I want faster character creation. Also, I’m a monster.

[Immortal Sun]

Doing more makes the character creation mini game more fun. It doesn't do very much to make the game itself more fun.

I think that is an extremely subjective opinion.

I personally love it when mechanical choices I make show up at the table. When my character is built to do something and then does it that is just really awesome.

 

[cfmcdonald]

I repeat, rolling one set of six abilities takes longer than Point Buy if you’re not trying to waste your day on it.

If you use point buy with any frequency, you know that after racial adjustments, every character ends up with either a 16, 14, 14, 12, 12, 8 spread or a 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 10 spread, depending on how the player feels about having a -1 in something (usually Strength or Intelligence).. Maybe a 17, 14, 14, 10, 10, 8 or a 16, 15, 14, 12, 10, 10, 8 if they know they want to take a Feat that gives +1 to something when they get the chance. If it consistently takes your players more time to get to that using point buy than it does to roll 4d6, drop the lowest, and add up the rest six times, then they’re either unfamiliar with point buy, or just genuinely enjoy taking their time with these decisions.

You are assuming someone with deep familiarity with 5e D&D and point buy, like they've read the PHB front to back 5 times and built a ton of point buy characters. I've played a ton of D&D in various editions but frankly I have no idea what you're talking about because I've never used point buy and don't really think in terms of stat optimization when making a character. Imagine someone who has never used point buy and never made a D&D character before. If you say "a standard array is really fast", sure I'd believe that.

 

[jgsugden]

You're a monster. A monster than is failing to see the forest for the trees. Go get some wood. Dirty.

Building a PC is more than stats. It is building the character of a character. In a role playing - story - game, even if the statistics and abilities are quick to cook up, the personality should be a long, slow, simmer. When I build a new 1st level character, it takes many hours. About 2 minutes is spent on stats, and the rest of the time is spent thinking about how the character came to be, what their story is, why they have the flaws they do, who they care about, why they're picking up a sword and murdering monsters, etc... I like to give my DM 2 or 3 pages of story prompts, hooks, and opportunities to make the game better for me, and for everyone.

 

[dave2008]

Wasn't there a UA with a system for quickly creating characters recently? This one's from 2016, but I thought there was a more recent one too (or maybe it was in XGE?).

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/quick-characters

I think your talking about the Sidekicks UA: https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA_Sidekicks.pdf

Many people thought these would make good characters as well.

 

[Charlaquin]

You are assuming someone with deep familiarity with 5e D&D and point buy, like they've read the PHB front to back 5 times and built a ton of point buy characters. I've played a ton of D&D in various editions but frankly I have no idea what you're talking about because I've never used point buy and don't really think in terms of stat optimization when making a character. Imagine someone who has never used point buy and never made a D&D character before. If you say "a standard array is really fast", sure I'd believe that.

Ok, but “Point buy is hard to learn for new players” is a very different argument than “point buy slows character creation to a crawl.” If that had been the argument FrogReaver had made, I wouldn’t have disagreed with them. I generally recommend new players use the standard array and if they insist on customizing their scores more than that, I accept and honor that desire and teach them how to do it.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ok, but “Point buy is hard to learn for new players” is a very different argument than “point buy slows character creation to a crawl.” If that had been the argument FrogReaver had made, I wouldn’t have disagreed with them. I generally recommend new players use the standard array and if they insist on customizing their scores more than that, I accept and honor that desire and teach them how to do it.

The argument is for experienced players as well. More options takes a lot more time to compare and contrast. You may have already compared and contrasted the various point buy options and know the ones you like best from memory and thus could sit down and fairly quickly make a character but for those that haven’t done this or don’t remember all their favorites it can take a while.

 

[Charlaquin]

The argument is for experienced players as well. More options takes a lot more time to compare and contrast. You may have already compared and contrasted the various point buy options and know the ones you like best from memory and thus could sit down and fairly quickly make a character but for those that haven’t done this or don’t remember all their favorites it can take a while.

Point buy really isn’t so complicated once you learn it. Like, if you know what you’re doing, it’s just as quick and easy as arrays. It’s ultimately just a system for tweaking arrays anyway.

Again, if your argument is that point buy is hard to use if you’re not familiar with it, I won’t dispute it. It’s an awkward system that takes some effort to learn. But it does not inherently slow down character creation, particularly not if your group regularly uses it.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[FrogReaver]

Point buy really isn’t so complicated once you learn it. Like, if you know what you’re doing, it’s just as quick and easy as arrays. It’s ultimately just a system for tweaking arrays anyway.

Again, if your argument is that point buy is hard to use if you’re not familiar with it, I won’t dispute it. It’s an awkward system that takes some effort to learn. But it does not inherently slow down character creation, particularly not if your group regularly uses it.

I’ve said what I mean like 20x times. What I mean isn’t that point buy takes a long time for inexperienced players. It takes a long time for experienced players too. It vastly increases their number of options and a player that cares about comparing and contrasting those options takes a while.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’ve said what I mean like 20x times. What I mean isn’t that point buy takes a long time for inexperienced players. It takes a long time for experienced players too. It vastly increases their number of options and a player that cares about comparing and contrasting those options takes a while.

And I disagree. It does not take players who are experienced with using point buy long to generate a set of stats with it, if they don’t want it to take a long time. If your players are consistently taking much longer to generate stats using point buy than they are to generate them using 4d6 drop 1, then they are either not very experienced at using point buy, or they enjoy taking their time with it. And in the latter case, “rolling is faster” is not going to be a very convincing argument for why they shouldn’t be using point buy.