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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PaulGreystoke" data-source="post: 786284" data-attributes="member: 10810">I'm surprised that this thread has gone on so long after everyone stated their preference one way or the other.  But Point Buy vs. Die Rolling apparently is a matter of religious conviction around here.  A lot of folks seem determined to try to convert the heathens who believe in the other method to the one truth faith. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />I will join the chorus of those who have found that the die rolling method can lead to inequities that can strain a campaign.  While I am a notoriously unlucky die roller in combat, I have always been exceeding lucky at die rolling in character generation & in hit points.  Thus the characters I have played in D&D campaigns that used die rolling for stat generation - which was all of them in the early years of the game - tended to be more powerful than the others in the group.  When the crybabies in the game whined about it, I shrugged & pointed out that all my characters had been rolled legitimately in front of the DM & that they should just learn to enjoy roleplaying a weaker character.  Strangely enough they didn't much like that advice. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  Instead they usually convinced the DM to allow ever more arcane die rolling methods to give them a chance to play an uber-character too.  Some DMs also tried to rebalance this imbalance by giving the weaker characters more powerful magical items.  In any event, the DMs that knuckled under to this pressure usually ended up losing control of their campaigns as the challenge of dealing with a party of super-characters became too great for them.  After being exposed to other systems that did have point buy character generation, I began using it in the campaigns I DMed.  Other than a few munchkin players, I had no problems with it.  My players were thrilled to be able to design more-or-less exactly the kind of character that they actually wanted to roleplay, instead of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.  There were a few players who were daunted by point buy, afraid that they would design a sub-optimal character, but as DM I was usually able to give them the advice they needed to build an effective version of their desire.  I liked point buy as a player too.  I recall a 2E campaign in which a friend & I were invited to play after all of the campaign's fighters had quit or died.  The party wanted both of us to play fighter-types to restore party balance.  The other player & I decided to play a paladin & a ranger.  Working together, we were able to design characters under the point buy system that, while completely different, were almost exactly equal in overall combat ability.  Neither of us felt overshadowed in combat.  (The 2 characters' roleplaying interaction was hysterical too, but that is besides the point...)I felt the bitter side of die rolling in a different 2E campaign a few years back.  The DM invited me to play, then designed all of the characters for the campaign.  I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to build the character myself, but I looked forward to the challenge of roleplaying whatever I got.  The DM made it clear that all character stats were to be secret.  This didn't bother me at all - they were metagame information after all, & since the DM had gone to the trouble of designing them, I assumed that they would be balanced.  I was handed one of the 2 fighter-types - another ranger.  I had been hoping for a spellcaster, but went to work designing a ranger quite different than any I had played before.  And I had a lot of fun with the concept, until in every combat I was completely being outfought by the party paladin.  I couldn't understand it - tactically I was doing the right things, but even discounting the luck factor, the other character was way more effective.  Eventually my metagame knowledge began to explain why - the paladin was built on a lot more points than my character was.  I sucked it up & played on, but I began to understand what it was like for all of those players years before forced to play alongside my uber-characters.  But then that is karma - what goes around, comes around. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Anyway, the paladin player eventually dropped out of the campaign for personal reasons.  The monsters had a field day beating the heck out of my character as he was forced to try to fill the vacuum left by the absence of the uber-character.  The party soon realized that it needed to recruit a real melee fighter to join the group or else combat was going to be a bloody uncomfortable mess for all concerned.  A new player was recruited, & the DM allowed him to roll up his character.  The player had hot dice that day & a true melee combat monster was born.  The player designed a munchkin dual wielding weapon-specialized whirling dervish of death.  Privately I pointed out to the DM that such a character would make combats hard to balance, but the DM dismissed my concerns & was vaguely insulted at the suggestion.  After a month of the uber-character obliterating everything in his path, the DM quit the campaign out of frustration. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" />So my experiences with die rolling character generation systems have been spectacularly bad, but YMMV. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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