D&D 5E (2014) Is Point Buy Balanced?

[KYRON45]

You're not picking up what I'm laying down. No one, especially me, is telling you what your fun should look like. What folks are telling you is that your view is not a universal view. That's the glossing over bit I'm talking about.

The reactions you're getting are because of this post of yours. Of course everyone's view of fun is different. Read your post again.

"Sorry friend. I roll a PC and I make the most of it.

I just don't see the value in "balanced".
If every PC is GREAT then none of them are.
I believe the kids call this diversity."

Kind of dismissive of any viewpoint but your own right? No one's upset, but that's the card you played, hence the reactions.

What folks are telling you is that there is nothing wrong with the way you play. Aspects of it both objectively and subjectively can and do hinder the fun for others though.

Does anyone here really think their view is universal?
How anything I say can adversely affect the fun of others is beyond my capability to understand.
Me not agreeing is not me arguing.
Thank you. Have a happy New Year.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem is that this is not one of those cases where if the wants are strong, you can have it both ways. If the game system actually rewards high rolls and punishes low ones, a system that provides point distribution for people who don't want that isn't going to solve the problem used in conjunction with a random one, unless the latter compresses the result.

So, yet again, it's the roller who has to compromise rather than the point-buyer.

Got it.

 

[AlViking]

So, yet again, it's the roller who has to compromise rather than the point-buyer.

Got it.

Until you can explain what you gain from rolling that you can't get from somen variation of point buy other than 3 minutes of gambling, yes.

I'm not saying you shouldn't roll, I don't care. But I also think that point buy should be the default unless everyone strongly expresses a desire for rolling.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would walk away from that game.

Eh. People have been used to D&D forcing combat to one degree or another on every character for decades. I don't see it as intrinsically any worse to force some capability in other spheres.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So, yet again, it's the roller who has to compromise rather than the point-buyer.

Got it.

I'd say the real answer is there is no useful compromise within a single play group. The desires are simply incompatible.

Now within a game system I find no really credible reason not provide both options unless you're sure your market simply doesn't care about one of them (as is the case with most superhero gamers). It may be other elements of the game system make one or the other impractical, but that's a different issue.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Though its not particularly directly relevant here (it wasn't a D&D game or even fantasy) I sometimes tell the story about my wife putting together a Mutants and Masterminds 2e character and talking to me about it (we were both players in the game) and her watching as a look of dawning horror came over my face as I realized she'd quite innocently stumbled into a really, really bad corner case in the rules that was going to blow up the first time she used an ability she was talking about taking on her character. I use it as an example of design mistakes having potential implication that reaches well beyond deliberate abuse.

Absolutely. I don't think deliberate abuse is more than like, MAYBE 25% of issues? And that's being quite generous--I'd expect it's closer to 10%, or less. Far, far more issues come from the rules making people believe X Y Z when none of X, Y, or Z is true--or people thinking game A is built for X Y Z, when it's actually built for L M N O P, and can't even do Y without houserules; or the GM aiming for a toned-down, down-to-earth, low-power adventures, because they know how to make it do that, and one or more players pick options because they want a power-fantasy wish-fulfillment thing because they know that's what the system does really well. Or maybe the GM is aiming for a high-power campaign and that's why they chose this system, and the player has no idea that that's why it was chosen, and goes for pure flavor regardless of strength, causing the same problem from the other direction.

The more the system presents one face, while mechanically supporting something different, the more likely players and GMs will misunderstand each other. 3rd edition has possibly the single greatest spread between what it tells the reader it does, and what it actually does, of any game I've read. They tried to address this later on (e.g. with the "<Class Name>s with Class" articles), but ultimately the damage was done--and Pathfinder inherited that same issue. Mr. Bulmahn communicated this quite clearly when he asked folks to give PF2e a chance: PF1e had hit a brick wall because the fundamental design of the 3rd edition system simply conflicts with what they wanted it to be.

I still maintain that there must have been either very limited blindtesting there, or those in charge of it must have ignored results that seemed off from anything they'd seen in direct playtesting. It seems impossible some of the problems that became endemic later would have remained unseen otherwise.

We've been told, point-blank, that active testing did not occur beyond level 6--just far enough to test the most basic of scaling elements and no further (e.g. level 6 is when you first get iterative attacks, when you get your third level-based feat, etc.) So no need to maintain it, it's simply true. 3e was very minimally-tested, and that's a big part of why it goes off the rails so quick--and why E6 and such exist. They're part of the levels actually playtested.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So, yet again, it's the roller who has to compromise rather than the point-buyer.

Got it.

Alternatively, the roller rolls and accepts that that might put them in a position that is unbalanced, and the person who doesn't want to roll...doesn't roll.

If the roller's expectation is "I will roll, and everyone else will to", then their position was always one hostile to the idea of compromise in the first place. It's not the point-buyer's fault that the roller wants to control the entire game, forcing everyone to play the way they want, is it?

 

[Lanefan]

Until you can explain what you gain from rolling that you can't get from somen variation of point buy other than 3 minutes of gambling, yes.

You gain a more variable - and thus, both more realistic and believable - set of characters.

I'm not saying you shouldn't roll, I don't care. But I also think that point buy should be the default unless everyone strongly expresses a desire for rolling.

Your second sentence disagrees with your first, in that you are saying I shouldn't roll unless everyone else actively wants to. That implies (to the point of almost outright saying) that one non-roller should be able to force the whole table not to roll, hardly what I'd call majority rule.

For me, I'm happy with rolling being the default* as I've always seen D&D as first and foremost being a game of chance. It's a great big long-form rogue-like.

* - with one exception: if it's a tournament game (remember those?) or similar and pre-gen characters are not provided.

 

[Lanefan]

Alternatively, the roller rolls and accepts that that might put them in a position that is unbalanced, and the person who doesn't want to roll...doesn't roll.

That's fine. Flip side: if just one player doesn't want to roll then that player can use a point-buy tweaked to give numbers vaguely-equal to the average provided by the rolling system being used (I put it this way as there's so many different rolling systems out there).

If the roller's expectation is "I will roll, and everyone else will to", then their position was always one hostile to the idea of compromise in the first place. It's not the point-buyer's fault that the roller wants to control the entire game, forcing everyone to play the way they want, is it?

Agreed, though @AlViking seems to think one non-roller ought to be able to force the whole table to play that way.

 

[Cergorach]

Where I see frustration by some (sometimes even me) is not in terms of character build or inherent PC competency but rather in obviously poor choices/tactics in game.

I've seen that too, and trying to 'educate' that player during the game and out of the game didn't help. What did help was a session 0 with pretty clear rules and the group together building the party. The party group has never worked as well together, efficiency. Very occasionally there are still poor choices/tactics in game, but with them working together they see the error in their ways and learn from them. I suspect that it's the difference between playing just their hero and playing a band of heros working together. They now also know each others characters better, so they can anticipate each other better and make their choices based on that.

For example, my biggest frustration in the past 4 years as a player was with another player who always played a fighter or barbarian, always dumped charisma and then always insisted on leading all the social encounters (this was a 2014 Fighter where they were not inherently good at those). He pretty much elbowed out the other players at the table when it came to social encounters and I was rocking a high charisma Rogue with proficiency in all the social skills and expertise in Deception and Persuasion.

That is a different type of egotistical behavior. As a DM I would have solved that creatively. But we also need to realize that playing a low charisma character by a high charisma person (and vice versa) might work in the short term, but often does not work in the long run. The same goes for extremes in intelligence. I have noticed that the older we've gotten, the more we can restrain ourselves and recognize our own strengths and weaknesses. So people don't use Int or Cha as dumpstats as much as 25-35 years ago... But not everyone gets wise in their old age...

If 3 players show up for a hack and slash and one player shows up for a game with no combat (and these do exist) it is an obvious problem, but that is different than 3 players showing up that are optimal in combat and one that is optimal out of combat.

Either is a problem, and I've seen both happen with different game systems, not just D&D. And honestly we've solved that issue without a session 0 a long time ago, or rather they solved themselves. They left by themselves, feeling 'too grown up' to play these 'silly games' anymore...