Point Buy Variant: Level Adjustment Variant

[Dragonblade275]

I'm thinking of using a variant I thought of a couple of days ago in our next campaign for character creation.

My players usually like to play characters with extremely high scores. Basically, what I want to do is encourage players to play characters with lower ability scores than they are used to. The way that I intend to do this is to allow them to build their new characters using the point buy method.

The twist is that I want to give them a choice of getting more points to buy their ability scores at the expense of having a level adjustment (so that characters with lower level adjustmments would get more XP per encounter and characters with higher ability scores would have an effective XP penalty). The question is how many points added to the point buy are worth a level adjustment?

The way I figure it, right now, a 25 point buy would have no level adjustment. What I'm trying to determine is how many more points would be worth a +1 level adjustement, a +2 level adjustment, or a +3 level adjustment.

Here's what I was considering:

25 pts = +0 Level Adjustment
32 pts = +1 Level Adjustment
41 pts = +2 Level Adjustment
52 pts = +3 Level Adjustment
65 pts = +4 Level Adjustment
80 pts = +5 Level Adjustment

Does this sound reasonable? Would these level adjustments be fair for these point buy values?

 

[Nyaricus]

I think your LA's are way too high. You said your players always like really high scores and your system seems to penalize that way too much. +5 LA to get x3 starting points? yeesh, that is way to much, IMO.

Personally, what i would do is give the payers a base of 10 with a 25 PB. That way, the players can have some "reasonable" scores, and you don't have to go making charts which, IMO, don't scale that well at all. +5 LA for 80 points is too much.

Do you have to do PB? there are plenty of ways in which your payer could roll for higher stats, or you could just give them 30 points for PB, and a base of 8 or 10.

Just a thought.

 

[Conaill]

Hi Dragonblade - welcome to the boards!

I've suggested something like this a couple of times in the past, but never gotten a chance to try it out yet. Your numbers seem about right - I came up with 5-10 (closer to 10) points per +1LA at the time.

I would be wary about those very high pointbuy values though. Those are likely to cause various unbalances in the characters which are hard to predict a priori. Swapping out one or two levels for higher stats should be reasonably safe. Anything higher than that - all bets are off.

Another variant of this is to let the players roll their stats, and then give some starting XP to the ones with lower stats to balance out the PCs against each other. For example, you could let them all roll 4d6-drop-1 (or 5d6-drop-2 if they want really high stats), then calculate the point total of each character, and give everyone 100XP for every point they are below the PC with the highest point total (assuming they start at 1st level). They can use that starting XP to craft some magic items to start out with, save them to level up a little earlier than everyone else, or if they are more than 10 points behind the highest total (1000 XP) they could start with an extra character level or a +1LA race.

Let us know how things work out for you...

 

[Dragonblade275]

I think your LA's are way too high. You said your players always like really high scores and your system seems to penalize that way too much. +5 LA to get x3 starting points? yeesh, that is way to much, IMO.

I might have to revise it a bit, but an 80 point buy can purchase the following set of abilities:

18 18 18 18 16 14

This seems to be a significant power boost over the elite array (25 point buy).

Personally, what i would do is give the payers a base of 10 with a 25 PB. That way, the players can have some "reasonable" scores, and you don't have to go making charts which, IMO, don't scale that well at all. +5 LA for 80 points is too much.

Thanks for the input, Nyaricus.

Do you have to do PB? there are plenty of ways in which your payer could roll for higher stats, or you could just give them 30 points for PB, and a base of 8 or 10.

Just a thought.

That is one option, but knowing my players, it wouldn't satisfy them. They would be more interested in playing a lower point buy game if there were some experience point incentive attached. Blanketly saying that everyone gets straight 10's plus 30 points to buy scores won't satisfy them. But if it's their idea to choose a lower amount of points for an higher XP reward, it will work.

Thanks for this input, though.

 

[Dragonblade275]

Thanks for the Reply, Conaill

Hi Dragonblade - welcome to the boards!

Thanks, Conaill.

I've suggested something like this a couple of times in the past, but never gotten a chance to try it out yet. Your numbers seem about right - I came up with 5-10 (closer to 10) points per +1LA at the time.

I would be wary about those very high pointbuy values though. Those are likely to cause various unbalances in the characters which are hard to predict a priori. Swapping out one or two levels for higher stats should be reasonably safe. Anything higher than that - all bets are off.

I can appreciate the warning on this. This is part of the reason for the higher level adjustment. A character with such higher starting scores might not have to work as hard since things just come naturally to him/her, so they gain less experience points per encounter. I do think there might be other imbalances that are hard to predict.

Another variant of this is to let the players roll their stats, and then give some starting XP to the ones with lower stats to balance out the PCs against each other. For example, you could let them all roll 4d6-drop-1 (or 5d6-drop-2 if they want really high stats), then calculate the point total of each character, and give everyone 100XP for every point they are below the PC with the highest point total (assuming they start at 1st level). They can use that starting XP to craft some magic items to start out with, save them to level up a little earlier than everyone else, or if they are more than 10 points behind the highest total (1000 XP) they could start with an extra character level or a +1LA race.

Thanks for these ideas. Definitely something to think about.

Let us know how things work out for you...

Thanks Conaill. Will do.

 

[Nyaricus]

yeesh, where are my manners? Dude, welcome to EN World! Hope you like it here, and hope to see you posting around some more, too!

Anywho, i personally don't go in for PB systems at all - although I will be, for the first time, playing in my campaign (rather than DMing) and for this we are gonna try out the Iron Heroes system - which requiers Point Buy. I personally would prefer a high-score dice rolling method included in the rules, but prolly we will end up doing 3d10 drop the lowest one, Organic Method. Organic Method is my personal favourite, btw.

speaking of dice roilling methods, thee was a really good thread a little while back. If you go into my Tasty Bits Thread, you can find my post in which i list my favourites, and in the top right hand corner you can veiw the whole thing.

later!!

 

[Crothian]

I might have to revise it a bit, but an 80 point buy can purchase the following set of abilities:

18 18 18 18 16 14

This seems to be a significant power boost over the elite array (25 point buy).

It is more powerful, but is a character with those satats really equal to a 6th level character? I'd say no. Stats are good in the early game, but other bonuises overtake them as character increase in levels.

 

[Dragonblade275]

yeesh, where are my manners? Dude, welcome to EN World! Hope you like it here, and hope to see you posting around some more, too!

Thanks for the welcome. I do hope to post around here some and to learn some. I played mostly AD&D before third edition and haven't really played that much third edition, yet. But, I do like the 3E/3.5E rules a bit better than AD&D.

Back in AD&D we used a variant from the original Unearthed Arcana to roll for scores.
9d6 for 1st ability
8d6 for 2nd ability
7d6 for 3rd ability
6d6 for 4th ability
5d6 for 5th ability
4d6 for 6th ability
3d6 for 7th ability (Comeliness was in use as a stat in those rules). It worked pretty well, but it resulted in scores much higher than what third edition is built for (25 pt elite array).

Anywho, i personally don't go in for PB systems at all - although I will be, for the first time, playing in my campaign (rather than DMing) and for this we are gonna try out the Iron Heroes system - which requiers Point Buy. I personally would prefer a high-score dice rolling method included in the rules, but prolly we will end up doing 3d10 drop the lowest one, Organic Method. Organic Method is my personal favourite, btw.

I've read a lot about Iron Heroes and I'm really looking forward to getting the rulebook(s) for it next year. We're trying Arcana Evolved mixed with Dragonlance in the next campaign.

speaking of dice roilling methods, thee was a really good thread a little while back. If you go into my Tasty Bits Thread, you can find my post in which i list my favourites, and in the top right hand corner you can veiw the whole thing.

I'll see if I can find my way to it. I'm still getting used to the set-up of this messageboard.

later!!

Thanks for the post!

 

[Dragonblade275]

I might have to revise it a bit, but an 80 point buy can purchase the following set of abilities:

18 18 18 18 16 14

This seems to be a significant power boost over the elite array (25 point buy).

It is more powerful, but is a character with those satats really equal to a 6th level character? I'd say no. Stats are good in the early game, but other bonuises overtake them as character increase in levels.

I don't know exactly where a character with these stats would fall. I do know that four such characters at least able to take on CR3 and some CR4 monsters at first level. I guess the thing to do would be to run some test fights to test the CR of such a character.

Like I wrote above, this probably needs some adjustment to make it fair and balanced.

 

[Crothian]

Playtesting is the best way to figure anything.