Rolling characters...what's your favorite method?

[bwgwl]

i agree with Wolfen Priest that the hypothetical 4th Edition of D&D will most likely use point buy as the "default" method.

Star Wars d20 uses point buy as the default. i don't have any of the other WOTC d20 games, so i don't know if that's a trend or not.

in a game that has made such a huge fuss over "game balance," i'm really surprised that it still advocates rolling randomly for ability scores, which can have such a massive impact on the course of the game -- especially the balance between PCs and between the PCs and the opposition.

 

[Mercule]

I use 4D6 and the point buy.

I leave it up to the player.

Some people like the older style of a random challenge. Others know exactly what they want to play and don't want to leave things to chance.

I will accomodate both views.

Officially, I do, too. Of course, the point buy has so totally eclipsed the die-rolling that rolling is little more than a foot-note. I'm not sure anyone has ever used dice since 3E came out.

Incidentally, I use a 28 pt buy.

 

[ForceUser]

as an aside, this has really been your experience?

that's strange to me. two of the most commonly used rogue skills (Spot and Listen) are dependent on Wisdom. in my campaigns, i always see rogues with at least a 12-14 Wisdom. the rogue i'm currently playing through RttToEE has a 16 Wisdom!

Sure has. With a 28-point buy system, your typical rogue in our campaigns looks like this: 10 Str, 15 Dex, 14 Con, 12 Int, 10 Wis, 12 Cha (that's from memory, not sure if it adds to exactly 28). You want the 15 Dex so it'll roll over into a 16 at 4th level, you want the higher Int for extra skill points, you want the high Con for hit points (nobody in our campaigns makes a character who has less than a 14 Con these days, except the odd elf with a 12. Not surprisingly, elves are rare in our groups. Humans are, by far, the preferred race. Our players are really on the "hit points is the most important stat in the game" bandwagon. Even the wizards regularly have a 14 or better Con!) I can't think of a single rogue played in the last year among any of us with a Wis higher than 10. People just tend to keep Spot/Listen maxed and roll off their raw skill.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

I used a generous point buy system in my first 3E campaign, and it wasn't long before I noticed that all the characters looked the same.

For my new campaign I'm experimenting with a mix of randomness and point buy, with a firm floor, so no stat is horrible:

Roll 4d6 6 times
All 1's, 2's, and 3's become 4's
Drop lowest die
Add 4 points (total) anywhere you like, up to a max of 18 in any stat
Add/Subtract racial modifiers

This generates average scores around 14-15, with usually one or two 18's, and one or two in the 12-14 range. It's always interesting to watch a player roll a lot of odd-numbered stats decide how to apply the 4 bonus points (Do I get that 18, or do I even out all those odd stats?)

I've never liked the idea of playing characters with significant weaknesses (I still remember the 1E wizard with a 4 Strength), so with this system no stat will be below 12, but the characters won't be perfectly customized either.

BTW, if this doesn't work, I think I'll try letting the players pick their stats - I'll just suggest that they not go overboard, as that would make things too easy, hence boring.

 

[bwgwl]

Sure has. With a 28-point buy system, your typical rogue in our campaigns looks like this: 10 Str, 15 Dex, 14 Con, 12 Int, 10 Wis, 12 Cha

hmm... me personally, i'd switch Con and Wis, drop Int to 10 and use it to either bump Dex or Cha. rogues already get a boatload of skill points (especially human rogues), so a 10 Int doesn't hurt as much. my character concepts with rogues often involve not getting hit, so i don't mind having a low Con with a rogue.

Our players are really on the "hit points is the most important stat in the game" bandwagon. Even the wizards regularly have a 14 or better Con!

i guess it all comes down to group playing styles. the groups i have played with have had different philosophies.

thanks for the detailed explanation!

 

[ForceUser]

hmm... me personally, i'd switch Con and Wis, drop Int to 10 and use it to either bump Dex or Cha. rogues already get a boatload of skill points (especially human rogues), so a 10 Int doesn't hurt as much. my character concepts with rogues often involve not getting hit, so i don't mind having a low Con with a rogue.


i guess it all comes down to group playing styles. the groups i have played with have had different philosophies.

thanks for the detailed explanation!

I think our group strives for optimization a bit too much, on the whole. The rogue I presented is indicative of the way people tend to run rogues in our campaigns - as sneak attacks waiting for an opportunity. Thus, hit points become important since they increase survivability.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that survivability is the #1 most desired attribute in our groups. Our DMs like dungeoncrawls, cool monsters ( guilty ) and challenging encounters, and there have been many instances that if our characters hadn't had those few extra hit points from the high Con they'd be dead. Boom. End of story. I guess you could say that we go to extremes - many character concepts revolve around taking one aspect of a class and building a character to maximize that single aspect, be it damage output, charismatic skills, Armor Class, etc. We tend to go overboard on the one attribute and tank the others to compensate for it. Then we tend to go out of our way to create situations favorable to our characters' strengths. Our players tend to be very, very careful planners who would rather retreat and come back later than face an encounter where they are at the disadvantage.

 

[kenjib]

One of my friends discovered what we have dubbed the Organic Point-Buy system on these very boards about 6 months ago, and we are implementing it unilaterally in all our games henceforth. Here's how it works:

Hey cool. That's the same as the system I came up with and I did post it quite a while ago. I wonder if that's where he got it from. I like that name you guys came up with better than what I've been calling it. I'm gonna call it that from now on too. Hehe.

 

[ForceUser]

Ahh, the originator rears his head! Thanks man, it's a great system!

 

[Vymair]

Organic Point Buy

Hey cool. That's the same as the system I came up with and I did post it quite a while ago. I wonder if that's where he got it from. I like that name you guys came up with better than what I've been calling it. I'm gonna call it that from now on too. Hehe.

I got it off these boards, so I'm sure I got from Kenjib. I will take credit for the name however .

As a side note, ForceUser didn't give the 4 pt bonus correctly, it's granted if you are 3 points or less from the target # (in our case 25 or more which is 3 short of our 28 pt).

 

[Ramien Meltides]

Our group has used 32 point buy recently and we've decided it's THE way to go for us from now on.

I used to do a large amount of the DMing for my gaming groups, and I used to be a big fan of the 4d6, drop the lowest method.

However, after a lot of experience with different groups, different players, different methods, I think Point Buy has a lot to offer that random rolling does not.

First of all, point buy eliminates any suspicion of cheating. You can't make a character who's got better stats than someone else, since you spent the same amount of points. I've ran into gamers before where you had to personally witness every single roll to be sure it wasn't tweaked by the player himself.

Secondly, it equalizes character creation styles... I know some gamers (myself included) who, when given the chance to roll stats, roll multiple times and take the best result. Other gamers are more strict on themselves, and take the first set of rolls regardless of how good or bad it is. It only took one game with a player who had extremely good stats (nothing under 16, due to multiple rolls with a computer-aided character creation program) and a player with extremely bad stats (he was the scrupulous type, and rolled poorly) to make me realize that everybody being equal is a good thing.

Finally, point buy lets you customize your character. You can have exactly as high a stat as you wish (although there is that minimum of 8 thing) and you can put the points in exactly what order you wish. "It's not as clumsy or random as dice rolling."