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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 3082875" data-attributes="member: 12460">Ooops. My bad. I just went back and checked and it was another poster who had said that.At any rate, I'd like to talk semantics for just a second. I think it is important to distinguish here what you mean by "encourage powergaming." I think it is very clear that point buy encourages powergaming, at least in the sense of character planning, more than rolling. That is hardly even arguable because point buy is by definition not random and therefore more subject to character choice, and hence planning, while rolling is by definition random and therefore limits your character planning options to those available from the roll. For instance, with a point buy, you can plan to have X feat by Y level because you can set your starting scores at the minimum necessary to get that feat by that level. If said feat is a prerequisite for a prestige class, then you will be able to know you can take Z prestige class by YY level. And so on.Other posters have commented on the fact that players often plan their characters from level 1 to 20 in 3e and I think that is often true. Perhaps point buy does not encourage munchkinism (that is, exploiting loopholes in the game, favoring numbers over everything else, etc.), but it certainly does promote character planning, which I think is at least an element of powergaming.And a quick word on powergaming too. I consider myself a powergamer, but only in the sense that I tend to optimize certain parts of a character. However, I rarely do so to play to the character's strengths, rather I build characters with strengths that are unusual for their character type. For instance, I play a Living Greyhawk character with a 16 Strength, a 16 Con, a 13 Int, Power Attack and Improved Toughness. Guessed the character class yet? It's wizard? 7th level wizard and no other classes. The character happens to be a very good fighter, although not as good of a fighter as an actual fighter would be, but very good nonetheless, and he can still cast his highest level spells using a headband of intellect +2. So the character is powergamed for fighting, but as a wizard, not a fighter. Many of my characters tend to follow a similar theme because I find that fun to play. This has little to do with the point buy argument. I am simply saying that I powergame to an extent and I do not consider it a bad thing. But there is a mentality among some players to create an invincible character (usually newer players IME if that can be believed) and that is usually based on twinking out every little bit of the rules and finding every possible angle to cover every single contingency. Such a thing makes the game unfun because then it really isn't much of a game. Your character has already prepared for every contingency so that randomness doesn't affect you. With things like the luck and destiny domain and fatespinner levels, you can even prevent the occassional '1' from setting you back, and as long as you only fail your saving throws on a 1. As a DM, what is the point for me to run a game when the numbers already dictate that my players will win and they don't even need to rely on thinking clearly to achieve that goal. Even the BBEG of this dungeon can't hit the fighter's AC without a 20. *Yawn* I guess you guys just win. There isn't much of a point. Point buy encourages the type of character planning that leads to such "invincible" characters because it makes character planning easier and more precise. Of course that doesn't mean you can't plan with rolled scores, but rolled scores do not always give you exactly what you want. When they do it's awesome, and your character is awesome. That's fine because such characters are rare. But when the rolls don't go your way, you have to come up with a build that is probably less than optimal and probably requires you to wait a little longer than you'd like in some cases to pick up a certain feat or prestige class.</blockquote>

Verification