25 or 32...what's the REAL "standard" point buy?

[The Sigil]

I give my players a "74 point buy."

You get 74 total attribute points. That's an 18, a 16, and four 10's for those scoring at home. Or, if you have all "even numbered" attributes, it's a sum of +7 for your attribute modifiers.

Yes, this allows PCs to get a lot of mileage out of a single stat. No, it hasn't been problematic.

(74 is also the closest integer to total of the average "4d6 drop lowest die" character, too)

--The Sigil

 

[Psiblade]

Over time, I have become a big fan of point buy. Characters tend not to get divided into haves and have nots based on die rolling. We play several different games with different point buy.

25 points - Legacy of the Green Regent. Hard to make unusual characters work. Very low powered games are produced. 25 is a little low in my opinion. Encounters of the appropriate level are hard.

28 points - Living Greyhawk & Secondary Home campaign. Characters can be different and viable. Characters slightly larger than life. Encounter levels seem right on at this level.

32 points - Primary Home campaign. Characters are heroes. Characters are more powerful than encounter level. Characters will need a +1 or +2 Encounter level adjustment to make this challenging.

-Psiblade

 

[silentspace]

I believe 25 point buy is weak, and 32 point buy is also pretty weak. 25 points is the stated 'average' that the game is designed around. But is it?

Look at the NPCs in most modules. They are tough tough tough. Lots of points. Look at the NPCs in the Epic Level Handbook. Blows 25 points out of the water.

Living Greyhawk is 28, right? I just checked an NPC in a Living Greyhawk module. First one I check turns out to be built with 42 points.

I guess it all boils down to how you want to play. Do you want to play a bunch of mediocre scrubs who get their jollies by trying to kill stronger, smarter, more charming opponents? Or do you want to play a more 'heroic' character, who's at least on par with your opponents?

 

[silentspace]

So for me, it's not a question of what's 'adequate'. (There's a little bit of macho posturing there, isn't there? "I beat four orcs with my 25 point buy character! I rock at role-playing!") It's more about a sense of fairness. Of course, this will not be an issue if you don't use published modules, and build all your opponents yourself, using the same point buy.

Just my two cents. Cheers!

 

[Terwox]

I'm doing 30 points right now, but it's mainly because my players whined a lot about not wanting 28.

I'm -extremely- pleased with point buy. I really don't like the dice rolling method.

There's always either somebody who rolls bad, or somebody who rolls really well. Although the 3.0 psion with 4str 4dex and 6con was a really cool character (he was outside the lines, but he really wanted to play him,) with a neat backstory and motif, that you can't really get with point buy... well, that's abnormal too, you know?

More often it was that somebody would roll the equivalent of a 45+, and other people would be sitting on low thirties. I don't know if my players cared if somebody was vastly more combat effective... but I did. It's not as fun for me to DM to how messed up dice rolls get.

I personally really really prefer point buy myself... I don't like the whole random die roll determines the character you might play for a few years. It can have cool results, but it's more frustrating, and less "my creation" if I rolled dice for it.

But I guess I started playing at 3E's birth and I got into white wolf's generation system first. So, meh!

butbut... point buy. yeah, if you've only done point buy 35+, or something better than 4d6... goodness, try dm'ing without doing it. The encounters actually make sense and are challenging and fun without as much tweaking. It's incredibly easier to balance... I was impressed. I'd never tried it, I love it.

 

[Cor Azer]

I use 28 or 30 point buy in my face-to-face games, usually as an option instead of rolling 4d6 drop lowest. In my PbeM games, a new character gets a base of 25 points, with a possible additional 10 points based on the character's background.

 

[silentspace]

Balancing shouldn't be difficult no matter what point buy you use, shouldn't it?

For example, four standard orcs (MM orcs) are not the same as four elite orcs. Which in turn is not the same as four 32-point buy orcs.

Why do people think its impossible to 'balance' encounters if you do anything other than 25 point buy?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I've used 22, 25, 28, 30, 32, and 36 point buy.

22 Point buy is what Living Greyhawk uses for cohorts. It's possible to make an effective character but requires using at least one dump stat. I wouldn't recommend it for a campaign.

25 Point buy is used in the Legacy of the Green Regent campaign. It's rather limiting in terms of what can be done and certain characters (monks, paladins, etc) will tend to look rather cookie cutter since they don't have a lot of flexibility.

28 Point buy is what I've used in Living Greyhawk and a couple of home campaigns. You can do a fair amount with 28 points including multiclassed characters.

30 points was what my group used for the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. My archer cleric was more successful with 30 points than with 28 but, on the whole it is similar.

32 points is what the Living Arcanis campaign uses. It allows more flexibility than 28 points but, IME, it seems that more players have managed to take that flexibility (and a number of high-powered Arcanis races) and create ineffective characters with them. I see a lot more uselessness in Arcanis than in Greyhawk.

36 points is what I mistakenly used for first 3.x campaign I ran (I thought it would give numbers similar to what we generally got with (4d6-L)x3. It's also what the home campaigns I'm playing in ATM use. In my experience, it's roughly equivalent to a +1 ECL race and, like ECL races, tends to result in a more deadly game since greater challenges are necessary to compete with the more powerful (offensively) characters but the characters' defense isn't actually equal to the challenge so PCs are more likely to be killed by a bad roll. (Incidentally, my experience with that campaign and early Living Greyhawk also demonstrated that high stat points don't actually make up for low magic. Since magic enhances characters' abilities in a number of ways that stats don't, the more stat-dependent campaign quite quickly ends up favoring characters who depend less on items--barbarians who figure they'll get hit anyway over fighters who try to go the defensive sword and shield route (you can't maintain this without getting magic armor and shield, etc), multiclass clerics and wizards who can use spells to buff themselves over fighters, etc).

If I had to choose a single point buy, it would probably be 28. The game seems to work best there though 32 points works as well.

 

[ARandomGod]

We used 30 points in the last game we started. In the game before we use "Pick your stats, total sum of modifiers can't be higher than +12, DM may adjust them as he sees fit based on class and gear". In the game before that we used "Distribute 75 points between all stats (starting at 0) at a 1 per 1 rate".

Now, THIS is the type of system I personally prefer.
Of the two I like the "Sum of the modifiers cannot be higher than X,
where X pretty much sets the power level of the game.

I personally think the 3-18 stats should be just dropped and your ability "score" should be your modifier. That's how I think of it anyhow. Sure, you would no longer get those (To me mostly useless and a little confusing when it comes to certain spell effects) odd numbered scores. But if you felt you really needed them you can always go ahead and keep half numbers listed in the mod "score".

I DO think it's funny when I forget and say things out loud that way:

"Well, I have a three for intelligence, so that nets me more skills." ~me

"Wait. What?" ~ the unInitiated

 

[clark411]

We ran with standard array for a few years. It felt fine, but it does cause some problems if your characters start dying. With a set array of stats, there are only so many ways you can build a class, and with people having their favorites (races and classes), there were only a handful of ways you could build a character.

Oh- with standard array the DM let monks and paladins have a bonus 3 points worth of stats to tack onto the standard array.

If I were to run, I'd probably go 28. In my experience, standard array and that region are very survivable, and yet they still push players to work well together. When we had players with disgusting stats at one point, the casualty rates were quite high as we were so "superior" to what we were facing.