Should point buy be discouraged?

[Walking Dad]

I have had so many discussion on just what stat you need to be optimized for different classes that I see this all the time.

I also saw discussions on Pathfinder with standard rolling stats discussing that you have to play a caster if you only got one good stat and you should wait for multiple high rolls to play a monk...

I liked WotC's most recent Gamma World. High predetermined stats in your two most important abilities and the rest is rolled. No min-maxing and no to powerful/weak characters.

I don't ever remember seeing a character that had sucko stats from rolling the dice....

Here:
Fantalass in WotBS OOC

Cpmpare him to the other characters in the game. And had not more fun because I had bad stats...

 

[Elf Witch]

Not at all.



Look, this is how I'm seeing what you're saying.

You disagreed with my assertion that ability scores aren't the determinant of whether a character is interesting or not. Which means that you believe ability scores determine whether a character is interesting or not.

You then went on to illustrate how having high ability scores allowed you to play a character that was more interesting than what that character would have been had you had lower ability scores.

This says, to me, that characters with high ability scores tend to be more interesting than characters with low ability scores. At the same time, you've also told me that being interesting as a character is more difficult with low ability scores.

Note that I'm not using the word "useful". I'm using the word "interesting". Certainly, a character with high ability scores is more useful than a character with low ability scores. But interesting? If a desirable goal of the game is to be able to portray interesting characters, then it strikes me that this is a good argument for a point-buy system, because a rolled-stats system can produce characters with mediocre stats which, according to you, are more difficult to make interesting.

No obtuseness, just trying to understand how you're able to hold a couple of seemingly paradoxical beliefs about ability scores.

I don't know if we are talking at cross purposes here or what.

What can't you understand that the reason I found this character interesting to play was because her high stats gave me an opportunity to play a straight fighter who was also good at things most fighters can't be good at unless they multiclass or play something else.

I am a huge fan of Arthurian literature and one of the concepts I like is the idea of a knight from a noble or royal family who knows the ins and outs of political intrigue and all the courtly manners.

Now it is almost impossible to really make that kind of character using the fighter in 3E they don't get the class skills to back that concept up. It was much easier to play in Ad&D because you didn't have skills and you could just say my fighter is this knight and knows the ins and outs of the noble lifestyle.

In 3E to build it you need to multiclass to be able to accomplish this usually. Because of my stats I had an 18 in both strength and intelligent a 16 in my con and charisma there are feats in the KOK setting that lets you build a knight style character but they have restrictions on taking them you have to have a certain minimum stat.

And no she would not have been nearly as interesting at a 32 point buy because I would never have built her as straight fighter I would have probably gone bard with levels of fighter which could be a cool concept but not exactly like what I wanted. Which was a tough fighter who cleaved through her enemies on the battlefield then could go out of combat and act as my Emperor's most capable diplomat and use diplomatic skills to convince other leaders to to do what my Emperor wanted.

Anyway I don't know how else to explain this. I am not saying you have to have high stats to make a character interesting I am saying that in this one case the high stats helped make this character interesting.

 

[Elf Witch]

I also saw discussions on Pathfinder with standard rolling stats discussing that you have to play a caster if you only got one good stat and you should wait for multiple high rolls to play a monk...

I liked WotC's most recent Gamma World. High predetermined stats in your two most important abilities and the rest is rolled. No min-maxing and no to powerful/weak characters.



Here:
Fantalass in WotBS OOC

Cpmpare him to the other characters in the game. And had not more fun because I had bad stats...

I have heard that too not just on Pathfinder forums but back in old AD&D and 3.0. I know a lot of people feel this way that unless you get several good stats it is to hard to play a paladin or a monk.

I know when I roll and I get one decent stat and the rest are just so an so I tend to play a mage or a fighter type.

I think in 3E because of skills and special abilities linked to stats this is more common.

 

[Number48]

My hope is that 5E will have point buy, but with the caveat that all ability scores are equally useful/needed by a character. If you want to excel in Str, be prepared to pay that cost. The idea is there in 3E with the increasing cost in point buy but fails in that my wizard just doesn't need any Str, Wis or Chr. The equally useful/needed is there in 4E, but it is pretty easy to get away with just one or two high stats depending on class and just suck it up in the defenses.

We need an edition where the high-Int fighter is just as viable as a high-Str fighter, and not in a hard-to-build obscure way but in a way that is as easy as the high-Str.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The problem is that stats are tied too closely to combat ability. If none of your stats directly added to defenses, to hit, or damage then it wouldn't matter if you rolled them or not.

But a difference between a 12 and a 20 in your prime stat in either 3.5e or 4e is +4 to hit and damage(only for non-casters in 3.5e). And a 20% difference in your chance to hit is a big deal. Even if it doesn't seem like it, it's a big deal psychologically. I've seen these two characters played at the same table. Usually the lower powered one says "It's no big deal, he rolled low, he has to live with it". But after a session or two, you can see the frustration rising in how often his character hits compared to the other people in the group.

Mathematically, randomness is bad for PCs. If you have a 40% chance to hit, you'll notice it every round of combat for every encounter for the whole game. Meanwhile, if a particular NPC or monster has a 40% chance to hit, no one is likely to notice. He shows up for 2 or 3 rounds of combat, dies, and no one thinks anything of it.

And that's the problem with rolling for stats...one bad roll affects your character for its entire lifespan. And with stats so tied into everything else, it effects your character significantly.

I'd like to bring back random stats for roleplaying reasons...but the only way I'd be in favor of it is if they had very little to no effect at all directly on combat. Make it so that people who have 10-15 strength get +1 damage, and 16-20 get +2 damage. Make it so that people with 15-20 dex get +1 to hit. In which case the difference between a high and low roll is at most a couple of points. Make it so that people don't have a REASON to want to min-max.

Or, better yet, just make it so your combat skills are entirely tied to your class and feats. Make strength how much you can carry, how much you can lift. Have it add to your jump checks and climb checks(but don't make the bonus from stat huge), so that people want higher numbers...but don't care THAT much if they roll low. Find something else for Dex to do than give you more AC or initiative.

Then allow rolling of stats again. The key here is that D&D is heavily combat based. Anything that makes you better at combat, people will take. And if it's in the game, it'll become the standard.

 

[FireLance]

Yeah, I can see an argument for rolled stats from the perspective of getting a more interesting character because it has a high (or low) score where you normally would not have placed it.

I believe the approach taken in the recent incarnation of Gamma World (also by WotC) was that you got one 18 in the stat which was most important to you, and you rolled for the rest of your ability scores.

I had also toyed with a system which was effectively rolled stats with a safety net: you assign a standard array of (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10) however you want, and roll 3d6 for each ability score. If the rolled number is higher than the assigned number, that becomes your ability score instead. So you could end up with a fighter with Strength 16 and Charisma 18 (before racial modifiers).

 

[Hassassin]

Is there a good reason to offer point buy if you also offer a standard array?

Sure point buy leads to some customization, but it can also lead to min-maxing. I'm not sure the benefits are that large.

 

[Hassassin]

I do! Lots of them!

And they are fun! One of our most memorable characters had good abilities except lowish Cha and extremely low Int. Man did he get the rest of the party into all sorts of trouble...

 

[Minigiant]

Point buy shouldn't be discouraged as the way D&D is usually puts importance on stats. 3e had some MAD classes and some that needed only one good ability score. A wide array of rolls in the group could cause a lot of issues in game.

I actually played one like that. We rolled stats. One guy rolled 2 17s and the rest below 8. Another rolled a lot of 13s (a sign). And the last guy and myself rolled 16 and junk. We spent a good 10 deciding who got to be the casters because "we can't all play first level casters again". Once we settler who would play the nonprimary caster, there was a TPK against the first named enemy as no one had decent AC and HP. And that was with the DM trying to let us win.

 

[delericho]

I've gone backwards and forwards on stat generation methods over the years. With random rolls, the fact that you invariably seem to have one PC much better or much worse than the rest is a pain (and even worse is when you have one of each). With point buy, there's very definitely a trend for characters to all look alike.

Ultimately, the conclusion that I came to is that there is no "one true way". It's always going to be a matter of taste.

Therefore:

- The game should downgrade the importance of stats. In 3e and 4e (and PF), it is just too important to have the 'right' stats, and the difference between a "kinda-okay" character and an optimised one (or even a somewhat optimised one) is huge. You effectively need to get the right stats, or you're going to suck for pretty much the duration of the campaign. This means that random rolls are just not viable in those games, except for one-shots - stats are just too important to leave to chance.

(And, actually, it has pretty much always been thus. Even in 1st and 2nd Edition having the right stats made a big difference. BECMI was a lot closer to the ideal, IMO.)

- The game absolutely should support random rolls. These are much easier for new players to grasp (since they only need to understand the meanings of the six stats). And, the random roll system as written should be competitive with the point-buy system as written. (4e fails in this regard. According to the PHB, rolls are on average 'slightly' worse than point-buy. In reality, they're much worse.)

- The game should also support point buy, for those who want that.

3e actually had the right of it. The 4d6-drop-lowest random system offered was actually equivalent to 28-point buy on average, but the default point buy system was actually 25 points. The reason for the disparity was that a player using point buy was able to optimise (min-max) his character, and thus get more bang for his buck, while the random rolls were effectively 'blind'. That's about the right balance to hit between the two systems.

(Whether either 4d6-drop-lowest or 25-point-buy was actually generous enough is itself a matter of taste, of course!)

Ultimately, I don't think the game should advocate one method over the other (outside the Starter Set, which should definitely go "random rolls"). Both have their adherents, their benefits, and their weaknesses.