Whats your opinion on the Point Buy System

[KnowTheToe]

I used to love the point buy, balanced, easy and consistant, but I never noticed how cookie cutter the characters become. I have not rolled stats for a 3E character ever, but now I want to try. Somehow, I feel refreshed, energized like a 3 year old on a sugar high. I can honestly say I am a new man. Now well see how it works.

 

[Dimwhit]

D&D is all about the dice! I think the point buy system sucks. And for several reasons, many of which I won't mention. The first being that this is D&D, and you use your dice. The second is for the very reason everyone seems to like it: the parity issue. What is this, communism? Everyone has to be on an even playing field? No rich? No poor? Life isn't even, why should D&D be any different? Some people are going to have strong characters, some weak, some average. The measure of a player is how well he does with what he has. If he's too weak and dies, well, you've just learned a life lesson. Same goes, by the way, for hit points. Taking average is terrible. Everyone has the same number of hit points (notwithstanding CON modifier differences). That's just not right.

As a great Canadian rock band sang, Roll the Bones.

I'll know listen to those who are ticked at my communism reference.

As a side note, one of my DMs had a great idea. We all rolled new character stats in front of everyone. We were allowed to roll three (maybe four) sets of stats, and we chose the best one. Some people had average, some had really high and really low scores, and some in between. But it worked out quite well.

 

[IceBear]

As long as the PLAYERS are all happy with their character's I don't care what method is used. I do agree that if one character has really high stats and another doesn't, it is likely that the character with the low stats won't have as much fun as the other player. That's what I, as a DM, try to prevent. I normally use 4D6, discard the lowest and reroll 1s, and do it in front of everyone else, and everyone is happy with their characters. This time I'm running an Internet game so I went with a 28 point buy for 2 reasons - I have a lot of newbie players so I didn't want their enjoyment spoiled (if they don't like it, they might not want to play again) by bad stats, and to prevent cheating (plain and simple).

IceBear

 

[Celebrim]

I guess for me, having started in an age when if you were allowed to use ANYTHING but 3d6, in order, take what you get, the DM would have been considered overly generous boardering on maybe Monte Haul, the whole point buy thing just seems kinda silly. I remember the days when you invented a character, choose a class, and started working on his personality and history, AFTER rolling the dice.

"Hmmm... 15 WIS, 14 CON, 7 CHR... nothing else really worth noting... maybe I'll play an unlikable cleric. Now, do I want to serve an evil diety, be a self-righteous pedagogue, or be a clueless, stammering, introvert who has never before left the monestary...."

www.ironygames.com/igroll.html

Go there and try the old system 4 or 6 times and think about it a second. If the object of the game is to have fun, not to win, then aren't those stats a whole lot more _interesting_ than 32 pt. buy characters? Aren't they causing you to consider playing characters that you would have never otherwise considered? Ok, so maybe your party won't be able to take down Pit Fiends at 14th level in one round, but you won't be whining about how 'weak' they are either. You still are going to be heroes, because your DM doesn't have to populate the world with 28-32 point build NPC's just to keep up.

There, I said it.

 

[Alchemist]

Okay, I have one that sprang from a conversation with a cohort recently. It's entirely untested but might do the trick.

The standard point buy uses a base score of 8 for all stats. If one were to introduce some variability to that base, it would make the whole point buy more variable. If one were to roll, say, 1d5+5 for each base stat, one ends up with a range of 6-10 for the base. Now, make the point buy moveable so that the points are spent relative to the base stat. So if you had a 6 and wanted it to become a 10, that's going to cost you 4 points. If you had a 10 and wanted an 18, it would only cost you 10 points. The table would have to be made moveable and extended for those crazy folks who must turn that 6 into an 18, but that's a relatively small feat.

This sort of system might introduce enough variability to mitigate cookie-cutter characters, while still keeping the relative balance of the point buy. As with anything dependant on the dice, the lucky still end up in a better position but it shouldn't be that huge of an advantage. A different range (perhaps 1d3+6) would result in less or more variation around the standard attribute of 8, depending on how much we like the dice to dictate our characters.

Comments? I'm interested in refining this idea to actually implement it in the next campaign I run.

 

[IceBear]

I guess for me, having started in an age when if you were allowed to use ANYTHING but 3d6, in order, take what you get, the DM would have been considered overly generous boardering on maybe Monte Haul, the whole point buy thing just seems kinda silly. I remember the days when you invented a character, choose a class, and started working on his personality and history, AFTER rolling the dice.

"Hmmm... 15 WIS, 14 CON, 7 CHR... nothing else really worth noting... maybe I'll play an unlikable cleric. Now, do I want to serve an evil diety, be a self-righteous pedagogue, or be a clueless, stammering, introvert who has never before left the monestary...."

www.ironygames.com/igroll.html

Go there and try the old system 4 or 6 times and think about it a second. If the object of the game is to have fun, not to win, then aren't those stats a whole lot more _interesting_ than 32 pt. buy characters? Aren't they causing you to consider playing characters that you would have never otherwise considered? Ok, so maybe your party won't be able to take down Pit Fiends at 14th level in one round, but you won't be whining about how 'weak' they are either. You still are going to be heroes, because your DM doesn't have to populate the world with 28-32 point build NPC's just to keep up.

There, I said it.

And again, it depends on your players. I've got one player that would have fun playing a character with crappy stats, and I've got another that wouldn't. The other 3 are ok with whatever they have, but I think a couple of those would start to have less fun if their stats affected their character's ability while another player had high stats and stole the spotlight.

I personally would enjoy the challenge of roleplaying whatever stats I got, but not everyone wants that. Thus, my opinion on use whatever method makes your players happy.

IceBear

 

[KnowTheToe]

Thus, my opinion on use whatever method makes your players happy.

IceBear

What kind of opinion is that! Can't make your mind up. You some kinda sissy! Before you post here again, you better grow yourself a set of *****. Now make a choice darnit!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Re: Re: Re

The only problem with pt buy is as someone pointed out there is an archetype character of each class for each level of pt buy. Most people will choose that archetype character.

That is very group dependent.

If your players only like to roleplay vanilla archetypes, it will take a very unusual turn of the dice to knock them out of that rut.

There are two or three obvious ways to play each and every core class -- each style demands a different distribution of stats. There are also many feats out there to entice players into trying unusual styles. And then we have multiclassing.

I can only feel sorry for players who choose the same characters over and over.

 

[KnowTheToe]

As mentioned above, I had never rolled a 3E character, I had always used point buy. Tonight I came home and rolled 6 sets of stats to represent a group of players and I had 1 very powerful PC (38 point value), 2 slightly above 32 , 2 around 28 point and 2 around 25 point buy.

So, in conclusion, I believe with the players I know, the consistancy of stats with the point buy would keep players happier with their characters.

I did make my first Brigand from the Kalamar setting and will hopefully one day find a game to play him in. What a cool class.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

It's funny all the posts talking about "cookie cutter" characters with point buy. I haven't seen it.

Here's a sampling of characters:

Human Ftr/Wiz 28 points
Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 10

Human Clr 28 points
Str 14, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 15, Cha 12

Human Clr 28 points
Str 14, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 14

Dwarf Ftr/Clr 28 points
Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 6

Dwarf Clr 28 points
Str 14, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 12

Human Monk
Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 8

Half-orc Bbn/Monk
Str 17, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 6

Human Rgr/Rog
Str 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 12

Human Brd
Str 14, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 15

Human Paladin
Str 15, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 14

Human Paladin
Str 15, Dex 12, Con 8, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 16

Dwarf Wiz
Str 12, Dex 12, Con 16 (18), Int 18, Wis 10, Cha 6

Half Orc Bbn
Str 20, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 6, Wis 8, Cha 6

Half Orc Bbn/Clr
Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 15, Cha 6

Human Ftr/Clr
Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 10

There's a fair amount of similarity in the stats. There's certainly a lot of 10s and 14s. However, out of the 15 or so characters, many of who fill quite similar roles, there's plenty of humans and no two sets of stats are identical. I didn't see any cookie cutter characters in the 30 point buy RttToEE campaign I played in either. The closest I've come to seeing nearly identical characters was the first time I played in a 32 point buy game (Living Arcanis).
I showed up with a Val barbarian Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 10. Another guy showed up with a human barbarian Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 10, Cha 12. But the characters themselves weren't too similar. He was focussed on reach weapon combat and my character was designed to smash things up with a Tralian hammer (2d8 /x4 exotic weapon in that setting--yeah, I'll admit I'm a bit of a power gamer--but I also had these Mordheim minis with 2 handed hammers that I'd never used )

If I had to build another front line fighter for that campaign, I probably wouldn't use the same set of stats either.