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

[Clint_L]

I don't love it, but I don't hate it either. This reduces the landscape of possible score arrays from 54,264 to 12,232. A reduction in diversity of 42,032 but I can live with 12,000 arrays.

I rolled up the base scores for three Monks:

Monk A, equivalent to 25 points (Str 10, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 8)

Monk B, points are unevaluatable* (Str 11, Dex 15, Con 13, Int 7, Wis 13, Cha 13)

Monk C, points are unevaluatable** (Str 13, Dex 17, Con 13, Int 9, Wis 15, Cha 11)

* Unevaluatable because of the 7, but everything else adds up to 27 points.
** Unevaluatable because of the 17, but everything else adds up to 23 points.

To illustrate what a difference a few points can make, compare Monk C to my point buy monk. Assume at Level 1 I put my background increases into Wis (+2) and Con (+1) for 13/17/14/9/17/11. At level 4, I take a feat such as brawler for 13/18/14/9/11/11. At level 8 I take a feat such as shadow-touched for 13/18/14/9/18/11.

My point buy monk is currently level 8 with 10/17/14/8/16/10 and one feat (brawler). The rolled monk C, above, is a feat ahead with as good or better rolls in every category. So the gamble of rolling can make a substantial play difference. An extra feat is a big deal!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah. We don't alter it into a wildly different thing for the sake of convenience. What you want isn't intimidate. You want persuasion 2.0. Intimidate does in fact have good uses. I've seen it, and I've done it. It's just not as useful generally as persuasion, because it's a DIFFERENT skill with a DIFFERENT purpose.

No. I want something that isn't incredibly stupid and self-harming 100% of the time.

Because that's what makes Intimidate suck. It doesn't do anything Persuasion or Deception cannot do, but everything it DOES do causes you harm. Always. It always makes enemies. It always screws things up. And because GMs believe Intimidate needs to have """consequences""" for its usage, it will ALWAYS blow up in your face, sooner or later, when people you previously intimidated now make your life much, much harder than any benefit you might've maybe possibly squeezed out of it.

And that's if you SUCCEED! If you fail, God help you for no one else will.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I have yet to meet a DM who didn't treat it like some sort of morale check against enemies. I've intimidated many groups to stand down instead of fighting us, and had players in my game do the same.

sure, but i mean an actual, codified, morale system for it to interface with, rather than it being left to GMs to each individually decide off the cuff who can be intimidated and how hard it would be, give it some consistency across the board.

 

[ECMO3]

No. I want something that isn't incredibly stupid and self-harming 100% of the time.

Because that's what makes Intimidate suck. It doesn't do anything Persuasion or Deception cannot do, but everything it DOES do causes you harm. Always. It always makes enemies. It always screws things up. And because GMs believe Intimidate needs to have """consequences""" for its usage, it will ALWAYS blow up in your face, sooner or later, when people you previously intimidated now make your life much, much harder than any benefit you might've maybe possibly squeezed out of it.

And that's if you SUCCEED! If you fail, God help you for no one else will.

I play a lot of high charisma characters and I usually take intimidate over persuasion, not because it is 'better" per se but because it fits the character better. On a lot of them I have both though and I almost always have Deception on those PCs.

I don't know that Intimidation always makes enemies, but nothing wrong with having some enemies if that is what your PC's personality is. You run into a lot of people IRL that like to intimidate others and they don't make enemies of everyone.

Charisma is one of the most "fun" abilities in the game for me. I would say of all 6 abilities it is often the one that is my main/highest ability. It nearly always is my highest ability on Fighters, Sorcs, Paladins and Warlocks. Sometimes it is my highest ability on Rangers and Rogues too and it is almost always the third highest ability on these two classes when it isn't the highest.

I only dump Charisma on Wizards and Clerics (I rarely play the other 3 classes I didn't mention)