Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7226543" data-attributes="member: 996">They mostly had one class they were U in, typically thief.  The whole idea of the balance-of-imbalances-over-time scheme was that the whoa-awesome Elf Fighter/Magic-user/Thief would get his when the humans were Lords & Wizards and he was 5/8/10 thanks to level limits. I was talking about the 80s.  <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=";)" /> The one long campaign I did run back then still ended up with a similar phenomenon, though at least everyone had to play their characters up from first.  It started out with one idea for the party, which the players decided they didn't like by 5th level, and most of them changed characters.  The line-up at high level was all casters, though at least not all wizards, thanks in part to the CPH.3.0 came along, and MCing became race-independent, and that phenomenon disappeared.  The long 3.x campaigns I was in saw only one player (the same player in both campaigns) change characters part way through, though the multi-class characters in the first campaign settled on advancing in one caster class pretty quickly, and the second campaign had single-class casters and multi-class non-casters, mostly the former. The 5e default does let you arrange them, of course.  At that point, the only difference between random and array is that you're not necessarily all using the same array, some may have strictly better arrays than others.  That's prettymuch the trade-off among the three methods.  Array gives you maximum fairness & balance - everyone has the same stats to work from, system mastery impact is limited to arranging them and picking race and assigning ASIs.  Point-buy comes in second, with more room for system-mastery induced imbalances from optimal stat choices.  Random generation remains a fair process, but can give strictly imbalanced results. Nod.  That's the balance side of it, yes.  You cannot just choose to play a strictly superior character to the next guy, you've gotta give something up to get something else.  The better the rest of the system is balanced, the more viable the choice to deviate from an optimal design can be... ...which does point up another downside of point-buy.  It's balanced to a tighter standard than the rest of the system, most critically, the relative value of stats (some classes being SAD, others MAD, DEX being das überstät, etc).Similarly, in array or random you can't simply choose to play a 'smart' or 'charismatic' barbarian that's still as barbarian-y as the next barbarian.   In the case of array, you just don't have that many high stats.  In the case of random, you may or may not roll exactly the strictly-superior-to-the-next-barbarian stats that you want.  If you don't, too bad for you - and, if you do, too bad for the guy now playing the strictly-inferior barbarian.  :shrug: That's not misleading, actually, because the point of a comparatively balanced stat generation method is that it lets /everyone/ at the table create the concept they want, without undermining anyone else's concept.  Considered in a vacuum of a single character, point buy doesn't let you play /exactly/ the character you might hypothetically want.  You can't play a character who's stronger than a storm giant or smarter than ki-rin - or both - for instance, nor can you play one with straight single-digit stats.  You /can/ play a character who's 'the strongest' or 'the smartest' by maximizing that one stat, and you won't be beaten out by anyone else doing the same.  Or, you can play a character who is 'strong & smart,' but you won't be as strong or smart as the guy who went all-in on one or the other.  When it comes to actually playing characters at the table, point-buy lets everyone play to the concept they want.  If you happen to want something the system doesn't favor so much, you could still end up overshadowed by another character even at the things you were trying to be good at, but that's not the fault of the generation method, it's the fault of the broader system. Nod, some of which suck.  Sure, you could roll 18/15/16/12/14/17  but, you could also roll 14/12/13/8/9/6.  One of those is good for you, the other bad, but they're both potentially pretty bad for the rest of the table, as they're stuck with an OP character dominating in the former case, and with a weak character under-contributing in the other. That is a problem medium armor has had since the concept was introduced in 3.0 and no edition has fixed (4e just plain tossed the category out).  It's not a problem with any particular stat generation system, though. While they'd theoretically 'benefit' from medium armor, they'd also be strictly inferior to their buddies who strap on the heavy stuff or dance around in light armor.  It's really just system imbalance piling further inferiority on top of un-desirable rolls.   I'm sure the hypothetical /population/ has an aesthetic quality that's theoretically desirable, that way, but as far as individual characters go, not so much.</blockquote>

Verification