Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="arscott" data-source="post: 3069931" data-attributes="member: 17969">Now you're arguing against yourself.  Earlier, you were saying that it's perfectly possible to play almost any character with almost any stats--that just because your paladin doesn't have the right distribution of stats, doesn't mean that you can't still play a paladin.  Now you're arguing that rolling wil prevent Mikey from playing a paladin over and over again.Besides, the variance of point buy can cut both ways.  If I'm someone who always plays blasty wizard, and decide to play a monk just this once, what's going to happen when I roll one 18 and a bunch of 11s?I'm all for encouraging people to play various character types.  But choosing random rolls just for that reason is a case of 'policy through inefficiency'--That is, structuring a rule in such a way that creates a problem, because one particular symptom of the problem is an effect you find desireable.Policy through inefficiency is bad design because other symptoms of the problem you create are often less desirable, and either need to be addressed (causing complications and general rules bloat) or simply left to fester.That's not to say that I view rolled stats as a problem.  I simply disagree with your position that they're the true path, and that point-buy is somehow the easy way and/or too nice to the players.I think stat generation is an important tool that can be used to set the flavor of the campaign, just as the DMG suggests:  In my Dark•Matter campaign (modern day occult investigators), I intentionally used a point-buy with fewer points than the players were used to.  This helped send the message that D&D style solutions aren't neccessarily appropriate, and that players should consider taking a more conservative approach.  Because of point-buy's diminishing returns, combined with scarce resources, It also encouraged players to create characers that were more well-rounded, rather than excelling in one or two particular areas.In the Dark Sun game I plan to start next year, players will roll their stats, but without the safety-net reroll.  The world of athas is harsh, and there's little room for concepts like fairness or forgiveness, so a random roll with no room for mistakes is highly appropriate.</blockquote>

Verification