JRRNeiklot
First Post
Dice. Point buy blows. Everyone has the exact same stats with point buy. The fighter puts the high score in strength, the wizard puts it in int, most of the other scores will be identical. Boring.
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Die Rolls or Point-Buy
- Thread starter WayneLigon
- Start date
32-point buy in the campaign I run.
I've been a newcomer to two groups in which the friends of the DM quietly used different methods of "rolling" their stats when we were supposed to use the "official" method from the PHB. Their characters had much higher stats than those of the "honestly" rolled characters in the group. It was blatant, yet either not discussed or outright denied.
Point buy removes this kind of issue.
I've been a newcomer to two groups in which the friends of the DM quietly used different methods of "rolling" their stats when we were supposed to use the "official" method from the PHB. Their characters had much higher stats than those of the "honestly" rolled characters in the group. It was blatant, yet either not discussed or outright denied.
Point buy removes this kind of issue.
Assuming we're just talking about D&D, I use both, but not in the same campaign.
Sometimes, I feel the campaign needs truly heroic PCs, and I let players use point-buy.* Usually, however, I let the dice rolls help the players shape their PCs (I usually let them re-roll 1s).
Still don't like your stats? Start over and roll 6 more times.
I've also experimented with other systems. For instance, bidding. You have a number of chits to bid on starting stats, wealth/equipment, max HP, and so forth. Kind of like how almost no 3.X class has all good saves bonuses, you want great stats, you're going to have to give up some wealth or some other scarce character building resource.
In other games, I generally go with the standard. My favorite game is HERO, for instance, and its pure point buy. Doing it any other way would really skew things.
*Its not the D&D standard version, however. Each PC starts off with 0 in every stat, and buys stats, 1 point for 1 stat point. The total building points given is 78 or 84 (depending upon the campaign), which works out to an average stat of either 13 or 14, respectively.
Sometimes, I feel the campaign needs truly heroic PCs, and I let players use point-buy.* Usually, however, I let the dice rolls help the players shape their PCs (I usually let them re-roll 1s).
Still don't like your stats? Start over and roll 6 more times.
I've also experimented with other systems. For instance, bidding. You have a number of chits to bid on starting stats, wealth/equipment, max HP, and so forth. Kind of like how almost no 3.X class has all good saves bonuses, you want great stats, you're going to have to give up some wealth or some other scarce character building resource.
In other games, I generally go with the standard. My favorite game is HERO, for instance, and its pure point buy. Doing it any other way would really skew things.
*Its not the D&D standard version, however. Each PC starts off with 0 in every stat, and buys stats, 1 point for 1 stat point. The total building points given is 78 or 84 (depending upon the campaign), which works out to an average stat of either 13 or 14, respectively.
the Jester
Legend
Dice.
No pc ever has a 5 with point buy, much less a 3. Some of the most memorable pcs ever imc have had one or more low stats.
No pc ever has a 5 with point buy, much less a 3. Some of the most memorable pcs ever imc have had one or more low stats.
Dragonbait
Explorer
Point buy, 32 points.
On the super-rare occasion of dice rolling (never my favorite because I play many point-buy systems and like the feel of control over your character from the ground up) I will often allow people to roll 8 times and keep the desired 6. During our WAHOOO POWER! days we would go as far as rolling 3 times for each stat and taking the best of the three.
On the super-rare occasion of dice rolling (never my favorite because I play many point-buy systems and like the feel of control over your character from the ground up) I will often allow people to roll 8 times and keep the desired 6. During our WAHOOO POWER! days we would go as far as rolling 3 times for each stat and taking the best of the three.
RandomCitizenX
First Post
This is pretty much what our group did, but we did 3 sets.
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
Point buy. Dice blow for character creation. I feel crappy if I end up with better stats than everyone else, and I feel crappy if I end up with worse stats. I want a level playing field in games.
-blarg
-blarg
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
AverageTable
First Post
Why the hell would someone suddenly revive a thread that’s been dead for five and a half years?
Nonetheless, since I (like, doubtlessly, most other people here) have witnessed this same debate numerous time before, I’ll speed things up and offer a summary of what’s about to be said. (I apologise if the post seems long; but I promise it's much shorter than all the other repetitive posts combined are going to be.)
Note also, as an aside, that every point I’m about to make also applies to the debate of rolling hit points versus taking some fixed value – the arguments and conclusions are all the same.
Those who prefer point-buy methods will argue that they:
- maintain equality between PCs.
- maintain balance between the PCs and the mathematics of the game system.
- reduce work for the DM (since it’s easier to build appropriate encounters for a group of equal and balanced PCs, rather than unequal and unbalanced ones).
- allow players to play the characters they want rather than the ones the dice are “kind” enough to permit.
- prevent a few, completely random die rolls from affecting an entire campaign to an immense degree.
- eliminate cheating and allow ability scores to be generated without DM supervision.
Each of these is a real and objective advantage of point-buy methods over rolling methods. None of these are merely someone’s “opinion”.
As such, one would expect that RPG enthusiasts would overwhelmingly favour point-buy methods once they’ve had these advantages explained to them. Yet this is far from the case. Many continue to insist that rolling ability scores is preferable.
Here are the arguments that proponents of rolling will offer for their position and why each one either insufficient or outright fallacious. This list is, essentially, exhaustive, since the dozens upon dozens of posts I’ve seen on this subject have never offered an argument other than the following four:
1. Rolling ability scores is more fun than using a point-buy method.
Is this claim true? For most people the answer is probably “yes”; but only from a very narrow and short-sighted perspective.
Rolling ability scores is “fun” in the same way that blackjack and slot machines are fun. Most people enjoy the thrill of crossing their fingers, rolling the dice, and seeing what fate has in store for them. The agony and the ecstasy of watching those random results appear is, admittedly, thrilling in its own little way. In the context of RPGs, however, this period of fun is extremely short-lived. Most people will roll a complete set of ability scores in only a minute or two. Yet they will, thereafter, have to live with those utterly random results for the entirety of their characters’ careers.
Thus, if the rolls are bad (which they are as often as not), then the player ends up exchanging 60 seconds of “fun” generating his random ability scores for an entire campaign of negative consequences. Not to mention the loss of enjoyment that typically results for the other players as well while they try to cope with a sup-par character in their group.
Moreover, even if the player gets lucky and rolls excellent scores, this only serves to unbalance the game in the opposite direction. While having excellent scores might be fun for the player himself, it typically lessens the enjoyment of the game for the other players who feel overshadowed and incompetent by comparison. In fact, even the player with the excellent scores may well find himself enjoying the game less since it becomes, for him, so much less challenging.
The result is that even though rolling ability scores is, admittedly, “more fun” (in a certain, narrow, sense) than using point-buy, the extremely short period of fun this brings is nowhere near sufficient to outweigh the many negative consequences it can inflict on the entire campaign thereafter.
2. Rolling ability scores is more “realistic” or “organic” because it produces characters with different degrees of quality and aptitude. In the real world some people simply are superior while others simply are inferior. The game should reflect this.
First of all, why? The entire point of a game like D&D is to have fun, not to simulate reality. Moreover, D&D is a game of cooperative, not competitive, play. In turn, players enjoy the game more when they feel their characters are comparable to the others in the group and able to contribute fully. Since this is heavily undermined by granting some characters major advantages over others based on nothing but their inherent “superiority”, it naturally follows that doing so is going to detract from the game much more than the “realism” of disparate characters will enhance it.
After all, when has a player ever said, “My character sucks; but that’s okay because I’m balancing out the curve. It’s more fun to play in a game where someone realistically sucks, even if that person is me, than to endure a game of unbearable equality.”? The reason no one ever says this is because some vaunted sense of “realism” is no consolation to the player with the short end of the stick.
Secondly, the degree to which rolling methods are more “realistic” than point-buy is highly exaggerated, anyway. It’s certainly true that in the real world some people are naturally superior to others; but not to the extent that any rolling method would suggest. The variance in capabilities that random sets of die rolls will produce is much greater than the variability in the capabilities of real people. In fact, when you consider that only people of a certain calibre would even consider becoming adventurers in the first place, the point-buy method may well be the more “realistic” alternative. Point-buy creates characters that, while differing in their particular abilities, all fall within the same “adventurer-worthy” group of people. To have a guy with crappy ability scores in the party is, arguably, the most unrealistic thing of all since such a person would never have dreamed of becoming an adventurer in the first place.
3. Point-buy methods favour “SAD” character-types.
That’s right, they do. But so do rolling methods and every other method. What the hell is your point?
The claim that multiple-ability-dependent (“MAD”) characters are worse off under point-buy methods than single-ability-dependent (“SAD”) characters is quite true. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with point-buy methods. This claim is only true because every ability-score generation method suffers from the same problem. It doesn’t matter how you produce your ability-score numbers, you’ll always be able to make a stronger character if you only need one high number than if you require two or three. This point is so obvious it’s barely worth the effort of writing it out.
This particular “argument” is so fallacious I’m ashamed to have to respond to it at all.
4. “I’ve always rolled ability scores and you can’t make me change; so there!”
I’ll be the first to admit that this formulation of this last “argument” is not very charitable; but, since it’s impossible to phrase something this foolish in a way that doesn’t sound stupid, I figured I might as well just drive the point home.
Here we have the final “argument” in favour of rolling ability scores. In fact, this particular “point” is strongly implicit in just about any argument given when someone tries to defend rolling over point-buy. The number-one reason why so many people insist on rolling ability scores, even in light of the many objective advantages of point-buy (and the complete lack of any real advantage for rolling) is that they’ve always rolled in the past and they just don’t want to change. Be it due to a sense of tradition, a sense of ritual, or plain old stubbornness; people generally dislike doing things differently than they’ve done them before. They fear that to change now is to disvalue everything they did before (i.e. “All of our past games are now meaningless since we were using an ‘inferior’ rolling method to generate ability scores!”) and to guard against that fear they simply refuse to admit that what they’ve done in the past could EVER be improved upon.
Newsflash: Things change. And in the context of gaming they almost always change for the better. Changes aren’t introduced for no reason. They don’t appear out of nowhere. Changes occur in printed rules because people who develop these games professionally, who understand them much better than we ever will, and who want to make the best game possible decided, on impartial and objective grounds, that those changes would make the game better than it was before. Combine that with how thoroughly most have embraced that change and how easy it is to argue in favour of it (see above), and it seems a very safe bet that they were correct.
Nonetheless, since I (like, doubtlessly, most other people here) have witnessed this same debate numerous time before, I’ll speed things up and offer a summary of what’s about to be said. (I apologise if the post seems long; but I promise it's much shorter than all the other repetitive posts combined are going to be.)
Note also, as an aside, that every point I’m about to make also applies to the debate of rolling hit points versus taking some fixed value – the arguments and conclusions are all the same.
Those who prefer point-buy methods will argue that they:
- maintain equality between PCs.
- maintain balance between the PCs and the mathematics of the game system.
- reduce work for the DM (since it’s easier to build appropriate encounters for a group of equal and balanced PCs, rather than unequal and unbalanced ones).
- allow players to play the characters they want rather than the ones the dice are “kind” enough to permit.
- prevent a few, completely random die rolls from affecting an entire campaign to an immense degree.
- eliminate cheating and allow ability scores to be generated without DM supervision.
Each of these is a real and objective advantage of point-buy methods over rolling methods. None of these are merely someone’s “opinion”.
As such, one would expect that RPG enthusiasts would overwhelmingly favour point-buy methods once they’ve had these advantages explained to them. Yet this is far from the case. Many continue to insist that rolling ability scores is preferable.
Here are the arguments that proponents of rolling will offer for their position and why each one either insufficient or outright fallacious. This list is, essentially, exhaustive, since the dozens upon dozens of posts I’ve seen on this subject have never offered an argument other than the following four:
1. Rolling ability scores is more fun than using a point-buy method.
Is this claim true? For most people the answer is probably “yes”; but only from a very narrow and short-sighted perspective.
Rolling ability scores is “fun” in the same way that blackjack and slot machines are fun. Most people enjoy the thrill of crossing their fingers, rolling the dice, and seeing what fate has in store for them. The agony and the ecstasy of watching those random results appear is, admittedly, thrilling in its own little way. In the context of RPGs, however, this period of fun is extremely short-lived. Most people will roll a complete set of ability scores in only a minute or two. Yet they will, thereafter, have to live with those utterly random results for the entirety of their characters’ careers.
Thus, if the rolls are bad (which they are as often as not), then the player ends up exchanging 60 seconds of “fun” generating his random ability scores for an entire campaign of negative consequences. Not to mention the loss of enjoyment that typically results for the other players as well while they try to cope with a sup-par character in their group.
Moreover, even if the player gets lucky and rolls excellent scores, this only serves to unbalance the game in the opposite direction. While having excellent scores might be fun for the player himself, it typically lessens the enjoyment of the game for the other players who feel overshadowed and incompetent by comparison. In fact, even the player with the excellent scores may well find himself enjoying the game less since it becomes, for him, so much less challenging.
The result is that even though rolling ability scores is, admittedly, “more fun” (in a certain, narrow, sense) than using point-buy, the extremely short period of fun this brings is nowhere near sufficient to outweigh the many negative consequences it can inflict on the entire campaign thereafter.
2. Rolling ability scores is more “realistic” or “organic” because it produces characters with different degrees of quality and aptitude. In the real world some people simply are superior while others simply are inferior. The game should reflect this.
First of all, why? The entire point of a game like D&D is to have fun, not to simulate reality. Moreover, D&D is a game of cooperative, not competitive, play. In turn, players enjoy the game more when they feel their characters are comparable to the others in the group and able to contribute fully. Since this is heavily undermined by granting some characters major advantages over others based on nothing but their inherent “superiority”, it naturally follows that doing so is going to detract from the game much more than the “realism” of disparate characters will enhance it.
After all, when has a player ever said, “My character sucks; but that’s okay because I’m balancing out the curve. It’s more fun to play in a game where someone realistically sucks, even if that person is me, than to endure a game of unbearable equality.”? The reason no one ever says this is because some vaunted sense of “realism” is no consolation to the player with the short end of the stick.
Secondly, the degree to which rolling methods are more “realistic” than point-buy is highly exaggerated, anyway. It’s certainly true that in the real world some people are naturally superior to others; but not to the extent that any rolling method would suggest. The variance in capabilities that random sets of die rolls will produce is much greater than the variability in the capabilities of real people. In fact, when you consider that only people of a certain calibre would even consider becoming adventurers in the first place, the point-buy method may well be the more “realistic” alternative. Point-buy creates characters that, while differing in their particular abilities, all fall within the same “adventurer-worthy” group of people. To have a guy with crappy ability scores in the party is, arguably, the most unrealistic thing of all since such a person would never have dreamed of becoming an adventurer in the first place.
3. Point-buy methods favour “SAD” character-types.
That’s right, they do. But so do rolling methods and every other method. What the hell is your point?
The claim that multiple-ability-dependent (“MAD”) characters are worse off under point-buy methods than single-ability-dependent (“SAD”) characters is quite true. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with point-buy methods. This claim is only true because every ability-score generation method suffers from the same problem. It doesn’t matter how you produce your ability-score numbers, you’ll always be able to make a stronger character if you only need one high number than if you require two or three. This point is so obvious it’s barely worth the effort of writing it out.
This particular “argument” is so fallacious I’m ashamed to have to respond to it at all.
4. “I’ve always rolled ability scores and you can’t make me change; so there!”
I’ll be the first to admit that this formulation of this last “argument” is not very charitable; but, since it’s impossible to phrase something this foolish in a way that doesn’t sound stupid, I figured I might as well just drive the point home.
Here we have the final “argument” in favour of rolling ability scores. In fact, this particular “point” is strongly implicit in just about any argument given when someone tries to defend rolling over point-buy. The number-one reason why so many people insist on rolling ability scores, even in light of the many objective advantages of point-buy (and the complete lack of any real advantage for rolling) is that they’ve always rolled in the past and they just don’t want to change. Be it due to a sense of tradition, a sense of ritual, or plain old stubbornness; people generally dislike doing things differently than they’ve done them before. They fear that to change now is to disvalue everything they did before (i.e. “All of our past games are now meaningless since we were using an ‘inferior’ rolling method to generate ability scores!”) and to guard against that fear they simply refuse to admit that what they’ve done in the past could EVER be improved upon.
Newsflash: Things change. And in the context of gaming they almost always change for the better. Changes aren’t introduced for no reason. They don’t appear out of nowhere. Changes occur in printed rules because people who develop these games professionally, who understand them much better than we ever will, and who want to make the best game possible decided, on impartial and objective grounds, that those changes would make the game better than it was before. Combine that with how thoroughly most have embraced that change and how easy it is to argue in favour of it (see above), and it seems a very safe bet that they were correct.
