Whats your opinion on the Point Buy System

[Celebrim]

nikolai: The idea of a dice pool isn't necessarily a bad one, but (as you admitted) yours needs a little work.

There is never an advantage to taking a d2 over a d4 or a d4 over a d6. I think what you mean is that you have the choice of a d2+2, or a d4+1, or a d6. That would be more reasonable, as each choice would have its advantages.

Secondly, by your method what is to stop me from putting 4d6 - mind you NOT 4d6-1d - into every attribute for an average of 15 or so in every attribute? If you start on an 8, won't the average attribute be a 23? What happens when I get lucky and have a 24 or better on the four dice? What happens when that uber min maxer puts 8 dice into his barbarians STR and comes out with a 32 or a 40?

I suppose you could fix that by giving the player 12 dice and a starting value of 6 in each attribute, and told them that if the result of a dice brought the attribute over 18, that the attribute had the value of 18. That would result in a reasonable range of attributes, and some interesting conudrums for min/maxer's, but since you are rolling so few dice you are really exacerbating the problems of randomness. There is a fairly strong probability that someone is going to roll alot of low numbers or alot of high numbers. Alot of characters are going to come out with the equivalent of 24 point buy or less.

 

[Pax]

And I am the opposite. (Except it is balanced). I tend to roll REALLY good (generally 5 of 6 stats are positive mods, with one or two in the 16-18 range) and one between 7 and 11. Then again I tend to allow (and when rolling had played by) a reroll of your lowest roll.

Disparity in luck is why I despise randomly generated attributes.

I've had (old 2E days) no less than FIVE campaigns absolutely destroyed by a disparity in luck when rolling attributes. One fellow constantly got at LEAST two 18's, and no more than ONE other attribute below 15, when rolling 4d6-drop-the-lowest.

With anyone's dice. Rolled by anyone -- even someone else!

Same person rolling for the other people, same dice, same table, a few seconds later -- saner, more-expected spreads (one or two 16+ attributes, several 11-15's, a one or two 10-or-lower attributes).

Yes -- as GM, I've rolled attribute sets for everyone at the table, using my dice, and seen the same trend in attributes. The lucky bastard gets his multiple-18 set, the others get more normal sets of attributes.

When most people have 16/14/13/13/11/9 ... and one person has 18/18/17/15/15/13 ... that creates a problem in and of itself.

Hence I strongly favor point-buy, and IMO, the DMG's inclusion of a point-buy system is something of a saving grace for D20.

 

[Murrdox]

Personally, I really REALLY like the previous posted idea of taking 3d6 per attribute, and then distributing 9d6 for all attributes and rolling. Do 3 sets of these, and ONLY three, take the one you want.

For those REALLY unlucky bastards, if none of your three sets produce a cumulative bonus of at least +3 (or +2, or +4 or whatever the DM decides) then you can roll another 3 sets.

I LOVE this idea very very much. A Fighter could put 5d6 into his STR, and roll somewhat moderately, getting a 15, but then get really lucky on his CHA (with only 3d6) and get a 17.

I'm sorry, but I just think point buy is stupid. No fighter is every going to put any points into CHA, No wizard is ever going to put points into STR, no Cleric is ever going to put points into Dex, etc. I also agree that PB shafts classes like the Monk who have multiple very important stats.

You just end up with "cookie-cutter" classes. When you roll randomly, of COURSE the fighter is going to put that 18 into STR, but he might break up his moderate scores in such a way to make a more interesting character than he'd get otherwise.

PLUS, as DM it's also the DMs job to make the game fun, and none of my players would have fun with the PB system. There's just something nice about rolling up your stats. And none of my characters really complain that "his stats are better than mine! Waahhh!!" If you have players that whine about their stats, kill their character and tell them to go ahead and roll up a new one.

Again, I love this 9d6 distribution idea. I'm going to take some dice and try it out a few times to see what kind of results I get from it.

 

[Pax]

Re: Re

I hate point buy systems for stats or limits on stats. I feel it fails to reflect the genetic diversity of a population.

If someone gets lucky and roles good stats, I see it as no different than a person being born with a plethora of advantages such as high physical strength, intelligence, and other traits associated with stats.

Even when I play GURPS, i place no limits on the points spent on stats and advantages and disadvantages.

I feel as though many of the players who like to play gritty forget that some of us want to be truly powerful and heroic figures, and high stats help represent such things.

That's all well and fine, fi everyone has comparable luck WRT generatign attributes. As I just posted, I've had campaigns destroyed because one player was (due solely to attributes) able to run away with the entire game, relegating the entire rest of the group to "sidekick" status.

Five campaigns in a row.

Point-buy prevents that. If you want to play with powerful characets, convince the DM to give a lot of points for the PB system (say, 40-ish).

 

[Tiberius]

I love the point buy. I've been using it since the game came out. One of my objections to rolling for stats has always been the fact that they are random. I hate random, as a general rule. The more I can do to minimize randomness, the happier I am. Point buy starts everone out on the same footing, and ensures that people can play what they want to play.

I'm also of the opinion that the game is more interesting when characters are flawed in some way. Low point buys facilitate this, so this is another point in the system's favor.

-Tiberius

 

[Pax]

I'm sorry, but I just think point buy is stupid. No fighter is every going to put any points into CHA, No wizard is ever going to put points into STR, no Cleric is ever going to put points into Dex, etc. I also agree that PB shafts classes like the Monk who have multiple very important stats.

Then explain Stefan Mourdale, my current Cleric(5) in a Ravenloft d20 campaign. Decent Dex, good Charisma, excellent Wisdom (due mainly to being a Vatraska half-Vistani). Moderate scores elsewhere.

You just end up with "cookie-cutter" classes. When you roll randomly, of COURSE the fighter is going to put that 18 into STR, but he might break up his moderate scores in such a way to make a more interesting character than he'd get otherwise.

You end up with cookie-cutter anyway, unless you have a disparity in luck between players. The fighter, with random rolled attributes (by PHB standard, 4d6 and drop the lowest die, arrange to taste) who will STILL mostly put theirhighest scores into STR/DEX/CON, wizards whose highest score will STILL be INT, and so on.

BEsides which, for fighters ... you want to go smackdown, I've got a 25th level Fighter(10)/Duellist(15) with an AC to die for. I don't need to do mad damage, I just have to havemore patience than the other guy ...

PLUS, as DM it's also the DMs job to make the game fun, and none of my players would have fun with the PB system. There's just something nice about rolling up your stats. And none of my characters really complain that "his stats are better than mine! Waahhh!!" If you have players that whine about their stats, kill their character and tell them to go ahead and roll up a new one.

See above. Sometimes rolling new sets won't help. We're not talking a few points here and there; we're talking where one fellow has a single "LOW" score that's as high as (or higher than) MOST of everyone else's ENTIRE SETS. Someone whose average is higher than most of the other players' highest score.

Randomness in character generation sucks, plain and simple; a player should be trusted to know what they will or will not enjoy playing, and be allowed to play exactly that.

 

[nikolai]

Celebrim, thanks very much for the reply. I don't think I explained myself very well in my first post, so I'm going to have a second shot. Hopefully I'll be more successful at turning what's in my head into pixels this time!

The idea is that the point buy system is used. But instead of just being able to decide exactly where the points go some randomness is introduced, hopefully giving more naturalistic characters. Also, because the whole idea is based upon assigning a fixed number of points, characters are balanced in that they've all got the same number of points. So the randomness you get with dice pools or with points plus dice systems isn't there. Hopefully, you won't get abnormally strong or weak characters. At least that's the idea...

So you get, say, 25 points. But instead of being able to just stick a point into Intelligence - like normal point buy - you have to choose a dice (say a d2) and assign each outcome to an ability (say 1=Intelligence, 2=Dexterity). You then throw the die and the point ends up in statistic that was rolled (so, if you got a 2, you have a point in Dex). You then repeat the same process for each point you have to spend, until they're all gone. So you use the dice to assign points, rather than roll ability scores.

When you finish you have a list of abilities and the number of points spent in each. And you then convert these into an ability score using the standard table.


Ability - Points Assigned - Ability Score
Str - 12 points - Ability Score = 16
Dex - 0 points - Ability Score = 8
Con - 3 points - Ability Score = 11
Int - 1 point - Ability Score = 9
Wis - 7 points - Ability Score = 14
Cha - 2 points - Ability Score = 10


I'd say the Pro is that you get balanced characters and I don't think you have the control to totally min/max, create cookie-cutter PCs or clone characters. The Con is that it takes time to roll up characters, particularly if you use a high point build.

Again, it does have weaknesses and I haven't inflicted it on a real group yet. More thoughts?

nikolai.

 

[andargor]

I guess to each his own... My colleagues and I would definitely dislike a PB system. Rolling dice is part of our culture (we've been playing for 25 years...) And RP becomes so much more important in a weak character.

So we use a hybrid: 4d6-1 six times, put the results in the stats you wish, can reallocate up to 3 points (say, if wizard, take 1 from Str and 2 from Cha to put in Int).

Works very well, without the "cookie cutter" feel to it.

My $0.02

Andargor

 

[Celebrim]

nikolai: OK, that makes alot more sense.

Yeah, that would be an acceptable way to make the character, but in this case, there is no particular advantage in picking a d6 over a d4 or a d4 over a d2. Only someone who really didn't care what his stats came out as would choose a d6.

And as a practical matter, I'd expect character creation to go as follows for a wizard.

"Ok, take the d2, 1 is INT, 2 is DEX..."

Repeat until DEX is target number...

"Ok, take the d2, 1 is INT, 2 is CON..."

Repeat until either is target number, then work the remaining stats until they reach the right level.

So in practice, you might as well do point buy then randomly select from the attributes (excluding the highest), and move 1 or 2 points randomly into another attribute (excluding the highest). A reasonably 'skillful' player ought to be able to manage the luck to the point that not much luck is involved.

 

[Ravellion]

I've used it and it didn't seem to work - characters weren't really diverse. Paladins almost all had 16 CHA. When I used Point buy, I had all "demihumans". Now I have 4 humans, an Aasimar and an Elf (which actually was still from the point buy days...). Everyone's CON was 14. etc. etc.

That said, I don't think it needs a big tweak.

Rav