Honest Rolls Character

In Tabletop RPGs where stats are rolled, such as Dungeons and Dragons or D20 Modern, this is the sort of character where the first numbers rolled for stats are the ones used for the stats, regardless of their value. In first generation D&D, the 3d6 stats were supposed to be rolled with three six-sided dice, and no more, and you had to take the stats in the order they were rolled.

This method of generating character stats isn't popular these days (indeed, even back then House Rules frequently circumvented this) because, since the rolls are honest, they are also completely random. You will get average or below-average stats more than half the time, and stats well below average on occasion, especially if you forgot to pay homage to the Random Number God before you rolled; and if you had your heart set on a pre-conceived character concept, the dice were more than happy to mess up your plans, usually by placing a low number into a score that you really needed a high number in.

D&D consequences: One stat below 8 will severely limit your character classes, sometimes even to a single class (earlier editions of AD&D even had stat requirements for playing specific classes); two or three can render it unplayable as a PC. And that's before you actually try to play the character and have to deal with the penalties for below-average stats, which was anything from a -1 penalty to hit and damage for a low Strength for the earliest versions, to a big penalty to AC if your Dexterity was the stat that took the hit in the later versions.

Some Game Masters live for the chance to run a campaign where someone is brave enough to run such a character, up to the point where they'll require honest rolls characters so they can have a campaign supposedly focused on personalities and role play rather than a Munchkin-fest. (The possibility that one or more players might then just happen to honestly roll up "munchkin" characters anyway is rarely addressed.) This tends to clash with the sort of player who comes to the table with a firm idea of what sort of character they'd like to play in their head already, as well as with most notions of 'party balance' since some player characters are apt to be just plain randomly better than others in the same group; but it can work if all the players are on board with it and willing to roll with whatever the dice hand them.

Usually, when a video game version is released, random stat generation is removed and a Point Build System is implemented.

Of course, subjectivity means that some groups prefer this method, to the point of creating House Rules to randomize character generation where it normally isn't.

Contrast Luck Manipulation Mechanic, in which games are designed to incorporate opporunities to re-roll stats for a better result.


 * FATAL rules include "the dice don't lie" and require honest rolls for your character. For almost every trait except gender. Including race, background, hair thickness, and anal circumference. It also heavily normalises the rolls, making anything significantly different from average nigh-impossible to get. And on the other hand, it is theoretically possible, if very improbable, to get physically impossible parameters.
 * The French derivative RPG Naheulbeuk uses this method for stats and to determine which races and classes are available to the player ; however, the values stay rather average even with crappy throws (oscillating between 8 and 13 while the maximum value of a stat is 20).
 * Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Dark Heresy (as well as Rogue Trader and Deathwatch) characters are like this, generating each stat in order using 2d10 (two ten-sided dice). The systems intentionally prevents extremes by adding a fixed value to each roll (depending on system) and allowing you to re-roll one of the stats (whichever you like). Given that you're also (ideally) supposed to roll for your class before you roll for stats it's usually possible to make something halfway playable out of any character.
 * Many Roguelike games, like Nethack and ADOM, make characters like this.
 * Ancient Domains of Mystery is nice enough to let you "choose" your stats through an arcane personality quiz (which can be gamed), but you don't get to choose which zodiac sign you were born under- sucks if your barbarian was born in the month of The Wizard. Newer Angband variants have auto-roll, which is a stat rolling that can create a more favorable character since the computer rerolls until some of the minimum specified are met.
 * The original Traveller had a lot of rolls during character creation. In fact, stay in a career too long and your character was likely to fail a survival roll and die before you ever got to play him.
 * Used for nostalgia in the Order of the Stick's Gary Gygax tribute strip. Roy and  break out an old copy of the 1st Edition rulebooks for the occasion, which use the "3d6, in order" rule. Also, the characters are very much like this, as the rest of the party seem to have mostly average stats with one standout stat (especially Elan and Belkar) while Roy appears to have above average scores in every stat. And then there's O-chul, who canonically has a "constitution score in the mid 20s". He mentions making Charisma his Dump Stat, which implies they either assign their dice rolls or that O-Chul used some manner of point buy. Though he may have simply been using self-deprecating humor about his lack of people skills (and/or grizzled and scarred appearance). Belkar once made a scatological pun comparing a recent bowel movement to Elan's Intelligence score.
 * Averted very hypocritically in many of the actual D&D NPC books, especially for 2nd Edition. For example, pick up the Forgotten Realms NPC guide. Notice that it's very common for characters to have multiple 16s-18s in their starting scores. As the icing on the cake, this is after they spend several paragraphs in the Player's Handbook going on and on over opportunity out of roleplaying a pathetically poor stat. Moral of the story: Mary Sues are for game designers, not for players.

Third Edition is better about this. While some NPC characters might be as above, monsters are almost universally given strictly average stats (10s and 11s) before their racial bonuses are applied. The DMG also explicitly encourages the rerolling of characters whose stats are too below average, and makes the default rule "Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest" rather than 3d6, so above average results will be more common. It also lists several alternatives, such as using a "point buy" system or fixed stat array, changing these methods from House Rules to officially sanctioned options. Fourth Edition actually makes point-buy the default, though the Player's Handbook mentions rolling as an alternative (if one slightly slanted to produce worse stats than one could buy, on average).
 * Pathfinder, also adopted the "Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest" as its standard character creation rule, but there are a couple of other options available, including the tournament standard of points buy.
 * Older editions of The Dark Eye included a milder form of random stat generation: Determine 6 (later 8) values with d6+7 (range 8-13), discard the lowest, assign the numbers to the basic 5 (later 7) attributes at will.
 * Maid the RPG has by default fully random generation of character attributes, personality traits, skills, and appearance, although characters will at worst be somewhat inappropriate for their immediate surroundings, and the setting encourages seriously weird characters in any event. Its default rules also, and uniquely, permit the players to derail a scenario or campaign into an Honest Rolls Plot.
 * Dungeon Crawl Classics strongly urges this.