What's the big deal with point buy?

[Crothian]

If you roll poorly for stats (provided you don't reroll unitl you get acceptable stats) that character will be penalized for it's entire life, likewise good stats will benefit a character it's entire life.

Not one's entire life. At low levels haveing a fighter with a 14 strenth verse an 18 is going to show. But at 20th level with all the bonuses from class, magic, feats, and other things it really doesn't matter a lot when one fighter gets +40 to attack and the other guy only gets +38.

 

[Agamon]

My players hate point buy. Not a single one of the six in the group I DM would rather point buy over roll. I'm pretty lenient with mulligans, though. No stat over 13 or a net bonus of +2 or less allows a reroll. I also use the floating reroll method. So there is little chance of having an unlikable PC.

Also, with HP, when a level is gained, every level's HD is rerolled. If you roll less than your previous total (with bonuses), you only gain 1 hp. But this means if you have bad HP one level, you'll have a good chance of alleviating the problem next level.

I want my players to like their PCs and not be disapointed in a bad roll that affects the PC throughout its existance. The game is supposed to be fun, not frustrating.

 

[werk]

Not one's entire life. At low levels haveing a fighter with a 14 strenth verse an 18 is going to show. But at 20th level with all the bonuses from class, magic, feats, and other things it really doesn't matter a lot when one fighter gets +40 to attack and the other guy only gets +38.

He's still -2 modifier compared to the other character for their entire life. That's not balanced to me.

One character having an 18Str and a 14Con, while the other has a 14Str and a 18Con, that's balanced. It is their option to elect to have a lower strength in exchange for a high stat elsewhere.

The last time I had players roll stats, the highest character counted out at almost 70 point buy, while the worst rolls were around a 20 point buy. Putting those two in the same party really illustrated the un-fairness of random rolling. (again, ignoring rerolling for desired stats, as that assumes that random rolls are inherently not fair/not fun)

Edit: Crothian, would you mind giving me $500 out of every paycheck that you make? As you earn more money, that $500 will become a smaller percentage of your total revenue, so it's really not a big deal...in the long run.

 

[Crothian]

He's still -2 modifier compared to the other character for their entire life. That's not balanced to me.

So, in your mind there is only perfect balance or no balance? What if the guy with the -2 modifier is msarter then the other player so actually is more effective? Does that still make his character weaker?

Edit: Crothian, would you mind giving me $500 out of every paycheck that you make? As you earn more money, that $500 will become a smaller percentage of your total revenue, so it's really not a big deal...in the long run.

You are right it is not that big of deal. I do give away a small percentage of my paycheck and doesn't bother me. I just don't give it to you

 

[an_idol_mind]

Balance schmalance. Rolling for attributes is fun. Rolling for hit points at new levels is fun. It feels good as a player to get lucky rolls, and there's much more uncertainty and variance that way. The few times I've used point buy, my characters' stats are basically always the same. If god doesn't play dice, he doesn't know what he's missing.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

"I have the worst luck at rolling dice so it's unfair to make me roll my ability scores."
"Whoever rolls the highest is going to end up dominating the whole campaign. That's not fair at all. I want to be able to have the spotlight sometimes too."
"That's so horribly broken! You mean if I roll five 18s I get to play a character with five 18s!?"
"Characters who roll high steal other characters' niches."
"If I don't get the ability scores I want, I can't play the character I want."

In my current campaign I used the following system, cribbed from these boards:
Each player rolls 4d6, drop lowest (in the case of having too few players, the DM rolls the extras). We collect these to make a set of ability scores. The group then votes on whether to keep the scores. If they do, great. Everyone makes a character from the same set of scores. If not, they reroll. However, whatever the first player's roll is gets fixed. That roll will no longer be rerolled. The players vote on that set, and if they reject it, the second player's roll gets fixed. Every time they reject, they get stuck with a roll, whether it's good or bad. After 6 rerolls, all the stats are fixed, and that's what you play with.

It solves all the above problems, except perhaps the last. But it's generally not a problem, since lame stats get vetoed. The current group went to five rerolls because they had some early success: the fixed numbers were pretty high, so they could gamble with the remaining few to see if they could bring them up. They actually ended up with pretty good scores. Of course, that didn't save them from several deaths and a couple of almost-TPKs.

 

[QuaziquestGM]

This argument seems to stim from the misconception that the PCs are supposed to usually win and that winning is the only fun.

The most fun games are the ones where the PC's know that they are going in over thier heads, and often have to come up with imaginitive retreat stradigies, and spend a week trying to survive random enocounter checks on anaverage of 3 hp while they wait for the cleric to recover from -9.....

Taking randomness out of the game is taking most of the challenge out of it.

Point buy is for tournaments, not "real play". Tournaments are a test of players' if given characters of equal potential.

As for the example of the supers game, hell yes I would complain. Geek is much better than SuperMan. Did you ever actually watch the cartoon? Geek is the one who shows up at the last minute and saves everybody's @$$ cause the villians didn't notice him or couldn't catch him. Kryptonight has no effect on monkeys! (and Wonder Woman was much cooler when she couldn't fly...now she is just an underpowered Superman who barely ever uses her tradmark magic lasso)

 

[Lanefan]

He's still -2 modifier compared to the other character for their entire life. That's not balanced to me.

One character having an 18Str and a 14Con, while the other has a 14Str and a 18Con, that's balanced. It is their option to elect to have a lower strength in exchange for a high stat elsewhere.

The last time I had players roll stats, the highest character counted out at almost 70 point buy, while the worst rolls were around a 20 point buy. Putting those two in the same party really illustrated the un-fairness of random rolling. (again, ignoring rerolling for desired stats, as that assumes that random rolls are inherently not fair/not fun)

What's this huge hang-up on everything being fair, and balanced, and even? It's very possible that the 20-point-buy guy will end up being as useful (or more so) to the party than the 70-point guy; you can't know until you drop the puck and play. Never mind they'll advance at different rates, end up with different items and abilities, and so on...

Enforce a rule that only the DM can toss out a set of rolls; otherwise, play what you roll. Your players will be more creative for it, either in how they play "sub-optimal" characters or in how they get them killed...

Lanefan

 

[Alceste]

I use point buy. If nothing else, it makes the players feel as though they're starting on equal footing.

QFT. All characters start off with equality in stats. How good the character becomes is up to the player. Having a character dominate the game because somebody got hot at character creation is immensely boring for the other players. A character with an array like 18, 18, 17, 16, 10, 8 will dominate the game. Btw, that was someone's starting stats in our last die generated game. We have been using point buy for a long time now, it just works better for all players.

 

[billd91]

So, in your mind there is only perfect balance or no balance? What if the guy with the -2 modifier is msarter then the other player so actually is more effective? Does that still make his character weaker?

This is an important point. There's a question of balance with respect to ability scores (where the relative effect of the difference tends to decline over the life of the character when it involves important stats), and general balance between PCs getting a chance to shine with the same relative frequency... something more dependent on what the DM plans for and how the player uses the character than on the result of stat rolls.
If you've got a PC in the party, even if he's got awesome stats, he still can't be the best at everything. If he starts to horn in on your territory, either suggest he spend his skill points/feats more wisely or carve out a more exclusive niche for yourself.
If you are a DM and the characters have some notable variation, make sure you have stuff for the other characters to do and no "Mr. 14-is-his-lowest-stat". But then, that's a good thing to do even if all the characters are generated through point buy, one of the players is a community theater star, or most of the players are shrinking violets.

By the way, in all the games I've run using dice for stats, large differences have very rarely been all that noticeable around the table except for some very specific cases (such as the half-ogre's strength) or when someone has specifically been bragging about what they can do.