15 point buy, why does it appeal to you?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Aranna wrote:
I don't believe you Gauss. I have been gaming for a couple decades now and I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen 2 18s on a sheet. The number of times I have seen more than 2 18s? Once. There is on occasion a guy a the table with one 17 or 18. But usually the high roll for a 4d6drop1 is 16.

And then there are groups like the one I learned tabletop roleplaying [by way of D&D 3.5] at, where half the group rolls 'normal' and the other half roll through the roof.

My first character had two 18's, two 16's, a 14 and a 12.

Shawna [party druid for that game] rolled... wait for it... 18, 18, 18, 18, 17, 13

Another player rolled 18, 18, 18, 15, 14, 14

Quote:
Heck the fickleness of the d20 has a FAR greater impact on play than stat generation. I have seen the poor player who can't seem to roll double digits on his d20... he is FAR more incapable than the guy who had really bad luck in stat generation. YET I hear NO calls for elimination of the d20.

I do!

For the time being I haven't pulled the trigger on it in my own games, but from a probabilities perspective I FAR prefer 2d10 to d20 [I am fond of 3d6 as well, but I really like how the probabilities lay out for 2d10]


Was the roll honest and the dice too?

I'm known for rolling high statted characters, but I usually need several 6x6 matrixes of whatever the roll is supposed to be (usually 4d6*1 but some times more generous) to reach a set of stats I like... and yeah, I wait to roll for the right stats before I create the character I'll submit... and I conversely tend to decline games where the stat creation stage is too stringent.

What I've also seen done, and don't stoop too is the use of rigged dice.


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Totally honest. These same dice had totally normal tendencies in actual play [all new players with few dice] and each roll was done one at a time with the whole table watching.


wow, just wow, even with generous methods, with the exception of 1st ed Unearthed Arcana's infamous method V, I've never seen such char sets.


Wow either there are a lot of cheaters out there or these people should switch to playing the lottery they should be multi millionaires by the end of the year.

The statistical norm for 4d6drop1 is +6 across a set not +12 or higher. And while I have seen +8 with regular occurrence (these are the captain amazing rollers). +12 or higher should be a once in a lifetime thing. Unless someone has defective dice.


Aranna wrote:
I don't believe you Gauss. I have been gaming for a couple decades now and I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen 2 18s on a sheet. The number of times I have seen more than 2 18s? Once. There is on occasion a guy a the table with one 17 or 18. But usually the high roll for a 4d6drop1 is 16. It isn't rare to bounce off the reroll buffer, it typically happens to someone on there first stat set. But the number of times I have seen 14, 10, 10, 10, 10, 8 is ZERO times in two decades. Yes that unlucky guy at the table will have a 14 or 15 high stat while most of the group has a 16... and every once in a while you might get captain extreme with a 17 or 18.

That "on occasion/every once in a while" is approximately a 30% chance if you're rolling a character one 4d6d1. If there's more than one character then you're more likely to have a 17 or 18 among their stats than not. Meanwhile the probability that a character will have no state higher than 14 is 20%. It's likely that a random group of four characters will have someone with no stat higher than 14 and someone else with a 17 or 18. It could be that the person with the 17/18 won't have any other good stats, but that's not more likely than the person with the 14 being in the same position. If you've never seen it, then you've been beating the statistical odds for a couple of decades.


Aranna wrote:

Wow either there are a lot of cheaters out there or these people should switch to playing the lottery they should be multi millionaires by the end of the year.

The statistical norm for 4d6drop1 is +6 across a set not +12 or higher. And while I have seen +8 with regular occurrence (these are the captain amazing rollers). +12 or higher should be a once in a lifetime thing. Unless someone has defective dice.

The problem is that 6 stats, or even 18 stats isn't enough rolling to see a "statistical norm". Statistical norms happen over hundreds if not thousands of rolls...not 6. With 6 you get variance and results to either end of the bell curve are not unusual.

Dark Archive

Yes, rolling nine 18 stats among players is extremely improbable and would have to involve some consideration of whether or not the dice were messed with. Maybe the way they were rolled, such has having 6s visible in hand and dropping the dice more then rolling them. There is also consideration of whether or not the dice for rigged.

Of any case, given all those 18s and the consideration that they were all roll properly... I probably offer that those without any 18s that they could have their two lowest stay rolls be made such.


I already addressed that Jonathon.

kyrt-ryder wrote:
Totally honest. These same dice had totally normal tendencies in actual play [all new players with few dice] and each roll was done one at a time with the whole table watching.

The girl who rolled the four 18s even shook the dice in a cup before dumping them out in a far-rolling pattern.

Your solution to even up the party seems pretty reasonable though.

Dark Archive

kyrt-ryder wrote:
Your solution to even up the party seems pretty reasonable though.

Thanks, the way I look at it players should not be punished for rolling well.

If the majority of the players rolled up 18s, I find it only fair to offer a couple of 18s to those that did not to balance everything out. Simply means encounters will need to be adjusted.

Community & Digital Content Director

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Removed a baiting post and the responses to it. Let's not make negative assumptions about experience level and correlate that to an individual/groups "creativity" or play style.

EDIT: Removed an additional post. If you have questions about moderation, please forward them to our Website Feedback subforum or community@paizo.com as appropriate, so as to not to derail the current conversation. Thanks!

Liberty's Edge

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Aranna wrote:

Wow either there are a lot of cheaters out there or these people should switch to playing the lottery they should be multi millionaires by the end of the year.

The statistical norm for 4d6drop1 is +6 across a set not +12 or higher. And while I have seen +8 with regular occurrence (these are the captain amazing rollers). +12 or higher should be a once in a lifetime thing. Unless someone has defective dice.

This is, as others have stated, not accurate. The percentages of this occurring are way higher than you're implying.

There's also a matter of playing those percentages. I've rolled up at least a dozen characters. All in gaming groups of 5-7 players (averaging on the low end, I admit), and thus I've seen at least 60 characters created. Probably more like 70 or so. So, even if there's only, say, a 5% chance of that happening, I'd have seen it 3 or 4 times just on average.

And I hate rolling for stats and do it as little as possible. Plus, less than half the games I play are Pathfinder (I'm actually playing four games right now, none are Pathfinder or other D&D). If I rolled (or had my players roll) stats every time I played or GMed a Pathfinder game, that number of stats-sets would probably triple. If I also played almost exclusively Pathfinder, it would probably triple again. And I've only been gaming 15 years, some people here have been gaming longer (though I may well game more frequently).

But still, that makes a number in the 500s very plausible as the number of stat sets some people have seen rolled. Even the most unlikely combinations will come up a fair number of times in that data set.


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The odds of the 4d6 method rolling 3x 18's is not the same as the odds of winning the lottery.

The odds of winning the powerball lottery is 1:292,201,338 or 0.000000342%. powerball link
The odds of rolling 3x 18's via 4d6 is 1:10,000 or 0.01%. 4d6 statistics link

Rolling just ONE 18 in a 6x 4d6 array has a 9.34% chance. That is a lot higher than most people give credit for.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
Aranna wrote:

Envy, if you strip my dramatic prose away, is a negative emotion. And doesn't usually come from anger but far more often from greed or pride. And no it definitely wants you unhappy. Just look at a greedy person. They get the "best" treasure pick and they are happy... till the next treasure pick and then they turn green again. It is a cycle of peaks and valleys with FAR more valleys than peaks. It wants suffering. Over a couple +1s typically.

no emotion is negative, if it were we would not have evolved to express it.

It's from anger because anger is the driving emotion, and envy drives you to action. Under that it's connected to feeling threatened as it has to do with another person holding advantage over you.

ignorance is bliss because you do not hold the weight of responsibility, do not ask for a lighter load, ask for broader shoulders.

It's not healthy to ignore or run away from emotions, but to accept them and use them. A person who acts the way you are describing is trying to hide his greed until it overflows, if you accept your desire for material gain, you can work with those around you to sate yourself and designate a distribution method.

what's the distribution method for character power? PB or other more elegant systems, but not dice. Like I've said I prefer to let people choose while discussing with each other and viewing each other's sheets.


I've honestly found that rolling one natural 18 in a 4d6 drop low format is a lot more common than "people actually paying the 17 point tax on taking an 18 in PB."

Moreover that rolling "uniformly good, but not great" (say 12,14,13 14,12,13) is way more common than "somebody actually buys that array."

Dark Archive

Myself I will give players a choice between three ability score methods, players much agree on using the same method:
* 4d6, reroll 1s & 2s, drop the lowest.
* 25 Point Buy
* Lastly, a modified Focus & Foible system from Way of the Wicked:
Choose a Focus, an ability score at which you excel. You receive an 18 in that score.
Choose a Foible, an ability score that is your weakness. You receive an 8 in that score.
For the other four, roll 1d10+7 four times in order. You may choose where these four rolled scores go.


It is far more common to roll an 18 and not have a negative stat than it is to have an 18 with point buy and not have a negative stat. Which is the problem with point buy. If you want to start at level 1 with an 18 before racials (which is a +stat) you can never retrain/relearn/use magic/etc to get back again. Anyone who wants to be "the best" at x ability needs that 18...which forces dump stats. Rolling can have bad luck or good luck, just like the rest of the game.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
*Thelith wrote:
It is far more common to roll an 18 and not have a negative stat than it is to have an 18 with point buy and not have a negative stat. Which is the problem with point buy. If you want to start at level 1 with an 18 before racials (which is a +stat) you can never retrain/relearn/use magic/etc to get back again. Anyone who wants to be "the best" at x ability needs that 18...which forces dump stats. Rolling can have bad luck or good luck, just like the rest of the game.

ability scores however actually affect how "lucky or unlucky" you are. good stats and you simply are lucky more often, bad stats and that character is permanently more unlucky.


*Thelith wrote:
It is far more common to roll an 18 and not have a negative stat than it is to have an 18 with point buy and not have a negative stat. Which is the problem with point buy. If you want to start at level 1 with an 18 before racials (which is a +stat) you can never retrain/relearn/use magic/etc to get back again. Anyone who wants to be "the best" at x ability needs that 18...which forces dump stats. Rolling can have bad luck or good luck, just like the rest of the game.

Word of warning. Don't roll with the expectation of getting that 18. Just look at the other posters numbers if you don't believe mine. 9% chance? You will have to go through 10 campaigns (on average) without an 18 before you get to the one game where you get to have one.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

actually after 7 games the odds of having a single 18 at 9.34% chance, the odds reach 49.7%

or (1-0.0934)^7 does anyway


I always roll expecting 6*18. I never get that but I can hope for it! Just like I hope to never roll a 1. With point buy there is no hope or risk.


I typically get a 16-18 ~half the time, and only get below 10 less than that... so I'm not seeing the downside of rolling 4d6 against PB15... heck, if you reroll 1's and 2's you only have about 1 in 6 odds(rolling a 3) per dice you can get less than 10 in any stat... that by itself seems preferable to me.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
M1k31 wrote:

I typically get a 16-18 ~half the time, and only get below 10 less than that... so I'm not seeing the downside of rolling 4d6 against PB15... heck, if you reroll 1's and 2's you only have about 1 in 6 odds(rolling a 3) per dice you can get less than 10 in any stat... that by itself seems preferable to me.

like i said, i rolled 3 ability sets in a row that were all worse than the last. the GM finally just wrote 1s in front of some of my ability scores. it just happens from time to time, and that time to time tends to be me more than others.


Bandw2 wrote:
M1k31 wrote:

I typically get a 16-18 ~half the time, and only get below 10 less than that... so I'm not seeing the downside of rolling 4d6 against PB15... heck, if you reroll 1's and 2's you only have about 1 in 6 odds(rolling a 3) per dice you can get less than 10 in any stat... that by itself seems preferable to me.

like i said, i rolled 3 ability sets in a row that were all worse than the last. the GM finally just wrote 1s in front of some of my ability scores. it just happens from time to time, and that time to time tends to be me more than others.

But that has nothing to do with PB15... if your dice get more than 4's ever you should still have higher stats than PB 15 will get you.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
M1k31 wrote:
Bandw2 wrote:
M1k31 wrote:

I typically get a 16-18 ~half the time, and only get below 10 less than that... so I'm not seeing the downside of rolling 4d6 against PB15... heck, if you reroll 1's and 2's you only have about 1 in 6 odds(rolling a 3) per dice you can get less than 10 in any stat... that by itself seems preferable to me.

like i said, i rolled 3 ability sets in a row that were all worse than the last. the GM finally just wrote 1s in front of some of my ability scores. it just happens from time to time, and that time to time tends to be me more than others.
But that has nothing to do with PB15... if your dice get more than 4's ever you should still have higher stats than PB 15 will get you.

i was given the 1s on my highest stats... yes they were all below 10.

Dark Archive

Bandw2 wrote:
I was given the 1s on my highest stats... yes they were all below 10.

If I had a player who didn't have a single score over 10, I without a doubt I would let them reroll.

Though given my style of rolling happens to be for 4d6, rerolls 1s and 2s once, drop lowest. I very much doubt that would happen.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
JonathonWilder wrote:
Bandw2 wrote:
I was given the 1s on my highest stats... yes they were all below 10.

If I had a player who didn't have a single score over 10, I without a doubt I would let them reroll.

Though given my style of rolling happens to be for 4d6, rerolls 1s and 2s once, drop lowest. I very much doubt that would happen.

this was the third roll (or them about but i know i had rolled more than twice.)

also yes, I bring this up because it basically lives in infamy in my mind, so many bad rolls in a row (one of them had a 3), that the GM just gave it to me.

i just roll bad, hence why i play GM.

The Exchange

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Statistically speaking 4d6 drop lowest will land you around PB18 (PFRPG-rules), so I do understand why people might not like it, especially considering the risk that you might roll an even worse outcome.

I just rolled for fun a set this way and got 16-15-14-9-7-6. I would play this without any problems with nearly any class imaginable. But you couldn't even recreate this with the PB system (no values under 7 allowed) and it's definitely not PB 15. As said, I totally understand if this not for everyone.

But what I really don't like to see is people getting accused of stat dumping for optimization reasons when choosing 16-15-14-9-8-7 (which would be PB 15), when actually a worse result would be allowed because it is rolled. And personally I think it's this stance why people might prefer higher Point Buys, because they don't want to dump stats too much, but also don't want to sacrifice their prime attributes so as not having to do so.

But to say that bad results are totally improbable is as incorrect as to say the same about good results. And both can damage the inter-party-balance, so if to avoid this danger is important to you, you'll probably do better with PB.

Dark Archive

The way I consider it, I would actually double check a player's rolled stats to make sure they did not come of lower then 20 PB and I would let them reroll a stat lower then 7.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

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One of my groups plays online using MapTools, and one of the players has written a character generation macro that rolls 4d6 drop lowest, checks the PB, and rerolls if the PB is below 10 or above 20. You only see the final results, so there's no remorse over some super character being thrown away. It allows people the option of rolling but no one is going to be super powerful or weak. We let players either choose to roll or 15 PB, but if you roll you have to keep it.

The Exchange

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I did something to the same effect once, by letting the players roll and then reigning their results in between PB 15 and PB 25. Did this by hand, so there was some handwaiving involved, but it worked for my group at that time, as I let them control the points they could add (or had to take away).


Arguments all 'round!:
Sometimes, you guys.

Sometimes it just feels like people aren't reading what others have written.

Example: the following conversation as it apparatus from the outside that occurred above:

- "Here is an anecdote: I rolled poorly, was allowed a reroll, and then did so again, and was allowed another reroll; as all had been horrid, the GM just bumped my stats. Rolling sucks."
- "Well, if it was us, I'd allow a reroll."
- "I did reroll - twice. I never exceeded 10 in my stats, even rerolling multiple times. Clearly, rolling is bad."
- "I'd handle it with a reroll. (Target by point buy.)"

I selected this conversation - which I didn't quote, but paraphrased - not because it was the only version of what's happened in this thread, but because I found it funny and the most obvious.

Here's the thing - anecdotes are nice to have, but not solid data points. You can't build an unassailable argument out of them, because, in the end, other people may have had just-as-legitimate conflicting experience*.

That said, you can't dismiss them out of hand, either - you have to recognize they are valid to the person sharing them and, especially if your solution was already tried, it's not a persuasive argument to dismiss their experience with your idea(s). Sharing how you'd handle it is fine, of course, but attempting to reject or belittle another's experience because of that isn't really a valid tactic, either. Noting your suspicion of something as unlikely or confusing, or aberrant - especially when citing your own experience - is fine, as is noting how you'd have handled a situation differently. But be aware that when another has already implies red similar

Don't get me wrong: I'm not accusing anyone here of deliberately acting in a poor manner. Heck, I can do the same without thinking, and most assuredly have. Again, though I chose a specific back-and-forth, I did not pick them for being rude or unpleasant to each other - both were being polite - but because it seems like a funny example of two guys that were kind of talking past one another, and making zero progress by failing to acknowledge the other had a legitimate point for other's style of play.

One important thing is to recognize when someone else has a valid point with experience that opposes your own - see the limits of your experience and acknowledge it - it'll help make your point more palatable and salient. It helps lower everyone's defenses and tends to produce less rejection of a point - and thus less frustration or anger - while increasing comprehension and, if not agreement, than acceptance and understanding. :)

* This is not to say that anecdotes are not worthwhile. In fact, they can be very worthwhile. It's just that using them as hard proof is going to fail - they are soft proof, at best proof that it works that way for you.

Again - over-all, this conversation has been civil, but I speak as a reminder that, you know, it should stay that way, and hopefully not turn into a totem for anger. You guys are awesome! Please carry on.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I think it depends very much on what you want out of the campaign. Our previous APs have been 5d6 drop lowest. This allows us to power through the low levels, not buy stat boosting items, and be fairly balanced when we get up into the high levels. Point buy is still my preferred choice, 25 minimum for similar reasons to the high power rolling.


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I sometimes see people in pbp doing rolling, if want can point buy 15 instead after rolling.

This is best of both worlds: if think can't get good rolls, at least get something.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I like that with the caveat that you have to build up from your rolls until you reach 15 point buy.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
JonathonWilder wrote:
The way I consider it, I would actually double check a player's rolled stats to make sure they did not come of lower then 20 PB and I would let them reroll a stat lower then 7.

why not just give them a NPC stat array ad then have them roll 1d4s onto the array at that point?


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
Tacticslion wrote:
** spoiler omitted **...

I was mostly having it conversationally to point out that "well average is better" that sometimes people don't get to roll average.

we were rolling this with dice, we had 4 d6s to our table(well maybe like 6 but whatever) so that meant everyone had to make character's not just me and I was holding up the table. so i was given extra stats.

Dark Archive

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Bandw2 wrote:
Why not just give them a NPC stat array ad then have them roll 1d4s onto the array at that point?

Hmm... now that's actually an interesting consideration. The elite array plus 1d4.


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Bandw2 wrote:
JonathonWilder wrote:
The way I consider it, I would actually double check a player's rolled stats to make sure they did not come of lower then 20 PB and I would let them reroll a stat lower then 7.
why not just give them a NPC stat array ad then have them roll 1d4s onto the array at that point?

This is interesting. I might actually test this one out. I'll play around with it.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

well, nice to know I helped people. '3'

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