What to you do for attributes

[Foxen]

So many point buyers, and even a few standard arrays...I'm almost shocked. Heh. My group has ALWAYS went with stat rolls. This time around, the group I play in rolled straight 4d6 x6. Most players had decent score sets over +6 bonuses without racials. I ended up with, err, +4 total (14, 14, 14, 11, 10, and 7)....which royally sucked for me. As a human pally, I added +2 to Wisdom (go figure) and ended with 14 STR and CHA which was quite painful. I actually should have point bought (which was an option...that no one took) but it was too late....the dice were cast (and they BETRAYED ME!).

Unbalanced? Yes.

One of the "weakest" characters in the party stat wise? Yes.

Does my GM care? Nope!

Do I care? Not anymore....

At first I was really sour. Combat wise, my character often "under performs" (mainly cause my dice SPITE me) not hitting as often as I could like. But, she plays smart (mostly), probably comes up with more smarter combat tactics, helps take out more opponents by influencing the party by yelling at them, and adds more role-playing flavor to the game than the rest of the party. I think the GM appreciates that...

Heck, he shares the same gaming philoophy as me...why have "balanced" characters? In the real world, life isn't fair. More so though, why do the players need "balance"? Aren't they all part of the same "team"? Aren't they all working together? With the variety in classes, skills, and feats (okay, less so in this edition), each player can contribute in one way or another to add to the party. And even without the built in game mechanics for variety, players ultimately choose to make their characters outstanding, as heroes.

So "balanced" character creation...no need, as long as the players can live with their characters stat lines, and are able to come up with ways to make their characters outstanding heroes, despite the differences in natural aptitude.

Fox

 

[PHGraves]

4d6 for the regular games, standard array for the RPGA.

If we wanted point buy, our group would just play GURPS.

 

[Wormwood]

Point-buy. I usually preferred rolling before, but point-buy is more balanced, and at least at the start of playing 4e, I want a level playing field.

This.

 

[Ibixat]

22 point point buy here as well, one thing about point buy is you can roll up as many character's as you want for different concepts, show up at a new game and almost gaurantee that no dm would say, that character is too powerful, he just won't fit, make a new one, and worst case you'd just roll up some new stats and swap em in to the old spots.

I miss 4d6 only in nostalgia.

My last rolled 4d6 paladin ended up with 13 13 13 13 12 10 (after racial mods)

Lets just say I was less than thrilled with my dice at that time. Sure he's fun to play but that is because I have fun with any character, he's also frustrating to play when in combat he hits for less than most and hits less often.

With the emphasis that 4E places on character over items I think the point buy leads for a more enjoyable game for the players as a group. Just like hitpoints being a fixed value, they took away a lot of the random rolls that if you rolled badly would haunt you forever on that character.

A fighter who rolled 3 1's in a row from level 2-4 for HP was essentially scrap at that point. By taking away the random rolls that last forever, and making the dice only determine the now, I think they helped remove some of the greatest frustrations the game had and put the emphasis back on having fun, not praying that one dice roll doesn't screw you for the rest of the campaign.