Ability Points Buy System how many ?

[Acmite]

I've been in games that use 28 point buy (including Living Greyhawk), 32 point buy (a couple different campaigns), and a modified version of Arcady's system (2 campaigns, both ongoing).

The modifications were basically different criteria that gave you points (eg: having a miniature didn't have any effect on your points, etc).

 

[Plane Sailing]

I originally used 4d6 drop lowest, but this led to some super-characters (two 18's rolled in front of me?) and a distinct lack of balance between PCs

For now I'm using 72 points divided up how the hell you like between 6 attributes; nothing more than 18, nothing less than 3.

Cheers

 

[Zappo]

25 points doesnt make for more than one 16... awfully little it seems... makes Demi-humans more appealable ?

In my campaign, there is the same human ratio as in any other, and demihumans don't seem to be more powerful in any respect.

Yes, 25 points means that the unmodified stats will rarely include more than one 16. Actually, sometimes a player will not even take a 16 and opt for a few of 14s and a 15 to be bumped up at 4th level. This is especially true of fighters; less so for spellcasters who usually raise their key stat as much as possible (sometimes to 18, though these characters tend to be less successful overall). Anyway, this is not 2e... a 14 is far from useless.

Also, while I do get characters with 8s in CHA, they are usually roleplayed well. There's a dwarf druid with 6 CHA in the campaign I'm currently DMing and he is very annoying, for example.

Players who really do powergame find that their characters aren't very successful for one reason or another, and tend to die horribly, usually from disasters they brought on their heads themselves while I even appear to be pulling my punches and seem desperate because I don't want their PCs to die. I'm a very subtle bastard, as I hope that something will slowly seep to the their subconscious about insane and asocial characters not working well.

When I want to play a high powered campaign, I tell the players to make higher level characters.

 

[F5]

I originally used 4d6 drop lowest, but this led to some super-characters (two 18's rolled in front of me?) and a distinct lack of balance between PCs

Plane Sailing makes a good point. In all the 3E games I've played in, we've used the roll-4d6-drop-lowest method. In some cases a couple players got lucky with multiple high scores, and others got only average scores. Those high-scored characters really shined in comparison to the average rollers.
A point-buy system (whatever number of points you use) at least keeps everyone on the same power level. Next game I run will probably be 32 point buy..

 

[Rashak Mani]

Very curious results... I would have thought the ROLLERs would have been stronger than they were as compared to POINT BUY.

RESULTS:

POINT BUY is the most often used SYSTEM

32 pts are the most often chosen... but the number of 28 and 30 pt users adds to the same number. So 28 to 32 is the "natural" tendency of gamers on the board.

Low Power campaigns are a clear minority...

 

[Kichwas]

25 points doesnt make for more than one 16... awfully little it seems... makes Demi-humans more appealable ?

I've always found more than one 15+ stat to be 'munchkin' so it's just about right for my tastes.

It seems to work quite well for the way the 3E is balanced anyway. I always hated how in the older versions of the game you had to have maxed out stats for them to matter at all. Now there's a broad range of useful stat values.

Very curious results... I would have thought the ROLLERs would have been stronger than they were as compared to POINT BUY.

There's a LOT of people who over the years have been caling for a non random method of character design for DnD. SOme of them like myself felt strongly enough about the issue to move on to other games. If it wasn't for point buy I wouldn't be playing 3E.

To me it's no suprise that things are turning out this way. I suspect that over time the point buy favoring crowd will grow even larger.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Point buy has the very compelling advantage that it allows the DM to tune the style of the campaign.

The most frequent criticism of point buy systems is that "all the characters look the same". I do not think that is a problem with 3e point buy.

There are a lot of reasonable ways to make the same general character niche. Fighters do not have to have a great Str. A good Str and good Wis may prove more valuable (Spot, Listen, and Will are pretty important rolls).

Even a Wiz or Cleric could have a modest casting stat and choose to concentrate on utility & defensive spells during combat.

 

[Conaill]

When the point buy is high enough (32+) a CR n enounter will feel like a CR n-((points-28)/4) encounter but give the XP of CR n.

Arcady, check my post on the first page...

One level for every four points seems excessive. According to the ECL calculators, you get approximately +1ECL for every 10-20 points. That would give a formula more like:

((points-25)/15)

So 40 point buy is as if you're playing a character that's one level higher.

 

[Kichwas]

One level for every four points seems excessive. According to the ECL calculators, you get approximately +1ECL for every 10-20 points. That would give a formula more like

I'd say those fan made calculators are off.

It doesn't take all that much difference in stats to have a very signifigant impact on play.

In published races a simple +1 cumulative total is enough to give an ECL.

 

[Conaill]

In published races a simple +1 cumulative total is enough to give an ECL.

That's already 6 points minimum. And if you reckon that the high ability bonuses will typically be combined with high stats, that would easily sum up to 8 or 10 points. I agree that 20 points seems a little high though.

BTW, the ECL calculators use different weights for different stats. As WotC has stated, a +2 to STR tends to be more powerful than a +2 to WIS or CHA.

I'd be willing to buy that a 35 pointbuy character is equivalent to a +1 ((points-25)/10), but I don't think a 36 pointbuy character is equivalent to a +1 ECL, as in your formula.

[Edit: waitaminite... are you saying a +1 *total*? That I don't believe. The ECL calculators were designed to fit the published ECL levels.]