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*Dungeons & Dragons
Is Point Buy Balanced?
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<blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 9826638" data-attributes="member: 50987"><p>I decided to model this in Excel, to see if it's a math thing or a perception thing (or a cheating thing).</p><p></p><p>Using the <strong>Standard Array</strong> (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), you end up with a total of 72.</p><p></p><p>For the <strong>Point-Buy Method,</strong> I pulled up a complete list of all 65 valid ability scores that you can get using the Point Buy method (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2epkdi/5e_here_is_a_complete_list_of_valid_ability_score/" target="_blank">Source</a>). I put them into a spreadsheet, and summed each result (15+15+15+8+8+8=69, 13+13+13+12+12+12=75, and everything in between.) Then I added them together and averaged the result.</p><p></p><p>The average for Point Buy is 72.3, but that's moot: the player chooses a result between 69 and 75.</p><p></p><p><strong>And for the 4d6 Method</strong>, I had Excel generate six stats using the 4d6 method, and add up the total of all six stats.</p><p>And then I had it repeat that calculation a total of 2,560 times, and then average the result.</p><p>The average result from the 4d6 method was 73.5.</p><p></p><p>So it does look like the 4d6 method will---on average, across thousands of iterations--generate stats that are about 1.5 points better than the Standard Array, and about 1 point higher than the <em>average value </em>of Point Buy...but you can get results as high as 75 using Point-Buy, through careful selection of stats. (13, 13, 13, 13, 12, 11 gives you 75 points, which is much higher than any other method and it's 100% reliable.)</p><p></p><p>TL;DR: I think Point Buy is fairly well-balanced with the other methods. The advantage for point-buy is that the player can choose how over- or under-powered they want their stats to be, by as much as +/- 3 whole points from the standard array, while with the 4d6 method you are probably going to end up at +1.5.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]425876[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]425877[/ATTACH]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CleverNickName, post: 9826638, member: 50987"] I decided to model this in Excel, to see if it's a math thing or a perception thing (or a cheating thing). Using the [B]Standard Array[/B] (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), you end up with a total of 72. For the [B]Point-Buy Method,[/B] I pulled up a complete list of all 65 valid ability scores that you can get using the Point Buy method ([URL='https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2epkdi/5e_here_is_a_complete_list_of_valid_ability_score/']Source[/URL]). I put them into a spreadsheet, and summed each result (15+15+15+8+8+8=69, 13+13+13+12+12+12=75, and everything in between.) Then I added them together and averaged the result. The average for Point Buy is 72.3, but that's moot: the player chooses a result between 69 and 75. [B]And for the 4d6 Method[/B], I had Excel generate six stats using the 4d6 method, and add up the total of all six stats. And then I had it repeat that calculation a total of 2,560 times, and then average the result. The average result from the 4d6 method was 73.5. So it does look like the 4d6 method will---on average, across thousands of iterations--generate stats that are about 1.5 points better than the Standard Array, and about 1 point higher than the [I]average value [/I]of Point Buy...but you can get results as high as 75 using Point-Buy, through careful selection of stats. (13, 13, 13, 13, 12, 11 gives you 75 points, which is much higher than any other method and it's 100% reliable.) TL;DR: I think Point Buy is fairly well-balanced with the other methods. The advantage for point-buy is that the player can choose how over- or under-powered they want their stats to be, by as much as +/- 3 whole points from the standard array, while with the 4d6 method you are probably going to end up at +1.5. [ATTACH type="full" width="382px" size="858x632"]425876[/ATTACH] [ATTACH type="full" width="380px" size="783x490"]425877[/ATTACH] [/QUOTE]
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