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Message: <blockquote data-quote="genshou" data-source="post: 2852300" data-attributes="member: 13164">I started doing retroactive skill points when I noticed a tendency for characters to jump on the best available Intelligence boosting tomes as early as possible, as though it were some sort of ability score-based Cold War.  They also tended to put higher scores in Intelligence rather than an ability more useful to their class, and then use their ability advancements to increase the other ability.  They did this because otherwise they would be gimped on skill points if they placed the lower score in Intelligence and then increased it over time.Also, it makes buying cross-class skills a little better for multiclass characters, because they'll get back the wasted skill points the next level.  This makes the players worry less about optimizing their characters as far as skill points are concerned.The point-buy ability advancement works great.  I use the value listed on the table for most NPCs, so the foes get tougher and more legendary the higher in level the PCs get.  Only for special NPCs do I adjust the value of the scores up or down (usually up, since there are few physically/mentally weak high-level NPCs in my games).  One thing I and my players really like about it is that we can use random die rolls to determine ability scores, but the guy who rolled lowest doesn't have to be the party nerf bag for all time.  When pretty much all the 20th-level NPCs in the world have a point-buy of 60, it lends the feel that only the strong survive to 20th-level, but PCs who don't start out that strong can work their way up to it (though they're less likely to survive in the interrim).</blockquote>

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