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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spinozajack" data-source="post: 6629666" data-attributes="member: 6794198">Not preventing players in my games from choosing either PB or rolling doesn't mean I think point buy is ideal. In fact, it proves how little regard I have for the difference between the two. If you pick point buy, I see it more like your character has a solid background and ate his wheaties and did his homework growing up, but wasn't either the class clown or the colossal quarterback either. So players can pick if they want the "safe, well rounded kind of guy", which is well represented in the restrictions that point buy allows, or they can take a risk and be from the bad side of the tracks, and maybe have an 18 charisma and be the Fonz, or that 18 18 18 str dex con and be Conan. No, I don't want Conan-esque characters to be selectable at-will in character creation. I want those characters to be rarer. So my stance is entirely self-consistent. Allowing point buy doesn't prevent me from saying that disallowing dice rolling is irrational in a dice playing game. Randomness is inherent in the game, that is a fact, and if people don't want it to include natural aptitude, that's their decision. However much of the reasoning behind this whole "fairness" / unfairness spiel is indeed irrational. Is it that that one character gets dropped from that unlucky crit at level 1, while another lives on to become the hero? No, life isn't fair, and neither is D&D. Fairness of outcome is neither desirable nor rational, if you are playing a game designed around dice which are there to prevent the outcome from being pre-determined. The difference between point buy and rolling isn't very large, considering you can boost your stats where you want them, and the ability caps prevent anyone from running away to the finish line from a lucky start after the firing gun. There is far more variability in character contributions to the outcome of a campaign from player skill, build choices, class choices, feat choices, than there ever will be in stat generation method, that much is guaranteed by the rules. So yes, I do think making a huge deal out of banning dice rolling on the grounds of "fairness" is irrational. Combat has dice that determine if an attack is a crit, a hit, a miss, if your character falls off that cliff or not. The list of things that can happen to your character that the dice will dictate is infinite. I, as a DM, would never directly kill a PC unless they were really, really stupid and got themselves hanged by a magistrate and their group couldn't do anything to stop it. Otherwise, I let the players decide if they jump into a fight, and if they don't retreat then let the dice fall where they may. That is more than fair. I see there being different kinds of unfairness in the world, the kind that you can't do anything about, and the kind that you can. Being born with a certain intelligence (starting Int), doesn't mean in D&D that you can't study hard and reach that 20, unlike in real life. So D&D characters, by virtue of the rules of level advancement, are already blessed with the ability to perfect themselves to a far greater extent that humans can in real life. So no, I don't care if it's unfair that one PC has a +1 or +2 more total from a lucky set of rolls compared to a point buy character. The point buy character already can choose to min max their starting stats or ending stats (if they live that long), and pick and choose their total point buy total. Whereas a rolling character will have a couple outliers and the rest will be within range. What's not fair about that? You take a risk for a high score or two by risking getting a few low scores, or you take the safe path and guarantee you don't have either the best or the worst stats. In early D&D editions, you were literally screwed if you didn't roll a high Int score and wanted to play a wizard and hoping to reach a high level. And even if you did, you probably wouldn't make it. Which means that high level wizards aren't just rare in-story, they are rare in-game, and required player skill to survive that long. It's like the board game Operation, we got a version recently and the holes are so big, anyone even my 6 year old nephew can play it without making a single error. When I was a kid, I don't remember the game being so easy, I believe they must have increased the size of the holes. There are like point blank shotgun shot exit wounds.D&D, like many games before it, has trended towards becoming easier and easier in its history, the more "fair" it's become over many iterations. Sometimes it's warranted, but this entire debate is just absurd. With bounded accuracy, you really don't even need a 20 main stat anyway, and wizards can cast 9th level spells with a 10 Int, as others have mentioned. Nuff said. The game is already bending over backwards to be so easy to max out your end game potential. And people still complain that it's not perfectly balanced in every way. Well, there is no such game. Character build choices, and weapon choices, do have real balance issues that lead to uniformity of builds. That's why I don't like them. Dice rolling for stats prevents uniformity of builds, and of characters, and does make a single group not full of Conans and Gandalfs. The negative space or white space is the low contrast, low profile region of an image which serves mostly to not draw attention to itself, so that the busy areas can. But in terms of stats, that's an illusion. I bet you I could play a wizard more intelligently and do more with a low int score than someone else with a 20 at level 1. But in second edition you literally couldn't even cast higher level spells unless you rolled well. And you couldn't boost your stats. No wonder why modern gamers don't play old school D&D, it's too "unfair". It also happens to feel more rewarding when you do achieve a high level, because that hardship and rarity and confluence of luck and wit and grit let you achieve it. Instead, nowadays you can practically play the game on auto pilot and do well. Definitely a different mentality. D&D has been on easy mode for about two decades now. It's way too easy to not just survive to high levels, but to dominate while doing so. I don't enjoy easy games where I'm guaranteed to win, I think it's a waste of time.</blockquote>

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