Are your players complaining of too many hopeless would-be heroes or bemoaning the lack of rippling Conanesque thew on their fighting men? This method, inspired by Steffan O'Sullivan's classic DIY RPG FUDGE, is intended to facilitate the quick and easy creation of D&D PCs (or NPCs) with a guaranteed equal mix of strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, it doesn't jettison the dice entirely in favor of fiddly point mongering and optimization.
Simply have players designate one ability as Great, one as Good, two as Fair, one as Poor, and one as Terrible. Then roll accordingly:
Great (16 -18): 15 + 1d3
Good (13 - 16): 12 + 1d4
Fair (9 - 12): 8 + 1d4
Poor (5 - 8): 4 + 1d4
Terrible (3 - 6): 2 + 1d4
This will produce characters with 55 - 72 total ability points. 63.5 on average versus the even 63 of six typical 3d6 rolls. If you prefer still more randomness, you can roll to distribute the adjectives themselves first instead of assigning them manually.
.JPG)
