Starting a new campaign soon. We have a couple of min/maxers who use point-buy systems to make characters who are great at 1 or 2 things and terrible at everything else. As such, they either dominate an encounter, or completely check out if the situation doesn't match up with their couple of tricks. Making matters worse, at least one of these guys can be counted upon to roll a ridiculously high set of abilities if we use any dice-rolling method (and they're not cheating), so they still have characters who overpower some of the other players in the group.
So I am considering the following starting array for all characters:
17, 16, 14, 12, 11, 10.
Further, I will stipulate that racial modifiers may not increase the 17 or lower the 10.
I'm shooting for flexibility (i.e. you can have an 18 to start, or you can get three +3 modifiers if you are dependent on several stats, etc.), but also want all of the characters to end up a bit more well-rounded and fair than we usually get. This campaign has the potential to go on for a while, and it's going to require more than just one-hit wonders.
Any thoughts? Has anyone run into these kinds of issues around the table before? Is this too much of a straightjacket to put the players in, or does this look like it's going to give them a head start on making unbalanced characters anyway?
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Speaking form a players perspective, all I can say is that I would have no problem with this array, or with the racial stipulations. I've played characters that started out less powerful than that. But, I'm not a min-maxer either. I actually think this sounds like a perfectly fair and workable system.
It's a bit higher than I would have given, but as a player I would have been very happy with that array, no matter which class I'd want to play.
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It really depends on how powerful you want the characters to be. That array works out to a 31 point buy which is 6 points higher than the highest "epic stats" option in the core rules.
Personally, I use the standard 15 point buy method and players often simply take the elite array (15/14/13/12/10/8) or a slight variation like (16/13/12/12/10/8) to start with a 16 (before racial adjustments).
If I wanted to make sure players didn't go the (18/16/10/7/7/7) route to min/max as much as possible, I'd just create two arrays and let them choose between them. Just make sure that both arrays have the same point cost to ensure a balance:
15 point:
15/14/13/12/10/8 or 16/13/12/12/10/8
20 point:
16/15/13/12/10/8 or 17/14/12/12/10/8
25 point:
16/16/14/12/10/8 or 18/14/13/12/10/8
Yeah, I'm trying to give them pretty high stats across the board in order to encourage them to branch out a bit. Hopefully, the fighter will end up with a high-enough intelligence that he'll consider developing a few skills, etc.
But with a party of 5 or 6, do you figure I'll need to adjust the CR of most monsters they face? (It's a campaign I'm developing, not a published one).
But with a party of 5 or 6, do you figure I'll need to adjust the CR of most monsters they face? (It's a campaign I'm developing, not a published one).
Usually things work out pretty well for a larger party if you add 1,5 times the number of monsters to each encounter.
For instance, if you would use 2 CR4 creatures for a 4-person party, then you should use 3 CR4 creatures for a 6-person party. Likewise, 4 creatures should become 6.
The main thing about larger parties is that the party will get a lot more actions than single bad guys will. Even if you increase the CR of a single BBEG by 3 or 4, the fact that the party will gave 6 actions each round compared to its 1 action each round is going to overpower it in no-time.
So, while you should probably increase the CR of solo BBEGs by 2 compared to what you would have a 4-person party go up against, you should also add a couple of minions to the mix.
Yeah, I'm trying to give them pretty high stats across the board in order to encourage them to branch out a bit. Hopefully, the fighter will end up with a high-enough intelligence that he'll consider developing a few skills, etc.
But with a party of 5 or 6, do you figure I'll need to adjust the CR of most monsters they face? (It's a campaign I'm developing, not a published one).
Well, if you're planning on using up to 6 characters with 30+ point buy stats then you'll definitely need to adjust the CR.
Published adventures will typically have encounters in the range of CR = (party level) to (party level +3) and are written with a party of 4 characters using 15 point buy in mind.
I would guess that given the very high stats, you'll need to increase the CR of most monsters by at least 1 and perhaps 2 in some cases.
Based on having 6 players, you also have to worry about economy of action which was pointed out above. In other words, just increasing CR may not be enough, you'll also have to add things like cohorts to your BBEGs and increase the number of enemies in other situations by about 50%.
As an example - a party of four 3rd level characters may find an encounter with a troll (CR 5) challenging. To get that same level of challenge with your high-stat party of six 3rd level characters, you may need to make it an advanced troll (CR 6) with his pet troll hound (CR 3).