In a previous post I described to roll RPG ability scores that always add up to the same number. It assumes that there are six ability scores.

Games such as Into the Odd, and those derived from it, such as Mausritter and Cairn, have three ability scores: STR, DEX, and WIL. Can we do something similar? I found a method, but it is not nearly as elegant.

The Method

Step 1: roll

Roll four six-sided dice and arrange them into a line.

For example:

Step 2: sum the first three dice

\[\mathsf{STR} = 5+4+2 =11\]

Step 3: sum the BACKS of the last three dice

\[\mathsf{DEX} = 3+5+4 =12\]

Step 4: add four to the remaining faces

\[\mathsf{WIL} = 2+3+4 =0\]

The number 4 was chosen since the average value of a six-sided die is 3½.

That’s it!

In our running example, our ability scores are:

Notice that the sum of the three scores is 32. It will always be 32!

A Modification (for more randomness)

We can add even more variety by not always going in the order of: STR, DEX, WIL. Notice that in the method described above, STR and DEX are more negatively correlated than WIL is with either STR or DEX (STR and DEX share two dice).

There are exactly three ways to meaningfully reorder the score, determined by which score is the one having 4 added to it (like WIL above).

Therefore you can roll a d6 on the following table to randomly pick an ordering of the scores: