If you use point-buy, you inevitably end up with extremely focussed characters. No Fighter will ever have a Charisma above the minimum allowed, for instance. If you use random rolling, even if no-one cheats, you may well end up with one member of the group with significantly better or significantly worse stats than anyone else (it doesn't matter if they're all high or low, only if there's a mismatch within the group). And you must never, never combine the two, or else you get both problems, which is doubly bad.
My solution (for d20 - not that I've been thinking about this a lot in the last 24 hours :-):
Prior to the game, the DM must roll up a whole load of stats. These will be grouped onto PC cards, each of which has 4 columns. The players then randomly select a card, and choose one of the columns.
The columns are as follows:
Column 1 has the "default array": 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8
Column 2 has a set of 6 stats rolled using 4d6, drop lowest.
Column 3 has a set of 6 stats rolled using 4d6, reroll 1's, then drop lowest.
Column 4 has a set of 7 stats rolled using 4d6, drop lowest.
Additionally, the following should be true: Columns 1 & 2 should have a net bonus of +5, column 3 a net bonus of +7, and column 4 a net bonus of +6 when the lowest score is ignored. Columns 2 and 3 should have 3 odd stats and 3 even stats. Column 4 should be the same, again when the lowest score is ignored. The lowest stat, in any of the columns, should be 7.
Having selected a card and a column within the card, the player assigns stats. The method for this depends on the column chosen:
If column 1 or 2 is used, the stats can be assigned in any order. If column 3 is used, the stats have to be used in the order given: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha. If column 4 is used, the player may swap any two numbers, and then drop any one number (or drop and then swap), but must then use the resulting six stats in order.
This method gives the following:
- All PCs are balanced (to within 1 or 2 points).
- There can be no cheating.
- The system contains both randomness and player choice.
There's a trade-off between raw power and flexibility - column 3 is the most powerful, but it might saddle your Fighter with a really high Charisma, which is sure to be a hardship :-)
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteIt looks interesting, I must say.
A question, for the stat assignment, you say that in column four you can drop one stat, does this mean the stats which comes after it gets move to the right, or can you choose which way you move the stats? For instance if the middle one was dropped, which one do you use for that stat? I'd say that you probably need to specify this, as othervise you can just switch the stat you want to drop to a good position, then drop it and then move the stats to a suitable position. I don't know if I make myself clear here.
What's the stat order in D&D anyway? Str, Con,Dex,Int,Wis,Cha is what pops into my mind, but I'm know to be wrong.
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteThe order is: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha.
(It used to be Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha, but they changed it for no real reason - I suppose the new way groups physical stats and then mental ones)
Anyway, that's easy to remember when you have a character sheet in front of you.
The idea with column four is that the numbers after the one you drop move to the right. Consider the following column: 12, 14, 15, 18, 8, 12, 15.
Let's assume that the player wants to have a Fighter. Let's further assume that he's going to get rid of the '8'.
What the player does, therefore, is swap the '18' with the first '12', to get: 18, 14, 15, 12, 8, 12, 15. He then drops the '8', to get 18, 14, 15, 12, 12, 15. These are then his stats, in order.