Two 15s

[TRP]

It's not a matter of requiring a character to contain at least two 15 attributes; it's about allowing the player the option of playing such a character. It costs the DM nothing, and it in no way adversely affects a game to allow players this option. It's not like requiring 18 in two prime attributes.

[AxeMental]

The comparison of a character's rolled stats to a hand in poker would only be accurate if a poker player had to stick to a single hand of cards for, potentially, years on end. Sticking with what you rolled and making the best of cruddy stats and playing a character of a different class than you want to because that's what you rolled is all well and good when you're 11 years old on summer break playing D&D 40 hours a week and building up a stable of a dozen or more characters, or for a one-off session at a game day or con where you're only ever going to play the character once. But when you're in a campaign that only meets once or twice a month (or less) and your character is (assuming it survives) the only one you're going to be playing for the next year or two, then I think it's incumbent upon the GM to allow the players to have characters they actually like playing and are satisfied with. If a player enjoys playing a gimp character and making the best of it, more power to that player, but that doesn't mean all the rest of the players should also be forced to have their enjoyment of the game permanently compromised.

These are all good points and true (if we were playing "correctly" with just one or two PCs over a long hall...like years, then yes, you want to have someone you care about). Right now we seem to be burning threw PCs (either rolling up new ones despite having others, or dying off in short brutal dungeons). I suppose I was thinking more in terms of how we played in the hey day.

TRP, yeah I see your point. If its not something the DM is going to encourage, just allow if a player asks, thats fine. And yeah, two 15s will be hardly noticed given their small bonuses.

[genghisdon]

The PH recommends two 15s for character ability scores (and with good reason, I think).

How do you apply this?

A) raise the 1 or 2 LOWEST below-15 scores to 15 if needed?
B) raise the 1 or 2 HIGHEST below-15 scores to 15 if needed?
C) other?

Prespos

I've varied between all 3, but typically B). A) I often use for characters that are above starting levels (say 250,000 starting XP). A common C) method I've used is re-rolling the last score or 2 until a 15+ comes up, but I've gone away from that, despite decades of use, because it is unfair to a player that actually rolled a 15 or 2 straight up (it gives worse rollers a shot at beating them).

[AxeMental]

One thing worth noting, if you took any PC with 14s in every attribute, which would look pretty good, it actually has zero meaningful benefit to having a 9 in every attribute (except for a few cases, opening doors, learning magic, reaction adjustment..). Also your first +1 weapon is equiv. to a 16 str. Your first +1 ring or armor is equiv. to 15 dex. Perhaps a better way to deal with the problem is, as DM, to secretly help out these particular players (ie. just by chance, one of the goblins x fighter killed had on a piece of y magic (which makes x fighter as powerful as he'd have been if he'd rolled two 15s). Perhaps this is what magic is for (along with character development). Of course, this may require a group of players that aren't a bunch of selfish greedy SOBs, who would automatically give the person with the greatest need magic first. The idea is that that the player never feels like he had a rerole (which the game typically never gives outright. You save versus death from a giant spider bite once. A nice DM might throw in a neutralize poison in a previous room (say hidden in a skeleton's rotting backpack). This would be no different).