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<blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 4483531" data-attributes="member: 172">IME, how much of a problem that is depends on the importance of your selection balanced against the availability of points. If a system gives you a small amount of points, lets you spend them anywhere, and makes just one or two attributes really important for the character, point buy tends to produce repetitive or even distorted character designs. This, I think, is why I can stand M&amp;M point buy (more than enough points to reach your limits in several categories) as opposed to D&amp;D (reaching limits is expensive but mechanically compelling.)oWoD deals with this by masking probabilities, but to its credit, it forces you to spend your points in categories. Still, I think the points are a bit slim.nWoD, while a more solid system IMO, has more of a problem because the probabilities are more clear and it's easier to &quot;game&quot; the character.It doesn't work for this DM because of the aforementioned cookie cutter and hyper-optimized character designs.I find that point buy has a much higher tendency to think about your character mechanically. It gets you into little internal debates like &quot;is 2 more points of strength really more than 4 more points in my other stats?&quot;, and can even tempt you to sacrifice concept for mechanical efficiency.There are methods that can produce a middle ground between the randomized and point buy or array styles. But the designers haven't been thoughtful enough to include any such methods in the books. I had one such method; I thought I had put it in the blogs, but I see I have not. Guess I have an idea for my next blog post...Edit: and here it is:<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/psion/886-card-based-stat-gen-more-equitable-random-stat-gen-method.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/psion/886-card-based-stat-gen-more-equitable-random-stat-gen-method.html</a></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Psion, post: 4483531, member: 172"] IME, how much of a problem that is depends on the importance of your selection balanced against the availability of points. If a system gives you a small amount of points, lets you spend them anywhere, and makes just one or two attributes really important for the character, point buy tends to produce repetitive or even distorted character designs. This, I think, is why I can stand M&M point buy (more than enough points to reach your limits in several categories) as opposed to D&D (reaching limits is expensive but mechanically compelling.) oWoD deals with this by masking probabilities, but to its credit, it forces you to spend your points in categories. Still, I think the points are a bit slim. nWoD, while a more solid system IMO, has more of a problem because the probabilities are more clear and it's easier to "game" the character. It doesn't work for [I]this[/I] DM because of the aforementioned cookie cutter and hyper-optimized character designs. I find that point buy has a much higher tendency to think about your character mechanically. It gets you into little internal debates like "is 2 more points of strength really more than 4 more points in my other stats?", and can even tempt you to sacrifice concept for mechanical efficiency. There are methods that can produce a middle ground between the randomized and point buy or array styles. But the designers haven't been thoughtful enough to include any such methods in the books. I had one such method; I thought I had put it in the blogs, but I see I have not. Guess I have an idea for my next blog post... Edit: and here it is: [url]http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/psion/886-card-based-stat-gen-more-equitable-random-stat-gen-method.html[/url] [/QUOTE]

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