D&D 5E Point buy or Dice?

[Herr der Qual]

I love the dice roll, whether I'm playing or whether I'm DMing, it adds some cool curve balls, I don't like point buy because in life, we don't get to pick out bodies, and it seems cheap to me and it restricts characters from developing cool attributes, I love picking up my dice and giving six rolls and seeing what class suits him best. My current character was random rolled and my dice were hot! I've really been enjoying playing a thoroughly tough character.

I wound up with: Str 18, Dex 11, Con 19, Int 13, Wis 18 and Cha 16. That's after the modifiers from selecting a Mountain Dwarf. I random roll my personality traits too, went with outlander and actually met personality traits that match his stats in a weird way: I'm always picking things up, fiddling with them and sometimes breaking them (low dex), I watch over my friends as if they were a litter of newborn pups (high cha), Ideals: Change (high wis), Bonds An injury to the wilderness of my home is an injury to me (no conjunction), Flaws: No room for caution (high Con, Str) used to being able to survive the punishment of living recklessly, maybe a byproduct of it.

Random rolling all of these attributes and traits makes the role playing a lot more fun for me. I random roll NPC's 98% of the time too, when I DM. If I wind up with a character that I've done the point buy system with I don't find I enjoy it as much, it's just not as fun. I've also had characters with terrible stats, I ran an Aasimar Oracle in Pathfinder that had one stat above 11 and it was his Cha which was 20 after the racial modifier, his stats were Str 8, Dex 9, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 6, Cha 20. His perception was terrible, he wasn't stupid but he wasn't brilliant and he was doomed wading into melee range with anything, but man did his spells hit home and he could charm the pants off anyone a party member had gotten himself in trouble with, once beat a bard at a music competition as well. He was a blast to play, yes I could have built that with a point buy but I would have never dumped a stat like Wis, especially not that hard.

So what system do you guys prefer and why? Is there a difference for you if you are DMing or Playing?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

The new philosophy is somewhat against rolling stats, seems even HP as well. I love rolling them, and we just use the 3e rule that if your stat bonus total is less than +1 you can re-roll. I've given my players the options and they always take the roll. When DM'ing I always roll monster HP too, I dislike the standard Ogre has 53 HP all the time idea. Some are tougher, some weaker. Why? Its how it always was when I got into gaming and I like the challenge of making a decent PC with what I roll.

 

[Umbran]

I haven't done a survey, but my experience is that most game systems these days are working with some style of point-buy character generation. Random generation is kind of rare these days.

I am happy with both. I am leaning to using point-buy for D&D games in the near future, rather than dice. While I personally often like the restriction that comes with taking a random role (restriction -> creativity, for me), I can see that most often, avoiding the "Joe rlled so much better than I did!" issue is a good thing.

 

[Herr der Qual]

I can see that most often, avoiding the "Joe rlled so much better than I did!" issue is a good thing.

I've had situations like that where in a group I was DMing one character rolled way worse than the others, I told him "give the character a chance, play his strengths", once he picked his race and class, he actually wound up being the leader of the group because he used everything he had more intelligently than the two beefcakes that had some juicy stats, they just kinda went "hulk smash" all the time and didn't do as well, he was really creative with the his use of equipment and skills to really shine in the group and after that it was one of his favorite characters he ever played. I'm a big fan of the tough it out school, if not retire the character try again.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Smart play by the player is so much more important than good stats that I've rarely seen the lucky rollers dominate the table. And at our table when someone rolls a new PC and gets good stats we tend to be happy since it will make the party a bit stronger, at least until that player makes another boneheaded decision or the dice abandon him and he is back rolling up a new one. Nobody pouts.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I like to roll stats but take average HP. It's possible that I may be influenced by expected values here: if average HP rounded down instead of up I'd probably roll.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The new philosophy is somewhat against rolling stats, seems even HP as well. I love rolling them, and we just use the 3e rule that if your stat bonus total is less than +1 you can re-roll. I've given my players the options and they always take the roll. When DM'ing I always roll monster HP too, I dislike the standard Ogre has 53 HP all the time idea. Some are tougher, some weaker. Why? Its how it always was when I got into gaming and I like the challenge of making a decent PC with what I roll.

Smart play by the player is so much more important than good stats that I've rarely seen the lucky rollers dominate the table. And at our table when someone rolls a new PC and gets good stats we tend to be happy since it will make the party a bit stronger, at least until that player makes another boneheaded decision or the dice abandon him and he is back rolling up a new one. Nobody pouts.

I agree with both of these. Keeping variable HP among monsters keeps players on their toes, which is a good way to avoid metagaming. Also, having truly random stats can end up with some of the most memorable PCs. I had a fighter with a 6 CHA once. Made him a lumbering brute covered in scars and missing teeth, which are role-playing attributes I probably wouldn't have if his CHA wasn't so low.

 

[Taronkov]

In the new group I'm with you roll but if you end up with a worse stat line than the point buy system could get you, you can opt to use the point buy. We had to do this after a player got a high roll of 10 on their six rolls. That was on 4d6 drop the lowest mind you. I personally like the point buy system though. It means everyone starts on equal terms from a build perspective. If most people roll average and one player rolls amazing that one person will always outshine the rest of the party. Either way it's all a matter of preference.

 

[PnPgamer]

In our group we average our rolled total into between +6 and +8, so if it is too low or too high, we roll a new one. I prefer rolling but we have been using point buy for balance reasons I guess.

 

[Herr der Qual]

In the new group I'm with you roll but if you end up with a worse stat line than the point buy system could get you, you can opt to use the point buy. We had to do this after a player got a high roll of 10 on their six rolls. That was on 4d6 drop the lowest mind you. I personally like the point buy system though. It means everyone starts on equal terms from a build perspective. If most people roll average and one player rolls amazing that one person will always outshine the rest of the party. Either way it's all a matter of preference.

I understand that the point buy system does have the advantage of making things even for the party, but I disagree that if one person has better stats than the rest of the party that he will shine, you can counteract your stats with race, class and feat options (if feats are allowed in your group).

I just feel like the randomness adds a bunch. In a previous group we had two rules for random rolls if you have one or more stats with negative modifiers you can reroll one stat (doesn't have to be one of the bad stats) and one switch, regardless of how well your rolls go you can say swap your str for your dex.