I’m about to start a new campaign of dark heresy but after rolling up some stat lines with players i have been finding that the way its done in the book can be a bit unfair.

Has any one got any alliterate ways of generating characteristics? I’m thinking of either allowing my players assign stats or letting them roll 3d10 and discard the lowest or would that brake the game?

It is really up to you.

As a player you can be unlucky and start with a weaker character than the rest, but that is the reality sometimes you friends are stronger or weaker.

I have also tried letting them assign which roll goes to which stat, which makes the statline fit better to their choice of career class.

Lastly I also tried creating a point system which worked fine, but was slightly confusing and not the easiest thing to do. It does work good on the other hand because they rarely make new characters. :)

The easiest way to ensure no one is hosed is roll 10 pairs of 2d10, drop the lowest and assign as they wish. Otherwise 9 times of 2d10 and let them reroll one.

Cymbel said:

That's what I do.

Cymbel said:

…  to give them all a 30 statline. :D

Base +10 is boring though, no one exceeds, no one has weaknesses. Stats help me define who my character is. I personally like roll 9 pairs of 2d10 and reroll one, which gives characters the most life. I once got a noble psyker with hilariously low WP (even after the reroll), it became a major part of her.

Letting player choose where to put their rolls is safe, players are guarenteed to get a character they like.

The only draw back is that less usefull attributes always get the shaft so in a sense its a little boring.

Have your GM make the 10 rolls, and each player can assign them to their Characteristics as they choose.

Everyone has the same distribution of scores, though arrayed so that they are more beneficial to them.

I use the standard system from the book, as well as random homeworld/careers. After rolling their first characters the players suprised me by indicating a preference for this system, since we had a wide diversity of abilities within the group, and even within the same class. It sparked a healthy debate about how characters with low stats in one area could be made to shine in other areas through clever roleplaying and distribution of gear.

Having said that, if a player was completely hosed with sub 25 in each stat I would give them the option to start again, since I wouldnt force a player to run with a character which has no redeeming statistical qualities unless they expressed a desire to do so.

We've rolled 2D10 eleven times and dropped the worst two results, than applied the rest as we wished, and generely if we don't like the set we rolled we can reroll everything again as many times as we want (none of us in the group that playes DH are "power gamers" so we tend to settle for a decent set of figures with a couple of high ones and a couple of low ones). 

I myself have been toying with the idea of a point based system like Docdoom77 suggested in the duplicate thread. I think it might be the best way if you want a "fair" system.

After all the rolls are made I do allow my PCs to re-roll one stat and choose the best result.  That said I generally think it's just tough luck if you get bad stats.  The background for DH is a bit of an exception though.  If all of a PCs stats were sub par then there has to be an explanation as to why the PC was chosen by the Inquisitor, so I might compensate the PC through good contacts or some other benefit.

Visitor Q said:

The truth is that, more often than not, characters' professions should be defined by their characteristics - barring exceptional cases where a character is ushered into his role based on heritage (such as, say, a Rogue Trader's child following in their father's footsteps). So for true "realism in randomness", we should roll characteristics and then pick the class the results are best suited for. Some players, especially those having difficulty deciding on what they want to play, may prefer this.

Other players, however, come up with a concept long before they roll the dice, and having their creativity be punished by bad rolls may present a problem if the end result undermines realism as well, such as when people begin asking themselves how "someone like that could ever become X" - especially in cases where a character's role would be defined by their aptitude as determined in various tests conducted by whatever organisation is responsible for them.

Still, a degree of randomness prevents "cheese builds" and makes our characters appear more like real people, so personally I believe in the middle ground between having the class determined by characteristics dice rolls and an all-out points buy system. Slight modifications to the end result such as allowing 1-2 results to be swapped and/or rerolled go a long way in increasing the character's viability for whatever job their player intends them for. :)

I use the 100 point point buy system presented in the later Core Books as an alternative. I have one player whose dice are so good we all regularly glance at his dice to see if he is cheating and another player whose dice are so bad I jokingly proposed a houserule that all his difficulties start at +30. Without pointbuy the differences between them would be even worse with one having phenomenal stats and the other being a gimp version of Forrest Gump.

Riggswolfe said:

i use this same method. use the base stats as found for their given homeworld and give them 80-100 points to allocate. if you dont want min maxing then decree that at least 5 points have to go into any given stat but no more than 20. it has worked pretty well for me so far.

Generally, roll 9 sets of 2d10, assign as they fall (first is WS, second is BS) or as players wish (to go with a concept), re-roll on ONE stat, min of 11. An Alternate to that if putting stats where you want is 10 sets of 2d10 and drop the lowest. I prefer the re-roll because it gives more "chance" especially if you take out the min of 11 (though I dont reccomend that). Otherwise, if using just IH stuff for homeworld/BG packages. SupTG has a good roller/generator.