Reroll
Why there is a reroll option when creating your character ? I just don't understand why we cannot start with the same number of points. The game has different difficulty options so why rerolling? To me, it's just a waste of time. Just give us the possibility to put the number we want instead of rolling infinitly.
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I personally don't like to min/max, so I don't need an incredible roll to get what I want. If I were feeling impatient, there's a console cheat that gives you automatic maximum rolls, or you can easily edit attributes via EEkeeper.
As for your initial question, rolling for ability scores is an integral part of character generation in the 2e AD&D system. It adds an element of randomness into the game. Instead of a point-buy or fixed total number for all characters (the unrealistic, egalitarian way), it accounts for the fact that individuals vary in their potential (i.e., there is an abundance of below 75-point people in the world and very few who are 90 and above).
It's for Roleplaying purposes. If you want to just roll through the game, enable cheats and hit CTRL+8 at the points screen and continue on your way.
Our DM used to let us roll three sets of stats and pick the set that best suited us personally, or the group as a whole.
Edit: It might be worth pointing out that "Dungeons & Dragons" (the DM's Handbook) was first published in 1974.
Put simply whilst a old-school D&D player might roll a gnome with mediocre stats and think "okay... I can build a hapless gnome bard with this." A lot of players will think "oh come on! I'm sick of restarting the game" and just ragequit.
The option allows whatever house rule you want. Keep your first roll, give yourself 2-5 re-rolls, roll until you see the first number greater than some acceptable minimum (Just about any experienced P&P DMs would allow some amount of re-rolling rearranging, or allow you to bump a stat to class minimum for the sake of having a balanced party or allowing players to take classes they will actually RP well).
In P&P game you need to get the same group of people together once a week (or whatever) for months/years regularly. Players who can play a character (type/class/stats) that they really like it'll be far more enjoyable for all and you greatly increase their odds of continuing a campaign. Particularly when compared with the alternative of forcing everyone to play a thief because they didn't hit minimum stats to have any other class..... that's the kind of "rule" you do very early on when you discover the game and haven't really played much, and then realize that while it may be interesting for a short low level campaign it's not a strategy that creates characters (or groups of players) that go on to have epic adventures for years to come.
I found in P&P games even forcing players to all be a certain race (for the sake of the story) made it difficult to get them really invested in the whole affair.
Again, reality becomes if you roll a pathetic character, you just throw yourself on your sword or do something really stupid to kill yourself and start rolling again, so why not streamline the process to allow for variability but also allows you to quickly throw away something not worth saving?
Lastly, I'd like to mention in P&P if you were just starting with one roll stats I'd leave the option on the table to improve stats with XP. It only makes sense that a fighter who has been in a month's worth of battles would get stronger and heartier. A wizard who is constantly meddling with the arcane and researching would get smarter, the thief would get more agile when plying his trade every day, and the priest would become more wise with study/prayer/meditation and simply just life experience.... From there you could set a maximum possible based on innate potential, but still. One thing I really liked about Skyrim was that you leveled up in skills by actually using them which made quite a bit more sense than leveling up abilities you've never used until you can actually use them.
Really if you think about it just about everyone in a party living on the road and living the life of adventure should get stronger, heartier, and learn new things. Or simply pick one stat per level to concentrate on. RP it as (in part of our rest time I'll read books to get smarter or do pushups to get stronger, or do stretching exercises and practice gymnastics to get more agile). There's no reason IRL 10 strength couldn't hit the weights every day for a month and become an 11, or a 15 CON runner wouldn't become a 17 if they did 10 miles every morning.
Again, that would be a sensible way to implement it P&P if you were starting with one roll like it or lump it. Writing it into a video game becomes far more complex for the player or the one who has to make the rule.. And video games being video games. The developer must still consider that "reload" is always an option for the player.
When the game starts, you make your character with everything except stat points.
You then get walked through a number of events in Charname's life. You get to choose how Charname spent his/her time and what Charname is good/bad at. Pick too many 'good' things, and you end up losing the chance to be great at something else.
When it is done, the game assigns you your ability scores, and you are allowed to move each score up or down 1 point.
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Ex:
Flashback 1-
In your youth, a cart collapsed and fell on a monk. Char name rushes to help.
Choice 1: Charname lifts the entire cart up by himself, freeing the trapped monk (Str18, 19 for a half-orc, 17 for a halfling)
Choice 2: Charname begins lifting it up, and is soon aided by Hull. Together, they free the monk (S16, with modifiers)
Choice 3: Charname, along with several watchers, free the monk. (S12, with modifiers)
Choice 4: Charname eventually joins in when it becomes clear that another hand is needed (S10, with modifiers)
Choice 5: Charname knew that he could barely carry his books, and would just get in the way. (S8, with modifiers)
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Each Charname can only choose the 'best' choice once during character creation. If Charname picks the worst choice, it adds another 'best' choice.
By letting the player still add/subtract some dice, you can customize a bit. You can also minmax if you want, but never to the ridiculous level of Cha3 or whatnot. And best of all, it adds a bit to Charname's background.
I'll never forget the time I tried to use INT as a dump stat in Fallout 2. Charname can only grunt in conversation and everyone talks to him like he is a 2 year old. This is one of the few things that BG series really missed RP wise is not having unique events/dialogue for extremely low or high stats.
This evolved with more generous ways of rolling so you were more likely to get the character you wanted (roll 4 dice, take the best 3; roll different numbers of dice, take the best 3, depending on the class you want to be; roll dice for 6 attributes, and distribute them to the stats in the order of your choice) before 'point buy' systems become common in the early 90s.
For D&D 3rd edition, points-buy seemed to be the default, with the dice roll as a discouraged option. Planescape:Torment actually used a points-buy system rather than dice rolling, and that is a similar age to BG2 and also following 2nd edition rules.
BG2 comes somewhere in the middle, where we roll madly for a high stat total, and can then freely distribute the numbers without high/low numbers affecting the cost. It is seriously overpowered, but hey, we're playing gods here - overpowered is the name of the game