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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 5125360" data-attributes="member: 35909">I vastly prefer point buy.  A DM that only allows rolling for stats actually causes me to pause and consider not joining the game, I hate rolling so much.  One small, singular event should never burden you for so long or to so great a magnitude as poor rolling can.  I've been in some games with pretty bad disparities.  One game, my rolls were worth something like 12-15 point buy and I made a Warlock just because of the available classes, it was the least stat-reliant.  Another player made a Rogue with his amazing rolls that I calculated to be worth something like 42 point buy.  He was literally better than me at every single thing I tried to specialize in, on top of half a dozen other things.[sblock]Even though I usually liked the DM for other systems, his way of running D&D was just too cruel for my tastes, had to leave.  It was a dystopian kind of world, so I guess he thought being harsh on everything was fitting.  It wasn't just the power disparity, either.  My character was the only good character in a party of very, very evil PCs (not my choice, he told us what kind of alignment we had to play when we blindly picked our character backrounds he had written up).  He continously punished my character or made her good intentions only make things worse whenever I tried to actually RP her as being...good.  I felt like she was a D&D personification of Justine (the Marquis de Sade character), and I just didn't feel like playing that sort of thing.[/sblock]That said, I dislike PF's point buy system greatly.  Being able to nuke your scores to salvage bonus points, even if mechanically it's not much different than just starting all stats at 8, just gives this min-maxing feel I can't stand.And for those who decry point buy for allowing a caster to start with an 18, my issue with PF is what it does to other characters.  They made a 14 cost 5 points now, and "normal" point buy is only 15.  High fantasy is 20.  So if you're making a monk, rogue, or other MAD class and simply want 4 scores of 14 (not unreasonable to me, then again I'm mostly used to high powered ~32 point-buy games), you suddenly need to nuke your other two scores, just to afford that with the standard.  High Fantasy just barely lets you squeeze it in.  Compare to 3.5, where normal point buy is 25 points.  4 scores of 14 costs 24 points, fitting into that system with a point ot spare.  With the high powered 32, you can even raise the other 2 scores to 10 and/or get one or two 16's in the high scores.If I use PF, I'm tempted to just use 3.5 point buy.  Maybe since all PF races generally net a +2 ability score increase, I'll reduce the point buy a certain amount.  Four points (32 point buy becomes 28 point buy, for example) sounds about right.I have the same sentiments.  I'd rather everyone use point buy, but just as I hate tyrannical DMs that force me to roll, I wouldn't want to force a rolling lover to use point buy.  I just don't understand why some people, including close friends I otherwise generally understand the psyches of, insist that rolling is "more fun."  It's a set of rolls that takes like 15 seconds, and then never happens again.  Anyway...I follow a similar policy.  I'll offer a massive, freaking awesome point buy, like 32, to encourage people to just use that.  If you still want to roll, you can do 4d6 drop the lowest as normal.  If your scores come out terrible (ah, karma!) I'll let you use point buy instead of accepting them.  But your point buy will be significantly lower (for 32 PB games, probably ~20-22).  If anyone thinks that's mean spirited, it's purely for balance.  If you knew you could fall back on point buy if you rolling awful, and it wouldn't be at a much lower value, everyone would just try their hand at the dice first.  Nothing to lose.</blockquote>

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