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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6862071" data-attributes="member: 6799649">The best character creation systems combine a level of chance and a level of control. All control with no chance leaves no room for ideas that fit outside the limited possibilities allowed, while total chance may leave you with something you have no interest in playing.With rolling, you are not stuck with 3d6 six times in order, like it or lump it! You can have 4d6 drop 1, or assign those six scores to the attributes you want, or both. 3d6 seven or twelve times, assign the best six. Re-roll if too low, or not!There are many ways to get the desired combination of chance and control if you use rolling, but there is no way to do that using point-buy.Superhero RPGs feel this divide more keenly than D&D, because of superpowers. Do the players roll their powers randomly, or use point-buy like Champions?Here is a quote from Simon Burley from his SHRPG Squadron UK:-"I love the character generation system for Squadron UK. It straddles the divide between RANDOM and DESIGN systems. It allows you to design a hero you want to play but the random element gives a nudge to your imagination and stops you creating the same hero over and over again."I'm not interested in totally random character generation. This too often gives characters with unfeasible combinations of powers which players don't want to run."In addition, the player doesn't feel 'ownership' of the character having done little except roll the dice to create them."In the same way I don't like game systems which allow players total control of the design of their characters. I don't want to insult anyone but we don't all have the imagination to come up with a brand new superhero. Then there's the guy who spends hours poring over the rulebooks trying to squeeze every little advantage out of the system. Not to mention the players who - when their favourite character is killed or sidelined - simply creates a clone."So, for me, the perfect system for making Heroes should have a random element tempered by the player selection and design."Rolling enables that. Point-buy doesn't. Point-buy allows and encourages you to squeeze every advantage from your points until you get the 'best' fighter or wizard or whatever, and you can just make another clone with a different name when the first one bites it. It creates an unreal population of people with Str/Dex of 8/16 or 16/8.I understand why organised play needs point-buy. The shame you'd feel for, say, choosing six 18s would rapidly evaporate in front of strangers who are doing the same.In nearly four decades of playing D&D, I have never used point-buy outside of organised play!</blockquote>

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