Point Buy

[Caliban]

I absolutely despise point buy character generation. IMO, it generates characters that tend to have more "balanced out" stats than those just rolling the dice, which makes for a more "realistic" generation method: each character has strenghths and weaknesses, and has to build upon them regarding the choice of race and class. With PB, players nearly always use their points to greatest effect - with dice rolls, this is somewhat limited. Oh, well ... one could argue that this is rather the players' fault than the method's ...

One way or the other, I'm not gonna allow PB in any of my campaigns anytime soon.

*shrug* And I absolutely despise random rolling. Unless you let the players keep rolling until they are all demigods, you always end up with one or two characters that completely overshadow the rest of the group, either in or out of combat. If you put in encounters that challenge them, the rest of the PC's feel like cohorts supporting the main character. If you put in a challenge appropriate to the "normal" PC's, the one or two "uber" PC's tend to walk all over it.

I used to play a lot of random rolled characters. Since 3.0 I've used Point Buy and I'm never going back. The players can actually make the character they want, instead of the character the dice rolls force on them.

I won't play a game if the DM forces me to roll randomly, and I won't run a game unless point buy is used.

 

[milotha]

At first, I was really happy with the point buy system. I thought, finally a balanced system of generating equal characters. This seems great. No longer will I have to endure a single crummy roll of the dice hampering my character for it's entire career.

I made up my first point buy character and discovered that my highest stat was a 14 because I didn't want to ditch any of my stats. The next character came out fairly similar, I got one 16 that time. And the next and the next and the next all went the same. Pretty soon, I realized that I'd never have a character with a rolled 6 in one stat. I'd never have that interesting roll playing challenge of having to put a 6 in some stat. One of my favorite characters of all in 2e had a 6 in wisdom, another one had an 6 in con. It was a hoot to role play.

I've gone back to rolling. We roll 4d6 7 times and drop the lowest roll. Then assign your stats as you see fit. We find that we get higher point total characters, and we get a broader range of characters. If you roll particularly crappy, you get to reroll. Plus, whenever you roll that 18, the character feels special. You are more likely to bond with it, and more likely to care. That's a good thing in my book. No one seems to mind.

 

[d4]

Pretty soon, I realized that I'd never have a character with a rolled 6 in one stat. I'd never have that interesting roll playing challenge of having to put a 6 in some stat. One of my favorite characters of all in 2e had a 6 in wisdom, another one had an 6 in con. It was a hoot to role play.

if you like role-playing a character with a 6 Wisdom, what's stopping you from assigning your character a 6 Wisdom with the point buy method? with point buy, you have more control over your character's stats, not less.

 

[milotha]

if you like role-playing a character with a 6 Wisdom, what's stopping you from assigning your character a 6 Wisdom with the point buy method? with point buy, you have more control over your character's stats, not less.

Most point buy systems start out with an 8 base, and then buying it down doesn't give you anymore points. So, what is the point afterall of doing this? If everyone else is minmaxing, I have to too.

With rolling, you got stuck with it. No one is going to sit there and go "Why do you have a 6 in your stat. You're a stupid player."

 

[takyris]

That kinda sounds like a problem with your group, not with Point Buy. I mean, it works out to the same thing -- don't use it in your group -- but let's assign blame correctly. My group has people all over the map, pointwise -- some folks will rack up an 18 and take two 9's to compensate, some folks will try for a single 16 and nothing below 10, and some folks will go the 12-14 route all throughout. It's all good. And people do minmax their point buy... to match their character concept. Sometimes, that means that Int is the dump-stat. Sometimes it means that Wis is the dump-stat. Sometimes (gak) it means that Con is the dump-stat.

If folks are happy playing in a game where another player's character has, effectively, a permanent +1 or +2 to his stats for no reason other than the fact that he rolled better at character generation, then there's no problem. For some of us, it's annoying. And if you really want things to be random but fair, you can always roll randomly and then adjust the rolls to get to the right point-buy level.

I'll admit that my group is odd, though, in terms of liking in-game randomness but hating meta-game randomness, like what your ability scores are or how many hit points you get upon levelling up.

 

[Thanee]

..., you always end up with one or two characters that completely overshadow the rest of the group, either in or out of combat.

Can't really say that happens a lot in our games. Of course, we simply allow rerolls for those who roll below a certain point (judging from the other rolls).

I won't play a game if the DM forces me to roll randomly, and I won't run a game unless point buy is used.

Yeah, there are basically two kinds of players. The ones that prefer to let the dice have some influence in their decision and dislike the "clone stats" PB tends to create and the ones that absolutely despise that and want to build their character exactly as they imagine them.

In case a group consists of both, I'd just allow to choose between dice rolling or point buy, so everyone should be happy (unless you also want that everyone uses exactly the same method for fairness, but that would be forcing a method on the others as much as dice rolling is forcing that method on you, so it's equally bad).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Ryltar]

RPG is for me not about 'forcing' the players to play something they might not be comfortable with, but to let them play something they would like to play.

Totally agreed.

I had a player that was forced to play a (rolled) Int 6, Cha 17 character, while his natural playing style was more like Int 17 and Cha 6. It was impossible for him [...]

That's why I allow free distribution of the roll results. No problems there.

 

[Thanee]

if you like role-playing a character with a 6 Wisdom, what's stopping you from assigning your character a 6 Wisdom with the point buy method? with point buy, you have more control over your character's stats, not less.

Well, technically that isn't possible, but that's just splitting hairs.

What I really want to say is, that more control is not always better.
Point Buy tends to lead people to optimum (minmaxed, depending on the concept) distributions.

This is also the main complaint, which involves seeing the very same stat array over and over again.

Some people have no problem with it, some do, exactly as with rolling dice.

It's just a matter of personal preferance and compromise in a mixed group.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

That's why I allow free distribution of the roll results. No problems there.

Oh yes. That's one of the most horrible things with rolling stats... not being able to assign them!

Bye
Thanee

 

[nikolai]

Players love rolling stats. Therefore I found that an interesting way to do it is to have everybody roll up a set of 6 stats using 4D6-L and then put them into a pool and let the players divie them out. Just tell them before the game that if their character dies they have to make a new one using point buy equal to the point buy of their old character to prevent one player taking all the stats.

I think this is a fantastic idea. It balances the "random" element of die rolling with the "balance" that is the benefit of point buy. It balances stats across the party by definition, and because of the 24 scores you generate the law of large numbers is going to stop the party as a whole being greatly over-powered.

I think rather than debating the pros and cons of rolling vs. point buy, we need more ways like this of combining the benefits of both.

One pet idea of mind (and it is slightly obsessive). Is to combine the "get what you're given" aspect of rolling and the balance of point buy like this. There are (16*16*16*16*16*16)=16,777,216 different arrays. So generate each array and calculate its point buy value. You then have a number of arrays assigned to each point buy value. Choose your power level, and assign each character an array of that level randomly. The arrays will be "balanced" by definition, and the players will have "natural" characters, rather than min/maxed ones.

BTW: Does anyone have ideas about the relative merits of letting players assign scores to abilities vs. letting them fall as you roll the dice? In term of power differences.