How many of your use the 22 point buy in the phb?

[Ginnel]

I voted yes even though I'm not playing 4E. There are a lot of things in 4E that I like and am importing into my house ruled 3.5E game, this is one of them. I would prefer players to use the standard spread, but I will allow any of the possible 22-point buy spreads. I used to use a random roll of 4d6, rerolling all "1's" and the first "2", and using the highest three; do this 6 times and choose which stats the numbers are assigned to. But after seeing the standard spread and point buy in the 4E PHB, I wondered why I hadn't always been doing this. I'll never go back to random rolls for stats.

Almost my thoughts and experiences exactly, I loved rolling dice for stats for that thrill of random chance, but I can forego that for more fun later on when everyone is being equally useful and have the stats to fit their concept.

current 4th edition campaign is same point buy as 22 but with 28 points, allowing characters to run about with 2 18's for two attack stats if wanted.

Dragonborn Fighter worked out as 18str 16con 13dex 13int 13wis 10 cha
a kinda jack of all trades concept worked out quite neatly, can get the feats for all kinds of odds and ends and I have nice scores in 2 key abilities too.

 

[chromeraven]

In the game I'm playing in now, we're doing 22 p.b.

when I run I will do either a 26 p.b. or roll 4d6 and drop.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

We've used point buy in 3E most of the time (starting with 25, but later adopted also 28 and 32 point buy), and naturally picked the "new" 22 point-buy of 4E.

 

[juk380x]

I always use 22 pt buy, and I don't think it makes some classes less viable. MAD does not really occur in 4E unless you're trying to build characters who can do everything. For instance, there are Warlords who depend on STR and either CHA or INT, Warlocks depend on CHA or CON and INT, and so on. This is not MAD - it just requires you to prioritize one stat over the other, so that you wouldn't make an All-round character. It's like that for practically every class (aside maybe for the wizard - INT and WIS all the way).

The 22-pt-buy is pretty well balanced with regards to party roles and character building concepts. If the party is getting pounded by the monsters, it means they either didn't really 'build' their PCs well, or they lack tactical prowess. I mean, not everybody is a charoper or a tactical mastermind. In that case, the DM should just give them slightly easier encounters. On the other hand, if you give them better stats, you might unbalance the game not in the sense that the encounters will become too easy (you can always make them harder if you want) but in the sense that the characters will be able to do too much stuff, which somehow dilutes the experience for me. I like playing rogues, but it would be less fun for me if I could have a huge DEX plus a great STR and CHA scores. I would kick ass in too many skills and fighting styles, which would feel wrong. It makes sense that you have to choose between the strong, brutal type and the weaker, more agile type with social skills

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I've been using point buy as written for now, and unless any of my players raise it as an issue then I'll continue to do so.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

In one of my 3.x games, we rolled. Then one of my players confessed to having rolled 65,000 times (using a program, and, no, I'm not kidding) to get the stats he wanted. Which, IMO, defeats the purpose of rolling the dice. Why not just use point buy?

So for my 4e game, that's what we did, 22-point buy and it's working quite well so far.

 

[keterys]

Standard array in one game (wanted to speed up character creation and make it just about learning the game) and point buy in the other two.

Don't like rolling, though I do like some methods like using cards to generate characters that are all on par with each other.

If I weren't running modules at the moment (so I had more exacting control of the campaign), I might be okay with having rolled characters if they shared rolls somehow (like maybe have the four players all roll 3d6 at once and they get to take one of the rolls, do so 6 or 7 times, then each person arrange with the same array)

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

We usually roll. I typically allow a single extra roll if you don't like the first one, with the option of using point-buy/the standard array at any time.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I let players roll 4d6, drop the lowest, as in 3e. If they don't like what they get, they can use the Standard Array or 22 point buy.

I have been thinking of a 26 or 28 point buy, though.

 

[Dykstrav]

You speak of them as though they were mutually exclusive, as if superior stats somehow made the player dumber or more incompetent in some manner.

Given all other things equal, if we assume that 2 PCs are played with just as much skill and finesse, the one with better stats would always be better off. So I don't see why I deliberately need to gimp my own PC just to prove a point?

They're not mutually exclusive. Since it's the skill of the player that matters, you certainly can play a character with all 18's with just as much skill and finesse as a character with average scores. It is not incumbent upon a player to play a noodle-armed, butter-fingered, asthmatic, mentally and socially inept character to "prove" that you are a skilled roleplayer. (Besides which, I play D&D for fun, not to prove points.) If the game is fun I'll give it a shot.

I've had just as much fun playing a character made using 2E's method I (3d6 in order) as I have in a game that used a 40-point point buy. I really think that having high ability scores isn't as important as some claim it to be. But then again, character power (and not even necessarily success) doesn't equate to fun for me.

Personally, I find it more challenging and less fun to play characters with little differentiation in ability scores because nothing stands out about that character's natural talents. Whether the character is hopelessly average (all 10-12) or superheroic (all 15+), nothing stands out. The choice of character class doesn't seem as natural and it stretches my suspension of disbelief to have a character that could be good at anything he wanted to try. I like having a few shortcomings when I play. Characters that can do just about anything on their own need others less, which detracts from the dynamic of a balanced adventuring party.

This is all beside the fact that ability scores really don't have much to do with the root causes of most failures for characters and their parties: bad dice rolling, poor player skill, and poor DM skill. You can have all the positive modifiers in the world and it probably won't help too much if you keep rolling 1's all night long. Conversely, even a wizard can become a melee terror if the player is rolling 20's all night and the DM keeps rolling 1's for the monsters. Nothing about your character's ability scores can (nor should) keep a player from making bad decisions, like sticking the character's head into the darkness inside the mouth of the carved green devil-face in the Tomb of Horrors. If the challenges are too hard for the characters, they are too hard because the DM made them them too hard, not because of the ability score generation method or any other mathematical function of the game.