D&D 4E Point buy, 4e & you.

[Nadaka]

My brother has a tendancy to roll many many 18's for his D&D characters. Even under direct supervision and provided "clean" dice and a cup and mandatory 3 seconds of shake.

Its annoying when his worst character ever had a mere 3 18's. The best I saw him roll was 5 18's and a 3.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I played with both, I still prefer dice

Same here. I also learned that rolling for ability scores deny players the opportunity of bringing back the PC who just died with a different name and hair color.

Cheers,

 

[Celebrim]

In any point buy system of any sort (whether for attributes or whatever) there needs to be a recognition that the incremental value of an additional bonus in a particular thing increases at rate that is faster than linear.

This is because it is much better to be overwhelmingly good at something than it is to be mediocre at alot of things. In all RPGs and RPG inspired games, breaking the game involves finding a way to synergistically due one thing extremely well - often to the exclusion of ever doing anything else. This is itself a synergy. If the one thing that you do well, you do so overwhelmingly well that you never have to do anything else, then you don't have to 'waste' any resources getting good at anything else.

So pretty much any RPG worth talking about does something to penalize overly focusing on one thing. In D&D's attribute point buy system it is primarily by weighting extraordinary increments as being more valueable than less extraordinary ones. This is correct design.

Similarly, we know that a +5 sword isn't worth merely 5 times a +1 sword. A 20th level character isn't merely 20 times as good as a 1st level character. A +6 bonus to your spell DC's isn't merely 6 times better than a +1 bonus to your spell DC's. And so forth.

Frankly, I find the plea to stop weighting extraordinary scores more valueable to be just a bit disengenious. I don't think anyone making that suggestion really expects to use the new system to create a wider variaty of ability score arrays. Quite the contrary, I think that they - and most players - would be strongly discouraged from producing wider variaties of arrays.

If 4e is valuing an 18 even more highly than 3e, then that is something 4e is getting right. Compared to 3e, you are much less dependent on being good in a wide variaty of abilities. Compared to 3e, in 4e you have much less penalty for having low scores in anything. It's already looking like an optimal array for 4e would be along the lines of 18, 18, 12, 8, 8, 8 - and that you'd happily drop those 8's lower if you could. If the 4e designers recognized that they reduced some of the penalty for min/maxing and compensated, then kudo's to them for that at least.

 

[Engilbrand]

I prefer rolling. Recently, though, we've just been doing large numbers as a group or having the DM roll the stats that we all get. The most recent game is 18, 17, 15, 14, 13, 12.
When I eventually DM 4E, I'll probably allow rolling. If I ever do point buy, it will be with the old chart (if there has actually been a change), and it will be at least 35 point buy. I hate low stat games. Always have.

 

[Vael]

If my group collectively wanted to roll, I let them roll, but I prefer point buy. When I've played, I've always rolled better than point buy stats, but I'd still rather use point buy.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

rolling dice and the DM allowing for rerolls as he wishes...

maybe i go back to our ADnD system with rolling two sets of 7 3d6 + 2d6 to spend as you like...

As i see it right now, low score can once again be kind of interesting not crippling you completely...

 

[Counterspin]

I agree with Engilbrand. Roll one set of stats, used by the whole group, or use point buy. I don't want there to be a differential between the starting potential of the characters based on luck.

 

[Darkthorne]

I prefer point buy so much better. One of the best RP'ers in my group constantly has the gods of fate pee in his cheerios when it comes to random stats. I have rolled better than average stats but compared to others in my group but I want the option of putting a bad stat where I want it instead of having some weird inbred mutant freak instead (not that there's anything wrong with weird inbred mutant freaks). I want the ability to go "Ooo this class/paragon class looks awesome" or "this off the wall combo would be fun to play" and be able to run that and not be a victim to the dice. I've run suboptimal characters before, even had a Monk with an 8 con and a 12 str which was fun to run before it became an arms race.

 

[Evilhalfling]

My group and I prefer rolling, but afterward I add up the total modifiers and give ability bonuses to players below the group average. (the group vetoed penalties to people above the average) The change is normally between 1-5 bonus pts, capping at 18.

It seems to work well.

 

[Cadfan]

Its true that a +1 is a +1, whether you start at +0 and add one, or start at +3 and add one.

But, primary stats are worth more than less valuable stats.

Weighting the cost of high stats means that you end up facing a choice- do I want +1 in my best, most important stat? Or +2 or 3 in a less important stat?

That's why it matters. Its not (solely, there's some mathematically fiddliness here) because going from +3 to +4 is better than going from +0 to +1, its because different stats have different worths and this technique fixes the balance between them.