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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 763062" data-attributes="member: 3146">An accurate assessment of 4d6 on a point buy scale also needs to account for "hopeless" characters. Throwing out hopeless characters (as per the PH) skews the point buy higher than average rolls would indicate.Myself, I prefer point buy. It lets me play the character I want to play (none of the "I wanted to play a cleric but I can either be an amazing thief or a pathetic cleric"). It evens out the power of the PCs. (I've played in games where one person rolled nearly perfectly and another rolled very poorly--it's not very satisfying to be playing a hobbit when everyone else is playing Gandalf or Aragorn and they're in the same party (Merry and Pippin felt this way if you recall from LotR). I know some people like the idea of one player getting to be the hero and someone else playing the flunkie or the loser but I had more than enough of that garbage in Junior High. It wasn't fun then and it isn't fun now). I haven't really seen min-maxing to be more of a problem with point buy than rolling. Either way, people will put their stats where they think they're advantageous--point buy, however, allows people to choose how min-maxed their character is going to be and adds a very definite cost to min-maxing. (Nor is the problem of newbies not knowing the system averted by rolling--when most of the players in my group made their first 3e characters by rolling they put scores in places they wouldn't do now. The same with point buy--it's just a question of how you get the scores). Point buy also allows some interesting options that I want to try out next time I run a game. I'm thinking of something like allowing higher point buys at the cost of +1 or +2 ECL (for the young and inexperienced but very gifted type characters), allowing +ecl races at no ECL if they live with lower point buy, and possibly even allowing characters to start with extra levels of NPC classes at the cost of lower stats (thus simulating the experienced campaigner or warrior/shepherd archetype who is travelling with the young heroes; I haven't figured out whether I'd treat it as a negative ECL or whether I'd just let the player increase his stats to normal point buy levels as he gained experience that would normally cause him to level (simulating the warrior-turned barkeep regaining his lost muscle and constitution)). I like the idea of having a more or less balanced party of unbalanced individuals--something I think point buy can do but rolling can't.</blockquote>

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