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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7219686" data-attributes="member: 996">It's as fair as any other sort of gambling.  Probably not legal in all states, though. It's inherently fair - everyone gets the same number of points.  It's only as balanced as the stats are.  And, when you start factoring into it the 'needs' of various classes for various stats, well, that balance becomes even more tenuous, but also gets into class (im)balance. That's the difference between 'fair' and 'balanced' in the context of a game.  Fair is, everyone has the same n% chance of getting an OP high-stat character.  'Balanced' is everyone gets a decent character, and a bunch of choices to customize it without wrecking it or making it OP.  Balance is a much higher bar to clear than fairness. Some editions more than others.  4e had it /really/ bad.  The treadmill demanded that you keep your primary stat maxxed, so that was half your stat boosts obligatorily relegated to one stat, an 'all round' character was off the table, and moreso the higher level you got.  The best you could do was split-secondary, and that, to be really viable, split between two stats in different pairs than your primary.  So a Wizard could go INT/CON/WIS, for instance, but INT/WIS/CHA or INT/STR/CON was off the table, non-viable.  Want a high INT/DEX character concept, like an Eladrin, who had a racial bonus to those two stats?  You're hurt'n yourself because your FORT & WILL are both going to be sub-standard if you spend your stat boosts on INT & DEX the whole time.  Sure, 4e gave you a wealth of character-customization options among many Classes, a plethora of Themes, a super-abundance of Backgrounds, a chaff-storm of feats, and the right to re-skin powers.  But if your concept called for an 'all round' paragon, or even all-round well-above average, while the point-build system would let you do it, it simply wasn't viable, especially as you progressed to higher levels - you'd fall off the treadmill.3e was about as bad, classic terrible (an 'all round' PC with 12-14, say in all stats wouldn't even have meaningful bonuses in any of 'em, he'd be little better off than the guy with straight 9s), and 5e, with BA and the hard 20 stat cap and the brutal six-save system, has probably brought the 'all round' PC closer to viability than ever before.  It's just barely practical with point-buy, which is frustrating, and it's not at all likely with random generation, nor possible at a reasonable level with array (you could throw ASIs at your lower stats to get there eventually).One thing that might help a little is consolidated saves and weapon-attack/AC options that combine stats instead of always choosing the higher.  For instance, a weapon, like the longsword, might be used with a style that adds both STR & DEX, instead of finesse DEX /instead/ of STR - up to a maximum of +4.  Not broken, makes going for modest stats efficient, but not OP.  Similarly, since seeing attacks coming should help with avoiding them, DEX+WIS up to +4 as an alternative to DEX alone to AC.  That kinda thing.Could get quite complex, if you wanted.  (My ideas tend towards excessive complexity, as a general rule.) ;(</blockquote>

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