After a few games of maxing out the stats and hitpoints of my groups, I decided to play BG by accepting the first roll of the dice when creating the characters, and also when levelling up.

My PC was a mage who got 9 INT on the first roll (ouch !), but in the spirit of the game I decided to accept that without redistributing any of the stat points and to venture forth regardless.

However, when my NPC "tank" got 1 (one) measly HP on the first level up, taking him from 10 to 11 HP, it was more than I could take. I decided to abandon the game, since I did not relish the thought of facing Sarevok with a "tank" that would have 16 hit points or so !

Are there any players out there who actually accept the first roll of the dice in all cases (from character creation to levelling up), as would be the case in a "pen and paper" game ?

I don't accept the first role, but hardcore players do. But that's just too extreme for me ;)

Well, there's really no such thing as "playing things like a pencil & paper game," or to be more precise, there's really no ONE thing. Different DMs do different things: A dyed-in-the-wool, hardcore purist DM would force the players to rigidly accept the first dice roll, no changes or exceptions. A wishy-washy munchkin DM, in contrast, would let the players to roll the dice as many times as they wanted to, and allow them absolute freedom in removing points from certain stats and putting them into others. You can see for yourself which path the BG games take. There are, however, some popular "middle grounds:"</font>

• You roll the stat dice 6 times, and then decide which roll goes toward which stat. For instance, if you're rolling a Fighter and your last roll is an 18, that 18 does not have to be your Charisma--you can make it be your CON if you want to.</font>
• Just like #1, but the players are allowed to roll 3 sets of stats. If they don't get <u>any</u> good numbers (16 or higher) on their first set, they can start over a second, and even a third time.</font>
• My method: You are allowed to hit Reroll as many times as you want, but you may not use the + or - buttons at all: No moving points from one stat into another. Just Reroll until you hit a set of stats that you can live with.</font>
• Just like #3, but you're allowed to keep 5 sets of "saved" stats. When you see a set of stats that looks good, write them down, and keep Rerolling. When you've written down 5 sets of stats, you must choose 1 of them.</font>

There is also the matter of what dice are rolled: Many people think that each of your 6 stats is determined by a roll of 3D6. In the BG games, it's not--it's actually 4D6, and the lowest die is thrown out. Purist DMs may insist on 3D6.

There are similar "shades" of the hitpoint rolls as well:
1) You must accept the first hitpoint roll you get. No exceptions.
2) You may Save the game, Level Up, and then Reload, 3 times, and then take the best hitpoint result of those three.
3) You may Save, Level Up, and Reload, until you get a hitpoint roll that is at least 66% of the maximum gain you could have gotten.
4) If you're playing BG2, you may move the Difficulty slider down to Normal (which automatically makes all hitpointrolls be the maximum) during the early Level-Ups.

I confess that I'm no purist when it comes to hitpoints: If I'm going to lose a battle, I want it to be because of an error on my part, not because my party simply isn't healthy enough. Having a high-hitpoint party also decreases the odds of us suffering one-hit kills or getting chunked, which are just plain <u>no fun</u>. In BG1, I use #2 or #3 to determine my hitpoints, and I use #4 in BG2.

Thanks for your explanation of the different approaches to "rolling the dice", Six !

I guess one does have to be a bit of a purist to accept the first roll, no exceptions.

For character creation, your first option seems pretty close to being "honest", i.e. rolling the dice 6 times and then putting each roll in one of the stats, as is best suited to the character being created.

For levelling up, I guess it is OK to use your option 2 or 3 if the first roll is too low.

Then again, maybe it is possible to take the purist route, because one might not get all bad rolls on each level up, resulting in at least a decent number of hitpoints. But that is quite a chance to take.

Alternatively, one might have to change the character's role if and when its hitpoints are too few, and then use different tactics to survive the battles ?

Unfortunately, the monsters and other baddies do not seem to have been "rolled" in a purist fashion !

As Lord says, playing BG strictly in a purist manner is possibly too extreme, but then again, that is a challenge in itself. Maybe I'll try it that way again sometime.

And remember, if you find that some of your stats are too low, you can always use one of the tomes you find to raise them up a bit ;)