Is that necessary to have a 20?

[Jiggy]

Fergie wrote:

If you look at the iconic characters, you can see the baseline that the game was designed around.

You know, Pathfinder Society has stat blocks for all the iconics, using 20pt buy. I haven't looked, but I bet some of them have some 18s or higher.

Is it the baseline the game was designed around, or the baseline that you personally like?

Note that there's nothing wrong with preferring lower stats - in fact, having only played PFS, I'm very curious to try a 15pt buy game sometime. I just don't like the attitude that I see sometimes (in varying degrees - you're definitely on the milder end, which is nice) that people with stats beyond a given threshold are somehow doing something wrong or are guilty of something. Seems a bit judgmental.

[IkeDoe]

Ismodai wrote:

hi, after seeing tons of build/optimization posts i started to wonder, is it a must o have an 18 or a 20 on your main stat to be effective? i mean, for example, in a 20 pt buy i may do a 16+2 if i need a human/half something caster, but if i make a 14+2, that makes my char useless?

im not trying to troll here or to start a min/maxer hate thread, what i`d actually wanna know is that if the game math is built thinking that the caster will have int 18, the fighter str 18 n so on, making anything lesser than that completely sub optimal

Note that some builds posted here are trying to win a DPR competition, focusing in damage and ignoring defense, hit points, etc.. If you want to overspecialize in something, then prolly you need 20 in some ability, if you want to play an overall powerful character ability scores of 18+ aren't needed in most cases. If you are using point buy with 20 points or less you will almost always get more benefits from 17 or less scores(in order to have secondary scores of 14+).