Point Buy Negative Values

[Charwoman Gene]

Yeah, I kinda got into this ferret-on-pixie-sticks-and-red-bull hyper mental mood about this.

Hopefully I will get the time today to take the hour it will take to make my spreadsheet...

Oh, BTW, I think the "control" of point buy is counteracted by the non-linear point values.

 

[Thanee]

Oh, BTW, I think the "control" of point buy is counteracted by the non-linear point values.

I'd say, those are mainly to cover the lower probability to roll up very high stats and to prevent extreme minmaxing (encouraging average/slightly above average scores).

Bye
Thanee

 

[CRGreathouse]

c) Make them match the curve of the high numbers. This gives

7 -> -1
6 -> -3
5 -> -5
4 -> -8
3 -> -11​

I think they should curve the other way

7 -> -1
6 -> -1
5 -> -2
4 -> -2
3 -> -3​

The point of the 'curve' is to make the differences between low scores small and the difference between large scores large, so your scaling is backward from my perspective.

Without a choice for this sort of curve, I just voted for 0 and it's the closest to what I want.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I think they should curve the other way

7 -> -1
6 -> -1
5 -> -2
4 -> -2
3 -> -3​

The point of the 'curve' is to make the differences between low scores small and the difference between large scores large, so your scaling is backward from my perspective.

Without a choice for this sort of curve, I just voted for 0 and it's the closest to what I want.

I'm very glad people posted other variants, actually. I didn't think of slowing down the point increases but it might make a good compromise.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Personally, I think that character generation should be skewed towards generating above average characters. Why no let the player play a "hero", someone who is above average in most abilities?

If we go by the traditional 10-11 is "average model, then even iconic spread (a fairly common way to distribute 25 point buy) characters are above average in most of their abilities. 15 14 13 12 10 8 is above average in 4 abilities, average in one, and below average in one.

There is little not let a player use, say, 40 - 45 pb or 4d6 drop 7 rolls, or even let them reroll if they think the charatcer stinks (personally I prefer rolling methods, because of the randomness; the whole point buy thing rubs me wrong for some reason)

Having high stat characters is not going to break the game, it will be more fun for the player (especially at lower levels) and a good DM can still challenge players and make the game interesting.

That rather depends on your definition of "breaking the game" and how good your players are at efficient character construction. I ran a 36 point buy game for about 2 years and I found that the characters (who were not particularly well constructed) performed about as well as 28 point buy characters one or two levels higher than them against most foes. At the moment, I'm playing in a game where the DM decided that 36 points wasn't enough for "heroic" characters and had us roll until we came up with something better than the 36 points we started with. We mostly ended up at 40-55 points and now he continually comments on how we're taking his monsters apart. At the moment, we're 11th level and in a fight that looks like an EL 17, but it feels more like party level +3 or +4 than the certain death that EL=APL +6 should be. A good part of the reason for that is our stats. (I know my paladin would be hurting a lot more if he had the normal 77 hp rather than the 100+ that he has. (16 rather than 14 con and a generous hit point method). He'd also be hurting a lot more if his charisma were lower and he hadn't been able to heal 44 of the 77 points of damage he took.

Higher stat characters have less trouble with encounters than lower-stat characters. High stat characters also have more ways to break the game. Ordinarily, a paladin/monk is a pretty challenging character to make effective since the only stat that isn't tied to an important ability is intelligence. If you have really high stats, however, you can do some nifty things with that combination.

This is a game and the pont is for the DM to make it fun for the players, whilst having a good time themselves. Overly limiting characters doesn't serve a neessary purpose.

The question is what is overly limiting characters? My own experience, after playing a pseudo-dragonlance game where the minotaur fighter/mage with incredible stats pretty much did everything and the only thing the rest of the party was there for was to haste him, suggests that balance between characters is important. Thus I'm a fan of point buy. My experience also indicates that characters with PB 36+ stats are harder to apply the CR/EL system to and get accurate results. Thus, I think that 28-32 points is a good point for everyone having fun. Obviously, other peoples opinions vary.

 

[Darkness]

This takes us to an interesting point; why is the default rule for ability generation 4d6d while CRs are based on characters with 25pt default array? The playtesters seem to be implying that the two are equivalent?

AFAIK they deliberately used slightly below average characters (including mediocre skill/feat choices) for CR testing to ensure you don't need to squeeze all possible power out of your character to hold your own.

 

[Rystil Arden]

AFAIK they deliberately used slightly below average characters (including mediocre skill/feat choices) for CR testing to ensure you don't need to squeeze all possible power out of your character to hold your own.

That makes a lot of sense, actually, and it fits with the below-par choices they made compared to the advice they give on their website for building a better character (which shows that they know how to not build a lacklustre character).

 

[S'mon]

Well, one might suspect, that this hasn't been thought through enough.

Of course you need to put the PB amount below the average of the dice rolls, because of the better control, but PB 25 just is too far below. Also experience shows clearly, that PB 28 is more like it.

Bye
Thanee

Words of wisdom from Thanee, as always (I always feel Thanee should get a nomination for "most common sense from any ENW poster" award)

I think the designers knew fine well that 3/4d6 equated roughly to 28 PB and anticipated that most groups probably wouldn't use 25 PB - after all LG doesn't. Having NPC arrays on 25 pts & PCs on 28 gives just the slight edge that makes for a satisfying game experience IMO. I used to be a "PCs are heroes - they need super duper stats!" school, but that's 1e/2e thinking - in 3e super-stat campaigns are actually far more random & prone to unforeseen TPKs, because the Gm needs tougher encounters to challenge, but the PCs aren't much more resilient.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Personally, I think that character generation should be skewed towards generating above average characters. Why no let the player play a "hero", someone who is above average in most abilities? ...
Having high stat characters is not going to break the game, it will be more fun for the player (especially at lower levels) and a good DM can still challenge players and make the game interesting.
...
pbd

I feel this is like the DnD version of "Our amplifiers go to '11'". Raising the ability averages and character power means that the challenges are objectively harder as you said. In the relative sense they are the same. Both low power and high power characters are challenged proportionately.

However raising EL to account for higher stats tends to discourage offensive spellcasting. Saves, SR, and HP scale faster with CR than any benefit you gain from an extra +1 or +2 stat bonus increase. Offensive casters need Spell Pen in addition to Spell Focuses just to break even which is a big chunk of their feat resources. For some games this is a desirable result.

To avoid wasting feats and wasted spells casters lean towards defensive spells and buffing spells which complicate the high level game. In particular it leads to another boost in challenge levels (and a corresponding increase in the inefficiency of offensive spells) and drags the game down in bookkeeping and spell management. This reliance on buffing makes anticipated encounters too easy and surprise encounters too difficult. And the DM is guessing which will be the case.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Well 25 is too low, for one thing. If you run the Probability Distribution Function on a single stat roll and multiply by six, you get 25.4675925926 for an average point buy. And that includes characters who have 3 in all stats, so once you throw out hopeless characters, you should probably have 27 PB average.

Don't forget, there's nothing in the Point Buy rules to exclude the hopeless character rule.

If you create a character with 25 point buy with scores 13,13,13,13,13,8, then since you don't have any scores higher than 13, you're allowed to scrap the character and start over

-Hyp.