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So there is a thread in Gamer Talk about which do you do... Point Buy or Dice rolling.
This is along the same lines but different.
Which do you prefer and why?
Me... I'm old school. I have never liked pt buy. I like the randomness of dice and the numbers they give. Granted you can come up with some tough characters but then again if you go by old versions not really.
If you take the common person today they average of them is not 10 across the board. Not to mention to me "Heroes" should be better than the rest of the population.
There are those that would argue or say that higher states kill monsters faster. Which is funny as in 1st and 2nd and even 3/3.5 did not have issues with beasties. A good DM could easily compensate for a party that is "lucky"
I know Paizo writes for the Pt system, but you can still easily have TPK or near TPK.
Imagine if you will Kingmaker. Our DM tossed a wandering beasties at u. That beastie was a troll. We had players and we still lost our toughest fighter and darn near lost another when the troll got flamed and ran away. We where at the time 1st or 2nd level characters. Had we been pt buy it is no doubt all of us would have died.
One of our new players is going to DM his first game in PF this weekend and we are using Pt Buy for the 1st time and I can speak for the majority of our group that we do not like Pt buy, give us the randomness of the dice and do like we did from 1st ed on up.
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Point buy is more fair.
But rolling ALWAYS produces higher stats. Much higher than statistically possible. Everybody has a tendency to roll scores and if they don't have enough high numbers just "start over" with a new set.
I never liked point buy. I see the merit of it for PFS play but other than that I prefer the random factor.
I have my own method of rolling dice which I have been using since 2nd edition days. it gives an avg of about 14. Unfortunately, if I was to use Point buy for the abilities my players wind up with I would have to give them like 55 points.
One of my friends is one of those DM's that likes hardships. He makes his players play with 15 point buy. I think 15 point buy is way to low. I am one of those player centric dm's. I love killing them in combat, but I like to make them feel good about their characters while I do it:)
I allow my players 7 4d6 rolls re-rolling all 1's drop the lowest die of each 4d6. They also get to drop the lowest generated of the seven stat scores.
After that I let them roll a d4, and cap off their ability scores to an 18 maximum. Almost everyone of my players has 2 18's at least.
For my NPC's that are their nemeses, I use the Epic point buy. Still the PC's usually out do them in abilities. I
Point buy is more fair.
But rolling ALWAYS produces higher stats. Much higher than statistically possible. Everybody has a tendency to roll scores and if they don't have enough high numbers just "start over" with a new set.
For certain. If you do the 3d6 in order, then point buy is better. I would say 4d6 droppping the lowest is about equal to 20 point buy from what I have seen.
Allowing 4d6, and choosing order always gives better scores than point buy. That is what I didn't like the Never Winter Nights games from Bioware. I loved that Baldur's Gate let you randomly roll. NWN you were stuck with what you got from point buy.
I prefer to roll. I think the game balances better in a number of ways when the stats are rolled. I think characters tend to balance between offense and defense a little better. I think characters that are focused on one stat compared to multiple stats balance better. And I think you get better balance between player types - optimizer vs more casual and between experienced and inexperienced.
So there is a thread in Gamer Talk about which do you do... Point Buy or Dice rolling.
This is along the same lines but different.
Which do you prefer and why?
Me... I'm old school. I have never liked pt buy. I like the randomness of dice and the numbers they give. Granted you can come up with some tough characters but then again if you go by old versions not really.
If you take the common person today they average of them is not 10 across the board. Not to mention to me "Heroes" should be better than the rest of the population.
There are those that would argue or say that higher states kill monsters faster. Which is funny as in 1st and 2nd and even 3/3.5 did not have issues with beasties. A good DM could easily compensate for a party that is "lucky"
I know Paizo writes for the Pt system, but you can still easily have TPK or near TPK.
Imagine if you will Kingmaker. Our DM tossed a wandering beasties at u. That beastie was a troll. We had players and we still lost our toughest fighter and darn near lost another when the troll got flamed and ran away. We where at the time 1st or 2nd level characters. Had we been pt buy it is no doubt all of us would have died.
One of our new players is going to DM his first game in PF this weekend and we are using Pt Buy for the 1st time and I can speak for the majority of our group that we do not like Pt buy, give us the randomness of the dice and do like we did from 1st ed on up.
Also to aid in Hitpoint generation I always use 1st level Maximum, but after that Hit points are still rolled randomly, but you only accept numbers in the high half of the die. Like 5 or above for a d8. The worse hit point roll you can get there is a 5. 1,2,3, or 4 you roll again.
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I like them both. I like working with numbers I didn't quite expect from rolls, and I like tweaking each number with point buy.
I do prefer that everyone be equal however, and make adjustments on rolling methods.
The thing is... in RL are you equal to everyone else? No. There is no way you are equal to say a Professional Football player when it comes to his Strength, Dex, and possibly Charisma not to mention his Intelligence. To learn 250+ plays from a play book and memorize them is not easy.
Not to mention do you have the brains of say a brain and wisdom of a neuro Surgeon who rides his bike to work, does marathons, does bike racing in local races. and works out regularly?
The fact is no one is equal or alike. and even with a PT buy you are cookie cutter. You get 15 or 20 or 25 pts to spend and so does everyone else. To me this is not real, life is random.
But that is my opinion
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Any time you get the choice to roll less dice, the game gets better. Pathfinder should be about roleplaying, not about luck.
Then again, I houserule HP so those aren't rolled either.
I like point buy so that way I can get some good stats. Anyway rolling dice makes it hard to think of characters ahead of time.
You could try to combine the two with luck and points to get stats that are not equal but still similar in giving 10 +2d4 points will result in slightly different characters without characters being that far off this would be for a 15 point buy equivelent.
If I roll a character that is 18 12 12 12 10 8 it becomes hard to play a character that is good at multiple things.
While I like the idea of rolling stats, as a GM I've found that the power disparity between those who roll well, and those who roll poorly just isn't worth the headache. I switched to point buy and fixed HP some time ago and it's worked well. I may try rolled stats again at some point, but I doubt I'll go back to using rolled HP.
While this does lead to some similarity between characters, I generally operate my groups as being people of similar power who have come together. Differing strengths aside, I'm not big on having a couple clay pots floating down river with a bunch of iron ones.
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The thing is... in RL are you equal to everyone else? No.
And my opinion is that I play D&D to escape real life, not imitate it. Take note as well, that I'm talking about PC generation, so when I say 'everyone is equal' I mean 'everyone in the party'. Not 'everyone in the world'.
I don't care about reality, I play games where warriors leap off rooftops to split foes in half and then run for a day straight before swimming through lava. Random chance takes hold AFTER character creation, not before. When one person has nothing below 16 and another nothing above 13, I find that a problem.
I find the best way to make sure the players are equal is to have them all roll stats, and then pick one of the sets for everyone to use.
I'm lucky enough to usually have 6 players, so they all roll one score and make an array which they all use. They liked to roll; I wanted to make sure all of the PCs had a even starting point. That was a compromise we all could enjoy. In my RotRL game they are currently all rocking 17, 16, 15, 14, 11, 11 due to some wicked good rolls so nobody is complaining.
I'm cursed with seven, but I think I could make it work. Each rolls one, lowest is dropped.
We currently have 7 in that game too, but 1 joined during the 2nd session; playing a pretty sweet monk for a 1st time gamer-I'm glad he has the stats to support it well enough and not sour his experience with the game or the class.
Boy do I know how THAT feels...
Does the monk not live up to your expectations either? I love the idea behind the class, but the execution was poor, so I was a bit concerned when the player had his heart set on it. He's adapted well.
I find the best way to make sure the players are equal is to have them all roll stats, and then pick one of the sets for everyone to use.
I actually really like the elegance of this solution! Thanks for sharing it!
My first character was a 3.5 Human Monk, ability scores 10, 14, 10, 10, 13, 10.
Harsh. Reminds me of the last 3.5 character I rolled: 15, 11, 11, 10, 10, 10. I ended up playing psion, so luckily my stats didn't much matter. I'm so glad I GM now.
I liked point buy, you should not have to count on luck and sacrifice a bag of Cheetos and a case of mountain dew to the dice gods just so you get lucky enough to play the class and concept you want to play.
What done it for me was player 1 having what would be a 98 point buy stats under pathfinder while player 2 having a 12 point buy and the rest ranging from 15-21 point buy.
This question has been mulled over again and again, but I'll go ahead and weigh in. Point buy is just better. Why? Because it gives the GM another tool to make the players' experience fun- that being the ability to save Mr. Unlucky Dice (like me) from being impotent and having no fun. When the GM sets the point buy at 15, the players will have crap stats and the GM can base encounters on that. If the GM gives 3d6 in order, Mr. Unlucky will have all 6's and one 10 and Mr. Lucky Dice will have all 18's and one 12. Then the GM will have to build for Mr. Lucky or he'll kill everything and no one else will have a chance to do anything meaningful.
Point Buy =/= the same experience for everybody. Point Buy = consistent characters for the GM to build experiences off of.
I like the variances that come from random rolling, especially for MAD and SAD characters (with dice rolling you have fewer 20 Int wizards and more 16 str/16 dex/16 wis/16 con monks)
However, point buy fixes a ton of problems.
I've considered a modification of point buy that, instead of racial stat bonuses and penalties, you build a point buy scale from 5-20, and give each race 'racial minimums' and 'racial maximums' for stats...
Humans would be 'All stats: Minimum 7 and Maximum 18. One stat (player's choice) Maximum 20'
Then, you'd buy the stats you want.
However, I haven't gotten past the 'consideration' point, other than I'd want 18-20 to be so expensive you only get one, while you could reasonably get 3-5 stats 13-17. Basically, build a point buy scale that keeps the God-casters with one great stat, one good stat, and a bunch of stat dumps while also allowing for well-rounded MAD classes to get 4 good stats.
It's an interesting thought experiment, and it shouldn't be terribly difficult to build if I would sit down and build some 'templates' of what types of characters I would like to see stat-wise and then reverse engineer the costs, but I haven't felt the need to do it yet.
Any time you get the choice to roll less dice, the game gets better. Pathfinder should be about roleplaying, not about luck.
Then again, I houserule HP so those aren't rolled either.
So then a play must be the best form of roleplaying game yet! I disagree strongly. Luck is part of the game.
If we were writing a novel I would agree less dice rolling is better.
I like point buy so that way I can get some good stats. Anyway rolling dice makes it hard to think of characters ahead of time.
You could try to combine the two with luck and points to get stats that are not equal but still similar in giving 10 +2d4 points will result in slightly different characters without characters being that far off this would be for a 15 point buy equivelent.
If I roll a character that is 18 12 12 12 10 8 it becomes hard to play a character that is good at multiple things.
That character is still pretty versatile. 12 is a +1 bonus, 5% better. Not a great character, but certainly not unplayable. I bet rolling your abilities with 4d6 and choosing would give you a better spread.