Skip to main content

Where to Begin

Generating ability scores is an interesting question in any campaign. Scores too low and the party will struggle too hard. Conversely, score that are too high means the party will not be challenged, leading quickly to boredom.

In this campaign, I wanted to give the randomness of rolling for ability scores, but minimize the chance for low scores. This decision meant skipping completely the point-buy system from D&D Adventure League. I tested out two different schemes to see which produced scores in an acceptable range.

The first idea I had was rollng 5d6, rerolling any ones, and taking the best three numbers. Two test runs gave the following sets:
  • 13, 18, 15, 13, 16, 13
  • 15, 18, 14, 16, 17, 15
These seem kinda high for the campaign. Trying again, the following two sets were the result of 5d6 with no rerolls:

  • 12, 15, 12, 12, 11, 15
  • 12, 13, 14, 15, 13, 13

This range looks more like what I imagined, giving the players the opportunity to accomplish much in the game without turning the adventure into a cakewalk.

For fun, I looked at how many points each of the bank of statistics starting from the top, the four sets of scores would cost 55, 71, 33 and 35 points respectively.

So I decided to borrow the best of both worlds: let players roll for their ability scores taking the highest three out of five dice, but if the player gets unlucky, allow them to spend 30 points instead.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Hammerford

The ancient town of Hammerford lies far south on the continent, where high mountain ranges separate vast frozen plains from wooded tundra. For nearly a dozen centuries, the city stood as a thriving waypoint along trade routes from warmer areas in the north to dwarven mines deep under the mountains to the south. Giants were rumoured to live even further south than the dwarfs, and part of the supposed evidence of their existence is the shallows of the Cranreuch River. A wide ridge under the river provided an excellent ford when the river once flowed freely. For nearly four hundred years, the river has never thawed, and the sturdiest, smoothest portion of ice to traverse rests over the same location. The shallows are allegedly formed by the head of an enormous mallet from the discarded weapon of a giant. Nobody has ever seen the mallet or dug into the river bank to verify its presence, but the legend endures and from this story, the town gained its name. The town has endured, even as ...
Post a Comment
Read more