This week, I'll be talking about some of the various methods, official or homebrew, that I've heard for determining attributes in tabletop roleplaying games. We'll start with The biggest distinguisher: Point Buy vs. Roll.
A point buy attribute system gives all players an equal amount of some currency which they use to build their characters, in games like D&D, this means checking a table at character creation and spending your points then and there on attributes only. In games like World of Darkness or GURPS, attributes are only one thing these points are spent on, and balancing points between attributes, skills, feats, etc. is part of the challenge of not only character creation, but point-based character advancement.
Rolling for attributes, on the other hand, adds a little more randomness to the whole thing. Opponents of rolling for attributes point out the randomness, and the chance for characters with widely different levels of competence. Within rolling for attributes, there are two major schools of thought: Roll Down, and Score Assignment.
Roll down is a fairly archaic system at this point, and few except for the most hardcore Old School Renaissance fans will default to this method. What roll down means is that the first number you roll is the score in your first attribute, usually Strength. The second number you roll is the score in your second attribute, usually Dexterity, and so on.
Score assignment just means that after you've rolled your scores, you decide which score to assign to which attribute. In score assignment, you might roll an 18, 14, 14, 10, 8, and 6. You would then decide which of six attributes to place each of these six scores into.
There are quite a few methods of rolling the scores themselves, and we'll finish up with a quick rundown of them.
3d6: Roll three six-sided dice and add the results together.
4d6 drop one: Roll four six-sided dice, remove the lowest scoring die, and add together the remaining three.
2d6+6: Roll two six-sided dice, add the results together, and add six to the sum for the final attribute score.
Beyond this, some GMs have thresholds to reroll. Usually, I've heard is as around 70 points in all attributes added together. Anything under this, reroll. It's also possible to not only drop the lowest die in a pool, but to roll one more attribute than needed, and drop the lowest attribute score roll. So a player might roll 18, 14, 14, 10, 8, 6, 4. They rolled seven scores to use in six attributes, and will use everything but the four to make their character.
As with anything that's been in the hands of the fans as long as tabletop gaming has been, you'll find six different preferred methods among any five players polled; but, hopefully, this article is a strong basis for considering what method will work best for your game. Happy gaming, all.
I think what I'm going to do when I start my campaign is give each character 8's across the board on all attributes (where 10 is the average 0 modifier level) and then have them go through a military basic training type of environment. Based on their specialization they choose, they will be assigned higher ranks in the appropriate attributes. Do you think that would work well?
ReplyDeleteIn premise, that could work. It's similar to something I know of called a "zero level funnel" where the players make several very underpowered characters each, and any characters to survive long enough to hit level one attain more reasonable stats.
DeleteI say "in premise" because what's going to make or break an idea like this is how balanced and intuitive the specific mechanics are.