Should point buy be discouraged?

[GMforPowergamers]

you don't find having every player maxing out certain scores and mining the not so important ones bland and boring? I find the whole idea of everyone following the same strategy one big yawn. I like a little individuality in my players.

that said, I haven't decided if he's right.

foolish_mortals

I have seen rolling work really well, and I have seen it fall flat. When rolling works well it kicks point by's but, however when it goes bad it is almost unplayable.

Examples (Both good and bad)

in a FR setting game I ran, I made the players roll 3d6 7 times, then drop the lowest. we had a barbarian1/ranger 3 start with an 8 Int and a 9 cha, it was that players most memorable character ever.

In a hombrew setting we had 1 player roll 3 18's and 2 17's and a 15. the next best character for stats had 1 16... and one player had 4 12's and 2 below 10 stats. people called it the Azrathel(the character with all high stats) show, becuse he could do and be everything.

In 3.0 I wanted to make a wizard who was a weak nerd, but a super genius. We rolled stats and I got 4 16's a 13 and a 12. I could not play what I wanted.

I can count atleast a dozen times that in 2e we could not play rangers, palidens, or bards becuse we did not have our stats.

 

[Greg K]

You will always put your highest score in the stat that you need the most for the class you want to play.

I disagree . I have seen Fighters not put the 18 in strength, but Con or Dex. I have also seen Wizards not put it into Int and Clerics not put it into Wisdom. It is not, often, but I have seen it happen.

 

[osprey126]

Here is an interesting hybrid roll point buy system that I have used that allows for more balance of the point buy but a little variation that you have to incorporate into your character. It prevents the standard array syndrom that is one of the downsides of a point buy system while reducing the risks of poor characters from a rolling system.

I used this system to create a rogue/runethane and ended up with a low constitution score that made it necessary to explain. I made the character having been sick as a young street urchin and the result was a paranoia about disease and filth. He used a cantrip to cleanse himself everyday and avoided contact with filth if at all possible.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-le...ility-score-generation-method.html#post127020

 

[Deadboy]

I abhor rolling for stats, it takes unnecessary time and requires the DM to oversee the process (I play with at least one player I know for a fact will cheat if not supervised). I also dislike being a character with average or low stats when a lucky rolling friend is running around with no score lower than a 15. Point buys also make it much easier for game designers to balance the system.

That said, whether rolled stats are right or aren't right is entirely down to personal taste; it doesn't hurt the game to include both methods and should not encourage one or the other as its obvious there are players who vastly prefer one method to the other and both methods each have its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The designers just need to make sure players know what they're getting into before they pick.

 

[foolish_mortals]

I don't know why you think rolling stats takes alot of time? There isn't a whole lot of math involved, just roll, add up and put in their appropiate statistic. Point buy seems much slower to me.

Not that it really matters, neither one really should be a 3 day process.

foolish_mortals

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I abhor rolling for stats, it takes unnecessary time and requires the DM to oversee the process (I play with at least one player I know for a fact will cheat if not supervised).

Blame the rules because someone doesn't follow them?

 

[herrozerro]

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.

After reading all of this i dont get why point-buy is the bad guy in this arguement, you got a lucky roll and made a super cool character. you could accomplish the same with just adding more points to your point buy.

If you argument is that rolling is better because you get lucky characters then the inverse is also true that rolling can suck because you can get a real sucky character.

 

[delericho]

4. Point buy has always been part of the system, though a bit more random initially: The all stats are 8 and roll X d6 and add to stats.

Nitpick: not quite true. That method wasn't present in 1st Ed, in either the DMG or Unearthed Arcana. It was present in the 2nd Ed PHB - we used it exclusively for years.

 

[LostSoul]

The thing I like most about random rolls is that players are not guaranteed to get the PC that they want.

The thing I like most about point-buy is that it allows players to craft the PC they want.

Obviously these two things don't work well together.

You can make it a campaign-level option: if you use random stats, the "default" options will probably include things like level drain, tricks which raise or lower stats, magic items that raise your stat to an 18, girdles of masculinity/femininity, and other radical changes to your PC - because the game doesn't assume that you are going to be able to play the PC you want. If you use point-buy, the default options will probably leave those things out of the game, since it assumes that the player is going to be able to control changes to the PC.

Of course you could mix and match those options throughout the game if you want.

 

[Deadboy]

Blame the rules because someone doesn't follow them?

Blame the rules because it becomes something that requires oversight, rather than something that can be done by players prior to the session. It solved a problem I've had at my table in a way that left everyone satisfied. So... yes.