point buy

[pbd]

How do you all feel about point buy systems for character generation? I personally don't like them much, you end up with a bunch of vanilla characters wose abilities are all about the same (a 15, a couple of 14s, and a couple of 12s), even with the "high" point buy. No diversity at all. I personally feel rolling generates more diverse characters, you get soem good ones and some bad ones or maybe you get lucky (or unlucky for that matter). Even just assigning abilites yourself (most of us are mature enought not to just give a PC straight 18s).

Enogh of my rantings, I just want to see if how other people feel. Why do people like point buy systems?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I heart point buy. Point buy is great.

* Rolling gives you random attributes, but it can really suck when one guy rolls very low and another guy rolls very high. A buddy of mine was in a game where he rolled a character that would be worth about 40 points and another guy rolled what would be a 22 point character. Since they started at first level, my friend's rogue was the main fighter and the 22 point guy who was actually playing a fighter was begging to do damage. Not so much fun for him.

* Our group plays a lot of one shots. I can tell them "25 point buy, assume you roll average hit points" and everyone is good to go.

* It makes it easier to balance encounters. The Monster Manual was written with 25 point characters (the iconics) in mind. Since the PCs are all 25 point characters, I spend less time on the mechanics and more time on the story.

I really, really like point buy!

 

[Nisarg]

I don't care for point-buy at all. In addition to what you described, it also tends to lead to min-maxing, or encourage it anyways.

Nisarg

 

[kolikeos]

'point buy' is really sucky
but sometimes it's better then rolling (concidering my extrimly bad luck )

 

[Liquidsabre]

I had 2 pairs of identical stats when I last tried point-buy. Ugh, I can't stand it, but some folk need to have fairness across the board or their players get fussy.

We just roll 4d6, drop lowest die, roll 7 times and assign highest six scores as desired. In addition the sum of the stat modifiers that are less than +5 gets an auto re-roll, anything higher a player may elect to re-roll but must take whatever rolled the second time.

We get variability of die-rolling (and fun!), we don't typically see those dastardly low rolls, occasionally some one rolls a lucky set of stats (at which point the whole group cheers, if they can see a fighter with high Wis it's a good thing, not a jealousy thing), but most scores are above average hero stats. There was a poll a little while ago on stat rolling methods if someone could find it...

 

[Felix]

Point buy gets rid of some gamer's tendancies to do things like roll six sets of ability scores from 4d6-drop-lowest and then pick the best combination. Felix, the elven bard my screenname is from rolled his stats like that when my DM said "hey, that's what we all do." He didn't have a score lower than a 15. While it was cool for a while, it definitely smelled like cheese.

Point buy might yield a party of characters with scores limited to 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8, but that allows a character to have two good abilities, three average ones, and one below average one. That sounds reasonable to me. At least, more reasonable than a character with all >15.

Rolling gives you random attributes, but it can really suck when one guy rolls very low and another guy rolls very high.

Too true, too true. And if you have a party of more than 4 people, you're more than likely going to have this situation.

 

[Quasqueton]

The below characters are in my game. The numbers include bonus points for 4th and 8th levels, but do not include any magic items. Were the numbers rolled or bought? [You might be surprised, here.]

8, 12, 18, 18, 10, 8

10, 14, 14, 12, 17, 10

10, 20, 12, 14, 10, 10

18, 14, 10, 10, 14, 8

18, 14, 12, 14, 10, 10

Are they diverse or all the same? Plain vanilla or swirled flavors? Are they random or ordered?

Quasqueton

 

[drunkmoogle]

I love point buy, for the reasons stated above.

Fairness and balance across the board. I no longer want to hear another player whine about stats.

 

[Quasqueton]

15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8, but that allows a character to have two good abilities, three average ones, and one below average one.

Interesting. I see two good abilities, two above average, one average, and one below average.

Quasqueton

 

[Iuz]

Just my experience . . .

- in my campaign we have been using 32 point buy; no vanilla characters because everyone has a very different idea of what is a good way to spend points (but even if there were, abilities don't make the character)

- unlike the many games I ran with dice generated characters there is no jealousy over differring rolling

- by giving the players control over their own stats it eliminates some of the hard feelings that can result from them not getting the character they wanted