character creation???

[0-hr]

Umm, yea, 60 points is just a tad high... But hey, if it works for you, go for it

In all of my campaigns we use 32 point buy. I've come to really dislike rolling because I've just seen too many trusted friends roll "unwitnessed" uber characters. It seems even the most honest person is prone to freaky streaks of luck when rolling up characters by themselves. I'd just rather have everyone be even.

On the other hand, in one campaign we had the choice of the following:

1) Roll stats (only witnessed rolls count. Yes, I trust you completely, but only witnessed rolls count.)

2) Do a point buy from the Character Gen program

3) Use the point array from the Character Gen program

So you'd geneate 3 sets of stats (one with each method) and pick the one you wanted to keep. It gave you a chance to roll something well, but put a "floor" on it so that no-one was too "ability-challenged".

 

[trentonjoe]

We roll dice. Character creation is the best part of playing! There is nothing better than 15, 17, 14, 12, 15, <shake, shake, shake, > 7.

It is usally followed by pretty serious curses!

 

[estevans_lackey]

I strongly suggest point buying. It's not fun when one character uber-dominates the group. It's also not fun is everything is too easy for you, and the DM doesn't dare make things tougher for fear of killing off everything else. And the DM shouldn't sic' the Terminator (tm) on you unless they're really angry at you, but they may if your stats are just too high.

Randomness is such a wonderful thing, though. Here's what I do. Roll em up standard PHB style then award extra skill points (maybe not ranks but misc. mods) and feats depending on how in depth the story is.

I don't know about you guys but I've been playing along time and the old "I'm hiring you to do a job" thing gets old after a while. This way there is insentive to actively participate in, what will be for many levels, the bulk of the story.

The main thing I like to hear is "do the PC's have any enemies and/or allies?" I can do sooo much with just that. If they want some cool bonus stuff, however, they're going to cough up the goods. he, he, he....

 

[estevans_lackey]

I strongly suggest point buying. It's not fun when one character uber-dominates the group. It's also not fun is everything is too easy for you, and the DM doesn't dare make things tougher for fear of killing off everything else. And the DM shouldn't sic' the Terminator (tm) on you unless they're really angry at you, but they may if your stats are just too high.

Randomness is such a wonderful thing, though. Here's what I do. Roll em up standard PHB style then award extra skill points (maybe not ranks but misc. mods) and feats depending on how in depth the story is.

I don't know about you guys but I've been playing along time and the old "I'm hiring you to do a job" thing gets old after a while. This way there is insentive to actively participate in, what will be for many levels, the bulk of the story.

The main thing I like to hear is "do the PC's have any enemies and/or allies?" I can do sooo much with just that. If they want some cool bonus stuff, however, they're going to cough up the goods. he, he, he....

 

[Macbrea]

The only problem that ever comes up with point buy is that you will notice this guy show up frequently.

32 point buy

Half-orc Male (Barbarian or Fighter) 1

Str 20, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 6, wis 8, chr 6


By the rolling system you won't see a player use dump stats quite as badly. If you don't want them to have stats below 8 in your game you could try 2d6+6 per stat.

 

[Conaill]

Just tbring this thread BACK ON TOPIC... the question was NOT about point-buy stats in D&D, the question was about character creation in other gaming systems.

And for those of you that don't seem to know the difference: the point-buy option in the DMG is only a very weak reflection of the character generation flexibility you get in other systems.

In GURPS for example, there are no levels and classes. Instead, ALL the aspects of character creation are subject to point-buy. Standard PC's are built using 100 points, which can be allocated towards stats, skills and advantages (feats). You can get another 40 points by taking disadvantages (flaws). "Leveling up" is simple: after each session you put some more points in stats, skills or advantages (stat increases cost double after character creation, and adding new advantages is subject to GM approval).

Some people accuse GURPS as being more open to abuse and min-maxing, but I've frankly never found that as much of a problem as in D&D. Possibly because GURPS seems less likely to lead to munchkinization. (For one, it doesn't encourage hack-and-slash rollplaying, because there's no XP bonuses per "kill". XP are typically based on roleplay and story advancement.)

 

[kreynolds]

I'm sure there are some instances where one guy has no stat lower then a 16, and another has no higher then a 14, but this rarely seems to happen.

See, one of my players, and fellow DMs, ends up with the following array over 90% of the time: 18, 18, 16, 16, 15, 15, 14. I even watch him roll, because I just couldn't believe his luck after making 3 different characters. Sometimes his stats deviate by 1 point higher or lower, but damn, they're high.

Myself? I almost always end up with an array similar to this: 18, 16, 15, 13, 10, 9, give or take a point per stat. Not a bad array, but it gets boring.

I'll be using a 32 point buy and 75% of max hit points for the rest of my games from here on out.

 

[Orco42]

I like rolling but I always roll poorly. Unlike a friend of mine whos first charcater had 18,18,18,17,16,16 and I watched her roll. The she asked "Is that good?".

I almost cried.

 

[Zerovoid]

I'm a big fan of point buy, and I admit that its partially since I tend to roll poorly. Not that I belive in luck, but it seems while everyone else is yelling "Yes an 18!", I'm getting a 14, and when they say "Crap, only 13," I'm probably rolling a 5 or something.

Quite frankly, with the scores I see in most rolled adventuring parties, I think everyone cheats when they roll without supervision. Maybe you take a "practice roll", or you reroll one bad score in an otherwise honest set of stats.

Then there are people who say "I rolled up a couple of characters, but then I decided I didn't want to be a wizard or cleric, so I made a ranger instead." This person probably rolled a different set of scores for each character, but then went all the way through character generation just so they wouldn't feel like they had rolled several sets of stats, and taken the best one

I use the Living Greyhawk standard for stats and hitpoints. 18 point buy, and hit points are always 1/2 rounded up.

 

[dcollins]

We roll the dice. Take what you get. Some people ar ebetter then others, but that's fair since some people play better then others.

Agreed.

Furthermore, something that routinely gets overlooked when people clamor for additional character fine-tuning options (like point-buying stats), is that it makes it harder for new players to pick up the game. If you're doing point-buy, the new player sitting down needs to figure out what the purpose of each stat is, needs to ask what benefit each score gives, needs to ask what they effect in-game, and needs to intuitively guess at the balancing issues at hand. With dice-rolling, it's just roll, roll, roll, and move on from there closer to actually playing and having fun with the game.