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Honest Rolls Character: Difference between revisions
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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.HonestRollsCharacter 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.HonestRollsCharacter, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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In [[Tabletop RPG|Tabletop RPGs]] where stats are rolled, such as [[Dungeons and Dragons]] or [[D 20 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, [[
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.
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Contrast [[Luck Manipulation Mechanic]], in which games are designed to incorporate opporunities to re-roll stats for a better result.
{{examples
* ''[[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 [[Memetic Mutation|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 [[One in A Million Chance|very improbable]], to get physically impossible parameters.
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