Stat Rolling House Rule

[Galadrin]

Hey everyone, I came up with this house rule for rolling ability scores that I'm rather fond of, and thought I'd share. The intended goal is to get varied character ability scores so that each character will have both strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, I want to allow the player to both customize his ability scores AND be influenced by a randomly generated character. In my experience, rolling 4d6 (drop the lowest) rarely results in negative modifier abilities which is so boring to me. I also feel that, if allowed to arrange the ability scores as you want, character creation becomes stupidly competitive. If two players both make fighters, they will likely arrange the stats in the exact same places (Strength first, followed by Constitution and Dexterity). The result is that one fighter has, in every way, better stats than the other.

Ok, with all that in mind, here's my proposal:

Roll 3d6 for each ability score, in order (do not arrange as you want!). After this, roll 3d6 once more and you may swap this result in for any of your ability scores. If neither your Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence or Wisdom is at least 14 at this point, you may start again and reroll all the ability scores. Once you have your ability scores, you may then increase one ability score by 3, another by 2 and another by 1 (no ability score can be increased over 18). After this, review your ability scores and choose class and race as normal.

The result is the occasional strong and tough fighter who has bad dexterity, or the occasional fighter with very high wisdom. That makes for a MUCH more interesting character, in my honest opinion. With the 3 point boost, every character will have access to a 17 or 18 stat fairly easily (unless he boosts a lower stat instead), which lends itself well to the heroic feel of Castles & Crusades.

[serleran]

Actually, you're encouraging removing weaknesses by 1) allowing a stat to be replaced with a second roll (might be better, might not) and 2) giving free stat improvements.

If the goal is to generate high scores (strengths) and low ones (weaknesses) you should invoke some rule that mandates quid pro quo allocation. That is, if you swap one score for the new roll, you swap a different score for the old roll, where the old roll must be lower or equal to what the stat currently is (this prevents a person from replacing two decent stats for a crappy one: ie, if there was a 13 Intelligence and a 9 Dexterity, the extra roll yielded an 18, you can't go to 18 Intelligence and 13 Dexterity by swapping out -- the Dex has to stay at 9.)

Granted, a lot of this relies on luck of the roll, and 3d6 can be fickle... so, if it works in practice, then its cool. I think it might be a little more dice rolling at character creation than I, personally, want... but that's me.

An interesting alteration, though.

[Galadrin]

Hm, you may be right. I think I'll try it out as is, but instead of boosting three ability scores, you can only boost one (by up to 3 points, capped at 18). Like you said, the fickleness of the 3d6 is key... I'm betting that with 3d6 for ability scores, characters will often have at least two low scores. The 7th roll is useful because it boosts weak characters and doesn't help strong characters (on average), and will negate one of those weak scores. The 3 point boost, I'm betting, will more often than not be spent to upgrade an already good score to a really high score, rather than spent improving a weak score.

[Treebore]

I let my players create their attributes however they wish. Its their character after all. I can kill them irregardless,

If your going to insist they create their characters your way then Serl is right. Your secondary approach will get more attributes with negatives, but to really be balanced between the positive and the negative you will need to go more extreme. It doesn't sound like you want complete balance, just a little bit of "low attributes". So I'm betting your second post will come close to giving you what your looking for.

Still, in my experience, most players like playing exceptional characters, not "average", "slightly above average", and definitely not "below average". There are always an exception, but 95%+ percent of the time they will be happiest with good to high stats rather than low.

Since this is a game for having fun I let my players be happy and have stats they want. It was a hard thing to do, letting them have that control, but I have stuck with it for about 10 years now.

The players are happy, until I kill their PC.

Allowing them to have higher stats has actually made it easier on me in terms of not killing them by accident. IE character death occurs most often when I plan the encounter to be "high risk".

Even so just last night the group was going to be TPKed, but then a player permanently burned a luck point to succeed at a SIEGE check, and not only did they live, they won the battle.

So the Frost Giants, and their White Dragon pet, failed to bring them down after all.

As it was one players PC died (he didn't run when I strongly suggested he should), another was down and bleeding out, two more were at 5 HP, but despite their high attributes they still could have died, should have died, but extreme luck changed the tied of the battle at a crucial moment. Not only did they burn the luck point permanently, but then the dang White Dragon fumbled on its save versus the Fireball.

Fate can be so fickle.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

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[Galadrin]

Treebore wrote:
It doesn't sound like you want complete balance, just a little bit of "low attributes". So I'm betting your second post will come close to giving you what your looking for.

I think you get exactly what I'm after. I like characters to have big strengths, big weaknesses and rarely any mundane, average values (when they have these, it should just be to show off their more important strengths and weaknesses). If I went with Serleran's rather good idea (a point-for-point creation so characters had to take weaknesses), I'd probably want two abilities with negative modifiers, two with no modifier and two with positive modifiers. The only reason I don't do that, I think, is that I know every Fighter (for instance) would have nearly identical stats.

Treebore wrote:
Still, in my experience, most players like playing exceptional characters, not "average", "slightly above average", and definitely not "below average". There are always an exception, but 95%+ percent of the time they will be happiest with good to high stats rather than low.

This is probably true, but I really love character creation NOT because it sets you up to be a powerful player in the game, but rather because it draws you into the game itself. It's a great intro to get you into storytelling time... explain why this character is so darn weird? Why does he have these weaknesses, and these strengths... quirks and flaws, virtues and vices and so on are neat things to implement as well.

[Treebore]

Galadrin wrote:
This is probably true, but I really love character creation NOT because it sets you up to be a powerful player in the game, but rather because it draws you into the game itself. It's a great intro to get you into storytelling time... explain why this character is so darn weird? Why does he have these weaknesses, and these strengths... quirks and flaws, virtues and vices and so on are neat things to implement as well.

I agree its true. Just instead of making the players create their character "my way" I let them play and then encourage them to try different character concepts and builds, including concepts with some type of "Achilles heel". This takes time, so only works when you have people you can expect to DM for a long time, etc...

Gaming is like anything else, its a learning process, you get them in get them comfortable, and then get them to spread their wings into areas they have yet to explore.

Still, only works when you have the long term time to do so.
_________________
The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

[cinderblock]

3d6 straight down. Word.

[Orpheus]

I can deal with whatever method the DM chooses to use, but I like a good point-buy method for the reason that it not only gives you a couple of good stats, but does so at the expense of having some poor stats as well. I don't like superpowerful characters since there doesn't seem to be a challenge in doing anything and all the DM has to do is just add more powerful monsters to counteract the PC's anyway.

[dungeonfish]

3d6 six times, arrange any way you want.

It's random. It's customized. I think it's by the book.

But most of all... It makes rolling an "18" a big deal!

I must admit, though, that I have allowed players to scratch a set of rolls that were just too poor and start over.

[Keolander]

Colour me strange, but I use Method 5 from AD&D Unearthed Arcana. Even doing this method, I've only seen one natural 18 out of four characters generated this time around. As Treebore said, having great stats doesn't keep you from dying necessarily. When I've had to play a sucky character with low stats, I do things to get him killed so I can try again.
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Lord Lamorek Steelguard, Baron of Calx Mons Montis - The Castles & Crusades Society

[Galadrin]

Which was method 5 again?