Now I KNOW there's no way this will go through, but I'm tossin' it out there like a piece o' meat for my favorite wolf-type peoples to tear to peaces with intellectual flair!:

Excerpt from the DM's Manual

Organic Characters:

Roll 4d6 six times, discarding the lowest die each time. Place in order (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha) as rolled. Reroll any one ability score of your choice, taking the new roll if it's higher. Then switch two ability scores. This method allows some choice, but doesn't let the player have all her ability scores exactly as she wants them. A character might have to cope with unwanted clumsiness (just in real life), or she may have a personal talent that isn't usual for a member of her class (such as a high strength score for a sorcerer).

My idea is that a character could opt to ask for a DM assisted organic roll. The player would use a 'Reroll Character' (which may be somthing kept in the server vault, or somthing the player makes). The player would write down what they got and make the character as best they can w/o the DM's score adjustments, and then log in for the DM to tweak the scores. The drawback is that THE DICE HATE YOU and you may end up with a really crappy character. To save the DM's time, this should prob'ly be app-only.

Seems horribly unnecessary. It just doesn't seem to present any real benefit, for the time that would have to go into it.

I like it even though it may be cumbersome.

I've always disliked the points assignment system because, surprise surprise, you get min/max characters more often than not.

Also, even if you did assign them in a reasonable way, you end up with "above average" characters.

I've always thought that in the NWN gaming system you'd never be able to have someone like say Conan the Barbarian. It just isn't possible to have all scores above average or better as there simply aren't enough points to make a truly heroic character like him. The only way would be to be -very- lucky with rolling dice and get a lot of scores that are over 15.

However, saying all that I don't think anything will change.

I don't understand why this is necessary? What benefit does this provide to the community? Why would it be better for the DM's to concern themselves with this than any of the other things that demand their attention?

Of course, it might cut down on min / maxing, but it could just as well give a character a really high advantage. Honestly, though I don't personally care about what another character's statistics are. I only concern myself on how they interact with other players, both IC and OOC. I don't stop every Dwarf I see to ask their charisma score. It simply does not factor into my enjoyment of the game.

Likewise, you can have 18 or more in a given ability but fail to play it. Having higher statistics are harder to play than lower ones, especially if they deviate far enough from where an individual stands in real life. If someone is as dumb as nails, giving their character all the intelligence in the world won't make them smart, and it will certainly translate over into their role-play. The same goes for Wisdom and Charisma, but those with high CHA are often the ones that complain the most.

This would mess up ELC.

Why can't you do this right now yourself without DM help?

I mean, if what you want to achieve here is to put in some limitations in your min/max:ing to help you roleplay fun characters, this should work fine:

Just roll the die yourself, and do the procedure on paper. Then create a new character as usual, and do your best to put in the scores you obtained through the procedure.

If your rolls are lower than the ability point limit put in by NWN, just don't spend all your ability points; no trouble there.

If your rolls are higher than the limit, then set the stats lower for one or two abilities of your choice and then increase them on levelup at levels 4, 8, 12...

On the other hand, if the idea was to generate a large number of throw-away organic characters until you get the one with insanely overpowered stats so you can conquer the whole server -- well, in that case I suggest instead sending in your concept as an DM application and see what they think about it :)

Actually, that wouldn't work. You have to spend all (30?) points.

rhizod Why can't you do this right now yourself without DM help?

I mean, if what you want to achieve here is to put in some limitations in your min/max:ing to help you roleplay fun characters, this should work fine:

Just roll the die yourself, and do the procedure on paper. Then create a new character as usual, and do your best to put in the scores you obtained through the procedure.

If your rolls are lower than the ability point limit put in by NWN, just don't spend all your ability points; no trouble there.

If your rolls are higher than the limit, then set the stats lower for one or two abilities of your choice and then increase them on levelup at levels 4, 8, 12...

On the other hand, if the idea was to generate a large number of throw-away organic characters until you get the one with insanely overpowered stats so you can conquer the whole server -- well, in that case I suggest instead sending in your concept as an DM application and see what they think about it :)

Just roll the die yourself, and do the procedure on paper. Then create a new character as usual, and do your best to put in the scores you obtained through the procedure.

Good od, man, have you *tried* this? It's almost garunteeing min/maxing!

If your rolls are lower than the ability point limit put in by NWN, just don't spend all your ability points; no trouble there.

As Snots said, 'Ya can't'.

If your rolls are higher than the limit, then set the stats lower for one or two abilities of your choice and then increase them on levelup at levels 4, 8, 12...

You'll end up min/maxing, and prob'ly in such a way as to make an extremely weak character during the already weak lower levels.

On the other hand, if the idea was to generate a large number of throw-away organic characters until you get the one with insanely overpowered stats so you can conquer the whole server -- well, in that case I suggest instead sending in your concept as an DM application and see what they think about it :)

God, no. If I wanted this, I'd say 'duh, make a system that does it for us automaticly, duh'. The DM involvement curbs this substansially. Organic rolling is kinda like playing Gollem. You might end up with the One Ring, or you might end up some old man's bitch. Or banned for pissing off the DMs. Did that happen to Gollem?

Meldread I don't understand why this is necessary? What benefit does this provide to the community? Why would it be better for the DM's to concern themselves with this than any of the other things that demand their attention?

Of course, it might cut down on min / maxing, but it could just as well give a character a really high advantage. Honestly, though I don't personally care about what another character's statistics are. I only concern myself on how they interact with other players, both IC and OOC. I don't stop every Dwarf I see to ask their charisma score. It simply does not factor into my enjoyment of the game.

Likewise, you can have 18 or more in a given ability but fail to play it. Having higher statistics are harder to play than lower ones, especially if they deviate far enough from where an individual stands in real life. If someone is as dumb as nails, giving their character all the intelligence in the world won't make them smart, and it will certainly translate over into their role-play. The same goes for Wisdom and Charisma, but those with high CHA are often the ones that complain the most.

Why would it be better for the DM's to concern themselves with this than any of the other things that demand their attention?

The DMs can say 'no'. Or just put it off untill their lesure.

As to the rest...:

Basicly, you just said (as I understand it) 'Well, I don't care if people play their stats' and then 'Dammit, people don't play thier stats!'. The idea is that the only people who would do this are good rollplayers. Anyone else trying it would quickly become frustrated with the stats they get (potentially), or have thir character taken away if thier causing problems. It's not like thier getting uber-powerful characters here, anyhow. THis is how DnD is played.

Snoteye This would mess up ELC.

Isen't ELC level based? Or do you mean the stat adjustments? It'd be easy enough to take the adjustments into account. It's 2nd grade math, at best.

Not necessarily.

DnD ability scores can be done a multitude of ways. That is one way DnD is played. This is another.

Enforce Legal Characters would reject DM-altered character files that are even a point off of what they should, through creation and level-ups, be capable of having for stats.

The best thing you can do is decide to get out your own dice, do all the rolling, and try to spend your points like that. Which is something you're free try to do on your own; just remember to play the stats you end up with.

ELC: Enforce Legal Characters. It is a nwserver option

ECL: Effective Character Level. An adjustment given to races/subraces which have inherent advantages over normal races.

It would be possible to make a customer ELC implementation or mod an existing one and then disable nwn's ELC, but glancing at the proposal here just doesn't sound like it would be the greatest idea. The potential to have 18's just makes too large of a balance issue to make this even feasable to me.

I remember playing where you didn't have a discard die. It was 3d6, you got what you got.

Youch.

I played it slightly different. It was also 4d6, but the attributes weren't placed in order. We could decide which value goes with which attribute. And if the rolls were very unlucky (attributes' modifiers sum less than 0) we rerolled everything from the top. This wasn't as random as in the excerpt Mashai's quoted, but still making things a bit more interesting.

But more to the point. When in PnP it's easy for a DM to bend the rules and set things up so it isn't impossible for a party to survive for too long, we don't have that flexibility in a cRPG.

I can see how it can be fun to rp such characters, but I just can't imagine the whole thing working smoothly.

I would not be for rolling. The tendency would be for people to let their mediocre characters die, in hopes the next one they make would get great rolls.

rolling for stats = Gross Character Imbalances