With that being said, I would like to make it very clear that I don't hate all random elements in character generation. On the contrary, I rather like them. I find randomization speeds the process up and I find it entertaining to "work with what fate has given me" occasionally. For example, I absolutely love randomly generating a character's ability scores.
One of the reasons I prefer randomly generating a character's ability scores is that I find it to be more enjoyable than the "Purchase" method. While the Purchase method allows a player to build the character they want and have more control over the process, I feel that it is incredibly boring and causes the process to grind to a halt. However, grabbing a couple of six-sided dice and rolling them a few times is both fast and entertaining.
Secondly, I feel like the random nature behind rolling for a character's ability scores better represents the fact that not everyone is created equal. Some people are better at certain things than others. Just because someone has an 18 in Strength doesn't mean you can't be useful to the party with your 18 Charisma. Personally, I find playing characters with average ability scores more fun because I now have to come up with fun and inventive ways around problems since I can't rely on high ability scores to save me.
While I like randomly generating a character's ability scores, I will admit that it sucks when fate decides to turn her back on you and you end up rolling a really horrible set of scores. So, like the rule I'm thinking about using for hit point generation, I'm thinking about using this one rule that Brian Patterson from d20monkey uses:
- Roll 4d6 and remove the lowest number.
- Roll that six times per set.
- Roll two sets of six.
- The player chooses one of the two sets (no mix-n-match).
While it would slow the character generation process down slightly, it would give the players a slightly better chance of not being stuck with completely horrible ability scores. Since I'm going to be running a Savage Worlds-based Savage Worlds game for the next few weeks, I'll probably have to wait awhile before I can actually implement this method of ability score generation and see how well it actually works at the table, but I'm sure it will work fine.
I have discovered that rolling 18d6, then letting the players divvy them up into 6 sets of 3 creates a nice balance of random rolling while still giving the player a good degree of control.
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely an interesting way of handling it. I believe the Pathfinder Core Rulebook has a similar method for ability score generation. What does this method affect the speed of character creation?
DeleteAs a Dm I do 4 sets of rolls, and rerolls on all 1s and 2s. That way you don't get 3s in your stats and such. I feel like that's too big a punishment, and is worse than arrow to the knee jokes for all adventurers.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I guess 6 isn't as god awful, so perhaps just a reroll on ones would work out great too.
I know a few friends who have the "Re-Roll 1's and 2's" rule as well, but I have never implemented it myself. If you were to ask me why, I'm not sure if I could give you a good answer. Something about it just feels...weird...to me and I don't know why.
DeleteMy dice almost universally hate me. To handle this, one of our group came up with roll 4d4, drop the lowest, then add six. That way, the lowest possible stat is a nine rather than a three, while the highest still ends up being an eighteen
ReplyDeleteI actually used to use a method similar to this. Players would roll 2d6 and add 6 to the result. 8 was the lowest score they could possibly roll and 18 was the highest. I'd probably let players who are notorious for rolling really bad to roll two sets of stats with that method just so they have a better safety-net.
DeleteThis method has a nice balance of "organicness" and fairness (in that it always gives the same total across all ability scores, so nobody's left with all-3s or somesuch nonsense).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kjd-imc.org/2007/06/21/ability-score-generation/