There's a joke that seems to be popular in Eastern Europe & the Balkans, which I first heard from a Romanian co-worker:
Once upon a time, God was walking the earth, visiting the faithful in disguise. He arrived at the hovel of a poor farmer in <insert country>. They treated him with the utmost hospitality, even shared what little bread and ale they had, knowing that they might go hungry instead, and gave him their bed, while they slept on the naked floor.
The next morning the Lord revealed himself unto them. As a reward for their Christian hospitality, he granted them a wish.
After some consultation with his wife, the peasant addressed God: "My Lord, you see that we only have a few scrawny chickens who rarely lay eggs, while our neighbor gets milk and cheese from his goat."
"So you want a goat, too?", replied God?
"No my Lord. We want you to kill the neighbor's goat!"
I've also heard it phrased "As long as the neighbor's goat is dead, too", as a succinct way of saying that you're content with your lot, as long as you're not one-upped by your fellow human being.
The reason why I'm posting this anecdote here? Character generation.
Your neighbor's character sheet
I've seen this in quite a few games that used random character generation (like old-school D&D's "3d6 down the line" ability rolls): Angeline rolls well for their character, then it's Beatrice's turn, and she gets top of the line abilities, enough to create e.g. a Paladin in AD&D first edition.
Angeline knows that their stats rolled are above the average and perfectly suited to building a character, probably even the type she'd like to play most. BUT it would be even better if they had the same stats that Beatrice had.
There's a lot of psychology & science stuff going on there, and you don't have to feel bad if you behave like most people:
- Relative Deprivation, a whole theory of economics about how people feel about their individualistic lack of resources.
- The Frog Pond Effect, which apart from being a great name for an adventure, says that people consider themselves worse than they actually are off in a higher-performing peer group.
- Social Comparison Theory, which has all kinds of interesting hypotheses about seeing your relative merits, for example that comparing yourself to people closer to you is more "popular". So the Str 16 of the Magic-User might not bother you as much as that of your fellow Fighter.
- Inequity Aversion, which a whole lot of disciplines are studying.
Sometimes the players are quite vocal about it, but don't be too happy that you've got a bunch of Übermensch players in your group if they aren't. Envy and resentment can simmer beyond the surface, or awaken at a later time – maybe if the high stats aren't just there, but actually perform well. Or when the player is a victim of systemic inequity in real life and doesn't like feeling pointed towards that in their escapist hobby, too.
What to do about it?
Let's get a few responses out of the way that I think are pretty lacking:
- Making the differences meaningless. "It doesn't matter" often fails at psychological walls even if it is true. Never mind that I always considered this a bad game design: If rolling is only done for important stuff in-game, why is it done for needless things at character creation?
- A promise of dead goats. Scenarios where this might happen are either very fatal games, where there's some "hope" for upcoming schadenfreude, when the high-roller gets their comeuppance. Or games where group in-fighting is common, and thus you might be able to push Charles 3x18 over that cliff… The gamemaster setting up higher stakes and troubles for the lucky player isn't that much better here.
- "Just get over it." There's a certain edgelordy subset of roleplaying gamers, and gamemasters themselves obviously are removed from the whole equation of bad PC stats here. Combined, this can be a bloody affair. If your first reaction is considering any player who shows a dislike here as a "snowflake" who should toughen up, a re-evaluation of one's empathy might be on the menu.
After getting these three mini-rants off my chest, let's try to be a bit more productive.
Of course, an "obvious" solution is ditching the random generation. There have been plenty of point-buy and other deterministic methods of creating characters in the last decades of roleplaying game design. It's quite likely that one of those is in your rule book or something similar enough that you can quickly graft it on. Now, this doesn't help for other imbalances in the game, like e.g. spellcasters being inherently better. Changing that part of the system or picking one where this might be better is a bit too much for most groups. And well, some people just like random generation.
One approach I liked in the past was making the stat differences meaningful in-world. Point the lucky player towards something where a bit of resentment exists in the game world, too. Examples could be a noble heritage in a Dune-esque sci-fi campaign or most fantasy worlds. Or becoming a Paladin or Jedi Knight – ascetic professions and classes in general balance envy with a bit of pity…
This doesn't mean that the other player now has an in-game reason for pushing someone off a cliff, but maybe a bit of an outlet, channeling feelings into a more productive environment. "Use that anger", as they say in cliche acting classes.
The same is true for more "advantaged" classes. Asceticism was already mentioned above. I'm not a fan at all about the domain system in early D&D, but it has to be said that this "corrected" a few things on the in-world/societal level. Sure, Carina can sling fireballs, but Demetria the fighting-woman gets to rule.
There's one reason why bad stats are often seen as more detrimental as they are: How they're framed to work. Low intelligence = you're almost comically slow. Low charisma = you're ugly and inherently unsympathetic, force to play rude and uncouth.
Those are rather simplistic "self-evaluations". Especially in a system where there isn't much else that determines your character (disadvantages, flaws), you could put a lot more outside influences in there. You're not slow, you're just uneducated because of your station. You're not unlikeable, you might even be classically good-looking, but you're just hard at making friends, aloof or a victim of prejudice and bad stereotyping.
(Personally, I'd avoid outright disabilities, mental disorders or neurodivergence, but that's more a group-specific sentiment, and of course a matter of one's own privileges)
Is it worth it?
For me, that's a big question. I know coping strategies, I'm in a phase of my life where most players are beyond youthful pettiness. So this shouldn't be a big problem. But being the forever gamemaster, I'd like to minimize stumbling blocks, even if the chance of them is low. And I also like long-running campaigns, where even minor annoyances can grow, and minor disadvantages can accumulate.
So when I have a choice, I'm often voting for the deterministic character creation. I'm a bit cowardly here, maybe.