Worlds of Design: Rolls vs. Points in Character Building

Let’s talk about methods of generating RPG characters, both stochastic and deterministic.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

"Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will." Jawaharlal Nehru

When creating character attributes, there are two broad approaches to generating them: stochastic and deterministic. The stochastic method involves chance, while the deterministic method does not. Most any other method is going to be one of the other, whatever the details. The pros of one method tend to be the cons of the other.

Stochastic
The classic method is rolling dice, usually D6, sometimes an alternative like percentage dice. There are various ways do this. For example, some of the old methods were to sum the roll of 3d6 six times in a specific order of six character abilities. A variation was 3d6 and change the order as desired, another was roll 4d6, don’t count the lowest die, and then you might be able to change order or not; and so forth.

What are the pros of rolling the dice? First of all and primarily, variety (barring cheating). You get a big range of dice rolls. Dice rolling promotes realism, you get a big variation in numbers so you get some 3s, in fact you get as many 3s as 18s, and with some methods you have the opportunity to play characters with “cripplingly bad" ability numbers. Further, it's always exciting to roll dice, whether you like it or not. (Keep in mind, when I first saw D&D I said “I hate dice games.”)

One of the cons of rolling dice is that it's unfair in the long run, a player can get big advantages lasting for years of real-time throughout the campaign just by getting lucky in the first dice rolls. This can be frustrating to those who didn't get lucky. Perhaps even more, rolling dice encourages cheating. I've seen people roll one character after another until they get one they like - meaning lots of high numbers - and then they take that to a game to use. That’s not possible with point buy. Another con is that you may want to play a particular character class yet the dice just won’t cooperate (when you’re rolling in specific order).

Deterministic
The other method which I believe has been devised independently by several people including myself (I had an article for my system published a long time ago) is the one used in fifth edition D&D. A player is given a number of generic points to buy ability numbers. The lowest numbers can be very cheap, for example, if you are using a 3 to 18 scale, when you buy a 3 it may cost you one point, while an 18 may cost 20-some points. You decide what you want, for which ability, and allocate until you run out of points.

Point buy is very fair (FRP is a game, for some people). No one need be envious of someone who either 1) rolled high or 2) rolled many characters and picked the best one. It prevents the typical new character with sky-high abilities, it prevents cheating, so the player has to supply the skill, not rely on bonuses from big ability numbers. Of course, the GM can choose the number of points available to the players so he/she can give generally higher or lower numbers on average as they choose.

But point buy lacks variety for a particular class. The numbers tend to be the same. It's not exciting, it’s cerebral, and as such it takes a little longer than rolling dice. That's all the cons I can think of. Keep in mind I'm biased in favor of point buy. It's clean, fair and simple.

I haven’t spent much time trying to figure out yet another method of generating a character. The only other method I can think of that isn’t one or the other is to have some kind of skilled contest determine the numbers, such as pitching pennies or bowling. Then the question becomes why use one kind of skill over another?

Do you favor one method over the other? And has anyone devised a method that is not stochastic or deterministic?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I'm just trying to come at this from a different angle: Are you okay with D&D's tiers of play? (and) Do you accept a campaign where a character can die? If so, what's the difference between reaching tier 2 or 3, a spot where characters are far stronger and their abilities far greater?

The way I'm looking at it is an enormous amount of the PHB is relegated for tiers of play many don't see, either because they play in a gritty campaign where death happens often or they don't continue play longer than six months. So why is it so bad for a class to be in there that many players won't be able to play. I mean, characters die all the time because of bad dice rolls. For the paladin it's just inverted, you can't reach this pinnacle because of bad dice rolls.

Anyway, just a thought. Thanks for reading.

The difference, judging from the post you quoted, is choice.

In AD&D a player says "I want to play a paladin" and the DM says "I want you to play a paladin too, but let's follow the rules - go ahead and roll your ability scores." And then those dice rolls can say "no" to the paladin getting played even though the player and DM are both wanting it to happen and have chosen the path that is supposed to make it happen.

But in the other example the DM saying "I'm ending this campaign at 8th level" or "I'm only running for 6 months" or "despite it not actually being a rule, character death is going to mean down-leveling, and I'm gonna run a lethal enough campaign that we keep repeating the lower levels" is making a choice to not] engage in a particular part of the book - the analog of a player not wanting to play a paladin in the first place.

 

[clearstream]

The difference, judging from the post you quoted, is choice.

In AD&D a player says "I want to play a paladin" and the DM says "I want you to play a paladin too, but let's follow the rules - go ahead and roll your ability scores." And then those dice rolls can say "no" to the paladin getting played even though the player and DM are both wanting it to happen and have chosen the path that is supposed to make it happen.

But in the other example the DM saying "I'm ending this campaign at 8th level" or "I'm only running for 6 months" or "despite it not actually being a rule, character death is going to mean down-leveling, and I'm gonna run a lethal enough campaign that we keep repeating the lower levels" is making a choice to not] engage in a particular part of the book - the analog of a player not wanting to play a paladin in the first place.

Another take is that Paladin is a rare class, and it is something special to have the chance to play one. This can be regulated by the stochastic mechanism. We always made a big deal out of someone having the option. Same with monks. It wasn't about their mechanical power, it was about not being able to auto-pick one.

The thing about games, is that it is the constraints constitute the play. They are accepted just so that, that kind of play can occur. It may be that a group does not enjoy certain constraints, or where they are located, but that is just a matter of which constraints to use... how they want to shape the space for play.

 

[Scott Christian]

The difference, judging from the post you quoted, is choice.

In AD&D a player says "I want to play a paladin" and the DM says "I want you to play a paladin too, but let's follow the rules - go ahead and roll your ability scores." And then those dice rolls can say "no" to the paladin getting played even though the player and DM are both wanting it to happen and have chosen the path that is supposed to make it happen.

But in the other example the DM saying "I'm ending this campaign at 8th level" or "I'm only running for 6 months" or "despite it not actually being a rule, character death is going to mean down-leveling, and I'm gonna run a lethal enough campaign that we keep repeating the lower levels" is making a choice to not] engage in a particular part of the book - the analog of a player not wanting to play a paladin in the first place.

It may be about choice, but I think my point is valid - it is also about chance. The player is allowed the choice of the paladin versus the player having a chance to play the paladin. But, I think the inverse holds true: the player choosing to play a wizard may not have a chance to play in tier 2 or 3. Both of these are based on a roll of the dice.

I'm not saying I run my campaign that way, but I know people who have. You die, you start over. It is the way the game is essentially set up.

But, I do get your point, it feels like more choice is weighted in your option.

 

[Nytmare]

My preferred method when I ran my last four player campaign was stat array with a twist. No two characters could share the same high or low stat (including whatever stats the retiring or recently dead character had).

[EDIT as an example, If the high str/low int barbarian died, and the rest of the party was an int/con wiz, a cha/wis bard, and a wis/dex cleric, the new character could either have dex or con as their high stat, and str or cha as their low stat]

It was maybe a little heavy handed, but it made sure that the group always had singular specialists, new characters wouldn't step on the toes of the established characters, and that new characters were never just a carbon copy of the person who died.

For a D&D game that wasn't a campaign, I really wouldn't care, though I'd probably lean towards array or point buy. My actual preference at this point are games without D&D style character stats.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

But, I think the inverse holds true: the player choosing to play a wizard may not have a chance to play in tier 2 or 3. Both of these are based on a roll of the dice.

The tier of play a campaign reaches is not "a roll of the dice" by design.

 

[pemerton]

The paladin issues seems fairly straightforward

If a group approaches D&D in a similar way to how one might approach an arcade game - with level-ups and boosts, unlockables, etc - then it makes sense to gate cettain options behind luck and/or skill.

If a group approaches D&D primarily focused on the fiction, the character, the emotional experience of inhabiting one's character, etc - then it doesn't make much sense to restrict the sorts of characters that can be played behind a lucky dice roll. Just the same as it woudn't make sense to say We can play this game set in Middle Earth only if this toss of the coin comes up heads - otherwise we're not allowed to.

There is also the suggestion that the random gating is a way of making the frequency of paladins among players roughly map onto the frequency of paladins in the imagined world, but to me that makes little sense at all, as other character build elements - beig a knight rather thana peasant, being a wizard, being an elf - are not similarly gated.

 

[Hriston]

I've mostly played D&D and have always rolled (except when I played a pre-gen character once). Recently, however, I've DMed some PbP games. For the first game I ran, I allowed players the option of rolling or point buy, and every one of them chose to roll. But what I found is that those who rolled poorly (and there was one person in particular who rolled a character so abysmal that the player felt it was necessary to explain the low scores with the character having a disability) became disinterested in joining the game, and the one with the very bad scores (who did join) ended up ghosting and eventually quitting. So while I would still prefer using rolled scores in a face to face game, in my most recent PbP game I insisted on everyone using point buy to help overcome the challenge of retaining players that format seems to have.

 

[Scott Christian]

The tier of play a campaign reaches is not "a roll of the dice" by design.

I agree. For many GM's it might be set and for others more fluid. But, I am not talking about a campaign, I am discussing a single character. And, I have seen (as I am sure you have too) characters die because they had a string of bad rolls.
Now, we can debate about how the GM should it handle it, whether the interventions were in place, encounter design, etc. And my guess is I will agree with everything you say. But, a single character sometimes doesn't have the chance to make it to higher levels. And most players that I know, if their character dies they create a new character - something different.
Heck, the last campaign I was in this happened. I had a halfling bard I was in love with. Couldn't wait to see him hit that first peak of fifth level. Had everything plotted out. Nope. He died at fourth level. So I made a fourth level wood elf barbarian and came back into the game. Sad. But, it was chance that killed him.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

"your character is dead and never coming back" hasn't been a default caused-by-the-rules detail in a long time, so it's still very odd to try and treat that as an analog to "didn't roll good enough stats to play a paladin"

 

[Maxperson]

I won't use an array outside of a one shot convention game. In a sit down game it would be a deal breaker for me if I could not roll. Arrays make PCs feel too samey to me. Even if the stats don't go in the same spots, the numbers are pretty much the same. Hit points are the same way for me.