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I think one thing to remember is that in older editions, character creation was a sort of mini-game. Those who prefer it, like this aspect. You rolled FIRST , then decided what class to be. Part of the fun was trying to find a class that fit the dice, or saying "the hell with it" and playing a class with lower than desired stats and making it work. It meant there were parties without clerics not because no one wanted to play one, but because no one rolled the stats to justify becoming one.

Roleplaying started at dice rolling: A wizard with 16 str and 11 int...Hmmm...who am I, whats my story, how did THIS happen? Stat boosting items were created in home games well before they showed up in "official" documents as a way to shore up this interesting character...once it became common, and you played the class you wanted with an 18 in its primary stat, THAT is when stat boosting became a problem.

As they seem to be distilling the game down to the 6 Ability Scores (which I am digging), I'm intrigued by a balanced way of rolling (hey, there is that first thrilling experience of rolling scores).

Feb 8, 2012 -- 12:24PM, Arithezoo wrote:

I think this is a nice way to involve rolling for stats but still ensure that all players are on even grounds. 

Thanks. The issue with 4e was whether to allow rolls under 8, or more than one under 10. Since individual low stats had nearly no effect (unless you happened to have both stats of the same Defense low, which is easy to avoid unless you are rolling in order, and even then only the higher one matters). I ruled that all stats must be 10+, except for an 8+. Whenever you rolled below the minimum or over the maximum, you re-rolled or assigned the minimum (or maximum) value.

I ran the numbers on a lot of different stat rolling methods a few months ago here-

1d8.blogspot.com/2011/07/stat-rolling-an...

Since then, I've thought of a new way that should be very balanced.  Everyone roll up 6 stats and combine all the rolls in a list.   Example-

player 1 rolls- 12 15 16 14 13 11
player 2 rolls- 17 14 14 9 14 15
player 3 rolls- 12 14 9 13 18 14
player 4 rolls- 15 8 8 11 6 11

list-
12 15 16 14 13 11 17 14 14 9 14 15 12 14 9 13 18 14 15 8 8 11 6 11

Now players take turns selecting the stats for their pc from the list.  Who goes first?  Roll init for it or go with whoever had the highest stat roll.  In this case, player 3 goes first because he rolled an 18.  Now the trick to this is that the stats picked have to be in order and the same exact 6 numbers can't be picked twice.  So considering everyone wants that juicy 18, they might pick stats like this-

player 1 picks- 18 14 15 8 8 11 fighter
player 2 picks- 13 18 14 15 8 8 rogue
player 3 picks- 14 9 13 18 14 15 mage
player 4 picks- 12 14 9 13 18 14 cleric