I've just never considered "above average" to be that good, from a strictly flavor perspective.
So 16 is an awesome score. I'm sure that if I, Kuma, were statted out I'd have no 16s. Unless snarkiness becomes a stat. Unsurprisingly, I'm also sure that I'd be devoured by your average CR 1 encounter.
Of course it's going to be a "whatever works in your game" thing. There's no getting around that with a lot of RPG conventions. But calling an 18 superhuman is goofy. It's defined BY THE RULES as being around the human maximum. (Although with Pathfinder Human +2 to a stat and level increases the actual human maximum is defined as 25 or so)
Is that in keeping with reality? No, probably not. But D&D is a game where without magic, you can learn to run on clouds. (Yay, epic skill checks!)
If you think great white sharks should be stronger than the strongest human...
A: you're correct.
B: talk to the people who wrote the animal entry in the MM.
In general, I like point buy systems better than level based systems. But by that I'm referring to systems like GURPS, HERO, Shadowrun (which switched completely to buy with 4th).
I thought ShadowRun was point buy at first edition???
Character generation in shadowrun has always been kind of wonky. It works well mind you, it's just not a very common setup.
But calling an 18 superhuman is goofy. It's defined BY THE RULES as being around the human maximum.
Actually, getting your knickers in a knot over this is goofy.
By the way, superhuman can mean "beyond the human norm". I'd definetly call an 18 beyond the human norm. The human norm is 10. Only a very small percentage of humans have an 18 in anything.
Ha! Joke's on you, I don't wear knickers. =P
And I've never heard super defined as "beyond human norm". I've heard it defined as "excellent" or "exhibiting its characteristics to an excessive or extreme degree" but not "better than average".
Of course, the definitions of adjectives are often more vulnerable to creative interpretation than say, nouns.
And I've never heard super defined as "beyond human norm". I've heard it defined as "excellent" or "exhibiting its characteristics to an excessive or extreme degree" but not "better than average".
Of course, the definitions of adjectives are often more vulnerable to creative interpretation than say, nouns.
I think Mr. Yoss is right though, 11 is technically superhuman. Super just means over above and greater, and doesn't include any relativistic corrections, its just become synonymous with impossible for a regular human.
We have been using beta since release and have used 25 points by to play through a chunk of curse of the crimson throne. My wizard has points to spare enough that he is able to get into fights with his broad sword and win a good chunk of the time. That is on top of being a damn fine spell caster.
Really? (I also have an Epic+ point based wizard in CotCT.) Mine regularly gets his ass handed to him when he tries to melee. :D
[End of threadjack]
In general, I like point buy systems better than level based systems. But by that I'm referring to systems like GURPS, HERO, Shadowrun (which switched completely to buy with 4th).I thought ShadowRun was point buy at first edition???
Nope,
It was priority system. Kind of a wierd system, honestly. 4th edition Shadowrun moved to a point based system by default (although you can do a priority based as an alternate, which reversed 3rd).You had 5 things to prioritize, Race, Stats, Money, Skills, and Magic.
If you wanted to have magic, you had to make it 1st or second priority. 1st if you were human, 2nd if you were non-human. If you wanted to be nonhuman, you had to put race 1st. Stats 1st meant you had enough stat points to have a 5 (out of 6) in all stats and were human, but you could do 6,6,6,4,4,4 if you wanted. So you had points to put where you wanted, but it wasn't a buy, it was a straight 'distribute these points as you see fit, at least 1 in each stat, no more than 6 in each stat'. It would be kind of like giving someone 84 points in D&D and saying 'At least 3 pts in each stat, no single stat more than 18'. I've actually seen that on the web before, a priority system for D&D.
I don't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like :
Class, Stats, Gold, Race
Class
4) Any
3) Core Only
2) Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue
1) Fighter, Barbarian
Stats
4) 90
3) 84
2) 78
1) 72
OR
Stats
4) 18,17,16,14,13,12
3) 16,15,14,14,13,12
2) 16,15,13,13,12,10
1) 16,14,12,12,10, 8
Gold
4) 2,000
3) 1,000
2) 500
1) 50
Race
4) Any +1 (ignore +1)
3) Any +0
2) Core only
1) Human
Again, this is all off of fuzzy memory, but you get the general idea. Each 1st level character can get only one from each category. Then you get one priority 4, one priority 3, etc. Another, alternate method, was the sum to 10. You can take any priority for any category, but the sum of your priorities had to be 10 (3, 3, 3, 1). That's why the numbers go from 4 to 1 instead of 1 to 4.
Ha! Joke's on you, I don't wear knickers. =P
Of course not, with all the knickers in knots, how could you?
And I've never heard super defined as "beyond human norm". I've heard it defined as "excellent" or "exhibiting its characteristics to an excessive or extreme degree" but not "better than average".
Semantics again, I'm afraid. Beyond the norm could be interpreted as "above average", meaning "not that great but better than joe average" or as really beyond what a normal human can do, in the sense of "wow, that guy's so far out, I have to get a 1000gp item from the PHB just to see him!"
WoD also has a bit of a priority system, at least during character generation (after that, it doesn't matter any more)
RPG Superstar 2013
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If you think great white sharks should be stronger than the strongest human...
A: you're correct.
B: talk to the people who wrote the animal entry in the MM.
My Pathfinder players started with 25 points, and have fairly balanced scores. We are playing a long ROkugan campaign, so everyone has to be pretty versatile. There's a guy crippled by poison who has an 8 Con, and a Crab monk who has a low Cha, but they fully expect to be paying out the nose for their low scores.
I have always been one of those mechanical power gamers who expects a really deep, exciting story. As such, I don't feel like I hvae to have three sixteens to start my character off, but I do always want a good set of scores and the ability to be good at multiple things. I'm also a cheesy multiclasser sometimes (read: most of the time), so the need for good scores is even higher. Usually I am the DM, and I reason that everyone still has a weakness I can exploit, and someone else will have to come to the rescue. One of my Lion players invested heavily to get a 20 Strength at first level, and I let him. In social situations, he does his best, but throughout the campaign, he will be bailed out by the Crane players, who will certainly not fail to remind him. Against big monsters, the party needs a little crunch, and he is more likely than the Daidoji with the yari to get tainted by ogres.
I will say in comparing the PCs to the monsters: the shark doesn't take penalties for fighting in water the way most PCs do. He might have the same Strength as a fighter under the water, but it's still advantage: shark.
Plus, I haven't seen the big Pathfinder beastiary yet. Maybe the monster ability scores keep the point system in mind.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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Whoah be unto the ill-thinking player who even hints that my game is a cakewalk. I'll have his least favorite NPC ravage his mother and then thoroughly trap the road to revenge. I'll have a doppleganger replace his murdered sister. I'll have his wife kidnapped by Mammy Graul. I'll start using his dead PCs against his party...and give them all the stuff I told them they couldn't have.
And if that doesn't work, I'll put him on the trail of villains designed by Agresta and Hitchcock.
Ha! Joke's on you, I don't wear knickers. =POf course not, with all the knickers in knots, how could you?
Semantics again, I'm afraid. Beyond the norm could be interpreted as "above average", meaning "not that great but better than joe average" or as really beyond what a normal human can do, in the sense of "wow, that guy's so far out, I have to get a 1000gp item from the PHB just to see him!"And I've never heard super defined as "beyond human norm". I've heard it defined as "excellent" or "exhibiting its characteristics to an excessive or extreme degree" but not "better than average".
It sure can, but I just said "I've never heard it defined as beyond human norm" so that's a straw man. I did some looking actually, because I was curious about the exact definition, and there's a lot of leeway. So how you define superhuman doesn't necessarily have to match how I do. But as long as you mention "better than joe average" I'd like to point out that joe average probably has both a 14 and an 8 in his stats. Above average in one stat doesn't necessarily mean an above average person. If you want to define 11+ as being superhuman, that's cool, but it doesn't make the character a superhero.
I give the following array:
18 16 14 13 11 9.
But there are no stat boosting items in my game. I simply do not allow them.
I grant two points instead of one at every fourth level.
This allow the characters to be heroes without relying on items to meet a curve of power.
To each his own.
I've just never considered "above average" to be that good, from a strictly flavor perspective.
So 16 is an awesome score. I'm sure that if I, Kuma, were statted out I'd have no 16s. Unless snarkiness becomes a stat. Unsurprisingly, I'm also sure that I'd be devoured by your average CR 1 encounter.
Of course it's going to be a "whatever works in your game" thing. There's no getting around that with a lot of RPG conventions. But calling an 18 superhuman is goofy. It's defined BY THE RULES as being around the human maximum. (Although with Pathfinder Human +2 to a stat and level increases the actual human maximum is defined as 25 or so)
Is that in keeping with reality? No, probably not. But D&D is a game where without magic, you can learn to run on clouds. (Yay, epic skill checks!)
If you think great white sharks should be stronger than the strongest human...
A: you're correct.
B: talk to the people who wrote the animal entry in the MM.
Fantasy and Myth does contain heroes who are very strong and the system allows you to play them. The greatest heroes of the world can be stronger than a shark, but average humans generally are not. 15 points is robin hood and little john, 25 points is conan.
It sure can, but I just said "I've never heard it defined as beyond human norm" so that's a straw man. I did some looking actually, because I was curious about the exact definition, and there's a lot of leeway. So how you define superhuman doesn't necessarily have to match how I do. But as long as you mention "better than joe average" I'd like to point out that joe average probably has both a 14 and an 8 in his stats. Above average in one stat doesn't necessarily mean an above average person. If you want to define 11+ as being superhuman, that's cool, but it doesn't make the character a superhero.
Well:
The elite array is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8.
With 25 purchase, you can do something like 16, 14, 14, 14, 10, 10.
That makes you better in most abilities than the elite, and compared to the standard human... well, they're the same species, but chiuauas and rottweilers are the same species, too.
So to me, that means you can be superhuman with 25 point purchase. You don't have to go 50 points or divine array.
I don't see a problem with this. With point buy it's just a guideline. If you want more epic characters boost the amount of points. I used 28 and it worked good for us.
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There's lots of threads discussing the merits of point-buy vs rolling.
I like the random element, as there is a temptation for players to make the same point-buy decisions every time. There's the guy who wants to cover all angles, who always spreads his scores evenly, and the guy who always dumps three or four stats to max out one or two prime requisites. Both are viable tactics, but they can be boring if used every time.
The latter type can be exasperating, as they can become a vicious spiral. They leave 3 or 4 Achilles Heels, I am forced to play the NPCs intelligently, so target those weaknesses. They then come back with either a clone of the last guy ('You were just lucky last time'), or they overcompensate in the opposite direction ('No more failed will saves for me, this guy has 18 Wis and 8 Con!').
Rolling shakes players up to play something outside of that comfort zone. Mr 'all 14s' now has to deal with a low stat; does he cover himself via stat-boosting items, raise his saves by muticlassing, or choosing feats, like Iron Will?
Mr 'Two 18s and a sack of suck' has to learn that no longer being a total liability to everyone more than compensates for 1 or 2 less damage per hit.
The drawback to rolling, of course, is that the results can vary wildly, between members of the same party, and I do feel for the guy who gets a PC with total bonuses of +5/+6 (a perfectly viable PC), when the next guy gets +12/+14, etc.
There needs to be a way to allow for the randomness, while still making all players feel to be on the same footing, and that can be achieved through weighting the resulting PCs (up and down) with advantages and disadvantages in other areas.
That can be more/less Action Points, higher/lower minimum hp/level, bonus/penalty to xp, etc.
There's already a precedent for adjusting xp, based on the actual challenge (ie; if the PCs have higher than normal wealth), but this usually assumes the whole group is on the same footing.
This would require adjusting the xp (or other rewards) at different rates within the group.
Anyone ever done this?
My problem with rolling is twofold, and I usually see one or the other show up:
If you do actual randomness, like "roll 4d6 drop lowest, 6 times, no rerolls or any other monkey business", you can have huge differences in player power: One guy rolls like crap and doesn't have a single strong or even decent stat, while the other has stats that would allow you to pull off a powerful bard/monk.
And even if the stats are basically playable, they might not fit your character: One really good stat and only average for the rest might be good for a wizard, that doesn't help if you want to play a monk, and three decent stats doesn't help you if you want to play a wizard and want one really good one.
I know there's that nonsense about playing something different and maybe liking it, and that really can be fun, but I don't want to be forced doing that. I want to be in charge - if I want to do the "play with the cards you're dealt" crap, I ditch D&D and have a life.
But stuff like that doesn't happen that often, because I've learned that few people actually want randomness. The number one reason for advocating rolling for stats, in my experience, is "I want the chance for ridiculous stats like two 18s without a real downside". So they roll. And then roll again. And again.
They don't really go random. There usually are a dozen little failsaves, like "every 1 on a die is rolled again" or "everything under 8 is raised to 8" or "roll 3 sets of stats and choose the best" or "every set that doesn't at least have one 16 or whose total modifier is below +4" or stuff like that.
That means it's possible to get really good stats, but no chance of getting really bad ones, and usually, mediocre stats are dismissed, too. So you'll get at least good stats.
If you do random, actually do it. Stick to it. Don't let people cheat. If they decided to do random, take the dice how they fall. No do overs.
If you do pseudo-random, you might as well go purchase or point buy. If you think characters need two 18s and nothing below 14, give them enough points to work with, and expect them to wipe the floor with enemies that are supposed to be appropriate.
18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10 (36 points per PFRPG Beta's point buy)You don't need 36 points to get those stats:
18 = 16 (10 points) +2 racial bonus
16 = 14 (5 points) +2 racial bonus
14 = 14 (5 points)
12 = 12 (2 points)
12 = 12 (2 points)
10 = 12 (2 points) -2 racial bonusTotal Points: 26
So reduce one 12 to an 11 and you're using epic point buy.
I was referring to pre racial bonuses there.
25 purchase puts you houses above joe average, and head and shoulders above someone with the "elite array". I call *that* superhuman.
I call "better than elite" heroic, but like I said; if our definitions don't match up it's not really going to make a difference to anyone.
Note that I don't actually agree with the elite array, I think it should've been called the "fair to middlin'" array.
That makes you better in most abilities than the elite, and compared to the standard human... well, they're the same species, but chiuauas and rottweilers are the same species, too.
But are rottweilers considered supercanine?
So to me, that means you can be superhuman with 25 point purchase. You don't have to go 50 points or divine array.
Again, I'm going to stick to the "superhuman is relative" angle. I don't actually believe it of course, superhuman is above and beyond what is possible for humans to me; but to you it's greater than a "normal" human. OK. But regardless of the word being bandied about, I feel that the standard point buy is comical for a group of heroes that could realistically be expected to save entire planes from destruction. Meanwhile, have no fear, I'll never advocate divine or any other array. I like rolled stats, like I mentioned before.
If you do pseudo-random, you might as well go purchase or point buy.
I guess what it comes down to is: "No, that's not fun for us."
But the tone of your post, and I think it's unintentional because you come across as a pretty good guy in your posts, is that same sort of elitism previously mentioned.
"You guys who roll dice aren't even being really random."
And
"If you roll, you need to just roll and nothing else."
Are the kind of statements that put people's teeth on edge. Those of us who enjoy rolling like the sense of randomness, but that doesn't mean we don't want to put guidelines on it to prevent ourselves from being crippled.
I suppose my point of view is that someone who's pretty good at his chosen profession might become an adventurer. Someone who's a virtual god and capable of excelling at anything he turns his hand to might choose to become an adventurer.
Someone with a 17 wisdom and a 5 con/cha will probably have a great ear for music and die from the flu when he's 14 because no one liked him enough to help.
Anyway, even people who reroll 1s and have multiple sets of attributes have the potential to wind up with a 6 in every stat, which is certainly more random and challenging than any point buy I've seen.
Sorry to run on...
Wow...
Alright, well, I didn't expect the thread to get more than a couple posts but I suppose posting in the General Discussion section has some merits. A few things to address first.
The rant was just that, a rant. Someone rants about how they might dislike a certain political ideology doesn't necessarily mean they want everyone who is a part of that ideology dead. Alright, maybe not the best metaphor but the point is it was meant to be taken with a grain of salt.
But that doesn't mean that the base rules of the game should be changed to enable you in that.
Thankfully I don't believe it should be changed. Mainly because for it to have been so consistently low since 3.0 there must be numbers or popular opinion supporting it. Given that I'm the DM of my group I can change this and I do. The rant was inspired by a late night, a long day following a terrible week where one of those 'little things' that nagged at me set my brain off on a downward spiral of thoughts and I figured I'd vent here on the boards. Hence it being a rant.
Pulp detectives have booze and wonderwoman her apparent loves of BDSM.
Hey, loving BDSM isn't a character weakness thank you very much! :P
Now I know what you're saying about the flaws and characters having them being more fascinating. Hell, I agree, I'd be bored of a story involving a Mrs. Perfecta T. Evreething rather quickly unless the author was a god amongst storytellers. I don't, however, believe that a low stat is required for a good character. Flaws can be role played without requiring a 7 or 8 in one of your stats.
The drunken P.I. might booze up often but could still easily be healthier than the average joe.
Achilles may have had his heal but that wasn't a flaw of dexterity, constitution or strength.
And Superman... well I personally hate Superman so I won't go there.
I probably should have phrased things better but the Stormwind Fallacy is a fallacy in reference to D&D stat spreads. I can play a damn good character with no stat below 12 and still give him flaws and depth. Stats are a baseline not the final definition.
Though I have to agree with Shifty. I started playing D&D with 2nd Edition in the 90's and have been my groups primary DM ever since (which meant I, and by extension they, never had to deal with the nightmare of the 3d6 spread). So it could be that during those impressionable years of my youth I got used to the thought that in order to be damn good you needed an 18 primary. Sad was the fighter with anything lower than a 17 strength.
So when 3rd edition came around we likely wound up viewing the bonuses lower stats acquired as something like 'well now they're getting what they've needed all along but we still need high stats' rather than an shift in the distribution of power amongst the stats.
Also, I want to apologize if I came off as looking down on anyone who uses the point buy systems. I'm sorry if your characters are pathetic weaklings... kidding! Just kidding. No, I had no intention of making it seem like I looked down on people who used the point buy. I was voicing a difference of opinion and mine is that the 25 point buy doesn't equal 'Epic or High Fantasy' to me.
Well, my group has been built on *gasp* standard point buy. And everyone's happy. You don't need to be level 1 Batman to be useful.
For the record, the party is now 7th level and (without items) still only has 1 18 and 1 17 (with items it's 1 20, 1 17 and 1 18). Yet they seem to be managing to cope with being so weak and puny so far.
That is cool that that works for you and your group. Were I to use that for my group I'd likely find myself without a group. To each their own though. Though I don't think the 25 points would let you make a 1st level batman, he's awesome across the board and not just all 14's awesome :P
So if you don't take all your levels in wizard if your playing the full 20 levels. The person who can dedicate their entire life to wizardry and master all its secrets is rare beyond rare, play that up in your games. Don't dilute the rarity and specialness of a wizard who can use 9th level magic by having any tom, dick and harry wizard, even amongst the pc wizards, be able to cast them.
That's a little more dependent on the campaign world in question and how the GM of the game runs their world. In a high magic high fantasy setting it may not be that rare. In a setting less than that, however, that becomes easily emulated by people simply not achieving that high of a level. I would never think to encourage PC's to build their wizards so they are unable to cast 9th level spells at some point in the 20 levels they game. Maybe for the NPC's but not them.
That and any powergamer who plays wizards will tell you that you can focus on spellcasting for the entirety of those twenty levels (first twenty for those who don't cap out at the big 2. 0.) that hitting 20 full levels in spellcasting is nowhere close to mastering all the secrets.
This also gets into the realm of the PC's being in the spotlight. They are the heroes not because they're better than average, my cousin is better than average, but the PC's are supposed to be the heroes. They are supposed to stand tall above the rest *at the least*. Now I enjoy the grim and gritty style of play from time to time but we don't game to be realistic, and if we did we wouldn't use an RPG system based on levels and hit points as there are other systems out there far better at emulating realism than D&D. I play so I can make a story, present a problem and see how my PC's deal with it, and to have fun. My PC's play to create alter-egos that are heroes, not necessarily like unto gods (at least not until about 20th level) but definitely a cut above the rest.
Another element that likely influenced my perception on stats was that while my first 2nd Edition campaign setting box set was Mystara the Forgotten Realms became our primary setting. This back in 2nd edition where heroes from the books were statted out and were truly badass. Where NPC's were often far more powerful than the PC's could ever hope to be. Where having an 18 was a necessity not because it gave you cool benefits but because you felt the need to keep up. 3rd edition changed this considerably, true, but the impression had been made.
Maybe some day I'll run my PC's through a campaign with all CORE resources and 25 points just to see if they can handle it but giving them all tens in their stats and then 20 points to disperse on a one-for-one scale seems just fine for now.
We've had a number of threads about different attribute generation systems.
I started a campaign with the following:
[spoiler]
I wanted a process that “feels real,” –that is, takes into account a character’s history, the whimsy of fate, and the player / character’s desires– and which also gives each player a chance to develop his character’s backstory in a natural way. This system was not particularly fast, and replacement PCs will have the option of a more streamlined procedure to get back into the game quickly.One key feature harkened back to a character creation process from AD&D 1st Edition’s Unearthed Arcana, the dice buy.
Step 1: We perform a Three-Dragon Ante Reading (see Dragon issue 343) with 22 dice. This process distributes the dice among the six attributes in a process that invites the player to walk through the character’s history.
(For example, one step may decrease the character’s Dexterity but increase her Wisdom. Her player might decide that a childhood injury cost her a finger, from which she learned a lesson of prudence.)
Step 2: During any three steps in the PC's history, the player can assign a “trait” (see Paizo’s Traits document ) to the character. These are useful abilities, about half as powerful as a feat.
Step 3: This step reflects the desires of the player and the deliberate decisions of the character. To the 22 dice already assigned, the player adds 6 dice. I strongly advise making sure there are at least 3 dice per attribute, but each player can distribute the 6 dice as he pleases.
Step 4: The player rolls all the dice committed to each attribute, and records the sum of the best 3d6. More than three “6”s add +1 per additional “6”.
(For example, if there were 7 dice committed to the PC’s Intelligence, the player would roll 7d6 and take the best three. If the result was “1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6”, that would be a roll of 19. (The best three dice are 6+6+6 = 18, and there’s an additional “6”, for a +1 to the result.)
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Wow, that sounds like an awesome system, maybe I'll try that some time. Though I can see it presenting a problem with players who like to make their background stories up on their own but that's easy enough to get around.
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Nothing wrong with rolling itself but My group gave up on it and moved to point buy a while ago. Problem was pretty much this 3 players would roll Overall average stats whilst 1 always seemed to end up with the mother of all stats (not one lower than a 16) which meant I either had to
A. tell the really good stated player to re-roll his stat's to bring them in line with the others (which would be unfair for him)
B. have the other 3 re-roll till they had stats comparable to him (At which point I am just as well not bothering with rolling)
C. go with the stats as they were (Which made building balanced encounters a complete nightmare stuff the party found hard was a cakewalk for the high stat guy So in order to challange him I would have to throw in things that would easily munch the rest of the party.)
superhuman is above and beyond what is possible for humans to me
So you never play humans, right? Because you want superhuman stats. And humans cannot have superhuman stats, because if they have the stats, than humans can have those stats, and they're no longer superhuman :P.
I guess what it comes down to is: "No, that's not fun for us."
But the tone of your post, and I think it's unintentional because you come across as a pretty good guy in your posts, is that same sort of elitism previously mentioned.
"You guys who roll dice aren't even being really random."
And
"If you roll, you need to just roll and nothing else."
Are the kind of statements that put people's teeth on edge. Those of us who enjoy rolling like the sense of randomness, but that doesn't mean we don't want to put guidelines on it to prevent ourselves from being crippled.
It's not meant to be elitism. In fact, It's mean to be non-elitism.
I hear people bashing point buy because they say the stats suck. Then they advocate rolling the dice. Except that they adjust the rolls to the point where you might as well roll 1d6+12 for each stat, or maybe even 1d4+14.
If you want powerful stats without the risk of weak stats, you might as well go point buy, with enough points to buy.
If you somehow like the feel of rolling dice, that's fine. But if you're using pseudo-random methods, the only thing that's different from high point buy methods is that you have the illusion of rolling the dice.
Which might be nice, if you're into that sort of thing, if you like rolling dice (something you get to do enough in game, though, at least in my opinion).
But that doesn't make Point Buy bad or weak.
Someone with a 17 wisdom and a 5 con/cha will probably have a great ear for music and die from the flu when he's 14 because no one liked him enough to help.
Those good-aligned churches have the annoying trait of helping people even if they don't adore them. Messed in the head I always say, but they insist on doing it nonetheless :P
Anyway, even people who reroll 1s and have multiple sets of attributes have the potential to wind up with a 6 in every stat, which is certainly more random and challenging than any point buy I've seen.
Yeah, but the possibility of such stats is reduced more and more, while the possibility of bad stats is ever increased. Add reroll criteria (like "reroll if the total set doesn't have at least a 15 or the total bonus is below +5), and the chance of bad stats is basically zero, whith the chance of mediocre stats is distant at best.
Nothing wrong with rolling itself but My group gave up on it and moved to point buy a while ago.
I remember how I got our GM to switch:
In our first 3e game, one player managed to get two 18s (okay, we had an above average system: 4d6 drop lowest, roll 7 drop lowest stat, and then increase one more stat by 1) and dominated the game (he also was a druid which didn't really help).
For the next campaign (d20 Modern Stargate) I begged him to change to point buy, because of the fairness. He refused.
And I got the two 18s. Try playing a strong/soldier with 18 dex and con. Rocks.
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Another option to consider with a point buy is to start with a low or mid range point buy, but give extra stat increases as the characters level up. Currently, my group is using a heroic point buy, with stat increases at every even level.
It allows for a more organic rise in power - they start off better than average at level 1, but will be superhuman by the time they reach level 20, especially with a stat boosting item or two. Interestingly enough, this has led to fewer starting prime stat 18 characters (Fighters with STR 18), as the players realize they now have enough stat points to eventually have the fabled 18 by 6th or 8th level. Most have used points to shore up weaknesses, or meet upcoming stat requirements in non-prime stats.
Except the wizard. He was gunning for a ridiculously high INT to make his saves impossible, but changed his mind once he realized his dump stat was important to his Prestige class...