Should point buy be discouraged?

[WheresMyD20]

I prefer having a wide variety of ability score methods presented in the rules and letting the DM decide which ones are appropriate for his game. None of the methods needs to be labelled "default".

 

[Matt James]

I like how DARPG handles abilities. Even if you roll terribly, you are still not that far removed from contributing in a meaningful way.

 

[Dragonblade]

I believe that they do encourage min-maxing, as most of the characters my players play have started with a score of 20 in their most relevant attribute (e.g. the fighter with 20 Strength, the alchemist with 20 Intelligence), etc., via racial ability bonuses on top of point buy. I thought that might simply mean that I'd been too generous with the point-buy allocation, but my players flat-out told me that they were going to put 20 into their "prime requisite" (to use an older term) no matter what.

Of course they would. If they rolled an 18, they aren't suddenly going to put that score somewhere else. You will always put your highest score in the stat that you need the most for the class you want to play.

As I see it, the main draw of point-buy is that it lets you perfectly tailor a character around a specific idea that you already have. If you want to play a wizard, you can make the right stats for a wizard, instead of randomly rolling up a character that'd make a better fighter.

Thats part of it. I want to determine the PC I play, not let the dice pick for me. If you want a character to organically grow from rolling thats cool, but most people don't play that way. They have a concept in mind and want to recreate it on paper.

But the other and equally important part is fairness and balance in play. Its great if you are the guy that lucked out and rolled 16's, 17's and 18's for all your stats. But sucks to be the guy that rolled 12's or less for everything. So what do you do in that scenario? Force them to play that PC? Knowing that that the first thing they are going to want to do is off themselves so they can make a new one? How is that fun? Or watching them perpetually be frustrated as the guy with the uber stats steals the spotlight?

And despite claims to the contrary, you can't RP bad stats into better ones. No matter how much you envision your thief as a daring acrobat. If his Dex is a 12, he will consistently be outshined and outperformed by the PC who has the 18.

Or do you let them reroll? Well, if everyone rerolls their way into better stats, just give them all 16's or 18's and be done with it or let them pick the stats they feel are appropriate. Just dispense with the farce of rolling altogether.

In the last PF game I played before the DM came to his senses, we all rolled 16's or better except one guy who rolled 10's or less. The DM let him reroll five sets of stats before he too finally got to the promised land of uber stats. Then the DM threw up his hands a few levels into the game because he felt we were all too powerful. Well, duh.

So he switched to point buy and it ceased to be an issue.

 

[Number48]

I've also found myself liking several ideas I've recently read on various OSR blogs (most notably Grognardia; forgive me for not posting a link), stating that Pathfinder/D&D is a game, and that the game begins when you first sit down to make a character, not when the first adventure begins - in other words, that character "generation," rather than character "creation" - is part of the game-play, random die rolls and all.

Your stats affect your character from creation to death, it is not equivalent to an encounter. It is much more equivalent to setting up the board for a boardgame. I wouldn't play a version of Monopoly where people started with different amounts of money, even though I might be the who started with the most.

I've played all the variations. Even if you do random stats, if you allow people to assign the numbers to the stat they want, they are going to min-max as much as possible. If you don't allow them to move the stats, then the rolls are dictating what they can be. There are game systems that have completely random character generation for your stats, race and class but D&D has never been one of them.

As an aside, I can recall in 1E/2E days of wanting to play a paladin some day. In 20 or so years, I never once got the stats to play one. A character class shouldn't be something you wait years to get. On the other hand, I can recall several times in 1E that I had stats bad enough that I couldn't qualify for even the race I wanted to play, much less class.

Keep the point-buy and if the game mechanics are unfair or unfun with that, fix the game mechanics. Rolled stats will be unfair or unfun at least some of the time regardless of game mechanics.

 

[Number48]

In the last PF game I played before the DM came to his senses, we all rolled 16's or better except one guy who rolled 10's or less. The DM let him reroll five sets of stats before he too finally got to the promised land of uber stats.

I can tell you from experience that it feels so shameful to be the person that the DM keeps saying, well roll another set, roll another set, roll another set. Do you want me to roll your stats for you? It's just embarrassing.

 

[john112364]

Personally I don't see a problem with having point buy, random rolling (by whatever method you want), and/or an array of stats. Let the DM and players decide which to use. You can use one, two or all three options if you want. As long as everyone is consistent everyone should be ok with it. DnDNext is supposed to be all about options.

 

[howandwhy99]

I like how DARPG handles abilities. Even if you roll terribly, you are still not that far removed from contributing in a meaningful way.

"Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances"?? Yeah, I could see that going over well.

Seriously, random generation can work when the differences are not too large. When you get to Palladium levels or make "exploding die" rolls for ability scores, then it gets out of hand. The idea is variety and a little built in variance of difficulty. It's not as if rolling again to increase or decrease the difficulty is hard.

EDIT:
Also SAD and MAD concerns were built into AD&D classes. Single attribute dependency or single Prime Requisites were defined for the core 4 classes. Personally I take away the "at least a 9" restriction for these in AD&D and make any core classes playable with any score 3-18. Lower is harder, yes, but not so much as to make the game unplayable or the player ineffectual. Multiple attribute dependency or multiple Prime Requisite classes were the sub-classes and keeping these functional and useful was a matter of making a set of rolls qualify for them. Does a Paladin really need a 17 CHA? Maybe you could get away with less, but it was so vital to the class that requiring a bottom limit meant MAD issues didn't get in the way of playing the game as that class.

 

[DonTadow]

flumphs,

curious day yesterday, watched a guys review of Advanced Players Guide on youtube and he had a good observation: point buy for abilities lead to min maxing of characters. Which in turn leads to overpowered pcs. He stressed that you do point buy so everyone is treated fairly in the character creation process. Alternatively he said that it would be better to role a 3d6 or a 4d6 to generate characters. Yes, some people would have average characters and there would be the occasional uber character generated but it solved the problem of bland and boring min maxing.

is he right?
foolish_mortals

If every chaaracter is min/maxed, how is that bland and boring. Bland and boring is a subjective term.

DMs make min/maxing boring. If you have a character who thinks they have a dump skill, make sure that dump skill comes up in everything. My group has realized that I don't have a single dump ability. I have rewards and consequences for all skill rolls. Even mundane and trivial. There have been times at my table where I've had a barbarian go "darn, i wish i had more points in charisma, the party would have gotten tat contract"

 

[Felon]

flumphs,

curious day yesterday, watched a guys review of Advanced Players Guide on youtube and he had a good observation: point buy for abilities lead to min maxing of characters. Which in turn leads to overpowered pcs. He stressed that you do point buy so everyone is treated fairly in the character creation process. Alternatively he said that it would be better to role a 3d6 or a 4d6 to generate characters. Yes, some people would have average characters and there would be the occasional uber character generated but it solved the problem of bland and boring min maxing.

is he right?
foolish_mortals

No, he's not right. If he said the stuff you said, he shouldn't quit his day job. He's way off the mark. Of course, I don't have access to this video, so does he explain how exactly "powerfulness" relevant to how boring or exciting a character is?

One of the problems we have with modern RPG's is this weird notion that character generation should take the center stage. I contend that we make too big a deal out of how it's done. A character is not "exciting" or "boring" because of numbers on his character sheet. Gameploy need to be where the excitement is.

Forget trying to infuse character generation with the fleeting thrill of pulling the lever on a slot machine or scratching numbers of a lotto ticket with a penny. Let's get to the game already.

Btw, this goes double for superhero genre systems.

 

[kitsune9]

I like point buy because I don't want to have to oversee my players generating ability scores and the resulting character generation session. Some gamers find that fun to start the campaign that way, but to me, it's always a waste of good session time. I want to start a new campaign with the adventure.