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?

 

[pemerton]

I think point buy would result in a wider spread of stats if 5E wasn't so focused on maxing out key stats, and so tolerant of dump stats. There just aren't many convincing reasons to spread the love outside of maybe half the stats for a given character (generally DEX/CON plus class stat). I'd like to see actual reasons for fighters to take intelligence, or for a Wizard to take strength. Five Torches Deep manages that to a degree, so it is possible.

I don't know Five Torches Deep except as a name.

I've played games in which warrior PCs have excelled in non-fighting stuff:, but they're non-D&D games.

In one of our long-running Rolemaster campaigns two of the PCs were warriors (and cousins): one was focused almost solely on fighting; the other was a strong warrior but also a master smith, knowledgable in languages and socially rather graceful.

In our Prince Valiant game one of the knights is Brawn 3, Presence 4 and more skilled at talking than fighting.

To speak in generalities, contemporary D&D tends to emphasise all classes being able to contribute in combat. If you want to use your INT to contribute in combat, you build a wizard. A fighter contributes in combat via STR, DEX and CON, so it would seem to many rather artificial to also create an INT path (unless it is some sort of <pause for effect> warlord-type option).

Whereas, and still speaking in generatlisation, both RM and Prince Valiant tend to emphasise there being multiple arenas of action in which various PCs might find themselves involved. A clever or suave warrior is going to shine less in combat than other more physical or single-minded warrior builds, but brings something else to the table.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

But wouldn't one be trained in (say) Thievery and another in (say) Stealth?

I dunno, my ability to explain a position I do not hold falls short at that point.

Personally, I have no difficulty seeing two characters with identical mechanical choices as not being the same if their personalities aren't the same (a skill I practiced while DMing by having a group of monsters using the same stat block each behave as individuals rather than clones or personality-free drones).

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't know Five Torches Deep except as a name.

I've played games in which warrior PCs have excelled in non-fighting stuff:, but they're non-D&D games.

Five Torches is an OSR strip-down of 5E. One of the things they did is attempt, pretty successfully, to spread the mechanical benefits evenly across the abilities, each tied to game mechanics that every or most characters use. There's much more of a reason for, say, a Fighter to take Cha or Int. I thought it was a pretty successful treatment of the standard six in that regard. Part of that is to facilitate the role in order nature of character creation in 5TD, but I thought it was interesting outside that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I mean....rolled stats are going to generally result in similar abilities. And the priority of the stat as it relates to the chosen class is the same whichever method you use.

So a player who’s decided to play a Cleric is almost always going to place his highest score....rolled or bought....in Wisdom. And so on for each class.

The priorities don’t change based on method of generation.

Perhaps this is more a complaint that there are less meaningful choices for stat allocation than there should be?

 

[Darth Solo]

Still waiting for examples of play that demonstrate how "where random rolls don't fit in ways that having nothing to do with what a group chooses, nor with the (un)fairness of the world."

It's unusual enough to require examples.

 

[Darth Solo]

I think you're making things up to cover your weak point.

Please demonstrate I'm wrong with examples ....

 

[Lanefan]

I mean....rolled stats are going to generally result in similar abilities. And the priority of the stat as it relates to the chosen class is the same whichever method you use.

So a player who’s decided to play a Cleric is almost always going to place his highest score....rolled or bought....in Wisdom. And so on for each class.

The priorities don’t change based on method of generation.

Not for the prime stat, no; but sorting out the others can be trickier with rolled stats depending what the dice gave you.

If you're a single-stat class and roll 16-11-11-11-10-10 it's dirt simple. But if you roll 17-15-14-14-8-7 you've got some more interesting (and maybe tougher) choices to make even though on average those are nicer stats; especially when it comes to what to do with the 8 and the 7.

Edition makes a difference too: my choices would almost certainly be different in 5e (from what I can tell) than in 1e, or in 3e.

 

[pemerton]

Still waiting for examples of play that demonstrate how "where random rolls don't fit in ways that having nothing to do with what a group chooses, nor with the (un)fairness of the world."

I gave three examples already: Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant. Whether the world is unfair, or not (a question for another time), random rolls for ability scores have no conceivable place in PC-gen for these games. In BW, ability scores are built from pools that are in turn built from LPs that in turn are chosen under various constaints negotiated by the group as part of setting up a campaign.

In AW, each playbook has four ability-score spreds ("arrays") to choose from which reflect a particular approach to that sort of PC, and will feed into other choices of moves for one's character. You could, if you wanted to, through a d4 to choose one's array, but that would be like throwing a die-whatever to choose from the possible points-buy options. It wouldn't be a version of throwing 3d6 (or whatever) for each score.

In Prince Valiant, there are two abilities, Brawn and Presence, and 7 points to allocate to them. The number of points in a score represents coins tossed in action resolution (heads are succdesses). In our game we have two Brawn 4, Presence 3 (both knights) and two Brawn 3, Presence 4 (one started as a squire but is now a knight; the other is a travelling performer). There is no scope in this system for making a random roll for stats. You could toss a coin to decide whether you want to play a more physical or more mental character, but that would be like a 5e player tossing a coin to choose between fighter and wizard. That's not random stat generation.

Besides D&D, systems I know of that invite random stat generation are Tunnels & Trolls (mandatory I would have thought), Classic Traveller (for the reasons I explained upthread) and at least traditionally RQ (and its offshoots) and Rolemaster, which in this respect show their conceptual connections to classic D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Not for the prime stat, no; but sorting out the others can be trickier with rolled stats depending what the dice gave you.

If you're a single-stat class and roll 16-11-11-11-10-10 it's dirt simple. But if you roll 17-15-14-14-8-7 you've got some more interesting (and maybe tougher) choices to make

I'm not seeing the dramatic contrast here with the points-buy examples I posted upthread from 4e, which have one PC with the lowest stat 10, others with 8s, and various spreads from maxing one to near-maxing two to having multiples in the 14-ish range.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not seeing the dramatic contrast here with the points-buy examples I posted upthread from 4e, which have one PC with the lowest stat 10, others with 8s, and various spreads from maxing one to near-maxing two to having multiples in the 14-ish range.

Perhaps, but 15-10-10-9-8-6 gives (or forces!) different choices than 15-15-14-14-10-10 and different again than 18-16-13-12-11-7; and in some systems e.g. 1e D&D where classes are gated by minimum stat requirements the choices also extend to a greater variety of available classes, along with how best to arrange your rolls (if arrangement is allowed).