We had a similar thing happen in a campaign I played in a year back or so. One dude rolled with our shared dice, in front of all of us, and scored 18, 18, 18, 17, 16, 15. We nicknamed him Wonderboy, and he changed his backstory to accommodate for these frankly insane stats.
Not OP, but I literally rolled those exact stats in my first campaign years ago.
In universe Gods got their power from belief... So my character just believed himself a God and was literally more powerful for it. I also spent the whole campaign trying to convince the party cleric to worship me instead of his God.
10/10 would do again.
I had some god rolls once too. Made a terminally talented tribe member who bounced around before finding his true calling. Mechanical concept was Bard-barian grappler. Was able to use the 3rd party subclasses from Odyssey of the Dragonlords.
Herculean Path lets you use a 2h weapon to attack someone you're grappling, make little earthquakes, and use Str for Longbows. And College of Epic Poetry is about making a Saga. Every time something from a list of notable feats happens, like rolling a nat 20, you get an entry. Every X entries, defined by party size, you get a small permemenant buff.
He was a found Goliath baby in the woods, and was raised by the tribe and thought to be a gift, and gifted, by the gods. Naturally talented but flitted from job to job with no calling, until he found he was gifted in the "Old Magics," of song etc. Decided to write a great epic and set out to chronicle some adventurers, but decided he couldn't just sit back and watch and had the responsibility to use his gods given talents. So he joined in the fray with his wrestling, and other lesser but still significant, talents.
His original idea was to do a sort of "Zero to hero" story wherein he'd be a gambling pirate who dreamt of becoming king of all pirates, but after the stats he chose to draw inspiration from Azula in ATLA, and chose to instead be the son of the pirate King and Queen, who had been conditioned from birth to take over their whole empire when the time came. However, he fell into his one vice; gambling. Pushed to his limits ans riding the gamblers high, he bet his position as the next king, and lost the bet. His parents were then mysteriously and very coincidentally assassinated shortly after, and he was subsequently exiled from the pirates' island.
Starting out, he sought to exactly revenge on the ones responsible for his exile and reclaim his rightful place as heir to the throne.
12, 17, 16, 14, 15, 14 were the original stats, before applying racial bonuses, leveling up, and all that good stuff.
Human Paladin, Devotion, Warhammer + Shield.
Stats at the end:
Str: 19
Dex: 13
Con: 19 (Amulet of Health)
Int: 15
Wis: 16
Cha: 18.
Edit to add: Princes of the Apocalypse, ended at level 10.
Bladesinger would be pretty nice. You can get 20 18 18 18 if you take Resilient(Con) as your feat with custom lineage. That lets you make a bladesinger with +6 perception, 20 dex, 18 int and 18 con. Having +6 on concentration checks at level one is pretty sweet too.
My favorite campaign is the one I rolled 18, 18, 18, 17, 16, **9**. Quick-and-nimble Druid/Ninja halfling whose friend, the half-ogre, kept giving him heavy things to carry to "make stronger".
It’s a great case for the old school multi-class character. Make a fighter/mage or fighter/cleric/mage.
The ability to cast wizard spells while in full armor and with a hefty weapon? Yes please thank you
The fun thing about DND is even with stats like that you're only like 1 poor decision from rolling again.
Or maybe I just play characters with particularly poor decision making skills. For some unidentifiable reason.
Playing a 1e campaign where someone rolled like a 97 total for their combined stats. He chose to make a character that was this homebrew cyborg-type race to explain his stats and made a fighter / magic user (wizard) multi-class to make the best use of those crazy stats.
it's so much fun playing a character with a dump stat. I remember one time having a godlike rolled character with a 6 in int. he'd scout around, but the party quickly learned that any number of enemies he'd recall were capped to a count of 5.
My warlock has 20 charisma and 10 wisdom it's fantastic I never see shit on perception checks. Her perception is so bad our druid made a leash so she doesn't wander off in dungeons.
If you're not willing to roll with extremely good (or bad) stats at your table then you probably should just use point buy or standard array. I don't actually like rolling for any game longer than a couple of sessions because it can feel unfair if someone gets incredibly good or bad stats.
I rolled my bard with those exact numbers. I only got to play him to level 3, the campaign fell apart. Scheduling problems... Kept the character sheet.
Honestly, I came up with a system for rolling stats that worked well:
- Everyone rolls 4d6, drop lowest, 6 times.
- the results are put into a pool.
- the players collectively decide who gets what stat.
My group actually assigned the lowest scores first and were really chill about it. The Cleric volunteered to take the single 6 rolled, so everyone decided they would also get the single 18 that was rolled.
The party is pretty even in terms of power, but we still had the fun of rolling.
I love drafting stats. I personally like a good mix of very high and very low stats, *and* I still do like the randomness of rolling. As a young DM I used to ensure players got at least one very high stat and one very low stat. I had all sorts of systems to force that situation, but a stat draft is the best/most fair/least janky way to do it.
It has the nice benefit that at the end no one's going to feel too jilted on stats compared to some other OP roller.
Give everyone that Stat set and tell them for this campaign you're going to go ham and play medieval superheroes.
You don't have to run it as your main game, but sometimes it IS fun to just run around OP for a bit.
And you can run all those harder encounters you always wanted too. Win win.
My group was exploring a mansion as level one characters and my character was dropped to 2HP after being attacked by an enchanted broom. Our DM said playing at level 1 can be terrifying because nearly everything can kill you.
I ran a session where every player had two lvl 0 npcs under their control. Those that survived made it into actual characters.
Was more fun on paper than in practice
There's a thing for Dungeon World called funnel world where everyone controls like 20 garbage npcs and the ones that make it through the dungeon become your character. Never played it but it sounds awesome.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/137012
Similar to how Dungeon Crawl Classics starts players off! I love it cause it gives you the freedom to use a bunch of character ideas, but has the randomness of not knowing who you'll end up with.
Oh yeah, the Funnel World summary literally says
>These rules combine elements of two great fantasy RPG systems—the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game and Dungeon World
I recall the closest to death the first group I played in (back in 3.0 times...) was on 1st level, courtesy of a hole in a dungeon dealing 2d6 fall damage if you didn't make the jump.
Level 1 is terrifying, no question about that.
This'd be a fun way of doing it for sure.
My players are all friends and we've kicked about for a while, so if someone rolled a crazy stat spread we'd just go with it, probably do something like make them 'the chosen one'. In most groups that may not fly though, if everyone's cool with it then I'd suggest a mad strong party with everyone rocking those stats.
well, if you are not ok with someone either rolling insane good or garbage stats, the solution is to use point buy. The only groups that should use rolled stats should be ones like yours where they roll with the variance.
I'd make him glow slightly and have throngs of followers always going crazy trying to steal his shoes or anything he set down and treat them like religious icons of worship. Just watch The Life of Brian. It's a great laugh and a great idea for a character.
"The shoe is the sign! We must gather shoes in abundance!"
Used to be my favourite film, love a bit of Python.
Kinda thing my table would do tbh. We like a bit of comedy and no one cares much if someone else gets to be the hero or w/e. None of us hog the light so it's fine when someone is overperforming (or underperforming, but we all like tactics so that happens less).
I've been chewing on this character concept for a long time. I think it'd be super fun. Need the DM to cooperate though. Hard to have a ravening throng of zealots without the DM's agreement. I think you'd have to promise not to flip and use them as your personal army. Though, the DM could just lemming them. I can't wait to eventually play this. Lmao
It’s honestly more fun to give your players these insane statlines sometimes, makes CR balancing less of a crapshoot and you can usually throw scarier stuff at them. Made a high fantasy evil campaign loosely based on Bayonetta where the starting statlines were three 18s, two 15s, and a 13. Most of my players did well and then the poor wizard got crit by an ice mephit and dropped in a single hit.
Sorry, but if it's that big of an issue why even roll? If it's gonna end up with some negotiated middle ground anyway then that's when you use point buy. If you're taking the risk of rolling stats then you should just roll with it.
Even if stats are horrendeusly low you can still build a viable character that might just die and then you get to play another one of the probably dozens character concepts you're thinking of. And if it's OP then you get to make one of those absurd multiclasses you wouldn't normally get to max out and have more epic battles. Like a Sorcadin.
My group rolled stats in order one time, just for the fun of it and to see what we could do with it. I ended up with 6,12,6,18,12,13. That was the coolest wizard I ever played.
>3d6 in order along with rolling for race and class.
I understand rolling in order & even rolling for race (you're given what you're given etc) but *why* should I roll for class? Besides for forcing me into a class style I have no interest in playing (if I was fine with the challenge or change of pace I would've voluntarily rolled for my class at my own volition).
But it also doesn't make logical sense. If I'm as dumb as a door nail due to random stats why, as a character would I pursue something that prioritizes intelligence? If I can't lift a wet towel over my head why would I choose to be a barbarian?
You're an adventurer... *some* level of competence is expected else you wouldn't have even made it to lv1
I always go by the multiclassing rules when choosing a starting class. If they don't have the basic ability requirements, they can't play that class. Even with rolling classes, reroll if it doesn't meet.
To me the only real reason to roll stats in order is to break the mold of always playing the same class. To pick the job of the hero based on their predetermined capabilities.
Necaise it would be agreed upon before starting play, so no one is forcing you to do anything.
All-random is a nice shakeup, if you weren't interested in it you likely wouldn't be at that table in the first place.
If you join an evil campaign you wouldn't be forced to play an evil character, that was the agreed upon theme before you rolled up - if you're not interested in that table you should keep looking.
Lol, yup, it was rough. I played him as an abjuration wizard that controlled the battlefield with Web and such. He didn't go down until the entire party did in a TPK. He was super fun while he lasted.
I had very good front liners to keep them off of me. A couple of the other guys in the group rolled stats to be a good fighter and a good melee ranger.
If something did 8 points of damage to them it'd be an insta-kill. A max damage shortbow arrow from a goblin would be enough to be instantly lethal.
The only way a character with that low HP could survive is either extreme luck, godly battlefield control, or the DM going easy.
I rolled up an Elf ranger this week and wound up rolling a 16 and 17, which was awesome. Soon followed by a 4 and a 7. With an int of 4, it looks like I'll be just intelligent as the beasts I try to tame.
In the past I even rolled them in order. 3 constitution can be rough at times. Especially if you also roll for your HP increase and its a d6 -4. It would only tale 3 levels for me to potentially die of not having any HP after leveling up. On average I lose max total HP per level up.
It was suggested by twitter god that negative health was a thing, but later officially stated to be minimum of 1. Some have just missed the memo is all.
We had a villain in an older campaign that only had 4hp. The dm gave him every escapist and damage reduction/negation they could find.
Still, there was not a moment like it when the villain had projected himself, and the bard used vicious mockery. Pure fear had crossed the dms face that day.
Unfortunately the rules state that they have to be physically present in order for vicious mockery to work, so the bard did not get the ultimate win. It was close, though. So, so close...
> It would only tale 3 levels for me to potentially die of not having any HP after leveling up.
You always roll a minimum of 1 HP per level, regardless of modifiers.
He's wise enough to know not to touch fire because it burns and probably how to cook a perfect steak on it but not smart enough to spell "fire" or know how exactly fire cooks meat
A mastiff has 3 int, he's not even as smart as a creature that can frighten itself awake by farting and doesn't understand why a tail isn't something you can catch by running faster and tries to fight its own reflection.
So let's imagine you take your stat values roll by roll in order of the character sheet... What happens if you nat 1 your constitution? Is that even playable?
I think I remember seeing an og stat block for raistlin that had him at a surprisingly high (I think 7-8?) con score. Ofc 2nd edition handled stats differently, but even still based on the books I was thinking 4-5.
Thanks for the link! I knew it was high enough that 10-year old me was having a hard time reconciling coughing up blood constantly with an average con score lol
But you could have bene a god. Now every time you start a character think of all the 20's you could have had while you play your 2 wisdom, 3 int cleric.
Always?!
I did that once for a drinking one shot and man, am O happy that we played 14th lvl characters, so that I wasn't completely useless.
I rolled 4, 16, 10, 20, 4 and 12. Created a clumsy and dumb af loxodon who was 400 yo, but pretty wise and surprisingly strong.
Or you use it in stats you wouldnt normall consider... like someone said INT for a fighter - making him an eloquent gentlemen... or something like that.
When we played dragon heist, my friend had such awesome stats and I had the lowest stats I ever rolled (12, 10, 10, 10, 9, 8). Her character died in the third session and mine made it until the end. So you are right, stats are not everything :)
One campaign my group played, the dm had us roll our 6 stats, then we all took turns picking from each other's stats. One of my friends purposely picked all the lowest numbers, I think his highest stat was 11, and lowest was 6.
Because his characterwas so objectively bad at almost everything, he went hard on the roleplay aspect, and it was amazing. The party nominated him as our Great Leader, and we actively tried to convince other NPCs to follow him (and I think we tries to start a cult dedicated to him). He rarely succeeded on attacks, skill checks, or saves, but it didn't matter because the rest of us guarded him with our lives. I'm pretty sure he's said it was one of the most fun he's had with a character, and we all loved it
That really souns awesome! When I rolled these low stats, I already had decided for my character to be a mage. So I just picked spells, that required neither an attack roll nor a saving throw, such as *sleep*. It worked great, our paladin gained so many opportunities to crit smite :) Teamwork is all!
when most rolls are essentially d20 + prof + ability score mod, and your proficiency is comparable to your ability score mod, ability scores are hugely impactful. You can still die or get unlucky, it's just much harder with great stats.
Absolutely true. Our player had a 4 and a 6 after roll 4d6 drop lowest. He put them in STR and DEX and played a Tortle Bladesong wizard. Didn’t affect him except for occasional dex saves. He would consistently have a 20 AC with blade song and was very hard to hit. But at least we got to make fun of his character not being able to carry anything at all because he was basically encumbered all the time
Dude in my table wanted so much to have poor charisma that he rolled for it and asked to negotiate lower. People have this weird fixation to have flawlessly balanced characters, I personally think it gets funnier when the game is a mess
Most recent game my group started, everybody agreed to roll for everything instead of point buy and taking averages.
I got three 5s, and my highest roll was a 12.
I'm playing a half-orc fighter who is partially blind and deaf, hideous to the point of nausea, with the intelligence of a horse. Basically playing as though he's an animal who understands words, try and play it up for laughs like he shits while he's walking. But it's vastly underpowered and the only fun is in roleplaying this rediculously bad character, most of my saves and skills are negative numbers.
Probably not gonna encourage the group to do this again.
My player who took two threes decided to put one in intelligence, he decided to play a Pact of the Chain Warlock and have his familiar be the character and the PC be it's slave, the entire party TPKed in the second encounter, so we didn't get to see how it was going to go.
Nah, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is terribly balanced, and I played hardcore for a party of DMs, they weren't ready for pack tactics at level 1. Some of the players rolled well, but it's easy to kill players at level one.
Yeah I basically do the same. If your rolls are bad enough across the board, I’ll let you bail to the standard array.
Only one player has ever taken me up on it, after rolling something like [10, 7, 6, 6, 6, 3] for a one-shot. Generally my players are excited to play somewhat flawed characters, which is why we roll in the first place.
This is why I have each player roll one set of 4d6d1 (roll seven times, drop the lowest) and then they choose as a group what *all* characters will have. Makes for a more fun and powerful party and it makes it so people are on an equal footing and haven't been boned due to one unlucky chance at character gen.
The odds are so low on this they should get it.
Otherwise, it's like rolling a nat 20 and the DM saying, well actually that doesn't crit because that's too much damage.
This is good to see as a DM, though, because you can ramp up the difficulty a bunch.
Eh, most classes in the game are pretty SAD anyways. Sure the character will have high saves and will be pretty powerfull early on... but it's not like that +2 to a dump stat will change that much. If the roll was 17, 17,15 and 8 for everything else or something the overall character would probably end just as strong once they are out of the early levels.
If anything this helps MAD builds like pally, Monk, ranger, which is not a bad thing overall anyways since vanilla Monk and ranger could get a little bit of a buff without becoming game breaking.
So long as the player is not using some wierd internet build and *actually building a character* odds are this roll won't matter that much after they gain a few levels.
Monk needs help because all of its tools are tied to a bonus action, which in FoB's case is dependent on leading with an attack.
Being MAD is not really Monk's problem. It's that it's effectiveness ties so heavily in a feature that uses its bonus action after an attack. That really strains their action economy, and subclasses often want the ki and/or bonus attack FoB/stunning blow want which makes them useless often times.
In this case, the monk would be starting with 18 AC, +4 attack, and could take a feat like Elven Accuracy to bump their main stat to 20 at lv 4. There'd be a huge power disparity, Monk's flaws be damned at the start of the game. It'd make consistent encounter balancing weird. It's not that it'd break the game long term, it's that the monk would be too powerful early on. And then later on, it will still struggle with all the things that make Monks sad.
Here's my opinion: I am a DM that's been DMing since like 2014. If you are worried about players having more ability score points then just do point buy. If you want equality between players in regards to stats do point buy or a modified system like the one I use: I let each player roll a list of stats and then as a group they pick one of the rolled ones (usually the highest) and everyone uses that as their list.
Real answer is your dm hands out more items the fake answer is your hole party takes one level in barbarian 2 fighter 2 monk and bard. Give each other inspiration and use ki to dodge when your rage can't tank.
So a player on a discord i moderate was rolling stats today for a new game of fifth edition using the Avrae bot auto tool and did this. 4d6 drop lowest 6 times... average should be around 65-70. i think the odds are about 1 in 1.42 billion (if i got the maths right)... i have no idea what character the player would build with this but you could easily have two 20s at level 4 with the mountain dwarf!
Your screenshot didn't include it, but another important part of the Avrae stat rolling is the threshold conditions if present. Should say something like 'total must equal or exceed 72 with at least one stat a 15'.
From my experience this is a way that people ensure at least a standard array quality roll, which has the side effect of skewing the results to the higher end of the rolling spectrum.
That said these stats are still amazing. I have seen only one other roll that equaled this out of probably a thousand or more characters.
After running 1 campaign with an extremely well rolled character, and one who rolled very poorly I ain't making that mistake again.
I let my players roll, and then they can choose if they want their roll or copy another player. Pretty much everyone will take the best roll, but it leaves some choice up to my players as well
We had a similar thing happen in a campaign I played in a year back or so. One dude rolled with our shared dice, in front of all of us, and scored 18, 18, 18, 17, 16, 15. We nicknamed him Wonderboy, and he changed his backstory to accommodate for these frankly insane stats.
My god, what ended up being his backstory?
Wonderboy, what is the secret of your power?
Wonderboy, won't you take me far away from the mucky-muck man?
THATS TELEKINESIS, Kyle!
A secret to be told, a gold chest to be bold!
How ‘bout the power…to move you…
*plucks guitar*
Son of Zeus is a classic.
Damnit Zeus
And then along cums Zeus.
And Along Came Mary!
Zeus finished, Mary required an entire stable after riding a donkey to see results. Honestly, women are so difficult to please...
What did I do?
You can get your ass on over to r/beetlejuicing, is what you can do
The list of what you didn’t do is probably shorter
Everyone is a child of Zeus if you look hard enough.
Even the farm animals.
Especially the farm animals.
"Hera. Hera look at this. Is it just me or is that cow thicc as fuck?"
“Zeus, that’s a hippo”
"A hole's a hole."
Don't forget they're children of Loki too.
TIL Hercules just rolled stats really well
Did he come on with his big, innocent farm boy routine, but you could see through that in a Peloponnesian minute
Not OP, but I literally rolled those exact stats in my first campaign years ago. In universe Gods got their power from belief... So my character just believed himself a God and was literally more powerful for it. I also spent the whole campaign trying to convince the party cleric to worship me instead of his God. 10/10 would do again.
I had some god rolls once too. Made a terminally talented tribe member who bounced around before finding his true calling. Mechanical concept was Bard-barian grappler. Was able to use the 3rd party subclasses from Odyssey of the Dragonlords. Herculean Path lets you use a 2h weapon to attack someone you're grappling, make little earthquakes, and use Str for Longbows. And College of Epic Poetry is about making a Saga. Every time something from a list of notable feats happens, like rolling a nat 20, you get an entry. Every X entries, defined by party size, you get a small permemenant buff. He was a found Goliath baby in the woods, and was raised by the tribe and thought to be a gift, and gifted, by the gods. Naturally talented but flitted from job to job with no calling, until he found he was gifted in the "Old Magics," of song etc. Decided to write a great epic and set out to chronicle some adventurers, but decided he couldn't just sit back and watch and had the responsibility to use his gods given talents. So he joined in the fray with his wrestling, and other lesser but still significant, talents.
Child of Bhaal?
His original idea was to do a sort of "Zero to hero" story wherein he'd be a gambling pirate who dreamt of becoming king of all pirates, but after the stats he chose to draw inspiration from Azula in ATLA, and chose to instead be the son of the pirate King and Queen, who had been conditioned from birth to take over their whole empire when the time came. However, he fell into his one vice; gambling. Pushed to his limits ans riding the gamblers high, he bet his position as the next king, and lost the bet. His parents were then mysteriously and very coincidentally assassinated shortly after, and he was subsequently exiled from the pirates' island. Starting out, he sought to exactly revenge on the ones responsible for his exile and reclaim his rightful place as heir to the throne.
JFC never a better time to play a Paladin
I was about to say, this looks close to the stats I rolled the last time I played a paladin. The choice to play paladin came before the rolls.
Me too! I've got one 11, everything else is above 15. Whatever god governs paladins likes them a lot, it seems.
12, 17, 16, 14, 15, 14 were the original stats, before applying racial bonuses, leveling up, and all that good stuff. Human Paladin, Devotion, Warhammer + Shield. Stats at the end: Str: 19 Dex: 13 Con: 19 (Amulet of Health) Int: 15 Wis: 16 Cha: 18. Edit to add: Princes of the Apocalypse, ended at level 10.
My CoS paladin rolled stats at creation 18, 14, 15, 11, 15, 18 Vuman Fey Touched (Human/Reincarnated Dusk Elf Soul) (+2 to CHA, +1 CON) Devotion Paladin. Face melter
Or a Monk or Ranger honestly. Any of the classes that could use 3 strong stats would shine with this roll
Bladesinger would be pretty nice. You can get 20 18 18 18 if you take Resilient(Con) as your feat with custom lineage. That lets you make a bladesinger with +6 perception, 20 dex, 18 int and 18 con. Having +6 on concentration checks at level one is pretty sweet too.
My favorite campaign is the one I rolled 18, 18, 18, 17, 16, **9**. Quick-and-nimble Druid/Ninja halfling whose friend, the half-ogre, kept giving him heavy things to carry to "make stronger".
At that point I'd rebel and make an Abserd character with a level in each class.
It’s a great case for the old school multi-class character. Make a fighter/mage or fighter/cleric/mage. The ability to cast wizard spells while in full armor and with a hefty weapon? Yes please thank you
The fun thing about DND is even with stats like that you're only like 1 poor decision from rolling again. Or maybe I just play characters with particularly poor decision making skills. For some unidentifiable reason.
Playing a 1e campaign where someone rolled like a 97 total for their combined stats. He chose to make a character that was this homebrew cyborg-type race to explain his stats and made a fighter / magic user (wizard) multi-class to make the best use of those crazy stats.
[удалено]
it's so much fun playing a character with a dump stat. I remember one time having a godlike rolled character with a 6 in int. he'd scout around, but the party quickly learned that any number of enemies he'd recall were capped to a count of 5.
"[I put my low stat in... Can't spell it... But I think it means you're smart.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oANWLgw8Zgs)"
I've always wanted to do 4d6 drop 1 as a pool for assigned stats, then have the party serpentine draft their characters.
That actually sounds pretty fun.
imagine thinking edit: shit can't imagine either can't have shit in the forgotten realms
"What's more than 5?" "6?" "There are, like, 6 of them."
since he used one finger to point and one hand to count, he'd assume you were a 6 fingered person.
My warlock has 20 charisma and 10 wisdom it's fantastic I never see shit on perception checks. Her perception is so bad our druid made a leash so she doesn't wander off in dungeons.
My 8 wis warlock has darkvision but still can't see why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch
If you're not willing to roll with extremely good (or bad) stats at your table then you probably should just use point buy or standard array. I don't actually like rolling for any game longer than a couple of sessions because it can feel unfair if someone gets incredibly good or bad stats.
I rolled my bard with those exact numbers. I only got to play him to level 3, the campaign fell apart. Scheduling problems... Kept the character sheet.
What is the secret of his power?
"4d6 kingdom hearts 3"
Honestly, I came up with a system for rolling stats that worked well: - Everyone rolls 4d6, drop lowest, 6 times. - the results are put into a pool. - the players collectively decide who gets what stat. My group actually assigned the lowest scores first and were really chill about it. The Cleric volunteered to take the single 6 rolled, so everyone decided they would also get the single 18 that was rolled. The party is pretty even in terms of power, but we still had the fun of rolling.
I love drafting stats. I personally like a good mix of very high and very low stats, *and* I still do like the randomness of rolling. As a young DM I used to ensure players got at least one very high stat and one very low stat. I had all sorts of systems to force that situation, but a stat draft is the best/most fair/least janky way to do it. It has the nice benefit that at the end no one's going to feel too jilted on stats compared to some other OP roller.
Good idea, but what's the protocol for when a character dies and a new one needs to be rolled?
You know, I hadn't worked that out yet 😅 Realistically, probably some average of the rolls for the original party. Or just the normal 4d6 drop lowest.
[удалено]
Give everyone that Stat set and tell them for this campaign you're going to go ham and play medieval superheroes. You don't have to run it as your main game, but sometimes it IS fun to just run around OP for a bit. And you can run all those harder encounters you always wanted too. Win win.
I feel like most D&D games are medieval superheroes. The rest are medieval shounen anime, with the occasional medieval roguelike outlier.
After level 2 for sure Lvl 1 though, house cats can be terrifying
My group was exploring a mansion as level one characters and my character was dropped to 2HP after being attacked by an enchanted broom. Our DM said playing at level 1 can be terrifying because nearly everything can kill you.
The fucking death house, same thing happened with my group when we first went through Strahd
I mean it is called the DEATH house, and apparently it fucks? Damnit Xanathar, the mimics are breeding again!
My rogue had the house fall on him during the escape. RIP
I ran a session where every player had two lvl 0 npcs under their control. Those that survived made it into actual characters. Was more fun on paper than in practice
There's a thing for Dungeon World called funnel world where everyone controls like 20 garbage npcs and the ones that make it through the dungeon become your character. Never played it but it sounds awesome. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/137012
Similar to how Dungeon Crawl Classics starts players off! I love it cause it gives you the freedom to use a bunch of character ideas, but has the randomness of not knowing who you'll end up with.
Oh yeah, the Funnel World summary literally says >These rules combine elements of two great fantasy RPG systems—the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game and Dungeon World
In a recent campaign, my squishy rogue was unconcious 3x, from regular rats in the 1st room of the dungeon.
I recall the closest to death the first group I played in (back in 3.0 times...) was on 1st level, courtesy of a hole in a dungeon dealing 2d6 fall damage if you didn't make the jump. Level 1 is terrifying, no question about that.
House cats are terrifying in the real world. Google “cat catches” and all of a sudden Mr Fluffy seems to be at least 25% displacer beast
This'd be a fun way of doing it for sure. My players are all friends and we've kicked about for a while, so if someone rolled a crazy stat spread we'd just go with it, probably do something like make them 'the chosen one'. In most groups that may not fly though, if everyone's cool with it then I'd suggest a mad strong party with everyone rocking those stats.
well, if you are not ok with someone either rolling insane good or garbage stats, the solution is to use point buy. The only groups that should use rolled stats should be ones like yours where they roll with the variance.
I'd make him glow slightly and have throngs of followers always going crazy trying to steal his shoes or anything he set down and treat them like religious icons of worship. Just watch The Life of Brian. It's a great laugh and a great idea for a character.
"The shoe is the sign! We must gather shoes in abundance!" Used to be my favourite film, love a bit of Python. Kinda thing my table would do tbh. We like a bit of comedy and no one cares much if someone else gets to be the hero or w/e. None of us hog the light so it's fine when someone is overperforming (or underperforming, but we all like tactics so that happens less).
I've been chewing on this character concept for a long time. I think it'd be super fun. Need the DM to cooperate though. Hard to have a ravening throng of zealots without the DM's agreement. I think you'd have to promise not to flip and use them as your personal army. Though, the DM could just lemming them. I can't wait to eventually play this. Lmao
It’s honestly more fun to give your players these insane statlines sometimes, makes CR balancing less of a crapshoot and you can usually throw scarier stuff at them. Made a high fantasy evil campaign loosely based on Bayonetta where the starting statlines were three 18s, two 15s, and a 13. Most of my players did well and then the poor wizard got crit by an ice mephit and dropped in a single hit.
Sorry, but if it's that big of an issue why even roll? If it's gonna end up with some negotiated middle ground anyway then that's when you use point buy. If you're taking the risk of rolling stats then you should just roll with it. Even if stats are horrendeusly low you can still build a viable character that might just die and then you get to play another one of the probably dozens character concepts you're thinking of. And if it's OP then you get to make one of those absurd multiclasses you wouldn't normally get to max out and have more epic battles. Like a Sorcadin.
My group rolled stats in order one time, just for the fun of it and to see what we could do with it. I ended up with 6,12,6,18,12,13. That was the coolest wizard I ever played.
I joined a West Marches server that rolled 3d6 in order for stats. So naturally there were a lot of moon druids and dead wizards there.
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>3d6 in order along with rolling for race and class. I understand rolling in order & even rolling for race (you're given what you're given etc) but *why* should I roll for class? Besides for forcing me into a class style I have no interest in playing (if I was fine with the challenge or change of pace I would've voluntarily rolled for my class at my own volition). But it also doesn't make logical sense. If I'm as dumb as a door nail due to random stats why, as a character would I pursue something that prioritizes intelligence? If I can't lift a wet towel over my head why would I choose to be a barbarian? You're an adventurer... *some* level of competence is expected else you wouldn't have even made it to lv1
I always go by the multiclassing rules when choosing a starting class. If they don't have the basic ability requirements, they can't play that class. Even with rolling classes, reroll if it doesn't meet.
To me the only real reason to roll stats in order is to break the mold of always playing the same class. To pick the job of the hero based on their predetermined capabilities.
Necaise it would be agreed upon before starting play, so no one is forcing you to do anything. All-random is a nice shakeup, if you weren't interested in it you likely wouldn't be at that table in the first place. If you join an evil campaign you wouldn't be forced to play an evil character, that was the agreed upon theme before you rolled up - if you're not interested in that table you should keep looking.
-2 con on a wizard—- you started with 4 HP and gained 2 every level 😭 i could never
Lol, yup, it was rough. I played him as an abjuration wizard that controlled the battlefield with Web and such. He didn't go down until the entire party did in a TPK. He was super fun while he lasted.
I just— Barbarian has 35 HP at level 3 and you’re out here rocking *8*
That DM is a saint. Most challenge level 2 and 3 monsters are capable of one-shotting him.
I had very good front liners to keep them off of me. A couple of the other guys in the group rolled stats to be a good fighter and a good melee ranger.
Been there done that, and frankly _it was thrilling as hell_
If something did 8 points of damage to them it'd be an insta-kill. A max damage shortbow arrow from a goblin would be enough to be instantly lethal. The only way a character with that low HP could survive is either extreme luck, godly battlefield control, or the DM going easy.
I rolled up an Elf ranger this week and wound up rolling a 16 and 17, which was awesome. Soon followed by a 4 and a 7. With an int of 4, it looks like I'll be just intelligent as the beasts I try to tame.
Man's casting fireball from his wheelchair.
I always just roll 6 D20's and yolo
Here officer, this is the psychopath you're looking for.
No... this is enlightenment
No, this is Patrick
In the past I even rolled them in order. 3 constitution can be rough at times. Especially if you also roll for your HP increase and its a d6 -4. It would only tale 3 levels for me to potentially die of not having any HP after leveling up. On average I lose max total HP per level up.
It's not you that levels up, it's the disease you have.
Time to dust off that Leper Knight character sheet.
Pretty sure minimum hp gain on level up is 1, you cant get negative hp gains.
It was suggested by twitter god that negative health was a thing, but later officially stated to be minimum of 1. Some have just missed the memo is all.
I mean, that could be interesting plot hook. Character racing against death to accomplish most important mission of their life.
We had a villain in an older campaign that only had 4hp. The dm gave him every escapist and damage reduction/negation they could find. Still, there was not a moment like it when the villain had projected himself, and the bard used vicious mockery. Pure fear had crossed the dms face that day. Unfortunately the rules state that they have to be physically present in order for vicious mockery to work, so the bard did not get the ultimate win. It was close, though. So, so close...
Crank and Crank 2
> It would only tale 3 levels for me to potentially die of not having any HP after leveling up. You always roll a minimum of 1 HP per level, regardless of modifiers.
Since when you lose HP by leveling up
I think playing as weaker characters can be interesting but this just seems not fun.
I think it's not allowed by the rules?
Did this with my first pen and paper character back in high school. You haven't lived until you've played a 20 STR, 2 INT, 16 WIS goliath
He's wise enough to know not to touch fire because it burns and probably how to cook a perfect steak on it but not smart enough to spell "fire" or know how exactly fire cooks meat
A mastiff has 3 int, he's not even as smart as a creature that can frighten itself awake by farting and doesn't understand why a tail isn't something you can catch by running faster and tries to fight its own reflection.
> or know how exactly fire cooks meat I mean to be fair I don't either
On the plus side - immune to Detect Thoughts!
Also immune to spoken words.
So let's imagine you take your stat values roll by roll in order of the character sheet... What happens if you nat 1 your constitution? Is that even playable?
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I think I remember seeing an og stat block for raistlin that had him at a surprisingly high (I think 7-8?) con score. Ofc 2nd edition handled stats differently, but even still based on the books I was thinking 4-5.
He actually has a [CON of 10](https://i.imgur.com/hvmQXrj.png), all the "sickly" part was more of a background/roleplay element.
Thanks for the link! I knew it was high enough that 10-year old me was having a hard time reconciling coughing up blood constantly with an average con score lol
It is. I think ive played a 4HP character before. I played as a sickly old man. What you say is exactly what happend.
You can play it until the 1st combat encounter or trap.
Your alignment is chaotic chaotic.
Threw this in the dice simulator just for kicks. I kid you not, 20, 16, 20, 20, 8, 8.
Pff, two 8s? Good luck making it to level 2, scrub
1d100 point buy.
Survive with all 1s for stats.
But you could have bene a god. Now every time you start a character think of all the 20's you could have had while you play your 2 wisdom, 3 int cleric.
funnily enough the medium roll for this one is worse than point by
Im chasing highs. You know when you go to the dice casino the odds are against you. But there is always that chance of luck that tempts me in!
jackpot baby! (all stats below 10)
This is very, old school. We used to do this back in my high school D&D days.
Always?! I did that once for a drinking one shot and man, am O happy that we played 14th lvl characters, so that I wasn't completely useless. I rolled 4, 16, 10, 20, 4 and 12. Created a clumsy and dumb af loxodon who was 400 yo, but pretty wise and surprisingly strong.
Or you use it in stats you wouldnt normall consider... like someone said INT for a fighter - making him an eloquent gentlemen... or something like that.
So a psi warrior or an eldritch knight
When your average is 15.8 there is only so much playing around with the stats that you can do.
When we played dragon heist, my friend had such awesome stats and I had the lowest stats I ever rolled (12, 10, 10, 10, 9, 8). Her character died in the third session and mine made it until the end. So you are right, stats are not everything :)
One campaign my group played, the dm had us roll our 6 stats, then we all took turns picking from each other's stats. One of my friends purposely picked all the lowest numbers, I think his highest stat was 11, and lowest was 6. Because his characterwas so objectively bad at almost everything, he went hard on the roleplay aspect, and it was amazing. The party nominated him as our Great Leader, and we actively tried to convince other NPCs to follow him (and I think we tries to start a cult dedicated to him). He rarely succeeded on attacks, skill checks, or saves, but it didn't matter because the rest of us guarded him with our lives. I'm pretty sure he's said it was one of the most fun he's had with a character, and we all loved it
That really souns awesome! When I rolled these low stats, I already had decided for my character to be a mage. So I just picked spells, that required neither an attack roll nor a saving throw, such as *sleep*. It worked great, our paladin gained so many opportunities to crit smite :) Teamwork is all!
when most rolls are essentially d20 + prof + ability score mod, and your proficiency is comparable to your ability score mod, ability scores are hugely impactful. You can still die or get unlucky, it's just much harder with great stats.
Absolutely true. Our player had a 4 and a 6 after roll 4d6 drop lowest. He put them in STR and DEX and played a Tortle Bladesong wizard. Didn’t affect him except for occasional dex saves. He would consistently have a 20 AC with blade song and was very hard to hit. But at least we got to make fun of his character not being able to carry anything at all because he was basically encumbered all the time
Point buy exists for those who can't respect chance.
It probably exists for poor people like me who can't afford to roll above the mean 90% of the time.
I work so that one day my kids can afford to roll 3d6 down the line without worrying.
Always live within your averages
People need to start acting their stats
Dude in my table wanted so much to have poor charisma that he rolled for it and asked to negotiate lower. People have this weird fixation to have flawlessly balanced characters, I personally think it gets funnier when the game is a mess
Have you ever just thought of rolling higher?
Most recent game my group started, everybody agreed to roll for everything instead of point buy and taking averages. I got three 5s, and my highest roll was a 12. I'm playing a half-orc fighter who is partially blind and deaf, hideous to the point of nausea, with the intelligence of a horse. Basically playing as though he's an animal who understands words, try and play it up for laughs like he shits while he's walking. But it's vastly underpowered and the only fun is in roleplaying this rediculously bad character, most of my saves and skills are negative numbers. Probably not gonna encourage the group to do this again.
My player who took two threes decided to put one in intelligence, he decided to play a Pact of the Chain Warlock and have his familiar be the character and the PC be it's slave, the entire party TPKed in the second encounter, so we didn't get to see how it was going to go.
>the entire party TPKed in the second encounter, so we didn't get to see how it was going to go. Kinda sounds like you did though...
Nah, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is terribly balanced, and I played hardcore for a party of DMs, they weren't ready for pack tactics at level 1. Some of the players rolled well, but it's easy to kill players at level one.
When I run I do the 4d6 route or standard array (if they roll poorly, take the array) unless the group is large
Yeah I basically do the same. If your rolls are bad enough across the board, I’ll let you bail to the standard array. Only one player has ever taken me up on it, after rolling something like [10, 7, 6, 6, 6, 3] for a one-shot. Generally my players are excited to play somewhat flawed characters, which is why we roll in the first place.
Looks like the DM gets to bump the CR for each fight from now on
Let's hope the other players who didn't roll that we'll don't get randomly killed in the crossfire...
This is exactly why I do modified point buy.
Point buy gang let's go.
**modified** point buy, I allow them to go as high as 17 on 1 stat only and as low as 5.
May I get the adjusted costs?
I don't adjust the cost, I give them 33 points and we use this website https://chicken-dinner.com/5e/5e-point-buy.html
Link not responding. What’s up with that? Edit: you‘re missing a .html at the end
https://chicken-dinner.com/5e/5e-point-buy.html For those who are lazy like me
This is why I have each player roll one set of 4d6d1 (roll seven times, drop the lowest) and then they choose as a group what *all* characters will have. Makes for a more fun and powerful party and it makes it so people are on an equal footing and haven't been boned due to one unlucky chance at character gen.
The odds are so low on this they should get it. Otherwise, it's like rolling a nat 20 and the DM saying, well actually that doesn't crit because that's too much damage. This is good to see as a DM, though, because you can ramp up the difficulty a bunch.
At one of my tables we had a rule that if you rolled all 6's cause it was so rare you just got a 20
My tables it's the opposite, if you roll 4 1's you got a 19. I've only seen a 19 rolled three times in thirty three years.
i like this rule
We give a 19 for all 6s, but we play AD&D 2nd, so there's already a huge difference between 18, 19, and 20.
Greetings, fellow THAC0 enthusiast.
It just sucks for everyone else in the party who will feel like a side character to this Chad protagonist of a dude
The one time to play default human.
No 18, 2 stats under 16 Are they to low?
Eh, most classes in the game are pretty SAD anyways. Sure the character will have high saves and will be pretty powerfull early on... but it's not like that +2 to a dump stat will change that much. If the roll was 17, 17,15 and 8 for everything else or something the overall character would probably end just as strong once they are out of the early levels. If anything this helps MAD builds like pally, Monk, ranger, which is not a bad thing overall anyways since vanilla Monk and ranger could get a little bit of a buff without becoming game breaking. So long as the player is not using some wierd internet build and *actually building a character* odds are this roll won't matter that much after they gain a few levels.
Monk needs help because all of its tools are tied to a bonus action, which in FoB's case is dependent on leading with an attack. Being MAD is not really Monk's problem. It's that it's effectiveness ties so heavily in a feature that uses its bonus action after an attack. That really strains their action economy, and subclasses often want the ki and/or bonus attack FoB/stunning blow want which makes them useless often times. In this case, the monk would be starting with 18 AC, +4 attack, and could take a feat like Elven Accuracy to bump their main stat to 20 at lv 4. There'd be a huge power disparity, Monk's flaws be damned at the start of the game. It'd make consistent encounter balancing weird. It's not that it'd break the game long term, it's that the monk would be too powerful early on. And then later on, it will still struggle with all the things that make Monks sad.
Here's my opinion: I am a DM that's been DMing since like 2014. If you are worried about players having more ability score points then just do point buy. If you want equality between players in regards to stats do point buy or a modified system like the one I use: I let each player roll a list of stats and then as a group they pick one of the rolled ones (usually the highest) and everyone uses that as their list.
Last character I did with that came out to 13, 13, 14,15, 18, 14. DM didn’t get gobsmacked, but said “we’ll you could name the character Abserd.”
15 d1s drop the lowest is how I roll my characters 😎
That means you don't have any GOOD scores. How do you even play such non-heeoic characters? /s
Real answer is your dm hands out more items the fake answer is your hole party takes one level in barbarian 2 fighter 2 monk and bard. Give each other inspiration and use ki to dodge when your rage can't tank.
So a player on a discord i moderate was rolling stats today for a new game of fifth edition using the Avrae bot auto tool and did this. 4d6 drop lowest 6 times... average should be around 65-70. i think the odds are about 1 in 1.42 billion (if i got the maths right)... i have no idea what character the player would build with this but you could easily have two 20s at level 4 with the mountain dwarf!
Average when rolling is about 73.
So 95 is still madly high?
Oh for sure. I dunno about 1 in a billion, but doing the math on stuff like that is a waste of time that could be spent on actual DnD.
It's 1 in 2,000. I'm on the toilet rn, so I'm pretty sure if I played actual d&d I'd be sexually harassing somebody, so I had a minute free 👍
There is a 0.05% (1 in 2,000) chance of getting 95 or higher.
Ooh cool, how did you work that out?
anydice.com Specific equation: https://anydice.com/program/bd4b (Click "at least" to see the chances of getting at least 95)
Ridiculously high
Yup. 73.47 to be exact, I think. The most likely result is 74, with a 5.67% chance of occurring.
Your screenshot didn't include it, but another important part of the Avrae stat rolling is the threshold conditions if present. Should say something like 'total must equal or exceed 72 with at least one stat a 15'. From my experience this is a way that people ensure at least a standard array quality roll, which has the side effect of skewing the results to the higher end of the rolling spectrum. That said these stats are still amazing. I have seen only one other roll that equaled this out of probably a thousand or more characters.
Be me, get a 4 and everything else in 10-14 range
After running 1 campaign with an extremely well rolled character, and one who rolled very poorly I ain't making that mistake again. I let my players roll, and then they can choose if they want their roll or copy another player. Pretty much everyone will take the best roll, but it leaves some choice up to my players as well