RPG Ability Scores, Part III: Fantasy Draft

For the last installment on ability scores, a fun way to create an entire party, borrowing from the fantasy draft feature in Baseball Mogul.

Step 1: Everyone Rolls Up One Character
Each player generates one set of stats, rolling 4d6 and keeping the best 3, and recording the stats in the order rolled. The GM does the same.

Here's an example with 4 players:

Table Cell

Alex

Beth

Clay

Daryl

GM

STR	10	18	12	14	17
INT	14	11	11	11	17
WIS	11	9	7	12	11
DEX	12	12	10	11	14
CON	15	16	13	9	7
CHA	15	18	11	11	13

We see that Clay rolled a pretty bad character. But that's OK because he's going to pool his rolls with everyone else before divvying them up.

Step 2: Re-Rolls
Each player picks one of the stats that they rolled and re-rolls it, keeping the highest score. We are trying to build the best party, not the best character. So, Alex chooses to re-roll her WIS score, in hopes of having at least one high Wisdom score to choose from. Here are the scores after the re-rolls (shown in [bold]):

Table Cell

Alex

Beth

Clay

Daryl

GM

STR	10	18	12	14	17
INT	14	11	11	11	17
WIS	[12]	[16]	7	12	11
DEX	12	8	[13]	[16]	14
CON	15	16	13	9	8
CHA	15	18	11	11	13

Step 3: Throw Out The Boring Scores
To keep things interesting, remove the *middle* score from each row. This preserves the interesting scores (the high rolls and low rolls), but also keeps the average score near 12.2 (the average result of rolling 4d6 and keeping the best 3).

The remaining scores are the ones that players will "draft" from (shown here, sorted from high to low):

STR	18	17	12	10
INT	17	14	11	11
WIS	16	12	11	7
DEX	16	14	12	8
CON	16	15	9	8
CHA	18	15	11	11

Step 4: "Draft" The Scores
Player #1 ("Alex") picks first. She can pick any score in the table, but she can't change what stat it applies to. If she picks the '18' in the STR row, she has to use it for Strength.

Alex wants to play a thief/rogue, so she picks the 16 DEX. Here are the characters after Round 1 of the draft:

Table Cell

Alex (Thief)

Beth (Cleric)

Clay (Fighter)

Daryl (Mage)

STR			[18]
INT				[17]
WIS		[16]
DEX	[16]
CON
CHA

For the 2nd round, we reverse the draft order, so that Player #1 doesn't get to pick first in every round:

Table Cell

Alex (Thief)

Beth (Cleric)

Clay (Fighter)

Daryl (Mage)

STR		[17]	18
INT				17
WIS		16
DEX	16
CON			[15]	[16]
CHA	[18]

And here's the completed set of characters (before racial adjustments):

Table Cell

Alex (Thief)

Beth (Cleric)

Clay (Fighter)

Daryl (Mage)

STR	12	17	18	10
INT	11	14	11	17
WIS	11	16	7	12
DEX	16	8	12	14
CON	8	9	15	16
CHA	18	11	15	11

Summary: Each character gets a very good score in their primary attribute. But unlike systems that let players arrange stats as they like, they can't dump their low rolls in their least favorite stats (usually some combination of INT, WIS and CHA -- depending on character class). So you end up with some high stats in places where you wouldn't expect them (like the Thief with an 18 Charisma) and some potential weaknesses (such as the Cleric with an 8 Dexterity)