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

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Well, we can extrapolate patterns from the existing rules.

8 is treated as the 0 point, but we could instead treat 10 as the 0 point and call it (27-12) = 15 point buy. Adding 3 points gets you to 13, at which point costs increase. Hence, we should expect to remove points down to -3 with equivalent results.

So a 7 should be worth "-1 point", while 6 would be worth "-3" and 5 would be worth "-5".

Conversely, again using 10 as our center, modifiers increase to 2 per point of stat at 14. If we have a similar "three values each" pattern, then that would imply that you'd have to spend a total of 9 points (three to get to 13, six to get to 16), and then 17 would itself cost 3 points, for a total of 12. Shifting back to the 8-based method, that would imply it costs a total of 14 points to get to 17.

If we did do this, then Monk B would have an array worth 26 points, which is pretty well in the right area. Monk C, however, would have an array supremely valuable: 23+14 = 37. Which, yeah, looking at those scores that makes sense to me. Your sum-of-modifiers is a whopping 1+3+1-1+2+0 = +6, before racial/background stat bonuses. With +1 to three stats, you can bump that sum-of-modifiers up to 2+4+1-1+3+0 = +9. Considering the absolute best you can get with the regular point-buy is only +6, and that only by having painfully average stats (e.g. the three-13s/three-12s array), yeah, your Monk C is WAY ahead of the curve.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Typically I try to broadcast it to the players through RP. For example a street thug may not respond to persuasion but will to intimidation. So they may respond with "Pretty words don't mean a thing" or I'll just portray them as cowardly but self-centered. As I said above insight checks or even something like a history check come into play as well. If you know the history of the region you may know that soft diplomacy is viewed as a weakness, at least as part of first contact.

Most of the times I don't wait for the player to ask for an insight or history check, I'll just tell them to make one if I think it makes sense for the scenario.

I have never once seen a situation like this.

Never. Not once ever have I seen a situation where Intimidation definitely would work, it definitely would not have nasty consequences, and Persuasion/Diplomacy/whatever definitely could not work no matter what.

I find it frankly really hard to envision any situation where it is literally impossible to persuade someone, but it IS possible to intimidate them, but doing the latter never has any serious consequences.

 

[AlViking]

I have never once seen a situation like this.

Never. Not once ever have I seen a situation where Intimidation definitely would work, it definitely would not have nasty consequences, and Persuasion/Diplomacy/whatever definitely could not work no matter what.

I find it frankly really hard to envision any situation where it is literally impossible to persuade someone, but it IS possible to intimidate them, but doing the latter never has any serious consequences.

The reaction of NPCs to any interaction is going to be up to the GM. In games I run sometimes intimidation will work where persuasion will not. Sometimes either will work. I've had plenty of DMs over the years that allowed intimidation to work. Repercussions from using either persuasion or intimidation will be based on the situation and the NPC. For example an evil NPC may be persuaded but will think it makes the character weak and vulnerable where an intimidation check would have made them more cautious.

Your experiences are not universal.