D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats

[Maxperson]

I wonder how much "market" there'd be for a less buttoned-down version of something like AL - organized play, yes, but run with a bit more of an 'anything goes' vibe to it; more like a home game would often be. Roll 'em up any way the DM decides for that table. House rules OK. And to prevent abuses, no transfer of characters from one table to another. Join a new table, roll up a new character.

Lan-"just wondering"-efan

I'd be into that for sure.

 

[FarBeyondC]

And to prevent abuses, no transfer of characters from one table to another. Join a new table, roll up a new character.

Just wanted to note that the ability to transfer characters from one table to another is the most important part of AL, and organized play in general.

 

[Caliban]

Just wanted to note that the ability to transfer characters from one table to another is the most important part of AL, and organized play in general.

Shh...don't spoil it for them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Point-buy is 'better' than rolling when playing in a competitive environment,

Which AL is not. I don't think organized play has been competitive in any sense since it shifted from tournament modules to RPGA back...whenever that was, late 80s?

but my previous such experience offered no such 'make your own PC but use point-buy' option. Instead, such environments provided a selection of pre-gens and you had to choose one.

Tournaments used pregens, yeah. Though, what I recall seeing of the pregens that came with the tournament modules I saw hardly seemed balanced for a fair competition. It also seemed like tournament modules were particularly arbitrary and nonsensical, even by the standards of the day. (Though, I suppose, they might have constituted the standards of the day...)

Just wanted to note that the ability to transfer characters from one table to another is the most important part of AL, and organized play in general.

It's certainly more important than any vestige of 'competitive' play that might be left over from organized play's history of tournaments. But, there's other aspects that are very important. The casual aspect of not necessarily having to show up to every session. The theoretically shared experience of playing the same APs. There's a unifying/belonging side to it, I suppose.

I wonder how much "market" there'd be for a less buttoned-down version of something like AL - organized play, yes, but run with a bit more of an 'anything goes' vibe to it; more like a home game would often be.

AL does have room for that sort of thing. I think it's reported up the WPN chain as 'freeplay' or something like that. It doesn't count towards any AL anything, but it happens.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Which AL is not. I don't think organized play has been competitive in any sense since it shifted from tournament modules to RPGA back...whenever that was, late 80s?
Tournaments used pregens, yeah. Though, what I recall seeing of the pregens that came with the tournament modules I saw hardly seemed balanced for a fair competition. It also seemed like tournament modules were particularly arbitrary and nonsensical, even by the standards of the day. (Though, I suppose, they might have constituted the standards of the day...)

Old school AD&D tourneys were totally designed to challenge the players rather than the characters so you would see puzzles, traps, and whatnot that didn't make a lot of game world sense in a normal game. A test of player skill with scoring and all that. I miss that at cons.

 

[Marandahir]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a Session 0 where everyone rolls up their stats in front of everyone else, or otherwise prepares with a standard array or point-buy.
It's not policing. It's just part of human nature to want to fudge the rolls and get (even slightly) better scores. But it's an impulse we have to resist as a collective group, because it makes the game less fun for everyone is the party are all literal gods walking around at 1st level because of their perfect stats.

This isn't about enforcement of the rules. It's about allowing fun. And the fun comes in part from rolling the abilities out. We can support each other by having fun together as we roll our ability scores. There's no need to rush; playing D&D means prepping for a long-haul of many weeks, if not months or years, of play. One more week in the front doesn't hurt.

 

[Lanefan]

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a Session 0 where everyone rolls up their stats in front of everyone else, or otherwise prepares with a standard array or point-buy.
It's not policing. It's just part of human nature to want to fudge the rolls and get (even slightly) better scores. But it's an impulse we have to resist as a collective group, because it makes the game less fun for everyone is the party are all literal gods walking around at 1st level because of their perfect stats.

This isn't about enforcement of the rules. It's about allowing fun. And the fun comes in part from rolling the abilities out. We can support each other by having fun together as we roll our ability scores. There's no need to rush; playing D&D means prepping for a long-haul of many weeks, if not months or years, of play. One more week in the front doesn't hurt.

And rolling up characters shouldn't even take the whole session unless all of you are brand new to the game. By evening's end you can have the party met up, introduced to each other, and in the field; and if you're really efficient you might even get their first combat in.

 

[Marandahir]

Definitely. I usually also use the session also to work out what sort of game we want to play together; where in my world setting we want to explore, what themes we want to delve into. It's hard to make those decisions as a DM before knowing (A) who the players for this game will be and (B) what the characters they're playing are like! I'm not really in favour of AL-style "bring your character and jump on in" style gaming. But I respect it for what it is.

Ideally, those in-story introductions can happen at the end of the night for me, but sometimes we can't even get to the game proper in Session 0. And that's okay.

 

[Arial Black]

Yeah, it usually takes me around two weeks to turn my rolls into a fully-fledged crunch + fluff character.

That is one advantage of point-buy: you can turn stats into a PC ahead of time, so that even if it takes two weeks you can already have done that before the first session.

That is not enough for me to prefer point-buy over rolling though.