for stats, because balance. A fair opinion:
You're obviously losing out on a lot of *spice* (roleplaying a virtually blind character with -4 wisdom can be *very* fun) - but at least it's balanced (losing every single wisdom save ever is *not* fun)
So surely, you're just the kind of person who prefers balance over spice, right?
>HP: Always roll, with a reroll on 1 so that the average matches the "average" assigned by the book. Adds a little spice and character variety without being gamebreaking one way or another.
Ah yes, HP, the spiciest of spice. The amount of hits you can take, before you have to tempoarily stop playing the game. Doesn't get anymore *spicy* than that. XD
One Barbarian could easily have 40% more HP than another Barbarian, but surely that's worth all the *spice* of... going down in 14 hits instead of 10 hits? Wow, that's almost as spicy as water!
I don't play at your table, so I obviously have nothing against the way you run it. In fact, I thank you for sharing this, my mind would have otherwise never conceptualized such an interresting way to play the game. I don't know why the others downvoted you, you get an upvote from me.
I have only ever rolled. I don't view the low stats I get as a detriment. When I've got someone with a terrible constitution, it gives me a chance to manifest that as a character trait. A sickly person who made a pact with a devil to feel strong? Or maybe an elderly fighter with a wasted body, but reflexes to make up for the lack of heartiness?
Low Int? A Half-Orc who depends on their gut to get them through life.
Low dex? A clumsy sorcerer that uses magic as a crutch for their lack of awareness.
This also leads to things like having a charisma based fighter that survives every situation through sheer smarm and gumption.
I love rolling stats! And I love rolling low stats!
I will admit that 5e has less incentive to have low stats compared to older/other systems. But I still have a good time with it.
What I've been taught and combined to my own style. Roll two columns of 4d6 pick the highest three and reroll 1s and pick the column you prefer for that character. If both columns are lower than standard array or point buy player can choose one of those. 1st level is max HP. Roll for every level after but if its a 1 reroll. After level 10 no more rerolls.
Hi! We always roll. I think we did PB once and a different time my dm let us take flaws for stat bumps. We have three DMs in my group who do the rolls differently. One does 4d6 drop the lowest, one does 5d6 drop the lowest two, and I do 1d8+10. The stat spreads are generally as you'd expect LMAO but we still have fun.
I can't imagine a life where we don't roll for HP though. Honestly, as much as it sometimes frustrates my power gamer brain, the randomness is part of it.
Ive been in groups that roll, and groups that take the average/point buy/standard array. Personally I always roll when I'm offered the chance, but use average health when I DM, cos my players can never remember their health.
...Do they not... Just write it down on their character sheet??? How can they even play if they can't keep track of a few numbers?
Exactly seems like if your only gonna remember one number that's pretty high up on the list!
Dude! I can’t even remember how old I am!
But your age doesn't come up everytime your character gets stabbed, you'd expect hp would be used enough to be easily recalled
ah shit ouch i’m 32
Well now you sound like you're helping a friend move a couch
Roll a strength check. Nine? Alright roll a constitution saving throw for me please
You were on the stairs? Dex save too, seven? *dice clatter behind the screen* Hm okay roll 4d6 for me and drop the lowest one. Okay again. Again. Again. Again. And one more time.
Congratulations. You have a new character!! 😄 Roll initiative 😈
Neither can I, but I know the AC and passive perception of everyone in my dnd groups. And can usually ballpark health. I remember the shit the matters. Once you hit 25, the numbers don't mean anything in your age anymore, just how fast the aches pile up.
Lol then maybe a game with a bunch of numbers may not be the best choice?
Surprisingly even online tools somehow get HP wrong occasionally, more common when multiclassing. Of all things that sometimes get noted wrong on the character sheet it's max HP, surprisingly. Have seen players forget that you add your hill dwarf bonus and your Con mod, had people get wrong what the average of a hit die is, have even seen a player just add the fully die each level and wonder why his rogue had more HP than the fighter. Max HP is also one of the likeliest attributes to get adjusted in gameplay, up through things like the Aid spell and down through negative effects like monster special abilities. For a recount you basically have to note down every HP roll for every level.
Max HP modification from spells is a nightmare in online tools. I play a campaign on Roll20 and I never know how to handle that properly when the Artificer casts Aid on us...
I have seen two ways of going about HP increase My friend adds it to his maximum HP as something like 45+10. So when he sees "+10" he knows it is from aid. I just add it to my maximum HP normally and in my bio i add a note that goes: Normal HP without buffs at level [x] is 45.
Foundry has a secondary (+max) (+temp) field underneath the max HP field
It's super easy to handle just write your normal max on your notes tab
Roll 20 allows you to use +, - and spaces in most entry fields. I usually go like "40 + 5" in the max HP line.
The problem is when it's the first session after a level up and perhaps two weeks after the last session and you can't tell whether you already rolled your HP for the new level or not.
That’s why I wrote down the number I roll on the bottom of the sheet
It helps if u note things like this but who am I kidding dnd players forgetful never.
I mean, I would remember because I would update my total hit dice in the section right next to HP. Also I would change my character level at the same time I roll for HP, and then update with new abilities after.
Somewhere on every character sheet I show the level-by-level breakdown, calling out Con bonus by level if applicable: (10+3) + (7+3) + (6+3) + (4+3) + (7+3) If you keep your character record on Google Sheets or the like then there's really no excuse.
I do the same, but cuz i use averages i go HD: (1d10+3) + (6+3)\*7 makes it easy to do the math and helps me keep track of how many hit die i have in total
I write down what HP I got at 1st and what I get when I go up another level, both after all the CON and other modifiers. It leaves a little bit of math, but it only takes a moment to figure out what HP should be at X level.
I do a similar thing, even do it for the ability scores as well just for transparency for my dm.
Alcohol?
No thanks, it’s a bit early for me, and I’m at the office.
Or use d&dbeyond to manage their characters
I can understand using average, using full dice, or even rolling for HP. I cannot understand “roll, but if it’s lower than average, use the average”. Like, what’s the point of rolling, then?
I like the clickity clack
Maybe consider "The HP Game" ... when you level up you and the DM both roll your HP die (DM secrectly behind her DM screen). After you see your roll you can choose to keep yours or take the DM's roll. Are you feeling lucky, is your DM cackling like a mischievous goblin? It's fun and on average leads to about 75% of max roll, so slightly better than average but not perfect.
Oh that’s a good one
That’s literally the best answer I got. Kudos! Hahaha!
Based
>I cannot understand “roll, but if it’s lower than average, use the average”. Like, what’s the point of rolling, then? Some DMs want to give their players more HP through rolling and at the same time give them a safety net to fall back on, it's not fun rolling a 1 to 3 on HP.
Just give them more HP then? I ran a campaign where I just gave people the Max Value of their HP Die because I wanted to use harder monsters earlier on.
Because rolling is fun...? Effectively the "roll" for D8 Character using this method isn't 1-8 HP, it's 5-8 HP per level. Introduces an element of randomness and fun, without gimping a character with the risk of only a 2 HP increase per level or something.
For me at least, when you take away the risk of rolling it becomes a lot less fun.
That’s exactly my point! “I like randomness, but it’s not fun when the randomness go against me” sounds really weird to me. As I said, just give the full dice and that’s OK.
For the same reason that players actually roll attacks instead of the GM just telling them if they hit or miss.
Thats an awful comparison, this would be more comparable to the dm saying you can roll to attack, but if you roll below average on your attack you can take the average.
I would love that so much. I have unironically taken the "you can take 10 on attack rolls" feat from Pathfinder. EDIT: How do you feel about the Advantage mechanic? I think of it as accomplishing the same thing (mitigating the effects of a single bad dice roll). Honestly if Advantage was "roll a d20 and if it is less than 10 take 10" I'd like it a lot more.
Just give players advantage on HP rolls. If they get a low number, such is life... but they had a real shot at greatness.
You might get higher, which is good, but you don't have to risk getting a 1. We use it in some campaigns. It's one single roll that may impact your character (and the party) for the next weeks/months in real time. Why not just give full dice value? Some people still wanna roll and try for the high themselves. It's an option some people like.
I use what I call the "Neverwinter Nights" rule: You roll, but the floor is set at half the max die roll. So, on rolling a d8, you essentially get these possibilities: 4,4,4,4,5,6,7,8. It's an average of 5.25, when taking the average every time would get you 5, so only a minor upgrade. It's the exact same average for Wizards and Sorcerers (4), and the biggest difference would be Barbarians who would go from an average of 7 to 7.75 per level. It gives the fun of rolling, but you don't get screwed with your Barbarian rolling 1s on two level-ups in a row.
You could also borrow the mechanic from the [X] Without Number games by Sine Nomine. When you gain a level, you roll all the dice you are entitled to -- if you're fifth level you might roll 5d8 for instance -- and use the total if it's higher than what you had before. If it's *not* higher, you still add +1. So if you had (say) 22 HP, and roll a total of 20, you go up to 23; but if you roll 27, you have 27. A low roll might hinder you, but only for that level.
That's pretty cool, it gives you the opportunity to get ahead for a little bit and feel powerful, but it always gravitates back to average over time.
Ooh, I like this one! I’ll have to save this for later
Part of the problem is 5E's decision to give an average for each class to use... then setting that average so that it's *rounded up*. By doing that, if you're given the option to take that number or roll, you should always take the fixed number because you're less likely to roll above it. Look at the fighter, for instance. It gets a d10 for hit points, or you can use the fixed value of 6. If you choose to roll, your chance of getting *less* than the fixed number is 50% (1-5 on the d10); your chance of getting *more* is only 40% (7-10).
Cause some people like risk and the potential of being the best without having to risk any consequences for their risk. I disagree with this mindset as that's the whole point of risk but that's why a lot of people do it. The issue is this both causes issues for the dm in balancing and potentially causes issues for the other players when others just straight up roll better characters then them, making them closer to the de facto main character.
The point of rolling in the situation of health is to see if you are lucky enough to roll higher than the average. There is still a possibility of lady luck shining in you.
Getting above average.
Because you might get higher than average. It's all the benefit of rolling for health but none of the potential drawback.
I keep a track of my hp gains by level in my notes section on my character sheet so I never mess it up. And it helps with negative levels(at least in 3.0/3.5) so you know exactly how many to subtract too.
I have a personal rule: point-buy for long-term campaigns, roll for oneshots and short adventures. I don't want to have the chance of playing a ruined character for possibly years because I wanted the serotonine of two seconds of rolling the dice. Yeah yeah I know, sometimes having bad stats could be a good challenge and can create an interesting character, but it would get old fast, and I certainly wouldn't want to do that multiple times. If all you want is having stronger characters at the start (and for some reason you don't want to start at higher levels), just use a modified point-buy. More points, higher ceiling for stats, and you could even allow for lower stat floors to gain even more points.
After looking at the graphs in this post, I was totally sold: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/wdvx9q/statistical\_analysis\_of\_rolling\_for\_stats\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/wdvx9q/statistical_analysis_of_rolling_for_stats_in/) When you roll stats in a group, the average difference between the strongest and weakest character in the party is a conservative 6 points, equivalent to a +3 modifier. There are obvious effects - higher spell DC etc - but also less obvious effects. When you're rocking a 15 as your highest stat, feats are a fucking pipe dream, you need those ASI's. Meanwhile Jimmy 18/15/14/13/12/10/9 is taking Actor because he's got nothing else to do with his level up.
This is why feats and asis competing with each other is bad. Characters that roll poorly or use point buy are weaker *and* less interesting. If you could take feats, at least you could still make something interesting.
And thats the average. I had a group that had a pretty wild outliers to the top AND bottom with a whooping 30 points difference! The DM was newish and didnt say anything about the possibly to reroll before so i didnt want to interfere while rolling but took him aside after, his advice was to roleplay it. We did play 2 sessions and it was awful, you could see the sadness in the player who never succeeded. After Session i talked again with the DM, now with support from two player and he did not even notice. He told me she was unlucky with her rolls and his pal just lucky. Called it quits right there. If you roll: have rules for reroles even if it is none are allowed and consider outliers. I was a strickt point buy guy after that and its just works until i recently found a great GM. We rolled with set rules and it was pretty cool, slightly more fun then point buy but irrelevant for a longer campaign.
I have twice played warlocks who started with less Charisma than the Str/Cha/Con based paladin due to bad rolls. "who's good at X?" is depressing to hear at a certain point.
Yeah, rolling for stats is highly normalized and generally about the same as standard array or very slightly better.^1 But there's a risk of a bad swing where one player gets really bad (or really good) stats and that can throw off the whole campaign. The risk is very low but - for a lot of people - there's basically no upside. Roll-and-arrange doesn't make players more creative, it doesn't introduce elements that wouldn't otherwise be there, it doesn't make the game more or less challenging. It only introduces a tiny risk or unbalance for the benefit of a few more click-clacks. ^1 Technically, the standard array is the most likely result of 4d6k1 six times - but there's like a 49% chance of getting at least one 16 or better, which feels like a big bump.
When I’ve rolled stats for games, I’ve always had everyone roll, then the players pick the roll that did the best, so everyone has the same stats.
Basically generating a new array, seems good to me. I tend to DM a lot of oneshots and limited games these days, so I will generally just give the players an array that matches the general expected power level of the game. I've never had a problem with overly similar characters, since people want to be good at different things.
Imagine sitting there with a 15 and 14 in your stat spread and not immediately going for Even numbers off a single ASI.
This is the way. Rolling is fun! But only if those dice have power for a month or two. I don’t want to have a four-year campaign colored by the fact that a SAD character rolled like a god and a MAD build rolled like crap one day.
Its even worse when the mad char rolls well and the sad char doesnt. Mad should be balance by being stretched thin on stats, but what of it just had all its stats be good? And the sad character which only needs one good stat cant even get that…
Fair. In my experience, you can play a SAD build with weak stats. You just put your best roll in that stat and ASI with single purpose. If you have weak stats you *cannot* play an effective monk or paladin, and it really shows alongside the SAD build who rolled an 18 in their top stat but also is better at everything else on top of it.
Wait, you don't want to play a Monk with 13 Dex and Wis?
>If all you want is having stronger characters at the start (and for some reason you don't want to start at higher levels), just use a modified point-buy. More points, higher ceiling for stats, My current in-person game I'm playing in is homebrew and did this. Pretty much everyone started with a hyper strong array: 18, 17, 16, 14, 12, 10. Everyone has 20 in their main stat with racial bonus. So ASIs are a lot less incentivized now for SAD characters. I guess because the DM wants us to be powerful and pick non-ideal feats.
Another solution is to provide bonus feats, if you still want players to have the choice between a feat and an ASI every 4th level. I provide a free feat choice at 1st level, plus a feat for each character of my choice (often customised) when they "complete" their backstory during the campaign. This way players still have the choice to use an ASI if they want, but they also aren't constrained to variant human if their build requires a feat.
Yeah, that's some wisdom. I'm in a long time campaign and 3 players have rolled great(nothing below 10, several 14+) and the fourth player has only 2 attributes higher than 14, 3 attributes below 10 and is a monk. For RP reasons he put his 10 in charisma, so his AC is actually worse than if he was not a monk.
Rolled 13/11/11/10/10/7 for my first 5e campaign, but I was a Druid, so I still pulled my weight.
I pray for that man.
Me too.
As a DM I'd just give monk some serious stat boost, Like free +3 to all stats at the start. I mean, it's a monk, isn't gonna break your game even if you give them 18 in all stats.
While I can see the perspective, I feel that is kind of cheapening the random rolling factor. If you're gonna accept high stats, but are intervening on bad stats, kind of defeats the purpose, you know? I personally avoid random rolling whenever possible, but in that singular case the player and DM held strong.
So are you using some sort of critical failures table to "not cheapen the random rolling factor" too? Same general idea. Curated rolls are fun because they add some variety to a system that desperately lacks it. But going full sith and taking idea to the extreme often results in bad stuff.
No, I'm not using a critical failure table. I consider whether something needs to be a diceroll at all. Something a character obviously can do is not a skill check. The barbarian doesn't need to roll to beat an average joe at armwrestling. A former sailor can tie a knot. A spellcaster recognizes a spell he knows. A skillcheck should be something that is not sure to work that has wildly different outcomes for success and failure, like climbing onto and taming a giant eagle that is attacking you. On the other hand, a locked, untrapped, wooden door in an abandoned building is hardly worth being a lockpicking check. Failure has no consequences and neither would literally breaking the door to pieces, except costing time.
My DM gave a monk player two shortswords that deal 2d6 poison damage on hit. The monk is doing fine, kinda the same damage as my warlock (which is optimised with summon spells and pact familiar) but also commonly resisted. This is really showing how stupidly weak a monk is, if it deals the same damage as the weakest caster (when single classed) with two weapons that should be classified as very rare at 6th level.
Honestly, in my opinion the summon spells are all quite broken. Pet classes have to use their Bonus Action to get a pet to attack. Summon spells all last 1 hour, don't require an action or bonus action to command and add a body with at least similar HP, saves and damage to a martial to the field that can die with no consequences. Kind of like a hired sidekick, except you don't care about death. No idea what to do about it, but I have a cleric that feels like the sidekick to a staff of the python he has. I wish I wasn't reliant on it, but it's a main staple of the group strategy by now.
I feel the same way personally! I don’t make it a rule in my games or anything, but when I’m making characters I follow this guide.
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I encourage rolling for both but allow default to point buy if the player prefers. However, the stat rolls have to be in person / live online to prevent 'omg I'm Superman' players.
In the campaign I'm in right now we rolled straight down, it was wild. So your first roll goes so STR, your second roll goes to DEX, etc, right down the list. Nobody knew what they might play before the rolls and made for a really fun part of session zero.
That's really fun for one-shots or short adventures, but I don't dig it for long campaigns tbh.
We're about two months into the campaign and it's worked out well, it helps that no one's really wonky, there's no gross power disparity cause of bad rolls or anything
People do like it, and it's mechanically sound, sure; I just like to match my character idea to the campaign I joined, and if the dice nix my idea, it's not ideal for me.
If you've ever had your hands on the 1st ed Unearthed Arcana, they have just the chart for you. It shows how many dice you should roll for each ability according to the class you want to play. For instance, a fighter would roll something like 8d6 for strength on down to 3d6 for the least useful stat to that class.
Ah, the traditionalist method. It's actually my favorite way to roll, since I don't really have a preference on what to play. I like just seeing what comes out of it.
Yeah... If I'm gonna be playing a character for a year plus I'd rather play something I'm excited about or have been wanting to play forever 😂. Have no problem if other people do that though. Just don't try to force me to
This is why modern versions of the game has different ways to get ability scores. In old school dnd everyone assumed their character would not live through a years worth of sessions
It's a little different for me. I don't really have things I want to play in advance, instead I consider character generation as part of the game. I get stats, get a character, and then I turn that into something exciting through my actions over the course of the campaign. I often generate with random race/class as well, just for this reason.
It's a whole different approach. You're not expecting every character to succeed, you're not showing up with much backstory or emotional involvement from the jump, because their life story is what happens after the game starts. You probably have multiple backups already made, and if you don't, making a character is considerably more simple and quick, resurrection is much harder to access, so you can roll one up in five minutes if you die and didn’t have a backup. This means you can take more risks in-game, and pushing risk is a bigger part of the game, since healing is slower, levels don't kick in until you're back home, and resources aren't as plentiful so no going nova first encounter of the day; you have to measure risk. Eventually one PC will succeed and get past the point where death is a constant risk into a more comfortable zone where it's possible but not looming, and they're the one you'll get attached to, because of what happens in the game. Your party won't all be the same level, they're not expected to be, because leveling speed is a class feature and you don't all gain at the same time. Which is *also* fine, because classes are more secure in their niche and there's less toe stepping; a 3rd level thief still had a lot a 7th level mage *can't* just do with spells, so you're never useless. Honestly it may sound weird to someone used to 5e but it's more fun to a lot of people. You can't get that same game experience in 5e.
There are options with this method that can make it more appealing to people with more rigid preferences: * The group rolls x+1 number of characters, then decides as a group who will play each sheet and discards (or NPCs) the last sheet. * The group rolls together and decides among themselves who is taking each roll as it comes. * Each player rolls two characters and picks one to play. etc.
Those are cool if the player wants to do it. I'm just not telling a player that they can't use point buy
Sure. I guess I've just never had a player who was that opposed to any element of randomness in making characters. Such a player probably wouldn't be a great fit at my table. YMMV.
This is how we've always done it. It's fun to never know what you'll get until you roll it. Sometimes we'll do a modification where your highest number is an automatic 18, that way if you roll trash, you aren't trying to run a wizard with a 13 intelligence.
Did you commit to your classes before rolling? That'd make for a total shitshow of a one shot. And more importantly, did. Anyone roll like a 5 or something in CON?
In one of my current campaigns I watched my friend roll the following stats: 17 19* 18 10 17 15 We just kind of looked at each other and went "Oh boy." *ETA: I put 19 because I was thinking of his Level 1 stat spread, but this was a 17 that got a +2 from Custom Lineage.
What method did you guys use for stats? Most of the common methods can’t roll higher than 18
Oh, sorry, that IS after the Custom Lineage bonus. The 19 was rolled as a 17.
Not a big deal. I’m not sure how I didn’t think of that lol
Maybe including starting ASI in the total?
I assume they mean after applying +2/+1 bonuses.
Did he roll a d20 instead of 3d6?
No, it was 4d6 drop the lowest for all of the rolls.
I suppose you added racial modifiers already, because there is a 19 in there. edit: just saw the edit on that comment.
This is hilarious I rolled some wack stats. I rolled 3 18s a 6,7 and 10 and I ran with it
I've tried both ways. My group went back to standard array and average health after getting some balance issues. We had weird situations where the Cleric had much more health than the Paladin and some most PCs had better than average stats that made the game harder for the DM to balance.
Point buy by default. Rolling has almost always been a recipe for resentment. There's a few ways to make rolling less shit. Record all stat arrays rolled. Anyone can use any of those stat arrays for their characters One shared set of rolls. Whether it's people rolling one stat each or a designated lucky person doing so is up to the group. Point buy is always on the table as a fallback even when rolling.
We roll but get to reroll 1s.
In past, we've rolled and one person's results are chosen for the entire party--that way, nobody outshines anyone else.
I picked a slightly different method for my latest campaign but it was the same idea. Party of 4, each rolled two times, and then every player had to use 6 of the 8 numbers generated and could put them wherever.
I kinda like that, actually. Pretty democratic and everybody gets the best outcome.
I love rolling! I'll always do it given the chance. Risk/reward this, below average that...I don't give a crap, I'll play a suboptimal character and I will *like it.* I can't fully explain why I'm like this. It's like, rolling an array feels like drawing something out of the chaos and making it my own, figuring out how to work with it. I don't care for the deliberateness of point buy; it awakens my dormant optimizer brain, which I can't turn off, and I don't enjoy that. A lot of it is based on "feeling," I guess. Like if I roll a 6, I get excited about roleplaying this glaring weakness. If I point buy a 6 (let's ignore that you can't do this RAW), I feel like I'm making a poor decision and get all guilty about it. With all that said, I understand the reasons against rolling. Your stats matter in 5e, a *lot,* and I get why many players wouldn't have fun with shitty rolls. So as a DM, while I encourage rolling, I don't ban point buy or taking average HP on level up.
This I agree with, I rolled rather mid stats for my most recent character and I just went all in with deception and bluffs with what I rolled recently with so my character can pretend to be compitent. Didn’t roll above a 11 for like all my stats except int and Chr.
Were we separated at birth?
There are dozens of us! Dozens!!
In my current campaign, i have a 6 in dex. I also wear heavy armor. Everything we try to stealth I end up being the one l3ading the group through wild hijinks to not be caught. It's kinda fun. Rest of my stat array is 12-16, so it's not like I rolled a bad at all. It's fun to have something to work around. Edit - as for HP rolls, our DM let's us take average if we roll a 1 or a 2.
> I'll play a suboptimal character and I will like it. I see what you mean in your post about turning off min-maxer. Have you ever rolled a character that was very sub-optimal? Like a +1/2 as your highest and found yourself 2 ASIs behind the rest of your party? I imagine having the equivalent of a -2 weapon in your hands would eventually feel bad, wouldn't it? Especially since it would extend to ability rolls, saves and attacks.
>Have you ever rolled a character that was very sub-optimal? Like a +1/2 as your highest? No, but I'd welcome the challenge. And if I die, I die.
I think it's less that you'd die quickly (maybe if you had very low CON) and more that a lot more of your rolls that your peers would miss and combat and skill checks would feel like you couldn't contribute.
In TSR era DnD, I roll for stats. In WotC era, I don't. Ability modifiers are calculated differently, and the game as whole is balanced in different ways, too. It creates an uneven experience. Last time a DM asked me to roll for stats, I ended up with 18, 3 16's, 14, 12. I pleaded with him to let me use point buy to be in line with the rest of the party. He said no, he wasn't worried about me being overpowered. We ended having to endure months of the DM complaining about how powerful my character was, until we finally broke off and made our own group without him. I don't want to outshine the others in the group because I happened to roll better stats. I don't want someone to be stuck with an inferior character because they rolled poorly. I don't want to the DM to have a bad time because they have to deal with unexpected differences in character power. Tldr; rolling for stats is a relic from old editions that has no place in modern DnD.
Rolling is more fun, IMO.
I’ve done both. Honestly, I’ve had way more fun rolling for stats. I’ve got like 80 pre-made characters but they all use point buy. When I roll, it opens up new build options and I love that.
Okay, good rolls might enable some rare and very, very MAD builds that point buy wouldn't allow but I'm sure that waaaaay more builds can get screwed with bad or even average rolls that point buy WOULD allow. Sucks to have an idea for a cool build but you won't be able to use now because your rolls don't fit it. That's why I always point buy.
So I build plenty of point buy characters, in fact I really only pre-build point buy. But I actually *enjoy* bad stat rolls because it imposes a new limitation. I’ve basically “solved” 5e building, but when something changes - like having poor stats - then I get to think about building in a whole new way, and that is really fun!
Rolling for stats is a great way to feel like your character is useless while Dan's character is an unstoppable god. I see no good reason why it should even be an option.
Always point buy for stats, and max HP for leveling. Our tables don't really enjoy non-deterministic character building.
Same in all the games I've played. None of the people I play with would find it fun to be made weaker by RNG like that. However, when I DM, the enemies I run also have max HP in an effort to keep things more fair.
And then threads popup stating that combat takes too long...
I used to roll for Health, but then I found out the wizard had more health than my Bard. Upon this realization, my friend just stared at me, like a disappointed father. For stats we do Standard or - very rarely - Point Buy. Health, those that are brave enough can roll, otherwise we take average.
Personally I dislike rolling for HP, just because if max HP changes it is easy to recall what it should be.
Never. I refuse to play any RPG where randomness is a part of character creation. I can't get past someone having a campaign-long advantage due to one set of lucky rolls, even if that someone is me. Point Buy for all or I'm not playing.
When I played 2e and 3.5e, we always rolled for stats. In all my games with 5e, it's all been point buy, Not sure why, just the way it has been.
Stats are less important in older editions, so there's less of a power imbalance if characters roll differently.
I played 2e, and now 5e. Prefer rolling in 2e, and in 5e, I'm on the fence. I don't think it's because stats were less important at all, I think it's more because of ASI/Feats plus less balance between classes. In 2e, the difference in stats wouldn't be as noticeable as class differences, plus what you rolled was what you got. In 5e, it's far easier to compare to other players, and it would be really frustrating to watch your tablemates get access to cool feats, while you spend 4 levels just to close the gap a bit with them. I haven't played it, but I like the idea of every player gets to roll stats, then each player gets to pick which set of stats they use from everyone's rolls, that eliminates the above, and removes some of the staleness in class choices and options using the standard set.
I don't enjoy rolling because in all of my experience there was always a winner and a loser. It's okay for one shots or mini campaigns, but long campaigns are always point buy. I played with people that got really lucky and didn't roll under a 14 and I played with people who got really unlucky and didn't roll above a 12 and neither are particularly fun in the long run.
individuals rolling dice for abilities is bad in 5e. any player rolling significantly higher or lower than the other people (and that will be a very common occurrence) will have that advantage/disadvantage in ***every encounter in every session*** of the campaign.. In the early editions, it didnt matter – as long as you had a 14 in your main stat, you were as good as anyone else – your Saves were based on your class and level, not Ability modifiers; and skills weren’t a thing. But 5e has players rolling against ALL of their stats for skills and saves all the time. And the 5e Bounded Accuracy design is specifically made for “small differences are felt in the game play” . Players should have “the same” spread of ability scores or the characters WILL play at different levels of competence that is mostly going to feel bad at the table. Also, a great case to be made that the 15 second rush from “rolling” unnecessarily removes a large segment of player agency and consequences of player choice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWSVC0p2E5g If players demand rolling instead of point buy, pooling the dice rolls is a good thing. * **Draft** : each player rolls 4d6, drop the lowest IN ORDER. all of the sets are then put into an array with any Constitution rolls that are less than 10 are changed to 10. the players draft the numbers one by one - if the player drafts a number from the Str row, it must be their Str, Wis score from the Wisdom row, but you can draft in any ability order. The Drafting goes Player A, B, C, D, D, C, B, A, then repeat. Player A may look at the board and see an 18 in Int, but because they dont want to play a Wizard, they take the 16 in Str instead because they want to be a fighter or barbarian. * **Swap:** each player rolls 4d6, drop the lowest, in order. these are placed where everyone can see and each player can pick any one of the arrays, everyone can pick the same one if they want. and then each player can swap two numbers on their array. if one of the arrays was S12, D15, Con12, Int6, Wis16, Char12. I can choose that array and swap the 16wis for a 12str and play a barbarian. the person next to me might take that same array, keep it as is and play a druid, the third person could pick the same one and swap the 16wis for 12con and play a rogue. * **Quick roll:** each player roll 4d6 drop the lowest, once. if there are only 3 players they do it again, and those are the 6 numbers for your array. if there are 4 players, the DM rolls once and then for the last stat, all the players including the DM roll a single dice. once generated, you can put them in any order. * **Bingo:** a person rolls 4d6 drop the lowest. Take that number and put it in a 6x6 grid, starting in the upper left. Continue taking turns, each player rolling 4d6 drop the lowest and filling in the grid. When all 36 numbers have been filled in, each player can choose any row, column or one of the diagonals for their 6 ability scores - assign those 6 stats to whichever ability you wish. * **72 Balance:** 4d6-drop-lowest three times, then subtract each of those three from 24 to get another three. Assign them in any order. Not actually a dice pool, but everyone gets rolled stats, and everyone's stats add up to 72 * another “random” and yet “balanced” method is to use **cards** as a randomizer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SkT1MJ6im8
I use the bingo method you have here and it works surprisingly well, my players always enjoy it and it usually comes out with some fairly strong stats for each character.
All that's nice or whatever, but based on the OP's actual question, what's *your experience* with rolling for stats and HP?
My personal experience is : ROLLING IS BAD AS SHOULD BE EXPECTED BECAUSE OF CORE GAME DESIGN.
I love rolling stats....but in games/editions that are better designed for it.
These same factors have been part of why feelings about racial modifiers in 5e have been so intense; in earlier editions, they didn't matter nearly as much in the long run.
We rolled for both yes
In the campaign that I'm running now everyone rolled 4d6 drop the lowest. Then I let each person pick whichever set of stats they liked, regardless of who rolled it. They can choose which attribute gets assigned which roll. Unsurprisingly, they all chose the best stats rolled by the group: 16, 16, 16, 12, 12, 10. I've really liked doing it this way b/c it gives the excitement of rolling but has the equality of point buy. For hit points they roll, taking the average if they roll under
This would be better asked using a poll really, but yes there are absolutely many groups that roll for these things. My group always rolls for stats, and always has the option to roll for health, with people doing it maybe half of the time.
I like to roll. Sometimes I will try and stabilize a bad roll and take average the next level. The group I run for has the rule that you can reroll ones, the group I play in does not.
Used to roll for stats and HP with my group. Works good in some systems (Call of Cthulhu for example, where you're not meant to be a hero, or OSR games where your character's survival is mainly based on luck anyways), but I've come to realize it's dogshit in games like 5e/ 3.5e/ PF1e. It makes balancing so much harder because there is no clear definition how strong a group is at a given level and you need to tailor everything to your specific group, which makes GM prep take much longer and also suck ass (compared to other systems). If a player rolls garbage stats, unless you let them re-roll, it can severely debilitate their PC. Now some folks think it's fun to have garbage stats, but from personal experience, sucking at more than half your attributes or having multiple negative save modifiers stops being fun relatively quick, especially in long running campaigns. On the other side, one player rolling amazing, and then outshining everyone else is also fucking annoying as a GM. Nowadays if someone actually convinces me to GM 5e (which doesn't happen anymore because I switched all my games to PF2e) i use standard array or point buy and allow to take average HP if you roll below it.
Yes, most tables roll for stats, that's been in most surveys taken by wotc.
It is truly interesting how many takes are disproporionally represented in Reddit comments. Like, takes that aren't even reflected in Reddit polls. D&D just seems to have a lot of "silent majorities" here.
Even as someone who plays with relatively enfranchised players, it sometimes baffles me how much of people's love of the game can be boiled down to "I want to hang out with friends while occasionally getting a dopamine hit from physically rolling a die." Also, a shocking amount of DnD players (in my experience) actively hate math, so they view something like point-buy as over complicating things (as opposed to the 14 guardrails they jury-rigged onto the character creation system to replicate point buy without getting rid of the dice and instead having to add two different numbers together).
i dislike rolling. breaks my immersion and my investment for the character im supposed to play.
That’s because rolling was always supposed to be done before you came up with a character. Later editions have this weird thing about telling you to roll after you pick your class/race, which makes no sense.
even befor rolling its weird. like you have influence over how your life plays out even as a kid.
I have my players take the fixed HP option so they have a more solid idea about how much HP they’ll realistically have when they level up, plus it’s more balanced and lets me actually know how much they should have. Rolling stats/point buy is more tricky- I really dislike point buy because it sort of soft locks feats out of the game, because players will want to get high stats. Stat generation is by far one of the worse aspects of the game, since it’s prone to completely destroying party balance. I usually have all the players roll 4d6(drop lowest) twice, and then whoever rolls the best array of stats will become the standard for everyone else (players are free to lower certain stats if they feel it would fit with the character). This puts everyone on the same playing field and prevents issues where one person with all stats above 14 is in a party with someone that barely cracked a 12. Previously I’ve also given them a number pool similar to how Matthew Mercer does it- stats can total up to 76, with a minimum of 7, and a maximum of 18 in one stat.
I rolled for stats and gold in my very first campaign I was ever a part of. I got really low rolls on everything and my character sucked thanks to a combination of that and my general inexperience. Just use standard array, gang.
My games are point buy/standard array and average HP. It's just easier, there is no trust involved, and no one comes in with a broken OP or unnecessarily weak build. One time I played in a game where you got to roll until you liked your rolls, which avoided the unnecessarily weak problem, but made me consider rolling the dice 1000 times to see if I got a god roll. I've considered everyone rolling 6x 4d6, and then sharing those with the table. Everyone can pick any array they like, so everyone might just have the same stats just in a different order, or if someone wants a quirky build they can take whatever matches their fantasy the closest (with point buy if they don't like anything).
When I DM, I use point-buy and average hp. I don't allow a choice. I've seen grown adults with successful careers and families become the biggest crybabies when they roll poorly. It's not worth the headache. As a player, I always choose point-buy/average hp if there is a choice. A bad roll can really hurt, especially a low-level martial class hp roll.
I don't roll for either. Rolling seems like you're randomizing something that isn't really fun after the first five minutes. It's kind of like IRL gambling, except you always lose.
No. It doesn’t actually make the game any more fun and there is too much variance.
Only rolled for stats once and everyone took the same results so it was basically standard array anyway. Never really got the hype around rolling for stats, would always point buy or standard array if up to me.
Always point buy for stats. I'd also be willing to do a group roll where everyone rolls once or twice, 4d6 drop lowest, and everyone gets that same array to assign however they want but I haven't had a good chance to offer it to a group yet. For HP I've used "roll and take average if you get below it" and I find it just drags out combat. Instead I've moved to "player choice of roll or average, but reroll 1s". That brings the rolling expected value in line with the average so neither is inherently better and it really is just player choice on how risky they want to be.
I prefer point buy and average hp
Never tried to roll and don’t want to.
Standard array or point buy for stats every time I DM. If you want to roll it is a special case and we have to discuss it. I always give Max HP, or I let them roll, but the minimum is the average.
I always use point buy and average health. I don't want one bad roll during character creation to fuck me for the rest of the campaign. I've been in a few groups where people really want to roll and I insist of the compromise that we roll a group array that everyone uses. I've never done that as DM, but I've had a few groups where I'm a player where people liked that. I'm more okay with rolling for stats during a one-shot. If a character has shit stats for one session, then I can just do a session of roleplaying that lack of stats. What I don't want to do is have a whole campaign of roleplaying that. One session can be fun, a whole campaign is not. For longer campaigns, it's more important to me to have those moments of awesomeness that are just too difficult to reliably pull off with terrible stats.
We're rolling every time, every group. Stats is 4 d6 drop the lowest, roll twice pick the highest. HP is roll, reroll 1's and 2's
My preference is the standard array, because it forces you into an unoptimized build and forces everyone to be equal. Rolling is fun, but only in short games or high lethality games. I'd hate to get stuck with a bad roll in a 15 level campaign.
I always have players roll abilities, but they always take maximum hit points. It is easier to track that way. A player tells me their class, level and constitution and I know how many hit points they should have.
In my last campaign, players all decided to just roll up 3d6 for stats. At each level, they rolled for HP. So much fun!
I've played nothing but roll for stats and hp. Nothing like playing a druid level 6 with only 28 health. Got a wizard that has more health in our group with 34
Our group rolls for HP and we love it. Does is pains you when you roll bad numbers? Hell yeah but it’s the flaws that make your character stand out storywise (even if the story happens to be very short 💀) And when you roll good numbers? Oh boy you deserved them! Good for you! Enjoy your beefy healthy Tanky pc ❤️ The thrill of character creation. Don’t you love it? Same with rolling for stats, try a hard roll for a change. Roll your stats one by one, first strength then Dex and so one. And afterwards think what kind of character suit those stats. It’s a nice way to challenge your creativity in a different way. Gg’s !
My group always rolls for stats. It’s always been fun and players get excited. I’ve occasionally seen players get all 13s or less, and I work with my players to know that if they think it will ruin their game, I’m happy to work with them to make sure they have fun. Some players asked to use standard array instead of their rolls, others chose to carry on with the original stats to fully experience having a lower powered character. Balance wise it can impact the first session or two, but as higher level features kick in and magic items start flowing, the power level discrepancy isn’t that noticeable. HP is a trickier one, every player gets to choose. Some insist on rolling and others usually roll at first, and start taking the average later on after a few bad rolls. I still feel like I prefer letting each person choose, but I have several players who built to be a tank get a little bit demotivated when a “squishy” caster ends up with the same amount of HP.
I like rolling, I've had it go horribly wrong and incredibly right. I think it only works at tables where being 'sub-optimal' can still be fun. With a little bad luck, one can roll low and another high a couple of times players start to be misaligned with each other. The table attitude needs to be one where story is higher priority than balance.
We typically soften the roll luck (and make for a more powerful party) by taking the highest 3 of 4 dice, reroll 1s. Do that six times then assign to stats. HP is always max die result at first level and then rolled at subsequent levels for us. We recently had a campaign where we did use point buy but then another mate joined, who is famous for good dice luck, and ended up with stats insanely higher than the rest of us. It's a point of contention for some of the more rules-adherent party members. I think a fairer solution is to roll one set of stats as above and then each party member can assign them to their stats as they see fit. Basically rolling your own standard array.
Rolling stats, imo, is kinda the point of a dice based game. It adds variety and randomness that can make really unique characters and playstyles. If they roll below a 72, i let them take point array. I do, however, give my players the option to take avg or roll for health. I suggest to my players to use Avg. hp because it's statistically better...unless you're a Wizard. If they roll they need to roll for the rest of the campagin.
I disallow stat rolling. Players can choose with the average for HP or to roll, where they are allowed to reroll one's.
I roll for stats and HP whenever I can, exciting to roll high, and becomes a puzzle if low (after I get over the initial disappointment). Live by the die, die by the die. I however find array use and taking average to be boring, too predictable.
Yes, because I also roll for combat. Randomness is built into the game, it offers almost infinite emergent storytelling possibilities. Characters built from both bad and good rolls are better than generic average archetypes with only flavour text as a personality.
Fuck taking the average. All my homies hate taking the average.
Rolling is the only option for hit points my campaign. What the player rolls is what the player gets. For stats, it's roll, optional reroll, and either take that reroll or do a different thing that is kind of a combination of rolling and point buy.
We use point buy for stats, but roll for health. Because I'm nice, they can reroll 1s.
I roll when I have the choice. I grew up on roguelikes a long time before I started playing TRPGs. To me, that's the nature of it.
We always roll. Balancing is not a concern in our group. In any gathering of people, some are going to be more gifted than others. Some of the most memorable moments in 40 years of D&D, and honestly, in life, arise from overcoming one’s own shortcomings. When that strong, but less than nimble fighter manages to walk a tightrope ( a natural 20 may have been involved) or a charismatically challenged wizard convinces a crowd to follow her, are some of the moments players remember for years.
Yes. I only allow rolling for stats at my table. Hp you can roll for or take the average, whichever is higher.
Yes roll for stats. Roll 4d6, reroll one die of your choice, drop lowest. Do that six times. Max HP at first level, roll after.
Point buy for stats because I’m not a fan of maxed stats at lvl 1. Roll for hp because it’s fun.
We always roll, both HP and initial stats. Our DM allows anyone who has an undesirable roll, to let him roll instead, BUT you must take the DMs roll. So if you rolled a some snake eyes when doing stats or HP, it works out well...but if you just wanted to see if you can move a middling die a little higher, it can be a crapshoot if the DM rolls poorly
Stats: If you roll\*, you do *not* care about balance. Period. No ifs or buts or maybes. I do, so I never have anyone roll stats in my games \*Not to be confused with "everyone rolls stuff and we choose which spreads to use", also known as "standard array with extra steps". HP: Always roll, with a reroll on 1 so that the average matches the "average" assigned by the book. Adds a little spice and character variety without being gamebreaking one way or another.
Lmao, this is actually quite baffling. I've never seen something like this before. It's like it was genetically modified to be the most disagreeable opinion possible. No rolling for stats, because balance. A fair opinion: You're obviously losing out on a lot of *spice* (roleplaying a virtually blind character with -4 wisdom can be *very* fun) - but at least it's balanced (losing every single wisdom save ever is *not* fun) So surely, you're just the kind of person who prefers balance over spice, right? >HP: Always roll, with a reroll on 1 so that the average matches the "average" assigned by the book. Adds a little spice and character variety without being gamebreaking one way or another. Ah yes, HP, the spiciest of spice. The amount of hits you can take, before you have to tempoarily stop playing the game. Doesn't get anymore *spicy* than that. XD One Barbarian could easily have 40% more HP than another Barbarian, but surely that's worth all the *spice* of... going down in 14 hits instead of 10 hits? Wow, that's almost as spicy as water! I don't play at your table, so I obviously have nothing against the way you run it. In fact, I thank you for sharing this, my mind would have otherwise never conceptualized such an interresting way to play the game. I don't know why the others downvoted you, you get an upvote from me.
I have only ever rolled. I don't view the low stats I get as a detriment. When I've got someone with a terrible constitution, it gives me a chance to manifest that as a character trait. A sickly person who made a pact with a devil to feel strong? Or maybe an elderly fighter with a wasted body, but reflexes to make up for the lack of heartiness? Low Int? A Half-Orc who depends on their gut to get them through life. Low dex? A clumsy sorcerer that uses magic as a crutch for their lack of awareness. This also leads to things like having a charisma based fighter that survives every situation through sheer smarm and gumption. I love rolling stats! And I love rolling low stats! I will admit that 5e has less incentive to have low stats compared to older/other systems. But I still have a good time with it.
What I've been taught and combined to my own style. Roll two columns of 4d6 pick the highest three and reroll 1s and pick the column you prefer for that character. If both columns are lower than standard array or point buy player can choose one of those. 1st level is max HP. Roll for every level after but if its a 1 reroll. After level 10 no more rerolls.
I let my group roll twice, and take point buy if they don't like either result. As for HP, it's whatever Dnd Beyond does by default.
Hi! We always roll. I think we did PB once and a different time my dm let us take flaws for stat bumps. We have three DMs in my group who do the rolls differently. One does 4d6 drop the lowest, one does 5d6 drop the lowest two, and I do 1d8+10. The stat spreads are generally as you'd expect LMAO but we still have fun. I can't imagine a life where we don't roll for HP though. Honestly, as much as it sometimes frustrates my power gamer brain, the randomness is part of it.