D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats

[Arial Black]

Point buy systems are fair, but don't make the assumption that a point-buy system is equitable for the players. You can look at the character build forums and find point buy character recipes that are far more "powerful" than others. This gives a playing advantage to players that are either very experienced or players that copy recipes. You could carry this further and say: the only way to make point-buy systems equitable, is to only follow set recipes. If you have done that, then why not just give players 3-4 choices of stats for each character class. For beginning players, this may be the way to go.

It is arguable if point-buy recipe characters help or hurt role-play. For long-time gamers, I do not think it helps. Experienced players should probably have a handycap when making characters though.

It should be noted that neither point-buy nor array are 'fair and equitable' to those who want to play a MAD concept versus those who want to play a SAD concept.

If you want to play, say, a charismatic wizard then you can still be as good a wizard as any other in a game that requires point-buy. But if you want to play a charismatic barbarian then you will be a worse barbarian, because you have to take points away from Str/Dex/Con, while the wizard didn't have to take anything away from Int.

And yet, 'charismatic wizard' and 'charismatic barbarian' are equally valid concepts. Why is point-buy so unfair to one concept and not the other, when both concepts are equal?

The 'fairness' of point-buy, when you examine the characters that result from that method, is illusory. Just like some people claim that rolling is 'fair' because everyone starts with the same number of dice while the detractors say that the results of rolling are 'unfair', some people are claiming that point-buy is 'fair' because everyone starts with the same number of points while disregarding the fact that point-buy discriminates against some classes and concepts, and is 'unfair' in that regard.

For both methods, the starting conditions are 'fair' but the results can be 'unfair'. The problem lies with anyone who tries to claim that either method's results are fair, because neither method ensures that the results are fair.

 

[Hriston]

A lot has been made of the unequal results of rolling, but point buy by no means guarantees an equal result. 15, 15, 15, 8, 8, 8 and six other arrays that have two 15's as their highest scores yield a total modifier of only +3, whereas 14, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12 yields a total modifier of +7, which is hardly equitable.

 

[cmad1977]

If I roll my concept is informed by the rolls.
If in point buy the stats are informed by the concept.

Easy peasy.


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[Tony Vargas]

Or we have to use clumsy phraseology and say that the results are inequitable - which while technically is more correct is clumsy at best.

Or just us 'balanced,' since what you're talking about is simply imbalance, as that word is generally used in the hobby.

Ok, so, it's not unfair, but it IS inequitable. And inequitable results are a bad thing in a game.

Not in a competitive game, or you would only have draws. Balance like that is highly desirable in an RPG, at least, one not being played in a competitive mode, whether outright PvP or something more subtle, but fairness is all that's needed in most games.

Sometimes it's unavoidable, such as who starts first in a game

Going first is counted as a small advantage in chess, for example, the unfairness of that is dealt with by /randomly/ determining who plays white.

so, we deal with it as it comes, but, this isn't one of those cases. There's no advantage to inequitable results.

There's an advantage to whomever gets the inequitable results in their favor. And, clearly, a lot of D&Ders do want results like that, not just as results of random generation, but as results of choosing a given concept (and thus class) over another...

 

[Oofta]

Or just us 'balanced,' since what you're talking about is simply imbalance, as that word is generally used in the hobby.

Or just ignore this thread because despite what some people seem to argue it all comes down to personal preference and opinion. Oh wait ... just posted again...NOOOOOO!!!!

 

[Satyrn]

You say that you have the whole of the population be realistically diverse, except for PCs.

But I don't necessarily say that the rest of the population is realistically diverse. Indeed, I don't say anything about the rest of the population. I might build every single NPC with a "subStandard Array."

For me, every one of that diverse population is a valid character idea, and point-buy only lets me play a tiny fraction of them and denies me many valid character concepts.

Hey, if you wanted to use that subStandard Array when I was DMing, or any set of numbers lower than the Standard Array, I'd happily let you.

 

[Hussar]

Yes it is. It simply is. In real life you don't get to choose your stats, so rolling randomly is more realistic than point buy or array. Period. End of story. In reality you can have stats higher than 16 or lower than 8 at the beginning of adulthood/career, so rolling is more realistic than point buy or array. Period. End of story.



ROFL I love how you attempt to prevent background explanations, when in reality you would have them. It's an arbitrary limitation in order to win the internetz and I reject it completely. Regardless, even without a background rolling is more realistic for at least the two reasons I listed.

In real life, you don't get to create your character either. The vast majority of people in the world, and certainly not in a medieval one, don't even get to choose their career. You are a farmer because your father was a farmer and, in many societies, that was the end of it. The notion that character generation, in any form, is "realistic" is laughable.

That we limit the range from 8 to 15 is simply an artifact of this being a game and not any sort of simulation. The notion that your characteristics are entirely randomly determined is, again, laughable. It's not realistic.

But, that's the point about post hoc justifications. "I'm strong, so, my background says that I was a smith. (or whatever)" This isn't related to anything realistic. It's a post hoc justification of a random die roll. You are changing the game world BECAUSE of a die roll. The die roll is in no way influenced by the game world. What element of realism is influencing those rolls? How are those rolls being determined by anything in the game world?

Answer. They aren't. Any reason for those die rolls is determined after the fact to explain why you have this or that stat.

How is that realistic? At least in a life path generation system, you have the game world influencing the die roll. I decide to roll on the "Artisan" table, and I get a point of Strength because I was training as a smith. Ok, fair enough, that's the game world determining the stats. But, trying to go the other way is just layering a veneer of "realism" over what is essentially a completely unrealistic system.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In real life, you don't get to create your character either. The vast majority of people in the world, and certainly not in a medieval one, don't even get to choose their career. You are a farmer because your father was a farmer and, in many societies, that was the end of it. The notion that character generation, in any form, is "realistic" is laughable....

Max & I both mentioned using more involved random generation of just about everything about the character, back in the day, so it's been done. IDK if it was exactly realistic, per se, in some process-sim sense, but, in my case, it was tables that combined character generation tools and setting demographics. So, rolling a 94 means you're from Thaadra, you can infer not a lot of people come from there. That kinda thing.

But, sure, once you start arranging stats or whatever, it's "reallism? what realism?" ;P

 

[Hussar]

...because although role-playing games are 'games', they are also make-believe in an imaginary but believably realistic world of your (or someone else's) creation, and it is a fatal flaw to have so unrelistic a world where every person is exactly as capable/rich/lucky as every other.



Reality isn't random, even if the mechanisms behind reality are so complex and intertwined that they might appear random to us.

The reason we use random rolls for stats is not because random rolls are the cause of the abilities of real people; heredity and health and disease and experiences and many things we don't yet understand contribute in such complex ways that we cannot predict what people will be like even if we know all of the information. We use random rolling because the results of random rolling resemble a real population; certainly a better representation than the results of point-buy or array.

But, your presumption is that all PC's and NPC's are created using the same method. That is not necessarily true, nor is it even assumed by the game.

 

[Maxperson]

In real life,

You can just stop right there. Those three words invalidate everything you said after them. Nobody is talking about real life. The False Dichotomy of "real life" and "no realism whatsoever" that you keep trying to use against me is getting tired. Come back and discuss this with me when you understand that there are a multitude of grades of realism and that a person can want more realism(not having control over your stats and higher and lower possibilities), without needing to randomly roll backgrounds.