Rolling for Ability Scores or Point Buy

[Badapple]

I used to roll characters, created hundreds of them for fun, mostly just collections of ability scores. One of the first BASIC programs I wrote was a character generator. To this day anytime I'm playing any kind of boardgame that has me roll three six siders, if I get a 17 or an 18, there's a little part of me that thinks "oh I wish I used that roll when I was making a D&D character!" In short I always equated creating characters with rolling up scores.

But one day I was creating a character for an online game and I got something really insane, like two 18s, a 17, and the lowest score something like a 12. Jackpot!!!!

I felt like I couldn't just show up to this online game with this character, or everyone would figure I cheated, so I intentionally nipped down some points here and there to make him more in line with a typical rolled character. So weirdly enough I cheated, by downgrading my rolls, so that I wouldn't be perceived as a cheater.

So, once down this road, I was in a different online game and then instead of rolling, I just picked some stats out of my butt and put them on his sheet (making sure they weren't too high or too low). I did this because I had a certain type of character I wanted to play, and I was tired of rolling dice over and over again trying to get them to work out to meet the character I just picked an average spread that met his prerequisites, with like a 17 in his main stat or something. If anything his total scores were lower than the average for the party. So weirdly enough I cheated, but for a noble reason and with restraint, so that I would have the character I wanted to play.

Then I pretty much realized that what I was doing was a sort of self enforced point buy anyway. Shrug. So I now I prefer point buy. And then I ate some pie, the end.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Thank god I do not play this game online.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Single-class Wizard (Illusionist, banned Evokation) played as a Wisdom-7 somewhat-stereotypical blonde. Years of fun!

Ahah - thought that might be it. Wizards are, luckily for you!, the most SAD character class in the game. With a good Intelligence score (yours was okay, but not great; I like to start Wizards with 16 Int scores in PB - 17s and 18s are too expensive!), you can minimize the downside effect of all the other ones. Still takes some good play, but it's far, far easier to do than, say, a Fighter or a Cleric.

Which only has a little to do with how much fun you have playing, of course, if you like low stats as a challenge. The challenge would have been far greater, though, if you'd picked a different class.

Thanks; though I've no idea if that's good, bad or indifferent.

19 point buy is a little low; the standard is 25.

EDIT: Adjusting your stats to a 25-PB value:

Starting: 15-12-11-11-10-7

Adjusted: 16-13-12-12-10-8

So, an additional +1 to most things, except wherever you dropped the 10. A little more powerful, but not hugely so, especially given the o'erwhelming importance of Int to the Wizard.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - I know you keep a ton of stats on your campaigns. As an experiment, randomly pick 10 or so PC's and calculate their point buy value. Here is the point buy calculator: Point Buy Method Help

Stat Point Cost
8 0
9 1
10 2
11 3
12 4
13 5
14 6
15 8
16 10
17 13
18 16

It might be interesting to see how many come out above or below the 25 PBV standard. I predict that most will be above, but, that's my gut feeling.

 

[Lanefan]

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - I know you keep a ton of stats on your campaigns. As an experiment, randomly pick 10 or so PC's and calculate their point buy value.

It might be interesting to see how many come out above or below the 25 PBV standard. I predict that most will be above, but, that's my gut feeling.

Without even checking I can tell you most would be way above, as we have always - since 1981, anyway - used 5d6 drop two for roll-up.

I ran the numbers a few years ago, not against point-buy values but against actual average of the 6 starting stats after racial adjust (thus 18-16-14-12-10-8 and 13-13-13-13-13-13 would both count as 13.00) and found the starting average made only a very slight difference in expected career length.

Ahah - thought that might be it. Wizards are, luckily for you!, the most SAD character class in the game. With a good Intelligence score (yours was okay, but not great; I like to start Wizards with 16 Int scores in PB - 17s and 18s are too expensive!), you can minimize the downside effect of all the other ones. Still takes some good play, but it's far, far easier to do than, say, a Fighter or a Cleric.

Which only has a little to do with how much fun you have playing, of course, if you like low stats as a challenge. The challenge would have been far greater, though, if you'd picked a different class.

This was one where I had the class in mind before I started rolling - my intent was to try as best I could to build a 1e Illusionist using 3e rules. As you can see I didn't roll anything near the required 16 Dex., but as 3e doesn't care about such things I just went with it anyway.

And Wisdom 7 just makes it fun - who needs will saves anyway?

That is one thing I don't much like about point-buy or array systems - they never seem to want to account for very low stats. The bell curve in effect becomes 8-18, losing all the yummy 3-7 goodness! A series of lines often heard around here during roll-up goes:

"18!"
"That makes it useful."
"7!"
"That makes it playable!"

Lanefan

 

[Zustiur]

I'm happy with either. The only mitigating factors I use with dice rolling methods is there to keep the characters more consistent within the party, rather than to provide balance against an expected norm.
That is; I now have all players roll up an array, then choose whichever of those arrays they want to use. This means they can all use the same array if they want to.

Another option I haven't seen mentioned is to roll all the characters, then determine who got the highest in equivalent points buy terms. Determine the points difference between characters, and bring the lower characters up to meet the highest.
Say, Character A's stats equate to 31 points, B's are 28 and C's are a mere 25. Character B gets given 3 points to spend and C gets given 6.
In this way, being the person who rolled the highest may not actually be beneficial, because the other players get more control over their arrays than you do.