Arriving at ability scores

[Minigiant]

I sense "You could make it a module" will be the new "It's not broken because you can houserule it".

And "Just add the X module" is the new "use the X rules from Y book."

From the looks and sounds of it, 90% of all "totally new" ideas wont be core and are modules at best.

 

[Arlough]

Yeah, that's something that 4E 'introduced'. At first I thought, yeah no dice rolling for character generation, but the resulting characters had no weaknesses and even the greatest of all heroes should have an Achilles' heel to let them shine with their strengths despite his shortcommings. This also resulted in fairly 'sameish' characters of the same class.

2nd edition AD&D had a point buy system in the Player's Option: Skills & Powers book (known as methods VII and X). In the Complete Ranger Handbook (and I think the Druid and Paladin Handbooks as well) You had a table with 12 stat sets and rolled a D12 to see what set you got. So there were only 12 rangers out there, stat-wise. But, given the number of sub-choices you had to make, it wasn't really an issue. And the reason for this was that classes like rangers and paladins had minimum stat requirements that involved 4 different stats. (Most classes only had 1 or 2 minimum stats.) So, in effect, you knew that every ranger had to have:

• Strength > 12
• Dexterity > 12
• Constitution > 13
• Wisdom > 13

3rd edition had a point buy system as well. In 3rd, IIRC, it was Method 3.

Also, it seems that many of your are under the mistaken assumption that point buy is inherent in 4th. The same options for stat generating are available in 4th as were in 3rd, they are just presented in a different order. Now point buy is method 2, array is method 1, and rolling is method 3, all found on PHB pg 17-18.

Point is, 4th didn't introduce characters of similar stats. That was in there long before.

 

[YRUSirius]

Yup, you're right. The first method became always the standard though. In 4E it was the array, in the editions before it, it was rolling dice (more or less random, given the edition). So 4E 'introduced' the array as standard.

-YRUSirius

 

[El Mahdi]

...

Sounds interesting. Kind of reminds me of Palladium a bit. All in all I like it, but I can see it's drawbacks also.

One, I think it might make character generation a bit more complicated than they're looking for in the core system.

Second, It would definitely cater to min/maxers. You'd get people creating characters based entirely on what bonus a Feat, skill, or ability can provide. While that's not bad, and an entirely reasonable way of playing the game, it could potentially break the expected system math for DM's...creating characters with vastly different power levels within the same group. It's also something I think would be very hard for a DM to control or mitigate for their game.