power creep in starting ability scores

[diplomancer]

We've always rolled ability scores and only once has it ever been a problem, whether we've had high or low scores. These days I'd probably lean towards everyone just getting to pick their ability scores, it doesn't matter much in the long run. When we last did that we found we had a lower average than when we rolled, heh.

But I will say that to anyone concerned with internal power imbalances when rolling, Snake Draft is a really good way of getting the fun of rolling (and not having everyone use the same array) but also prevent any larger discrepancies between party members. It's not perfect because it requires the entire party to roll stats at the same time, so you can't use it to replace a dead character, but it presents a cool twist and some new challenges to party creation. It was probably my favorite method of rolling.

Here's a link to Snake Draft for reference.

This snake draft is pretty much the one my old DM used, that I was talking about. Though the way he used it, attributes were not in order, which basically meant that the "drafting" could be automated (as it is assumed every player would pick the highest stat available), making it faster. Players just had to choose between the final arrays, not for each stat.

Using the same dice as the link above, here's what the arrays would look like:
18 14 14 11 11 7 (75)
17 14 13 12 11 10 (77)
17 14 13 12 11 10 (77)
15 14 13 12 10 10 (74)