Search results

You gain a more variable - and thus, both more realistic and believable - set of characters. Your second sentence disagrees with your first, in that you are saying I shouldn't roll unless everyone else actively wants to. That implies (to the point of almost outright saying) that one non-roller...

Based on a bunch of ghost stories and examples too numerous to list, common sense would tell me this rule is wrong; and that the spectre (or whatever) can move through other creatures and objects as if those obstacles were not present. That they take damage if they remain inside an object seems...

So, yet again, it's the roller who has to compromise rather than the point-buyer. Got it.

Except that in most cases we're not talking about that scenario. Instead we're talking about scenarios where there's a wide range of competencies and abilities that may or may not be in different aspects of the game. So you might have the football player who is really good at getting in the...

Some would call that spotlight sharing: everyone gets their moments. Meh, if the players want to split the party I'm fine with that as it means they're willing to do some waiting; and if the party gets split by a game effect then so be it*. I take it as an accepted fact of life that...

I really like the spell-draining idea. Yoink! :)

The chooseable options are the basics; if you want something special you have to roll for it and may or may not get it...this time. I do it this way for various elements of character creation, not just class. This allows rare-in-theory to be and remain rare-in-practice.

This tangentially raises another point: with point buy or standard array something I like to do becomes impossible: that being to gate certain classes etc. behind high rolls in order to make them less commonly seen in play and a little bit special if-when they do arise.

I have a hard time believing this, provided the rolls were done honestly and witnessed. I once watched in awe as a player of mine legitimately rolled 18-18-17-17-15-15 (in whatever order). Then it hit the field and the combat dice took over; thanks to a critical hit from a Giant that character...

If 4e was all that was out there and I was brand new to RPGing, I wouldn't have much of a choice. :) Similar to when (with a few niche exceptions) B/X and 1e was all there was; and anyone brand new to RPGing ended up for the most part accepting the kind of gameplay those games offered. Since...

"Wipe them out. All of them." - Palpatine/Sidious.

The question then becomes one of whether they should cater to that player psychology or try to incrementally change it such that a "miss" streak is simply accepted as part of the game rather than bemoaned.

So you're not a fan of dynastic teams, then. Fair enough. Except that in the situation where the PCs are intended to be reflective of a bit of a cross-section of their respective populations... ...then certain characters ARE born with a certain size, brain power, etc. (personality too but...

Because getting the character into play gives it a chance to work out OK despite its stats (believe me, some do!). If it doesn't, retiring it serves to make the campaign setting* just that little bit broader and deeper in the long run. * - irrelevant if the DM is running a hard-line AP with no...

Sure, I'm fine with that. There's ways of doing it that aren't too obvious. :)

Thing is, disparity is not a bad thing. Right now Alphonso Davies is a far better football player (when he's not injured!) than most of the other pro players out there; ditto Connor McDavid when it comes to hockey. Do those disparities make football or hockey worse games? No. Why not...

They still kept linear bonuses for 5e, though, which is an inexplicable design choice when using a bell-curve generation method.

And IME that guy hiding in the back being ineffective ain't always the one with the bad stats. Quite the opposite, in fact: bad-stats guy is often the one front and centre trying to prove himself.

Perhaps, but if generally higher scores are desired the DM can always set the point-buy value higher.

I'm more "what goes around, comes around" when it comes to this. And, IME (even including 3e) I've had great stats on characters who didn't get out of their third session and relatively awful stats on characters who lasted for years. Further, if a character just isn't working - be it due to...