doghead said:
Well, we seem to have adequetly established that different people have different preferences, and that some people feel quite stongly about it one way or the other.
No surprise there.
thotd
Indeed. I think you have outlined the result of most Internet Forum Discussions.
These were the stats I rolled 17, 10, 13, 16, 12, 16 I put them in Str 18 Dex 10 Con 13 INt 16 WiS 12 CHR 16 since I came in at 10 I had two stats raises so I raised STR to 18 and CON to 14
To me someone with leadership has skills like diplomacy and sense motive and lets not forget that the feat leadership is based on CHR.
There is a feat in Kalamar that allows you make cross class skills class skills based on your INT modifier. I took that and since I had an INT of 16 I choose diplomacy, sense motive and Know royalty. Being human I had 6 skill points every level so I was able to make a fighter who was smart and skilled. I put my skill points in Dplomacy, Sense Motive, Know Royalty and Intimadate. With the Courtier class from Rokugan you get synergy bonuses to charisma bases skills when used in a social setting so my character was very good at diplomacy and adequate at things like gather info
my CHR was a 16 which gave me a +3 to any skills with CHR modifiers like diplomacy, Intimadate.
With a STR of 18 I was a kick butt fighter. With cleave, greater cleave, power attack, Improved Crit I used a falchion she was all about just laying the smack down in melee.
As I see it, most of what you describe here as important is a matter of personal experience and perspective. (Okay, no real surprise
)
With my proposed point buy values, you could still have essentially the same character, except that you would probably have less skills maxd at the values you did. Many skills don't really need such high values to portray the character accurately.
I agree that a good Leader should probably have Diplomacy and Sense Motive - but how high does he actually have to have it? Even good leaders are fooled some times, so a maxed Sense Motive is not automatically neccessary. Good Leaders usually work mostly with people that are already on their side, so you don't need extreme Diplomacy values.
A Fighter with Strength 15 is still perfectly capable of being a kick-ass fighter. My 25 point buy fighters are usually kick-ass (okay, the latest might have been a bit more deadly, but on the other hand, he is extremely versatile, which has helped a lot), but they don't have companions or enemies that have considerably better stats (before racial adjustments).
Yes this character could have been built as 28 point buy but I don't think it would been quite as much fun to play. It was fun playing a character who could kick butt as good as any fighter and yet have something to do outside of combat in a role play heavy game.
This is definitely a strength of higher point buy values - you can broaden your scope without sacrificing "core" power. That's a problem our group (using 25 point buy) encounters fairly often - using exotic class/race combinations is difficult (unless we have more than 4 players available). On the other hand, a powergamer could easily fall into the trap to use the many points to just improve his speciality instead of broadening the character. (I say trap because if he is involved in a role play heavy game, he will often be bored because he is so ineffective outside of combat)
But:
I don't see this as a strength of the roll method. You could also have rolled 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, and now tell me how you would have made your character then. You probably wouldn't have explored the character idea with such an array, and thus, your rolling method actually could have made you lose a great experience.
If your DM had given you 28 points or 32 points to play with, you would have a lot more safe options to create your character as you like it.
If it occurred in fiction he can throw your suspense of disbelief.
