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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6170159" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've played point buy, and in general it doesn't work.Point buy is inevitably plagued by three basic problems:1) Not all things you can buy are priced according to their utility.  From a purely utilitarian perspective, some choices are so good that you would be foolish not to make them.  This tends to result in all characters looking a like unless some sort of table rule or social pressure is in place to not abuse the rules. 2) Some things are so useful, that specializing in them results in you having a single tool that can solve all problems.  There is usually no reason in a point buy system to build a character with any sort of depth.  Instead, point buy encourages you to find some concept that makes you unbeatable, spend everything on that, and then use that hammer in every situation.  GURPS calls this 'Johnny-One-Trick', and knows it is a problem.   In WoD this is called, 'Potence is every discipline.'   Once you have a big enough hammer, you don't need depth.  The only thing that keeps things balanced is player unspoken agreement not to do things, and point buy produces far greater disparity in power level between characters than even badly designed class systems (D&D 3.5 for example).  Point buy is also a huge hassle for story tellers for the same reason.3) It's very very hard for a point buy system to produce anything other than completely helpless and massively powerful characters.  There is seldom a middle ground.  If you give the player few points to spend, he ends up unable to do much of anything.  If you give the player many points to spend, or the player earns many points, he can invest in a single all purpose skill or power that either forces you to meta game or becomes highly munchkin-y in a hurry.  All this can be avoid by group agreement to hold to certain standards of 'fair play', but then, problems with class systems can be avoided in the same manner.I haven't noticed that in practice point buy leads to better characters than classes.  Both systems have potential problems.  Both are poorly designed more often than not.Class based systems that don't provide you the freedom to create what you want are just as badly designed as point buy systems that don't provide balance.  Good design of both can resolve problems and different sorts of games might suggest different approaches.  There is no one right way here. In a game where attributes play a strong role, it is impossible to design a jack of all trades that can compete with any specialized character on the specialized character's ground.</blockquote>

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