3d6r1, probably

4d6 drop averages slightly better but only slightly

Rolling stats before, or after other character choices?

@kviiri You're allowed to choose.

anyone who would make you take stats in a line after choosing class/race is a monster and deserves to be shot into the sun

Roll all numbers at once and assign then, or assign upon rolling (for the latter option)?

@kviiri I'm not sure what the difference would be.

@Xirema i.e. "I have generated my array, now to assign them" vs. "My first roll is a 15... I'll put that in strength"

Yeah

There's some risk management involved if I can't roll the entire array before assigning

Ah, okay. Yeah, you generate the whole array before assigning.

Then I'm soundly in the 3d6 reroll 1's club

...or would be if I played DnD I guess x)

Soooooo........... This is where the "actually this question was rhetorical the whole time" thing comes back.

Because, indeed, knowing the actual numbers, I would never knowingly choose the 4d6dl-in-order method.

Its average roll is less than a quarter of a point higher than the 3d6-reroll-all-ones average roll.

It's way past bedtime but I'll elaborate as much that I find the idea of playing an underpowered character rather iffy, and the latter option offers a pretty good guarantee of getting something workable (not because of reroll ones in particular, the free assignment is the main draw)

But really the main kicker for me is that I usually have a specific class or concept I want to try, and the first method wouldn't really accommodate for that

I'm not going to dump the stats here, if someone wants to unfreeze the plane of math I'll dump it there. 😛

It should be unfrozen, I talked there a few days back

Oh, I didn't realize that

Dump'd.

Aaanyways, in theory I like "higher average stats but stats in order" because I usually wait until after things are rolled to make characters. Both my Barbarian (4d6dl in order) and Sorcerer (3d6 any order) were generated stats-first, character built around the stats.

I need to mosey off now

G'nite

Bye-bye!

My final thought is just that if you're going to offer two different methods of rolling dice, the strengths and weaknesses of each method should complement each other. "High stats and versatility" and "Very-Slightly-Higher stats with no versatility" only makes sense if the intention is to trap players who aren't math-savvy.

(which, let's be honest: is totally something I'd do 😛)

Also, FYI: all of this is stuff I've already discussed with the DM in question on balance, so I'm not talking behind their back in any way.

@Carcer What did the sun ever do to deserve that?

Even the saints are getting one less hour this year

@Xirema the second one so that you can arrange your stats

@skullpatrol that does not matter, Drew Brees is still their quarterback

@KorvinStarmast I meant All Saints Day, but then realized it is actually one hour longer =)

We need a miracle this year.

@skullpatrol True on about a million levels, that is. 😉

@KorvinStarmast Yoda, you are being?

@skullpatrol it's rare that a miracle would go unmissed, whether day by day or year by year

what do you mean?

btw, have you seen the latest veritasium vid?

a miracle could be built into spacetime itself (if Einstein was wrong) @AncientSwordRage

what he's talking about could be true inside a blackhole

@skullpatrol I mean it'd be nice to get a miracle most of the time

@skullpatrol I will have to watch it in the morning

ok, enjoy

Hypothetical question: if you had a d&d 5e character with 20s in all stats, what would be the class that benefited most from that at 20th level? My initial thought was Wizards since they are already a strong class and can only be improved by having good physical ability scores but I don’t know if that’s the best option

IIRC Paladins are usually described as the most MAD class in 5e

Barbarian is probably a close second

Paladins need something like 2 or 3 ability scores, so yeah I could see that

A good Paladin needs high strength constitution and charisma

a good barbarian need high con strength and dex

i think barbarian

oooooor....

BARD

Never fail a skill check, ever (you have +17 to 4 skills, +11 to a lot and +8 to all the rest)

It’s prefect because barbarians are MAD

...is there bleu cheese in Faerun?

Probably?

was wondering because I was wondering if "black and bleu" would be something you could order your steaks as (say, in some fine eatery in Suzail or Waterdeep)

As your DM I say yes

@Shalvenay I prefer my steaks white and gold.

@Shalvenay I hope so

@Xirema Is this a strange Lady Gaga steak dress reference?

Anyone know how to make a Six String Samurai type character?

@AncientSwordRage What system, and what do you consider the defining qualities of a Six String Samurai character?

@BESW Six-String samurai is a movie about someone called buddy who is wandering the wastelands with a guitar and a samurai sword.

Yeah, I saw it in college.

I guess I'm looking at splitting music and swords evenly

@BESW same :D

I was defaulting to D&D but I'm open to ideas

Because for me, since most of the systems I use don't care much about mechanically differentiating physical actions (musical duels, swordplay, it's all resolved the same) it'd be about defining the kinds of themes and motives and relationships emblematic of the film.

@BESW I'm less certain of that, both system-wise and film wise

It's been a long time since I saw it.

@BESW too long

I feel like it'd probably be a good fit for Misspent Youth.

The two images I can still visualise are him strolling calmly towards some opponents strumming the guitar, and the other is him going 'full samurai' slicing into the bowling pin people

@BESW is that a system, or a system mechanic?

@AncientSwordRage The easy answers are Bard (probably valor or swords), or there's the Samurai subclass for the fighter. (I have no familiarity with the film, so going of surface level description)

In Misspent Youth by Robert Bohl Games, Youthful Offenders in a dystopian world risk their optimism and positive qualities in rebellion against the Authority, trying to gain some modicum of victory before they've been embittered and corrupted by the system.

@BESW interesting

@Someone_Evil Samurai Fighter class works well, but I could also see them being a Bard/Paladin as well

@AncientSwordRage There's always lot's of ways to represent or (re)interpret a character. What are your goals? :)

@Someone_Evil I don't have any, I'm just doing this as a thought exercise to get as close as I can to the feel of the character

@BESW I'm looking over the eye-bleed edition, and I'm wondering who is the authority in Six-string Samurai

Relevant Six-String Samurai Reddit thread

The atheism question reminds me, we had one atheist character in our DnD 4e table back in the days

Oh no, are we really revisiting the modern atheism in Christian-polytheism fiction issue?

At first I thought it was merely a gimmick, but nay, that's indeed a common (not universal) feature of classes drawing their power from the nature

(And in the game's framework, it meant more like aligning against the gods, not... not believing they exist)

@BESW Haha, no I hope. I just wanted to bring up this little memory

Oh, speaking of which. [rummages for link]

Cavalorn wrote a twitter thread (and many many followups over the intervening years) about how the "ancient Celtic belief" of supernatural alternate realities which become accessible during Samhain, is a thoroughly modern concept invented by Englishmen.

That's one of the inspirations for Feywild, right?

Aye.

I find it particularly interesting because it reflects what I've seen in a lot of Indigenous beliefs about the supernatural/spiritual: it exists among us and alongside us, there is no physical division between the mundane and the supernatural because they don't actually make a distinction between the mundane and the supernatural.

The 'veil between worlds' seems to be an appropriation of Jewish ritual practices applied to a (possibly deliberate) misunderstanding of Celtic traditions about ancient tombs, by English spiritualists looking to universalize traditions which were originally very location-based.

"On Samhain the doors of ancient Celtic tombs open and nothing can be hidden" isn't something you can really exploit or integrate into your London or Boston seances. But "On Samhain the veil hiding ancient magical realms is parted," well, the veil is metaphorical/metaphysical so you can use that line anywhere.

(There's an amusing digression in the comments that it's possible the original "nothing can be hidden" line is referring to tax collectors checking to see if people are hiding taxable goods in the tombs. Since Samhain coincides roughly with tax-collecting because harvest.)

Heh :D

@AncientSwordRage Nah, I was referencing this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

This physicality of the supernatural is really common in old traditions. Hell could be accessed through caverns; you could literally point at the mountain where the Greek gods hung out; and the Celtic stories of spirits in tombs are very clear that the spirits are in their separate tombs, not using the tombs as some kind of teleporter to a shared otherspace.

(There's one old story about the inhabitants of the tombs using Samhain as an opportunity to trade with each other because it's when they could come out; that would make no sense at all if the tomb doors led to a shared space.)

This whole stuff about "the parting of the veil between worlds" is difficult to reliably source earlier than the 1920s, and it got a big boost in the 70s.

Reminds me of my attempts to learn about the Dreamtime, and how confusing that was because all the outsiders seem to have basically gone "oh yeah, alternate reality" but no.

I was just going to point out that I've been somewhat weirded out by works that go out of their way to render Hells and Heavens as bounded physical locales – never thought about that actually pre-dating the higher plane of existence as a concept.

IIRC in DnD 4e, Baator is a planet, with even dimensions for each layer specified. A far cry from 5e where the Nine Hells are quite explicitly outside normal space.

4e kinda had its cake and ate it too, riddling the planes over and under and through each other.