Point Buy Recommendations

[Ridley's Cohort]

My big problem with a 28 point buy is that is is hard on CHA based characters, and Monks.

Yup.

I think that you need at least 32 points to make a monk or paladin that can carry their weight during combat. Even those characters will be a bit marginal.

At 36 points I have noticed that monks & paladins can fill out some of those "secondary" stats to 14 and they look competitive.

Don't have enough experience with bards or sorcerors to really comment.

A 28 point buy campaign works very well if you stick to fighters, barbarians, rangers, rogues, clerics, druids, and wizards.

 

[incognito]

Ridley's -C

I agree, with the notable exception of druids. They end up needing good DEX, to offset the light armor, where as most clerics can get away with a 10 or even 8 DEX

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Yup.

I think that you need at least 32 points to make a monk or paladin that can carry their weight during combat. Even those characters will be a bit marginal.

At 36 points I have noticed that monks & paladins can fill out some of those "secondary" stats to 14 and they look competitive.

Don't have enough experience with bards or sorcerors to really comment.

A 28 point buy campaign works very well if you stick to fighters, barbarians, rangers, rogues, clerics, druids, and wizards.

For sorcerers it isn't a big deal, because there only class dependent stat of import is CHR. The rest are expected to fulfill duties that there class abilities are dependent on more than CHR.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Elder-B,

I would not consider any of those characters tweaked horribly.

[/i] [/B]

I wouldn't either, but many people here do. My opinion is if that's what the player wants to play good for them I'll let them play it. I have as of yet not had a situation in unweighted point buy where a persons stats have somehow diminished the enjoyment of other players.

On the 1st page you'll see my unweighted point buy is 25 points start at 8 in every stat. Works out to about 73 points in a completely point for point buy, but with the req of buying all stats up to 8 before racial mods.

And apparently if you see E-B posts(page 1) at least for str where it gets a double bonus in a focussed area(to hit and damage in melle combat) the benefits get marginally better as you progress. I think that's more of a problem with str being too good than a problem with unweighted point buy but so be it.

I really don't agree with any balance arguments that the weighted point buy is better. I think its primary purpose is too make certain stats rare similar to how rolling the dice makes them, but that to me is a camapign style issue and not a balnce issue. And if that's waht you want in a game the rules nudging tosudgest to players that they normally shouldn't buy stats past 14 by much, mor epower to you. This works especially well if your going for some everyman style cmapaign where the heros are much more ordinary people doing there best to do what's right(or wrong) in certain times. I think you could pull the same thing off with an unweighted point buy with just less points though.

 

[bret]

I wouldn't either, but many people here do. My opinion is if that's what the player wants to play good for them I'll let them play it. I have as of yet not had a situation in unweighted point buy where a persons stats have somehow diminished the enjoyment of other players.

I have been a player in both types of campaign.

My enjoyment of two of the campaigns was less because it was unweighted point buy. It made a significant difference in power levels, since in unweighted there is hardly any reason to take a middle stat like a 14.

I am currently in a 30 pt campaign where we used weighted point buy. I'm actually playing a character where I concentrated on just one attribute (Int 17 on a wizard) and I believe it does work better. There are other characters who are good in several statistics (14s), but when it comes to things requiring Int he has a significant advantage. The gap will widen at 4th level.

If I were playing a rogue in such a campaign, I would have gone for 14s and 12s instead of a single high attribute. The 14s would go in Int, Dex and Con.


I like point buy because dice hate me. I like weighted point buy because then I think the really high attributes mean more. You really have to want that 16 if it means loosing 2 points in another attribute.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Elder-B,

I would not consider any of those characters tweaked horribly.

<Snip>

I think the wizard is fairly reasonbly designed: str 10, dex 16, con 16, int 18, wis 10, cha 10, sounds about right, although again, I caution against taking a 10 wisdom.

I agree that they're all reasonably designed. If I were told unweighted point buy, they're the kind of characters I'd show up with.

The point is, however, that none of them are very far separated from 18 18 18 10, 8, 8 which people seem to think would be munchkin/power gamer fodder. For the wizard, all I did was drop two 18s to 16s and eliminate stat penalties. Arguments about whether or not it's wise to have a 10 int aren't arguments that it isn't power gaming--they're arguments that it's poor power gaming. (Something which, incidentally, annoys me much more than skilled power gaming).

And mutli-class wise: I have no problem with it, and if I did, it wold be because a CLASS has problems:maybe too front loaded (like the ranger), or penalized to heavily, like the bard, for multi-classing).

Sure. The point of the question was this though: Obviously that set of stats isn't too impressive for a fighter. However, for a paladin it's about the equivalent of 18, 18, 18, 10, 8, 8. So, if you don't want people min/maxing their characters into as specialized a role as possible, how do you discourage that if it turns out that a character will gain abilities that make the suboptimal stat choice optimal?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Not so at all. I've played a lot of games at 28 (weighted) points and have seen 28 point monks and paladins pull their own weight in combat.

Str 15, dex 10, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 14 is a perfectly playable set of stats for a paladin. Such a paladin can easily pull his own weight in a campaign if typical fighter stats are
Str 16, dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 10.

Similarly, a half orc monk with
Str 18, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 6
is an excellent bruiser in the 28 point campaign.

A regular monk with
Str 16, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 8
also works quite well.

28 point buy sorcerors work well too
Str 10, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 10, Cha 15 works well. (That was my initial setup for a 14th level sorceror I played in a high level campaign).

A sorceror who wants higher DCs could go:
Str 10, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 16

I've seen a highly successful 28 point sorceror with
Str 8, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 18

The thing about 28 point buy is that you have to accept that your character will probably have some weaknesses.

I think that you need at least 32 points to make a monk or paladin that can carry their weight during combat. Even those characters will be a bit marginal.

At 36 points I have noticed that monks & paladins can fill out some of those "secondary" stats to 14 and they look competitive.

Don't have enough experience with bards or sorcerors to really comment.

A 28 point buy campaign works very well if you stick to fighters, barbarians, rangers, rogues, clerics, druids, and wizards.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I have been a player in both types of campaign.

My enjoyment of two of the campaigns was less because it was unweighted point buy. It made a significant difference in power levels, since in unweighted there is hardly any reason to take a middle stat like a 14.



I like point buy because dice hate me. I like weighted point buy because then I think the really high attributes mean more. You really have to want that 16 if it means loosing 2 points in another attribute.

Sucks that some one elses stats effected you negatively in that game. In my game I have a human fighter starting stats 14,14,12,13,10,10(S,D,C,I,W,C) and a dwarf barb/fighter 18,10,17,10,12,6(starting stats for them both now improved a bit) And in melee combat the barb/fighter is better and a decent amount so.

Overall though my money is on the human fighter, he frequently busts out arrows accuaretly, drops the bow, quick draws his spiked chain(which both him and the dwarf use) and his ahcking away with decent skill. His higher int, dex opened up more feats to him, and bows are just nasty and he's good with them. He feels the pain a bit in the HP department with the base 12 con, but magic helped out there a bit. The dwarf is a master of mellee combat, and has a much better will save vs enchantments so he stays in the fight a lot longer. Though they basically ruled that the dwarf has to shiut up when ever they make a specific jesture so he doesn't sour any more negotiations.

Basically though I'd say the party if they could only take one would take the human fighter, they don't just need melle they need both ranged attacks and mellee from there primary fighter, and the human fighter with more average stats delivers this.

Honestly I think the party wishes both of them would take rogue levels to flesh out their skills to make them more utilitarian but its not up to the aprty but the players of the characters.


As for you 2nd point like I was trying to get across I think that is the primary purpose of weighted point buy to make high stats rarer. Or more special if you would prefer it phrased that way. Like I said as a DM(which I hate being) I prefer to see all the characters and work with the players so the characters can work to gether and are palying in a campaign apprpriate to what they want to play in and is fitting for the characters designed. I usually start his out with background and discussion so we can get a ballpark figure at what kind of stats, personalities, etc people can agree on and therefor how many points to alot. If they expressed a desire for mostly above ave stats with few high stats wher high stats were rare and special a weighted point buy might be the way to go.

 

[bret]

Sucks that some one elses stats effected you negatively in that game.

Guess I just get tired of constantly being overshadowed.

It is OK to not be in the limelight some of the time. It isn't so much fun when you never get spotlighted in a game. Part of this is GMing, part of this is that the high stats allow another character to completely overshadow someone with lower attributes. Without weighting, the high attribute character isn't going to have what I would consider a significant downside.

You mentioned what your experiences were, I mentioned how mine didn't match.

I've tried both ways, have you?

Even if you have, there is quite a bit of variance in how people play the same game. It is quite possible that your group would never have a problem with this. I know it made a positive difference in one group I was in, playing under the same GM with many of the same players when we went to weighted attributes.

Edit: Spelling

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Guess I just get tired of constantly being overshadowed.


I've tried both ways, have you?

Even if you have, there is quite a bit of variance in how people play the same game. It is quite possible that your group would never have a problem with this. I know it made a positive difference in one group I was in, playing under the same GM with many of the same players when we went to weighted attributes.

Edit: Spelling

Yes it does suck to be constantly overshadwed a reason i'm against rolling for stats. Even though I'm generally a good roller.

And I've tried both ways.(that sounds bad-or good depending on what you like) I've rolled(ugh) played in a weighted point buy, played in a unweighted point buy(75 point,and 80 point) and I run my 25 point start at 8 in stats unweighted point buy(I tried a 20 point buy unweighted but people felt weak and didn't like their characters).

And yes its true people play differently, so waht works for me and my group may suck for others.