I once rolled everything 15+. Campaign never started and they never got played. Tragic.
In Ye Olden Days, DMs wouldn’t necessarily insist on people making new characters for every campaign, you could have your guy play with your regular group one day and some randos in a one-shot the next. If you’ve kept the sheet you might find a DM willing to let Chad Thundercock finally have his time.
Fun fact: the y in “ye” when used as a definite article is actually a thorn: þ and still pronounced as “th.” This is from the character y being used as a replacement for þ in early printable typesets that did not include it. The unrelated second person plural pronoun “ge” also became “ye” and the two became confused in common usage. So, if you ever hear someone say “yee olde …” or similar instead of “thee olde …”, please remember how I’m a smug, self-satisfied bastard.
It’s Chief Thundercock tyvm.
I swear, every time I roll stats it’s something like this. But it never matters anyways because I can never roll worth shit when it comes to actually playing the game. It doesn’t mater that you have 20 in a stat when your d20 rolls like a d8.
when your d20 rolls like a d8
that’s when you send that die to die jail
it can only get out when it rolls a 20 or pays 50
M
This is why I always do a flat point buy for attributes. 78 points total, no ability score over 18 or under 8 before racial modifiers.
It’s less customizable, but standard stat spread of 15/14/13/12/10/8 generally works well
The problem I have with starting with lower scores is that it’s almost always better to take a feat than a stat score increase in 5e, and even if you did take the stat increases, you wouldn’t be able to hit 18 in your primary stat til level 8. Pair that with the fact that those increases come every four class levels, not player level, so multi-classing options are pretty limited if you don’t want to delay or lose a feat/stat increase.
I also believe we play DND and other fantasy RPGs to feel cooler, smarter, stronger, or more charming than we are in real life. Most of us are average or slightly above average in real life, I don’t want my players feeling average when they’re role playing their character. Making things challenging by limiting the players abilities isn’t fun. I like to let them be badasses, but challenge them to strategize an encounter, think creatively, or just do something really fucking cool to win a fight. Rule of Cool is always active in my games!
I actually came up with a system I quite like. I start them with 50 points, then let them roll 4d10, drop the lowest, then take the total and allocate between the 6 stats.
With a maximum of 80 points and minimum 53 points, it rewards players who get lucky without completely ruining the game for those who don’t. At the end of the day, it is meant to fun for everybody, not just the lucky.
Edit: switch my numbers by accident
I think you should do 53+4d10dl1, so the average is about equal to the total of a standard array (72)
dl1? Is that keep lowest die?
RNG is fun in character creation, but I don’t want to punish them in the whole campaign for poor luck. I prefer to keep their highest than their lowest.
drop lowest 1, so keep highest 3 as you said, but with 53 instead of 50
Ah, so add an extra 3 on so the average roll lines up with the standard array. Fair enough, I might just start doing that. Thanks!
Edit: Also, thanks for teaching me a new bit of dice terminology
We always do a session 0. Public rolls. 4d6 drop lowest. Stats top/down. Once you know your stats time to pick a class that works. It adds variability that some do not like but as a grizzled vet I embrace chaos.
So I see you’ve decided to play “Thor” huh? :-P
