I'm about to start running the SCAP and I've decided to go with point buy for stat generation for the very first time, instead of the usual roll 4d6 6 times. The question is, how many points?
The SCAP Hardcover suggests using 28 points. At the moment it looks like I will only have 4-5 players, rather than the 6 that it was designed for. Do you think I should bump up the point buy to 30 or 32 points to even things up or just leave it at 28?
If you used point buy in your SCAP, how many points did you give the players to spend?
Olaf the Stout
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I'm about to start running the SCAP and I've decided to go with point buy for stat generation for the very first time, instead of the usual roll 4d6 6 times. The question is, how many points?
The SCAP Hardcover suggests using 28 points. At the moment it looks like I will only have 4-5 players, rather than the 6 that it was designed for. Do you think I should bump up the point buy to 30 or 32 points to even things up or just leave it at 28?
If you used point buy in your SCAP, how many points did you give the players to spend?
Olaf the Stout
My theory since I've come to learn and love 3rd edition is that thanks to the magic of 3rd edition math, it is so easy for DMs to upgrade monsters, add levels, add templates etc.
What I've learned is this: If you make the players have "standard" or "Sub-standard" characters and they get beat down by an encounter or two, you wind up with alot of grumbling about the 'weakness' of their characters and party. On the other hand, if you beef them up a bit and let them have some really good stats, the players tend to smile a lot - even while kicking in their teeth - they're just happy that they have "powerful" characters. Just those few extra points makes a big difference pyschologically in the players' minds. Its the difference between a stat at 17 and 18; or two 14s instead of two 12s; and truthfully - as DMs - ask yourself, does that REALLY make a big difference in the scope of this epic adventure - especially one as tough as SCAP, with needs in a lot of non-combat oriented areas such as diplomacy, perform, etc. Not to mention its already been discussed many times that it doesnt' seem to provide a surplus of treasure in this campaign either.
But I digress, I had my players begin with 34 point buy! They loved it. They look really powerful on paper. But the truth is, I still have mopped the floor with them: Drakthar, Tongue-Eater, and Kazmojen have all been devastating to the party: of 6. Tongue-eater would have even resulted in a TPK if it weren't for the Striders showing up to help them. The bottom line - the DM can make any encounter as powerful as he needs to - the PCs will never outmatch what a DM can accomplish.
So in short - I would go with more liberal than stringent. The 28 stringent point buy is best with very controlled power-level enviornments best associated with RPGA games. Most players that I've ever known just simply enjoy "better stats."
At least thats MY opinion. My opinion and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee.
Robert
My group will consist of 2-3 gestalt characters and I was going to go with 28 points. However, I am using the magazines that assume a 4 character party. I also have never played the modules before and I have no idea how tough they are.
Shackeled City is often regarded as a built for a 6 person party, and being a tough one at that. Keep that in mind when assigning point buys.
Also, while gestalts do up the power bracket a bit, the true power of a character is in the actions he can take per round, which being gestalt doesn't change. 2-3 gestalts at 28 point buy.... well, if they are incredibly smart players with excellent teamwork and are playing "endurance" classes like warlock instead of wizard so they dont have to worry about resource expenditure as much....
Nah, they're still dead. Give them a spare level or two to start, then they should be ok.
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I'm about to start running the SCAP and I've decided to go with point buy for stat generation for the very first time, instead of the usual roll 4d6 6 times. The question is, how many points?
The SCAP Hardcover suggests using 28 points. At the moment it looks like I will only have 4-5 players, rather than the 6 that it was designed for. Do you think I should bump up the point buy to 30 or 32 points to even things up or just leave it at 28?
If you used point buy in your SCAP, how many points did you give the players to spend?
Olaf the Stout
I thought you were already running SCAP Olaf - starting a new one?
If it were me, I'd go with a 32 point buy. My group used the 4d6 method, but if I work out the numbers, most of them come close to a 32 point buy build.
I'm about to start running the SCAP and I've decided to go with point buy for stat generation for the very first time, instead of the usual roll 4d6 6 times. The question is, how many points?
The SCAP Hardcover suggests using 28 points. At the moment it looks like I will only have 4-5 players, rather than the 6 that it was designed for. Do you think I should bump up the point buy to 30 or 32 points to even things up or just leave it at 28?
If you used point buy in your SCAP, how many points did you give the players to spend?
Olaf the Stout
I thought you were already running SCAP Olaf - starting a new one?
If it were me, I'd go with a 32 point buy. My group used the 4d6 method, but if I work out the numbers, most of them come close to a 32 point buy build.
Nope, just getting ready to run it. Out of interest, what made you think that I was already running it?
My last campaign ended a couple of weeks ago as 2 players left the group mid-adventure. The 2 remaining players and myself decided to recruit a couple more players and start a new campaign. Once I get at least 2 more players I'll start the campaign again. Until then I'm prepping as much as I can for it.
Olaf the Stout
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Nope, just getting ready to run it. Out of interest, what made you think that I was already running it?
I'm not sure now ... I seemed to remember seeing you posting in the SC sections of the boards quite a lot way back when ... maybe I'm confusing you with someone else (With the same avatar or something).
I'm not sure now ... I seemed to remember seeing you posting in the SC sections of the boards quite a lot way back when ... maybe I'm confusing you with someone else (With the same avatar or something).
Nope, just getting ready to run it. Out of interest, what made you think that I was already running it?
No that was probably me. I read the adventures in Dungeon when the SCAP first came out and I also bought the hardcover soon after it came out. I've just been waiting for the opportunity to run it. Finally I'm getting the chance. In some ways that's a good thing. Now I can take advantage of what everyone else has done so far! :-)
Olaf the Stout
IMO, four 28 point buy 2nd level characters, four 32 point buy 1st level characters, and six 28 point buy 1st level characters are roughly equivalent from a game balance perspective. The 2nd level characters will have a bit more staying power at the start, which can be important with this adventure path.
I'd recommend the using the 28 point buy and starting them at 2nd level. They'll be a little more resilient in the first couple adventures, when they need it most, without the long-term increased power-level of 32 point buy.
Also, expand on basic details to bring Cauldron to life, both to make the party identify with the city and its inhabitants as well as making "down-time" more interesting. This will help prevent the campaign from being such a grind, too.
I actually running an intro Side Trek that should be enough to get them up to 2nd level before they get to Cauldron. I'm using The Burning Plague from the free adventures on wizards.com and setting it in Redgorge. After they solve the plague they will be sent to Cauldron to seek out the clerics at the Church of St. Cuthbert for advice on recovering and possible support. This will lead them into the events of chapter one.
That and 32 points. I'd rather have the characters too powerful than slaughtered if they get in over their head.
I gave my characters 25 points. With only four characters, they managed allright. The trick is smart tactics and a bit of luck. In the last session, they took a pretty rough beating from moltenwing, but managed ok in the end. That aura of fear is a complete bummer, especially if the party is standing on one of the plateaus and has nowhere to run.
I find that most fights last no more that 2 or 3 rounds.
The biggest equaliser, though, is the magic items. I think allmost every cagewright and boss has at least one belt of giant strength, headband of intelect or other stat-improving item. The players went up pretty quickly.
These items are a good choice for foes. It improves monsters without giving the DM the headaches of activating items or looking up rules or spell effects. The downside is that PCs turn into walking christmas trees in no time...
One option I'm considering for future campaigns is to start out the PCs at a relatively low level, and allow them to improve their stats quicker. Give them a stat increase once every other level, or once a level. In return, ban all stat enhancing effects and items.
An alternative is to give pcs a stat boost as a reward every so many levels based on their actions. So the player that roleplayed best would get an extra point of charisma, the one who came up with the best plan would get a point of inteligence of wisdom etc.
That is a pretty neat idea Chef. A willing group could make that really interesting. People are more likely to put ability bumps in non-class stats if they have more to spend.
I'm surprised to hear how many people are using point buy. Did anyone other than me have them roll? I used 3 sets of 4d6 stats allowing them to pick their set. I think the average stat bonus in the party is around +7.
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One option I'm considering for future campaigns is to start out the PCs at a relatively low level, and allow them to improve their stats quicker. Give them a stat increase once every other level, or once a level. In return, ban all stat enhancing effects and items.
An alternative is to give pcs a stat boost as a reward every so many levels based on their actions. So the player that roleplayed best would get an extra point of charisma, the one who came up with the best plan would get a point of inteligence of wisdom etc.
A system I used for a while in previous 3rd ed campaigns provides this capability.
The way it worked was:1) Every time a character advanced to a level not divisible by 4, they had the possibility of a stat increase.
a) The player would choose the stat to raise, and roll a d20. If the result was MORE than the current score, it would increase by one.
b) If the result was equal to or less than the score, it would not improve, but the player would make a ledger note that there is now a +1 to the next time he/she tries to raise that stat. Continue to increase the modifier each time you fail to raise a stat.
c) The next time he/she rolled, the result of the d20 PLUS all the modifier (equaling the number of failed attempts on THAT stat), needs to be higher than the score is.
d) Once the roll is successful, any modifiers accrued from failed attempts is erased. Trying to raise the stat again is now harder as the stat is now higher – and you start over accumulating the failed attempts
2) At every 4th level, the player still increases stats as normal – it’s an automatic stat increase and ignores the above rules of chance.
This system carries with it the built in parameters that as the stat gets higher, the harder it is to raise it. In other words as one approaches maximum potential in something, it is harder to continue to improve it. So someone with a 20 Strength finds it hard (at least one failed attempt) to increase it, while someone with a 10 can do so quite easily – but each successful attempt makes that ability harder and harder to improve it.
The results from our games gave an average level of success around 50% So when someone advanced to 12th level he/she had a chance at 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th, (8 chances) plus the auto-increases at 4th, 8th, 12th, meaning that by 12th level, the character increased their stats a total of 7 points. (8/2 + 3) One player succeeded 4 consecutive attempts (on various stats), and my wife failed 4 times on her CON before finally rolling on her 5th attempt and adding 4 to the roll – and succeeded. Obviously in this system, it’s quite a bit easier to raise the lower end stats, but someone with patience and tenacity can continue to try to raise those high end stats.
It’s worth noting that if you also include stat enhancement magic items (which we did have in our campaign), that the roll on the d20 need only be higher than the NORMAL ability score – not the enhanced one.
The players really enjoyed this, and also felt that although we used a “stat buy” system to generate characters, that they still had that slight buzz feeling of excitement that comes from rolling stats, and hoping for the best – but still not making as big of a disparity potential between characters as simply having everyone roll a set of stats from the beginning may produce.
Robert
...when one player grumbled about it being too low!
Did you immediately shoot said person? :D
I did want the characters to survive so we could have good continuity, and it certainly worked.
I have this issue as well but only because I have such a small group. There will only be 2-3 players so it can get really hairy when one of them drops dead.
I used the standard "floating reroll" from the DMG, each character rolled two sets and chose one at the end. Worked out well enough.
My group tends to get more out of their characters when they arent sporting too many 18s and looking super heroic.
I gave them 25 points if they just rolled up a character, 30 points if they wrote a character background based in either Cauldron or Sasserine.
I had one guy who promised me a background, then showed up to the first session with nothing. I told him he could either write the background then and there (people were still arriving), or rejigger his character with 25 points. He went with 25 points.
One that we tried for a time is instead of giving a stat point each level, give 1 build point per level.
it works out the same for high stats but low stats come up quickly.
Well in the end I went for 30 points. It was enough that if a player wanted an 18 in a stat they could. However if they did take an 18 it meant that they would have very average stats or one or two 8's. I think only one player ended up taking an 18 (the Wizard for Int). The rest were happy to spread out their points more.
Olaf the Stout
The time has come for character creation for my Shackled City game. I went with 32 points by default, however, if the player provides me with a 500 word background for the character they will receive 36 points. This makes their stats more on par with the type of stats rolled out using the 4d6 or 5d6 method. It evens out and in the long run I don't think the players will be over overpowered for what seems to be a challenging campaign.
Now it looks like I'll have 3-4 gestalt characters and so far they are a drow rogue/sorcerer and an elf paladin/druid who are adopted sisters from the Lantern Street Orphanage (the good twin and the evil twin) who I allowed to take the Thunder Twin feat from Forgotten Realms and yes, I know it's usually restricted to dwarves.
Well I'm happy with my 30 point buy choice so far. Only 1 player opted to go for an 18 in a score (the Wizard). The other 4 players were happy with 2 16's. No deaths so far but we're only 4 sessions in. :-)
Olaf the Stout
I went with 32 points by default, however, if the player provides me with a 500 word background for the character they will receive 36 points.
Niiiiiice.
Go with 32 points, as a player and DM it give you more flexibility to be more creative with your characters. Most of the adventure paths can easily handle characters with 32 or 34 with no changes.
Trust me the numbers work out well for 32. Just my 2 cents.
32 points seems to be perfect for straight characters. In my game I had everyone make gestalt characters and they had to put lots of thought into making 32 points work. All four of my players went with the option of writing a 500 word background story so they could have 36 points to use. Even with 36 they had to plan carefully and weigh their options. The only one who breezed through character creation was the one who made the ogre barbarian/ranger. He decided he didn't want spells so most of his points went into physical stats and making sure his negatives didn't make him unplayable. He ended up with a 28 Str, it's pretty sick.