Randomized Stats and the Strength Stat (not just encumbrance)

[Case]

I like random stats *shrug*

[Majikal]

Stats definitely need some looking at, everyone knows it.

Point system for the win.

[Warsong]

Your willingness to suicide a character early on to avoid negative stats is not a problem with the stat system, but your experience/expectation out of the game.

It is a problem with the stat system that it massively rewards doing something that isn't allowed.

People keep saying "random is good" but I've yet to really find an explanation why it's a good thing that some characters are randomly much better than others, in ways that simply cannot be caught up with by those who weren't lucky.

[wizturbo]

I like random stats.

I like how they force inequality among PCs.  I like that it makes some people weaker than others for no reason other than they lost the lottery.  It adds realism and unpredictability to the system.  

I like how it makes all PC's codedly different, creating realistic uncertainties on the outcome of events.  No matter how many warriors I play, I'll never play this warrior again.

I like how it makes good stats actually feel exceptional and special, and makes poor stats actually feel like a weakness.  Point buy systems inherently have a 'dump stat', and I hate that.  I also hate that point buy systems make it impossible to have a characters who is amazing at everything, or really bad at everything.  It chops off the outliers on the bell curve, and I find outliers to be fun.

I like the excitement it brings to starting a new character.  It's fun to roll stats, and the fact that the outcome will determine all kinds of things throughout my character's life.  Like some kind of butterfly effect.  Point buy systems don't bring that.  

I'm a natural optimizer.  It's what I do for a living.  With random stats, I don't have that option, and find that to be oddly freeing.   Instead of spending hours pondering whether I should go for an exceptional agility or drop it to extremely good and bump up my endurance instead...  I can spend that time dreaming up things related to role play.

The only thing I do not like about the stats system is that I roll my stats after I've already written my background and description.  I'd like my description to actually reflect my stat rolls.  I would also think that winning or losing the genetic lottery would alter my character's background.  But, that's a relatively minor gripe, and I'm guessing it would take a substantial amount of code work to change.   Not sure the juice is worth the squeeze on that one, when there are much more exciting code related things that could be done instead.

With that said, there are apparently people out there who've had their character concepts ruined when they had an unusually bad stat roll.  I've never experienced that, and I have no real way of testing whether or not their complaints are valid.  If they are valid, adding an "emergency re-roll" that sets all your stats to average seems like a fairly decent option.  Probably a waste of effort though, as I'm guessing it would only be used once a month at best, but that's just my guess.

[Inks]

It doesn't count with mage pcs, Wizturbo. You can play those fine with any stats.

I like random, anyway. But for sure have been dealt some bad hands.

I usually do an mdesc change to modify my desc to stats. For instance if I am a beefcake I become leaner, etc. Or more sickly. Mdesc change is a decent port of call. There are many things you can do to equalise and take the advantage.

[Lizzie]

The only thing that would be of use to me personally - is if I could roll stats before writing the mdesc and background. If I could see what the stats will be first, I can create the background and mdesc to fit the stats. It'd allow for a little less vaguery. I could make that really physically power-house strong woman, which I don't now (because what if poor strength). I can make the totally clueless woman who has serious learning disabilities - which I can't do now (because what if I end up with EG wisdom). I can make the dwarf who is astonishingly graceful for his race, which I can't now (because what if average agility).

So that's really all I'd put on my "wish list" with regards to stats. Otherwise I'm fine with it how it is now.

[Desertman]

In terms of people seeing their stats before writing up their PC, I can see positives and negatives.

One negative would be people who see their stat roll and then intentionally write up a no-effort throw-away PC because they know they are going to suicide it anyways.

The tall muscular man

Amos

He is tall and muscular. He is a man with brown hair. His skin is tanned. He has brown eyes. His hands are big. His arms have lots of muscles.

walk into silt sea

I could also see this being an issue for potential new players. They roll up their stats, get a below average stat and decide the game just isn't worth it if their character is already below average.

Ups and downs there I guess.

[rodic]

Bad stats suck
Good stats are awesome

Below average Strength/Agility/Endurance is not fun, it's a chore to get through things, whether combat, encumbrance, or just HP.   Like Low strength or Endurance is such a damn chore, low strength more so in just carrying stuff. 

Low hp sucks too, gets exhausting to RP death's door because you dare to spar or can't hang in with whoever cause your 88hp is 10 to 20ish points lower then those around you, it's quiet amazing how much those 10 to 20 points make a difference.

[valeria]

Since this keeps getting skipped over, perhaps a change in tact.

The second option I mentioned, keeping the system as it is except, after application approval you see the stat pool and distribute it yourself.  It doesn't change change the system other than allow greater granularity and player control.

This would be fine with me.  I'm not sure it's necessary with stat prioritization, since I've had 1 character ever where stats didn't fall in exactly the order I prioritized them in (and that case involved close categories and what I'm assuming was a class bonus) but if allowing a player to physically order their stats into place would make some people feel like they have more agency, sure.

C) Stats,
These will be your pregenerated stats, keep in mind if you do not like your stats you can
have the option to reroll a single time.
You get VG str, Good wis, Average agi and AA End,
Would you like to keep these stats?
Yes or No
If No Reroll process happens

D) Now that you know your stats upfront, you can build a character concept around that. And you
will know if your stats will allow that concept.

I particularly like idea D. 

Lets say someone doesn't like either set of stats, they can have the option to try to make another
character (Aborting the current one), 12 hours later, or even 24 hours later with different stat choices.

This is the only part of this idea I don't like.  Maybe if on both rolls you had 2 or more stats at below average/poor and you were within the adult age range, sure, allow someone to abort their character on the basis of it being "unplayable" (where unplayable actually means not fun for a certain subset of players to play with enjoyment, not actually... unplayable) with a nominal or no time limit.  But if you're going to basically give someone the opportunity to just keep trying to make characters with awesome stats, I'd either allow you to only do it once every X number of characters or impose a higher time penalty on it (maybe 7 days), so you don't have one person able to basically take their pick of 24 stat rolls over the course of a week.

[hyzhenhok]

No point buy system, please. The last thing we want is min-maxxing and all character ending up with similar stats. I think randomizing how many points you get during character creation might be an interesting wrinkle, but ultimately would not solve complaints about the randomness.

I agree with Kryos in that it'd be nice if we could see our rolls (before they are modified by guild and age) and distribute them to our stats as we see fit. Lots of PnP character generation systems do it this way. It'd be even better if this was the first step in character creation (or perhaps the second, after you choose your race) so you could build your character around your stats.

[Jihelu]

If we can allocate stats I'm giving my self shit endurance and wisdom and going straight agility strength.

[hyzhenhok]

If we can allocate stats I'm giving my self shit endurance and wisdom and going straight agility strength.

But what happens when you roll exceptional, exceptional, extremely good, extremely good? Or average average average average?

[Jihelu]

I suicide
/sarcasm

[Bogre]

Many of my thoughts align with Armaddict and wizturbo.

I am against point buy. We like random rolls and variation because it gives our characters the chance to be -special- and awesome, and an ass kicker amongst the plebs. Now to accept that sometimes we have to accept being a pleb stat wise.

My biggest fear is that I'll burn one of my super concepts and get crappy stats. Or that I'll app a roll call and end up with something painful. I love reroll undo, that has been a blessing. I generally don't make any characters that I'm not interested in playing. I make their niche, personality, look, goals etc before I roll stats. So I don't suicide characters for stats. Sometimes I make filler throwaways. (Who, ironically, more often than not have sick stat rolls), but they would be in high risk situations just because I was planning the character to do that anyways. I don't change characters based on rolls.

A suggestion is to offer a basic chosen roll you could customize and fall back to.  I would say you get 4-5 levels jumps and 1 level decrease to at least below average. So you get:

Below average, above av, above av, good.
Below average, ave, ave, egood
Below av , below av, good, vgood

As a fallback. So basically you combine a point buy backup but you allow the glee from massive rolls.

I don't think anyone would think it's cranking up the average either, to allow people to choose a not great, but not unplayable backup, especially if you make people choose something to below average.