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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8578603" data-attributes="member: 93670">That zero point buy is an interesting start, but it feels more like something with a function of ensuring that resulting "rolls" are statistically believable  & even the standard elite array of 15/14/13/12/10/8 leaves extra points to improve till you wind up with things like the completely bonkers 18/18/18/5+1/5+1/5 that [USER=6683330]@lichmaster[/USER] noted.  very the low odds of numbers below 8 with 4d6k3 is not properly weighted to the value of being able to minmax themuch better odds of high scores above 12 exactly asd much or little as needed.  Almost no character needs more than 3 maybe 4 stats & even that odd nich ultra-MAD build could 18/18/16/8/5+1/5+1 for merely about average in the 4th & still has room to improve that 8 by reducing the 5's in attributes they expect to never useI think part of the problem with point buy setups lies in the game evolving since 1st & 2nd edition with regards to how stats are handled without ever really rejiggering the pointbuy numbers around.  Back in ad&d2.0(and maybe 1e?) a player didn't pick up a +1/-1 till they hit 6 or 15 effectively making 7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14 a dead zone varied a bit from score.  In 3.x that got standardized to +/-1 for every 2 points above or below 10 so suddenly  the dead zone became meaningful and the part that would give negatives mostly went away for pointbuy with a floor of 8 for zero points.  That suddenly meaningful deadzone was somewhat mitigated by much tighter system math that assumed certain amounts of bonuses from magic items at different levels & differences in DC targets among other stuff like DR/x resist/x or SR/x but 5e did away with all that by shifting from most attacks miss to almost everything is successful most of the time unless it's your dump stat & untrained where the odds are merely okay.Fixing that pg33 <a href="https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MV3hWWDAs26UwmlWcG5" target="_blank">tome of variance </a>pointbuy option might be doable, but it would probably still fall prey to the problems built up in pointbuy over the editions.  Going a completely different route that puts the actual value of most attributes on the sheet front & center by presenting players with a choice of one or two stats with a number of points to buy the remaining 4-5 attributes based on that choice might be better.  [spoiler="Without doing the math for costs something like this should get the point across"]The numbers could use some work but are chosen just to show an example of concept<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">1x18 then enough points to where the remaining stats are going to be  a 6 or 7 unless deeper cuts are made to some in order to boost others.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">1x15 1x11 then enough points for a bunch of 7s & 8s unless deeper cuts are made for some </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">2x13 then enough points for a bunch of 10s unless deeper cuts are made</li> </ul>[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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