Rystil Arden
First Post
Well, obviously you can suggest an arbitrarily high PB that would basically require high stats, though I think I can make a lovable loser with ~40, you could then suggest 50. But the actual numbers in question are 30 and 25, and you can make not just a 'lovable loser' of a Rogue but even an abject unplayable failure with 30 PB pretty easily if you want to be bad:Manzanita said:
Str 9
Dex 9
Con 20
Int 9
Wis 16
Cha 7
(To move to 40 and still be a loser, I suggest 15 in Int and 9 in Cha. Focus on sneaking, sleight of hand, lockpicking, and Cha-based skills.)
You can also roleplay a lovable loser pretty easily even with all-around high stats. You just have the character focus on an area where they're bad in roleplaying, to comic results (for instance, the lovable loser in love could be a chauvanistic Barbarian with all 18s, but no ranks in social skills and no manners who always turns off all the girls with crude and off-colour comments). On the other hand, you can't roleplay a character as successful if they're actually a bumbling failure due to stats, since the constant failures will bely this portrayal.
Although you can certainly build them that way statwise with a higher point buy (and you can play a loser even with high stats), I suppose that if your net goal is to force the cohort to be a 'lovable loser', 'bumbling crony', 'constantly-dying side-gag', etc, then it's true that a lower Point Buy will successfully achieve this by disallowing other character types to be built, such as the noble paladin, as you point out.
Compounding the problem is the fact that the cohort will be two levels behind, or more if the player doesn't submit to the exerted forces and tries to make a cohort that isn't a cleric, a druid, or an archer and gets the cohort consistently killed.
I don't see why we should force the cohort to be the bumbling perennially-dying comic relief if that isn't what the player wants it to be.
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