I personally find rolling for ability scores very exciting, but my players don’t seem as keen. I think it’s because they tend to have a character concept in mind and random ability scores often won’t support building that character. This is perhaps a by-product of the way we prepare for campaigns, where the players arrive at the first session with characters already created (and often not in collaboration with their compatriots, but that’s another gripe).
And yet, point buy is really boring! It leads to predictable characters which rarely have flaws. Common advice for writers who want to create realistic characters that their audience will relate to is to give them flaws — flaws make for interesting characters. There are many classic fantasy tropes; the sickly wizard, the idiot fighter, the gruff dwarf. It’s not difficult to come up with others; the wise Cleric with no people skills, the brave but dim Paladin, the cunning thief with no sense of awareness, and on.
I myself have been guilty in the past, when given the option of a point buy, of creating a character without flaws. But I’ve found those characters often feel very bland during play, and as much as they don’t have a significant weakness they also usually don’t have a significant strength either. This is something I aim to resolve as a player, even in games where we don’t roll for abilities.
The 5th edition standard array is a nice middle ground between point buy and rolling for abilities. The flaws of the lower ability help build character and encourage the player to think about why their character has a lower than average score in that ability, whilst the pre-determined results help players to craft character concepts ahead of time. Sadly I think the standard array still encourages generation of safe, balanced and ultimately less interesting characters. No characters will have significant flaws with this system, particularly as no race in 5th edition (at least the PHB) receives a negative ability score modifier. Equally, few characters will have significant strengths and those classes with more than one or two prime abilities are less likely to be picked by your balance conscious player.
I want to see the hulking, unwavering yet barely intelligent character (good Strength and Constitution, poor Intelligence). The physically crippled, yet brilliant character (poor Strength, extremely low Constitution with fantastic Intelligence). The charming, even dashing character who’s a coward and a fool (fantastic Charisma, low Wisdom and middling Intelligence). The weak-willed genius with a raft of vices (low Wisdom, high Intelligence).
In my next campaign I’m going to use rolling for abilities again, only this time I’ll use something less strict than the standard 3d6 in order, swap once, discard if total modifiers below 0 I used for my LotFP campaign.
What method I’ll use is yet to be decided. According to the number crunchers at AnyDice 4d6 drop lowest produces an average roll of roughly 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9. The averages don’t suggest much opportunity for flawed characters, but as I want my party to feel more super-heroic than the old-fashioned 3d6 method tends to generate I’m willing to give it a try.