Dungeons & Dragons | Roleplaying Games
3 Better Ways to Roll Ability Scores in D&D
Randomness doesn’t have to be unbalanced
Many Dungeons & Dragons players enjoy randomizing their characters’ abilities. But D&D’s standard rules for rolling ability scores are flawed. Luckily, numerous better approaches exist that you can import to D&D — or almost any other RPG that has a set of variable core abilities.
The problem
Let’s start by considering the two main purposes of randomizing ability scores and why the standard approach falls short.
First, you might want to randomize the individual scores, ceding control to the dice over which scores end up high or low. You don’t get to optimize your characters or build them to fit an existing concept. But dice results can also spark new character ideas that feel organic in ways that more engineered characters might not. How might a character with high Strength and Charisma, but low Dexterity and Wisdom, act? This approach is especially common in early D&D and the OSR but rare in 5th Edition.
Second, you might want to randomize the array of scores before assigning values from that array to specific abilities. Here, you get the interest of an unbalanced and unique-feeling array — including the chance of sky-high and rock-bottom scores — as well as the inherent fun of rolling dice. At the same time, you can shape your character to fit an existing concept or your preferences, for instance by putting your highest score in Dexterity and your lowest in Charisma.
5th Edition D&D’s rules for rolling ability scores are meant to address this second case. You randomly roll each ability score and assign them however you want. That’s it: an attractively simple system.
But many gaming tables outright ban this approach because it gives some player characters better scores overall than others. Rolling each score independently is incompatible with balance within the party. Even min-maxing players who build characters unequivocally more powerful than the rest of the party (and perhaps especially these players) are unlikely to enjoy one character being more powerful due to nothing more than a throw of the dice. So, it’s no wonder that point-buy — distributing a fixed pool of points across the ability scores — and standard array — all players reordering the same array of scores however they like — are common alternatives.
But the fun of randomization remains. So, here are three alternate methods for injecting randomness into characters’ scores without sacrificing balance.
Option 1: roll around the table
Pass the dice around the table, each player rolling for one ability score. Use whatever method you want to generate each score (e.g., sum 4d6, dropping the lowest value). Keep passing the dice until six ability scores have been rolled. Then each player assigns those scores however they want to their character’s abilities.
Here you get the best of the standard array and rolled methods. Everyone uses the same array, so there’s balance within the party. But there’s still the organic charm and inherent excitement of rolling. The process is collaborative, engaging the table in one another’s character creation right off the bat, while still being quick and dead simple to execute (minimal mental math required, unlike with point-buy).
For these reasons, this is now my favorite method for rolling abilities in D&D, Pathfinder, and similar games.
Option 2: roll ability ranks
Start with an array of ability scores (e.g., the standard array). Then each player rolls a d20, a d100, or another large die once for each of the six abilities in order. Reroll to break ties. Assign the highest value in the array to the ability with the highest roll, the second highest value to the ability with the second highest roll, and so on. For example, if your second-highest roll on the d100 was for Constitution, then Constitution receives the second highest value in the array.
Randomizing the rankings of each character’s ability scores preserves the array of scores itself. We get the balance of the standard array as well as the organicness of rolling for individual scores in OSR fashion.
This approach is slower than rolling for abilities scores directly. But it’s still faster than point-buy in my experience.
Option 3: roll cumulative adjustments
Set all ability scores to a minimum starting value, say, 8 or 10. Then each player rolls a d6 a predetermined number of times (the same for everyone). For each die that shows 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, respectively, increase the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th ability score by 2. For example, if you roll 5 twice, increase the 5th ability score (Wisdom) by a total of 4.
This is the most random of the three approaches. Two players will probably have two different arrays of ability scores and those scores will also be ranked differently. But the sum of the ability scores will be the same for everyone, ensuring a minimum level of balance between characters.
If you want a party of thoroughly random characters, this method offers a marked upgrade over independently rolling each score — and it’s reasonably fast, too. For example, to get a distribution of scores comparable to 5th Edition’s standard array (but with a little higher minimum), set the minimum value to 10 and have each player roll 6 times — no more than you would if you rolled the scores independently.
Knave: Second Edition takes this approach and, by default, has each player roll just 3 times to adjust their character’s stats. It’s lightning fast and fun.
There are better ways
In sum, whether you want to randomize characters’ array of scores or those scores themselves, the D&D method of rolling scores independently creates unnecessary balance problems. Actually, I’ve been picking on D&D unfairly. Rolling for each score is such an attractively simple rule that some version of it appears frequently elsewhere (e.g., Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and much of the OSR). It’s almost a default, alongside point-buy. But there are plenty of alternate methods that preserve the balance between characters, allow one or both desired forms of randomness, and are comparably fast to run at the table.
So, game designers take note: it’s time to exchange the old mechanic for something new.
