How do *you* roll?

Philhelm

Of course, I'm speaking of character stats. For some reason, I usually have trouble min-maxing 100%. Take a warrior class for instance; looking at an 18/18/18/8/8/8 just looks ugly and generic to me. I'll usually have one 18 (usually DEX) and then distribute them in ways that seem to shape out the character. Maybe he'll have a decent INT or WIS, for example. Even if I have a roll in the 90's, I avoid all 18's for the physical stats. I guess I like the idea of the player character aesthetically looking as though he could be one of the NPC's when I look at his stats. Am I alone in this?

LadyEibhilinRhett

Naw. Minmaxing is boring. If I roll 18's, then I'll use 18's. But other than that, I just take what I roll. I allow myself 5 rerolls for new characters, though if I'm recreating a character I have previously played in another IE game I will roll as many times as needed to get the proper total to give them the exact same stats they had before. I think my record is like 250 rerolls or something. That was for a playthrough in Icewind Dale where I decided to recreate six of the joinable NPC's from BG to make up my party, for shits and giggles.

Lifat

hmm... Usually I roll a lot of times trying to get at least 89 points. But when I get the BG:EE I think my goal will be 93 points.
This is simply put because I want to play an elven fighter/mage with the stats:
18
18
17
18
4
18

That way after 7 playthroughs of BG1 my stats will be as follows:
25
25
24
25
25
25

And I'll be all ready for BG2:EE :P

Shin

I usually just assign the stats in accordance with the character I have in mind - like if I play a mage he'll have 18 INT and an above average WIS that then increases throughout the game as he gains more insight about how the world works. Physical stats tend to be average or below average. Put together my main characters tend to be a fair bit above average, but certainly not have all 18s.

Philhelm

Lifat said:

hmm... Usually I roll a lot of times trying to get at least 89 points. But when I get the BG:EE I think my goal will be 93 points.
This is simply put because I want to play an elven fighter/mage with the stats:
18
18
17
18
4
18

That way after 7 playthroughs of BG1 my stats will be as follows:
25
25
24
25
25
25

And I'll be all ready for BG2:EE :P

There are 3 Tomes of Wisdom in the game, aren't there? I've always wondered why the number of Tomes available wasn't equal though.

Lifat

You are correct about the amount of tomes. In bg1 (with expansion) you have 1 tome for each stat except wisdom which for some reason has 3.

Eudaemonium

I'm aiming for the following for my Assassin, which is a 95:

16
18
16
17
10
18

If I find it too impossible to get, though, I'll lower wisdom to 8 or so.

Tetraploid

I normally roll a few times - the PC is the child of a God, after all, so I don't feel too guilty about giving them slightly better than average stats! I don't roll until everything is 18 or anything like that, though. I'll get 18 in a main stat, and then maybe 14/16 in any secondary stats, and then if I have anything left I'll distribute it evenly among the remaining stats (trying to avoid leaving things at 3!).

ginger_hammer

I'm looking for a fighter/druid with at least a 90 for the following:

s 18
d 18
c 18
i 9
w 18
c 9

rufus_hobart

I usually roll until i get 3 scores of 15+ and then distribute them according to a character i have roughly in mind, usually giving them max score in one stat and varying the rest...they've got to have at least some chance of surviving beyond 1st level! ...and quite apart from many on here, i don't think i've ever rolled a character in the 90s no matter how hard i've tried!

Khemrikhara

I agree 100% with the OP - although I do roll a great many times and stop when I have a particularly high stat total, but I then tend to distribute them slightly oddly - I really just can't stand the sight of 18 - 18 - 18... On play-throughs I sit on the half-way point between roleplay and functionality... for example, I don't mind if Dynaheir wanders off to be killed by some gnolls, leaving a grieving Minsc in my party, because she is actually terrible, and I much prefer Xan, unpopular as that decision seems to be.

Also...

LadyEibhilinRhett said:

Naw. Minmaxing is boring. If I roll 18's, then I'll use 18's. But other than that, I just take what I roll. I allow myself 5 rerolls for new characters, though if I'm recreating a character I have previously played in another IE game I will roll as many times as needed to get the proper total to give them the exact same stats they had before. I think my record is like 250 rerolls or something. That was for a playthrough in Icewind Dale where I decided to recreate six of the joinable NPC's from BG to make up my party, for shits and giggles.

That is properly amazing.

Cheesebelly

The more the merrier as they say!

If I can, I try to max out Strength, Dexterity and Constitution (16 for non-warriors). Then I try to put a max stat for the characters' first ability, so in general that's around 90-92 for non warrior and rogues, 84 for warriors and rogues.

Excess stats should go into making your Intelligence dividable per 5 (so that with the tome, you're immune to one more Int drain), Wisdom of 8-10 (so that when I get it drained in BG2 permanently, I don't get a one digit score) and Charisma as high as possible.

For most characters I also need to keep in mind that I'll lose a Dexterity score for obvious reasons... and that's it!

So if I feel lazy, a Swashbuckler for me would have :
18, 18, 16, 10, 8, 15 for instance. That's just an average 85 for you, nothing super dramatic.
Were I to get a 97 though, with a Fighter/Mage (either multi or dual, doesn't matter), I'd go with :

18/##, 18, 18, 18, 8, 17

Which is gonna make it a :
19, 19, 19, 19, 11, 18 by the end of BG1 ;

By the end of BG2 it'd be a :
20, 19, 20, 20, 12, 20 for a good or neutral character Character
22, 20, 22, 20, 11, 19 for an evil Character

Either way - quite godly attributes I'd say

recklessheart

Thank you for making this post! I have to wonder sometimes about how many people power-roll.

I personally can't stand the idea. For a start, it's utterly incongruous with having a party of RP-stated NPCs. Secondly, I don't see the fun in a game where you've set the precedent from the get-go that you're going to make everything as easy as possible for yourself and diminish all the game's challenges, justified by being given a mechanical liberty.

A human fighter dual-class with 18/18/18/10/3/18? Innovative stuff.

Anyway, to each his own, I guess. Personally I assign stats as to how I would RP the character. I am certain that on more than one occasion, Imoen or Jaheira in BG2 had higher total stats than me.

But I was still better

Blave

How I roll? Most of the time: Ctrl+8.
Why? That's simple. Otherwise I'd reroll untill I have the disired score in all important stats anyway. Just using Ctrl+8 simply saves me a lot of time. And no character needs high score in all abilities. Having Int, Wis, and Charisma at 18 doesn't make much of a difference as a fighter, for example.

That being said, I still roll "legally" from time to time. But even then I usually end up rolling until I have everything I need.
Also, I like BG2 better than BG1 (though that's mostly for technicl reasons and might change with the EE) and don't feel like plying through BG1 very often. More often than not I "assume" that my BG2-characters finished BG1 first so I give them the tome increases via shadowkeeper.

VegardPompey

I roll to make my character as powerful as possible. I wish the game would give me an actual REASON to put points into Intelligence or Wisdom. I don't mind roleplaying but I'm not going to waste points on attributes I know to be completely useless.

Kilivitz

I think min-maxing is a bit lame and immersion-breaking. I'm also not into Mary Suing the PC as the strongest, fastest, healthiest, smartest, wiser and prettier character in the realms.

Each to it's own, of course. Being (re)playable in so many styles is one of the qualities of the BG series.

Blave said:

More often than not I "assume" that my BG2-characters finished BG1 first so I give them the tome increases via shadowkeeper.

I wonder if I could pull that off at work. "Well you see I didn't really feel like showing up at the office so I just assumed I was here all week long and gave myself a paycheck the following monday."

Joking aside, I find it amazing how those tomes managed to become a cheat *beyond* the game they're in.

When I didn't feel like playing BG1 I'd actually start the game and use the console to level up/get the tomes, then I would export the character and take him to BG2. It was still cheating, but I never liked using editors anyway.

I don't do that anymore. I feel guilty rewarding myself without earning it by playing. And it's not like BG2 isn't perfectly fun/beatable with a brand new character.

Trist

I try to play the random roll games 'As intended'. For BG1 I use the available NPCs as my attributes benchmark.

There are 25 NPCs in BG1.

The median best score is 17.
The median 2nd best score is 16.
The median 3rd best score is 15.
The median 4th best score is 13.
The median 5th best score is 11.
The median 6th best score is 9.

I re-roll until I get at least 81 in total and assign it as above, then add racial modifiers. Any left over points are discarded. That's still significantly better than the typical "4d6 drop lowest" method of generating heroic characters in the 2nd Ed D&D universe (which is approximately how the scores are generated for the PC).

I feel this is a pretty good reflection of what the designers intended and it makes sense from a lore perspective. You're a gifted mortal, not a pubescent god (with 3 wisdom?!).

HaHaCharade

@Cheesebelly , or anyone else that knows...

is 98 the maximum points you can get on a roll? I've seen people talking about 85, 90, 95... Just curious.

Mortianna

Philhelm said:

Lifat said:

hmm... Usually I roll a lot of times trying to get at least 89 points. But when I get the BG:EE I think my goal will be 93 points.
This is simply put because I want to play an elven fighter/mage with the stats:
18
18
17
18
4
18

That way after 7 playthroughs of BG1 my stats will be as follows:
25
25
24
25
25
25

And I'll be all ready for BG2:EE :P

There are 3 Tomes of Wisdom in the game, aren't there? I've always wondered why the number of Tomes available wasn't equal though.

It's so Viconia can end the game with an 18 Wisdom. ^.~

Trist

I imagine it's theoretically possible to get 108. In practice, the chance of rolling 88 or better is probably around 1%.

Kilivitz

@Trist that depends on the class. If you're rolling a Bard, Ranger or Paladin, it's way easier to roll over 90.

That would be because in BG, stat requirements actually become the minimum you will roll for these stats.

Trist

@Kilivitz absolutely, but those points wont be able to be reassigned anyway and are often stuck in charisma (Pal,Brd,Drd),

Kilivitz

@Trist You got a point there. But I still usually had a much easier time rolling for those classes because just the fact that you can't get a low score in a few stats prevents you from spending precious points making sure some secondary stats are not too low. I mean, isn't it annoying when you see a 17, an 18 and... a 4?

Trist

@Kilivitz Yeah, if I were aiming for huge stats I'd probably roll a ranger. Not that I particularly like them (except for the archer).

ajwz

They see me rolling. They hating.

DJKajuru

I like having high intelligence (14-15) and charisma (15+) , no matter what class I choose.
As for other stats... as long as it's at least 15, I'm okay

Cheesebelly

@HaHaCharade : In theory, the maximum you can get is 108 (6x18). I've seen scores as high as 100, but the engine doesn't limit the perfect 108. It does limit however *every* score below 75 if I am not mistaken.
Back on the BioWare forums, a guy programmed an auto-reroller program for BG2, which rolled and saved the roles all in a txt file. With a moderately fast PC, the program was able to reroll around 20 times per second. In 5 minutes, you could get a 95 with any character, in an hour or two, it could hit 100.

Through it, the guy was able to analyze the Attribute rolls and it was obvious that the scores couldn't go below 75 (I think the game automatically cancels any roll that goes below that score)
I am not sure if *anyone* at any point in their BG career, or the Auto Reroller in fact, were able to get the perfect 108, but the possibility is certainly there.

Mechalibur

I min/max, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all.

The game doesn't penalize certain classes for having the absolute minimum in a stat, so I see no problem with using that to my advantage. When I roleplay a character, I choose not to be limited by what my stat page says. If I needed to lower my intelligence to 3 in order to get the spread I want, then so be it. I don't start thinking of my character as mentally retarded as a result, and the dialogue options I'm presented with don't reflect that either, so very little immersion needs breaking.

As for taking away the challenge, I've done enough BG1 challenges, that I don't feel guilty about it at all. After beating the game with a solo character, beating it with crappy stats and the worst characters (in my opinion, anyway), and beating it on a no-reload challenge, I don't feel like I need to lower my stats to prove anything.

But that's just how I roll. If you have fun doing it your way, then all the power to you, friend.

Shin

Using regular d6 the chance is around one in 100 trillion to roll six 18s in a row, but the game likely handles it a bit different. Even so, in that case even with a program rolling 20 times per second, you'd have to let it run for around 160,000 years to expect a perfect 108.

moody_mage

@Cheesebelly
I downloaded and used the Autoroller and left it running for several hundred thousand rolls. The highest it got was a 98, and only a single instance of that.

Not to say higher is impossible but it would take extraordinary luck.

Trist

I try to avoid using exploits where possible. I find that 18s and 3s is an exploit much in the same way modifying chars to straight 18s in the goldbox/eob games was. The game engine supports it but the game was balanced with certain expectations in mind and I try to avoid violating them as much as possible.

I similarly feel uncomfortable using location switching to grind through the hard encounters (IWD) and using 'rest' to drain opposing mages of their spells.