Point Buy Recommendations

[-Eä-]

I like 38 points

Given as such I feel that a character gets enough points to have the primary score for his class very high and another, personality stat high. I like this for strange concepts like a Int 18, Str 18 Wizard and such... It allows for great roleplaying opportunities, not playing a stereotypical PC

Also, when in combat, I run them very tactically, and for the PCs to survive, even when facing opponents with average stats, they need high stats to survive. Mounted combat and bullrushing from many siden can kill, and for giving the characters a fair chance, I feel that high abilities is a must.

 

[bret]

Decide what sort of attribute bonuses you want your characters to have.

The easy way to do this is divide the points by 6 and see what attribute that would buy. Adjust to maximize bonus and for attributes over 14 appropriately.

At 25 point buy if they split it evenly, they would have five 12s and a 13. Total of +6 attribute modifier. If they want an attribute higher than 14, they will not have as high a total modifier. If a character took an 18 in an attribute, they only have 9 points left for the other five stats. Anyone doing this going to have multiple attributes with a penalty at this level of play. You could do 18, 13, and four 8s. Drop that to a 17 and you can get 17, 14, 10, and three 8s.

The standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) is built on 25 points.

At 28 point buy, the total becomes four 12s and two 14s. Total of +8 possible. Here it becomes more practical to have one very high attribute, although 18s will still be rare. You can now have an 18 without any penalty attributes (18, 11, four 10s). Going for highest attributes you would get 18. 16, 9 and three 8s.

At 30 point buy, the total becomes three 12s and three 14s. Total of +9 possible. You can have a pretty high attribute plus a secondary attribute without taking a penalty. You see a lot of 15s and 16s, but 17s and 18s are still rare and take a lot of sacrifice. Going for the maximum in a few attributes you could have 18, 16, 12, and three 8s. Maximum attributes without a penalty attribute would be 18, 14, and four 10s.

At 32 points buy you are likely to start seeing a few 18 attributes. Maximizing for total attribute modifier would give you two 12s and four 14s. This is the point where someone could finally buy two 18s but the rest of the attributes would be 8s.

At 36 points buy you can have straight 14s for a total attribute modifier of +12. At this point, 17s and 18s become popular for the one stat wonders and there is very little pressure to have a penalty attribute. Going for maximized attributes you could buy two 18s, 12, and four 8s. Going for a small number of bonus attributes without any penalty attributes you could get 18, 16, 12 and three 10s.

At 40 points you can have one 16 and five 14s for a total of +13 in attribute modifiers. Penalty attributes are going to be extremely rare considering you could buy two 18s and four 10s at this point. We are well into the high power game here.


I hope this helps.

 

[Darkness]

I'm wondering what a good point buy layout would be for more heroic characters. 25 just doesn't seem in the least bit to cut it for me.

I'm partial to 32 points - but I guess 35-36 might work, too.

I would have _searched_ for old posts but apparently you have to pay to use the search function. grrrr... freakin' lame.

For information on why this is so, go here.

 

[The Souljourner]

I like 30. Middle of the road, not low powered, not ridiculous. Makes for better paladins and monks without giving everyone 3 18s. More than 32 I feel starts getting up in the overly powerful range, which is ok if that's the kind of campaign you want to run, but for a regular campaign, seems like too much to me.

-The Souljourner

 

[Darkness]

I like 30. Middle of the road, not low powered, not ridiculous. Makes for better paladins and monks without giving everyone 3 18s.

For three 18s, you'd need at least 48 points, though, anyway.

 

[MadScientist]

My group has played nearly all of our campaigns using the 32 point buy and it's worked pretty well. The PC's are deffinately well above average, but it hasn't seemed overpowered at all.

 

[Endur]

12 point buy is the character has 6 10's, or some higher stats and some lower stats.

15 point buy is the monster manual idea of 3 10's and 3 11's.

24 point buy is the character has 6 12's.

25 point buy is the DMG NPCs (15, 14, 13,12,10, 8).

28 point buy is the Living Greyhawk campaign. Works ok.

I think 36 is a decent high powered campaign. i.e. a character can have all 14s, or can have some higher stats at the cost of some stats lower than 14.

Keep in mind that characters that need only one good stat do better in the lower point cost campaigns and characters that need multiple good stats do better in the higher point cost campaigns.

Characters in earlier editions with different die rolling methods had stats all over the place. One character might have his highest stat a 12. Another character in the same campaign might have his lowest stat a 12.

Tom

 

[rtricher]

We play 30 and it works well,

Good possibilities but not to strong that way you have at least one or two low stats.. That way you can't have everything.

18=16
17=13
16=10
15=8
14=6
13=5
12=4
11=3
10=2
9=1
8=0

I think someone asked

 

[Coredump]

I have another suggestion to you. Have your players 'earn' those points. It will allow you to tailor your campaign, without 'forcing' them.

For example:
Everybody gets 20 points, plus

2pt for a 1 page background story
1pt for an extra page of background
1pt for including at least 5 NPC's in your story, (for plot hooks)
1pt for a list of traits and personality quirks
1pt for coming from a small town
2pt for being 'good' aligned
1pt for picking a non-ECL race
1pt for picking human
2pt for coming from region "A"
1pt for coming from region "B"
1pt for 'knowing' another PC before adventuring
1pt for having a sworn oath of loyalty to someone/thing


This means that they could have up to 34 points to use. You can further tailor this so that they can only pick 10 out of 15, or that they are mutually exclusive (like the regions) or you can subdivide them into groups, and they can only pick 2 from each group, or whatever. I like it as a tool to foster more roleplaying via the background, quirks, known NPC's, and oaths. But it also helps to 'control' choices via alignment, races, etc.

Good luck.

.

 

[The Souljourner]

For three 18s, you'd need at least 48 points, though, anyway.

Technically, a Wood Elf could do it with just 36 points as long as it's Strength, Dex, and Wisdom Of course, he'd have 3 6's besides, but hey, who needs skillpoints or hitpoints?

-Nate, aka The Souljourner