incognito said:
Elder-B,
Perhaps my problem is with the weighting. I can admit, I'd like to see less 18's. However, I can also say without pause, I would liek characters who feel comfortable putting a 12 into CHA, even if they are not a sorcerer, bard, or paladin.
With the weighted buy, you almost never see a cleric with a 12 CHA, the clerics need the points for STR, WIS, and CON (maybe INT too?).
That's odd. My current 28 point LG cleric is Str 14, Dex 10, Con 14, Wis 15 (16 at 4th level), Cha 12
The previous cleric I created was a 30 point buy elf:
Str 12, Dex 16, con 12, int 10, wis 15, cha 12
My current Living Arcanis (32 point buy) Barbarian/Fighter/Cleric is
Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 10
In my current campaign, I have a cleric with 14 STR, 15 DEX, 17 WIS, 10 INT, 12 CHA, 12 CON. With a 28 point buy, I have to dump the odd numbers on both DEX, and WIS, and either dump one of the 14's, or dump both 12's
Yet the character with the 80 point buy seemes balance. so, I guess I am looking for a different weighting system, that allows for a lot of 12's and 14's, and fewer 16's, 17's and 18's
I guess it depends on the players. My experience is that the DMG weighting tends to result in exactly what you're talking about. Lots of 12s and 14s, one or two 16s, and very few 17s or 18s. The 17s and 18s require massive sacrifices since such characters will hardly have any bonusses in other stats.
As I mentioend before, I retain the right to veto any character. We recently had a character die, and I had a player approach me with an ass-backwards feat chain, selecting meta magic feats that he could not even apply to his cantrips, in preparation for a few levels down the line. I nerfed that.
Someone here mentioned bonuses are mutiplied at times - and it's true, not to mention spell saves become more difficult when you allow high stats, AND give free reign giving out magic items.
The poor monsters are expecting those 25 point buy characters to attack, and they get these OMEGA chracters - they will suffer.
That's exactly my point on the point buy. If a monster has a +2 reflex save and needs to make a DC 18 fireball (int 16+spell focus) save, he'll do so 25% of the time. If the attribute goes up to 18 or so, the monster is only half as likely to save. The higher the stat goes, the more of a difference the two points make. And when you've got 12 point buy monsters it makes a big difference.
So, I choose to mitigiate what items are available, since heroes are not made from magic items, but from bravery, great fortitude, iron will (etc, etc and no, don't mean the feats!).
DO you see where I am coming from?
I see where you're coming from but I think it can have an unbalancing effect--especially when buffing spells are taken into account. Generally a bull's strength spell is a lot better than gauntlets of ogre power. So an 8th level fighter/barbarian who started out with 18 strength is much better in terms of damage dealing than the one who started out with a 14 strength increased it twice and got gauntlets of ogre power because he's likely to be bull's strengthed which will give him even more strength. Consequently, he deals out significantly more damage than the lower stat character but has the same hit points and about the same armor class. Thus in order to get monsters who stand up to his damage dealing capacity, the DM needs to get higher CR monsters but he's not any more able to stand up to their damage than the weaker character. Consequently, the moment the dice start rolling the other way he's in trouble. It's the same thing that often happens to ECL characters only less severe. (when I was playing RttToEE we had a 28 strength half orc-half dragon barbarian who generally one-shotted everything (except the dragon). He had a 1st level character's hit points though so when he came up against a dire ape and didn't kill it, he got rended from full hit points to -15 in one round).
