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Just a curiosity, but why do so many people swear by the Point-Buy system? I understand that it is THE system used in Pathfinder Society, but why would anyone use it outside of organized play?
In my experience (32 years of RPGs ranging from BECMI D&D to AD&D 1st Ed., 2nd Ed., D&D 3.X, Pathfinder, GURPS, White Wolf's Storyteller System, Champions, and Fuzion, among others) point buy systems only lead to Min-Maxing and Munchkinism, with ultimately low-balling of stats to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. It also encourages people to build to mechanics as opposed to character. (I cannot count the number of times when Charisma / whatever is the social ability of the system in question has become the "dump-stat" because too few GMs build social challenges into their games, and/or penalize players for RPing higher social ability that the character should have.)
My group uses Method one (4d6 drop the lowest) from the core rulebook, and has for years. We tried point buy when it was introduced in 3rd Ed. and didn't care for it, finding it far inferior to Method one, and (especially when I am DM, I admit to a certain level of harshness here) a far higher rate of character mortality.
Any chance we can get a merge here, PMG, anyone?
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Just a curiosity, but why do so many people swear by the Point-Buy system? I understand that it is THE system used in Pathfinder Society, but why would anyone use it outside of organized play?
First, understand that the prevalence of discussions of point buy on the boards does not necessarily reflect gameplay. Keep in mind that there are a lot of thought experiments and build comparisons. Comparisons and theory don't work unless you have a standardized baseline. You can't compare builds if they roll different stats.
Even so, if people do actually use point buy, the reason cited is usually for fairness - to avoid having one player roll epic stats while someone else is just a commoner. Sure, you could enforce rerolls until everyone's similar in power level, but at that point you're really just using a more time-consuming point buy.
In my experience point buy systems only lead to Min-Maxing and Munchkinism, with ultimately low-balling of stats to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. It also encourages people to build to mechanics as opposed to character.
Then your experience does not reflect reality. People were dumping stats long before point buy came about. Putting a rolled 7 into CHA is no less "munchkiny" that putting a point-bought 7 there.
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its got a nice balancing factor, if you have a s+!@ty set of rolls, the GM doesn't have to take pity on you that you're not one of the supermen with three 17's and nothing under 12.
Whenever I play with groups that roll stats for a game, what inevitably happens is one or two people roll really badly, two people roll really realy well. and "dump stats" end up being a 10/11 instead of an 8 or 7 with point buys.
Its also nice when you've got a concept that you want to play, you don't have to worry about getting good enough rolls, you sacrifice a few points elsewhere and you can make your character who you want them to be. That to me is building to character more than rolling is.
I like to be able to decide who and what my character is ahead of time without radom elements. It roduces a balanc3 between all the pcs. Selection secondly, older systems it was great if you got high stats but the system didnt require it. I had an adnd rogue with 4 12's and 2 11's. He was alot of fun. I wouldnt have fun with him in pathfinder. He would miss struggle to beat trap dcs woukdnt qualify for alot of feats etc.
Being in a group with him and another pc with 4 18s would be even less fun as the other guy did everything.
Just a curiosity, but why do so many people swear by the Point-Buy system? I understand that it is THE system used in Pathfinder Society, but why would anyone use it outside of organized play?First, understand that the prevalence of discussions of point buy on the boards does not necessarily reflect gameplay. Keep in mind that there are a lot of thought experiments and build comparisons. Comparisons and theory don't work unless you have a standardized baseline. You can't compare builds if they roll different stats.
Even so, if people do actually use point buy, the reason cited is usually for fairness - to avoid having one player roll epic stats while someone else is just a commoner. Sure, you could enforce rerolls until everyone's similar in power level, but at that point you're really just using a more time-consuming point buy.
Then again, the same could be done just by creating the different builds with the 3.0 / 3.5 "Heroic Spread" (15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 8). (Not that I like it either, but at least it screws everyone equally, though I suppose point buy does this as well, only it also punishes those who are weaker in math as well.)
In my experience point buy systems only lead to Min-Maxing and Munchkinism, with ultimately low-balling of stats to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. It also encourages people to build to mechanics as opposed to character.Then your experience does not reflect reality. People were dumping stats long before point buy came about. Putting a rolled 7 into CHA is no less "munchkiny" that putting a point-bought 7 there.
Point taken there, but the odds of rolling a 7 on 4d6 drop the lowest are remarkably low (average roll on 4d6 drop lowest is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10.5, as opposed to the average of 8.66 on straight 3d6).
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Oh look, this thread again.
Seriously, hasn't the merits and demerits of point buy been discussed enough already? People who gripe about point buy being "munchkiny" are not going to change their opinion anyways; let them roll their stats for all I care.
Any chance we can get a merge here, PMG, anyone?
That is a similar but different thread.
I second that the most frequent issue is the disparity in the party. There is nothing worse than having a party of average statted characters and then having one character whose player seemed to have a horseshoe up their ass the day stats were rolled. When most characters are trying to deal with 7-12 stats and the other has low stats higher than their primary stats, its a severe game killer.
I do like the organic feel of dice rolling, and so what I've often done lately is to allow each player a 3d6 set, and then let all players choose from all the sets rolled, with no limit on how many times each set is chosen. Organic, and balanced (in most cases - SAD vs. MAD class selection can still alter things a bit, but it's not nearly as bad).
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Just a curiosity, but why do so many people swear by the Point-Buy system? I understand that it is THE system used in Pathfinder Society, but why would anyone use it outside of organized play?
In my experience (32 years of RPGs ranging from BECMI D&D to AD&D 1st Ed., 2nd Ed., D&D 3.X, Pathfinder, GURPS, White Wolf's Storyteller System, Champions, and Fuzion, among others) point buy systems only lead to Min-Maxing and Munchkinism, with ultimately low-balling of stats to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. It also encourages people to build to mechanics as opposed to character. (I cannot count the number of times when Charisma / whatever is the social ability of the system in question has become the "dump-stat" because too few GMs build social challenges into their games, and/or penalize players for RPing higher social ability that the character should have.)
My group uses Method one (4d6 drop the lowest) from the core rulebook, and has for years. We tried point buy when it was introduced in 3rd Ed. and didn't care for it, finding it far inferior to Method one, and (especially when I am DM, I admit to a certain level of harshness here) a far higher rate of character mortality.
Don't assume all players are munchkins or min-maxers and rollind does nothing to discourage either one.
With that said if I come up with a character concept, but the stats don't fit, then my character won't mechanically work well with it.
As a GM I know everyone is starting out on equal footing also. I don't have to worry about someone with all 15's to 18's, playing with someone who could not get about a 13, which makes it easier to manage the game when it comes to throwing encounters at the party. Yeah I could allow for a reroll, but that defeats the point of rolling IMHO. If I am going to have a minimum threshold I might as well use PB or stat arrays.
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Then again, the same could be done just by creating the different builds with the 3.0 / 3.5 "Heroic Spread" (15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 8). (Not that I like it either, but at least it screws everyone equally, though I suppose point buy does this as well, only it also punishes those who are weaker in math as well.)
Some people use the arrays, actually. Also, see below...
Point taken there, but the odds of rolling a 7 on 4d6 drop the lowest are remarkably low (average roll on 4d6 drop lowest is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10.5, as opposed to the average of 8.66 on straight 3d6).
If you want to talk about personal experience, here's mine:
Every time I've helped a traditional stat-roller build their first point-buy PC for PFS, they've always been terrified at how "bad" their stats are. And yet, many people (such as yourself) seem to connect point buy with munchkinism.I have my own ideas to reconcile those two observations, but I'd be curious to hear your own theories.
[If you want to talk about personal experience, here's mine:
Every time I've helped a traditional stat-roller build their first point-buy PC for PFS, they've always been terrified at how "bad" their stats are. And yet, many people (such as yourself) seem to connect point buy with munchkinism.I have my own ideas to reconcile those two observations, but I'd be curious to hear your own theories.
I also see the opposite: people like me who are fine with rolling 4d6 drop low and keeping what you get, and who are equally OK with a 15-point buy, but who are horrified at the insanely high stats generated by a 20- or 25-point buy. People used to the latter, when made to roll, end up being the ones who re-roll their stats 42 times until they end up with something that looks "reasonable" to them.
It all boils down to personal opinion as to what constitutes a "reasonable" set of stats, and a lot of that depends on personal preference regarding the type of game: do you want to play people who exceed your normal limitations through experience and perseverence? Or do you to play a team of Superfriends right from the start?
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Ohh look. We all know this won't turn out well, but we run to the thread like lemmings.
~best BIll Murray voice~ There is something wrong with us! Very very wrong with us!
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Rolling is great if you are lucky, a cheater or like playing the chump when you roll it.
Also, it's nice to be able to plan a character concept out in advance without having a bad set of rolls mucking things up.
For example, I just went here and rolled it 2 times. Got this:
__________1______2______3______4______5______6_____Total
Roll______10______7_____12______8_____13_____13_____63
Bonus____+0_____-2_____+1_____-1_____+1_____+1_____+0
PBE_______2_____-1______4______0______5______5_____15
__________1______2______3______4______5______6_____Total
Roll______16_____17_____12_____16_____15_____11_____87
Bonus____+3_____+3_____+1_____+3_____+2_____+0____+12
PBE______10_____12______4_____10______8______3_____47
I know I wouldn't be happy with the first set of rolls if I had to play with a guy getting the second. The first will, also, make many concepts hard (if not flat out impossible) to play.
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My biggest gripe with point-buy is that it's the most math-intensive method. I'd much rather roll or use an array just to keep things simple-- this is a game with a 585-page core rulebook and additional supplements coming out periodically, so anything to simplify is appreciated.
I'm amazed that people are actually calling point-buy a "faster" way to build a character. I suppose it's faster in that you can do it the night before, but what if you want to wait and see what everyone else is playing, and build a character that fills a need? In that case, rolling stats is much faster.
That said, I do like that point-buy gives the player a little more control. If you roll a 5, well, guess what, your character is gonna have a 5 in something. At least the point-builder who puts a 5 in something A) got extra points back for his sacrifice and B) made the conscious decision to cope with the handicap.
My biggest gripe with point-buy is that it's the most math-intensive method. I'd much rather roll or use an array just to keep things simple-- this is a game with a 585-page core rulebook and additional supplements coming out periodically, so anything to simplify is appreciated.
I'm amazed that people are actually calling point-buy a "faster" way to build a character. I suppose it's faster in that you can do it the night before, but what if you want to wait and see what everyone else is playing, and build a character that fills a need? In that case, rolling stats is much faster.
You visit a website like this one: Point Buy Calculator and do it without having to do any math.
All 18s for everyone.
I should try that one game. Just to see how it goes.
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I've always detested point buy. It's one of my least favourite things in D&D.
Always struck me as part of the 'World of Warcraft-isation' of D&D, responsible for cookie-cutter characters and blandness.
Don't think I saw a half-orc in 3rd edition that wasn't Str 20, Chr 6, and it causes me physical pain to see 7 Wisdom paladins in Pathfinder...
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As others have said, fairness. Having one character with straight 18s while another has a single 14 as his highest stat is kinda hard to equalize, in terms of party effectiveness.
Now, that's an exaggeration of how things are likely to actually go, but the problem is very real.
I've played in (and enjoyed) games with rolled stats, but in terms of running them, I love equality and fairness far too much not to use point-buy or something similar. Though I do enact various measures to ensure not too much min-maxing of stats occurs.
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Always struck me as part of the 'World of Warcraft-isation' of D&D, responsible for cookie-cutter characters and blandness.
You might want to go talk to some grognards about the times when they didn't even name their fighters until 3rd or 4th level.
WoW gets blamed for a lot of things it stole from D&D.
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Deadman's right that it's not fair, but our group doesn't care much about that. Most groups possibly would!
I let my players use a 4d6 drop-one generator, as long as I was present. They could roll as often as they wanted, but had to use the scores organically in the order they were rolled. Not everyone chose 18's, in favour of a more rounded character. One guy wanting to play in the goblin one-shot 'rejoiced' in what I think was the lowest scores I've ever seen: Str 7, Int 5, Wis 5, Dex 15, Con 6, Chr 3 (after racial modifiers). I shudder to think what that might be in point buy. I'm tempted to say it's unplayable, but he's determined to prove me wrong...
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You might want to go talk to some grognards about the times when they didn't even name their fighters until 3rd or 4th level.
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Hey, I named all my fighters. My wizards too, even though many times I despaired of ever getting one to level 3.
You might want to go talk to some grognards about the times when they didn't even name their fighters until 3rd or 4th level
Possibly some experienced that, but not me.
Gamers are always surprised why I don't find things like Hackmaster or Munchkin funny. Never really worked for me, because my AD&D experience was simply never like that.
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People like point buys because too often people have "Super Characters" with a stat array like [18, 18, 18, 17, 17, 16]. I actually seen this recently with a guy who was just rolling a character "for fun". Whereas with a point buy you are only likely to get maybe two 18s.
{stuff}
I haven't seen any munchkinism myself, except from the player that loved rolling and had a special (ie weighted) set of dice for generating his characters. I don't play with that guy any more, but he made sure everyone switched to point buy.
Point buy is simple and fair. If one player rolls a set of stats that really suck donkey-balls, it can be hard to get spotlight time. On the flip side, with point buy everybody gets the same, there's no question of one person getting a campaign long advantage because of a lucky set of rolls right at the outset.
That is a similar but different thread.Any chance we can get a merge here, PMG, anyone?
A thread full of interesting discussion on the topic and a whole lot of "nothing new" that we're going to see here as well.
Always struck me as part of the 'World of Warcraft-isation' of D&D, responsible for cookie-cutter characters and blandness.
Now, I'll reiterate what I said in the last thread and say that I much prefer the elite erray to either option. thenobledrake put it better than I could when he said it had
...the fairness of point buy, the not quite perfectness of rolling, and faster than both.
Let me just take a moment to address the point-buy = min-max argument. Point-buy does not encourage OR discourage min-maxing in any way. All it does is give the player a choice of whether or not they will min-max, as opposed to rolling stats which either prevents or mandates it on any given character.
If your play group likes to min-max, then rolling stats will give you a random level of min-maxing that is probably lower than what you would get otherwise. If your group doesn't like to min-max, then rolling stats will get a much higher rate of min-maxed characters, and by extension unhappy players. This why I, and everyone I play with, prefers point-buy.
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If you want to talk about personal experience, here's mine:
Every time I've helped a traditional stat-roller build their first point-buy PC for PFS, they've always been terrified at how "bad" their stats are. And yet, many people (such as yourself) seem to connect point buy with munchkinism.I have my own ideas to reconcile those two observations, but I'd be curious to hear your own theories.
Yes, I admit that my first reaction to point buy was "Oh my god these are awful," Then I had a player point out to me that he could make a combat beast just by dumping his Cha. and his Int. (his reasoning was that he never used skills anyway, and the already mentioned tendency of GMs to not enforce a "play to your character's social skills, not your own," tendencies.
To me the point-buy system feels like it punishes the player who builds a balanced character to his concept and rewards the guy who boosts the hell out STR and CON, at the expense of INT and CHA with relativly minor drawbacks at most tables. (This also works with the Wizard who builds-up INT and CON and drops STR and CHA).
Put another way, can you show me a balanced spread at both 15 and 20 point buys that will allow for the creation of most character types (obviously depending on placement of prime stat and choice of race without sacrificing a stat for purely mechanical reasons (i. e. this doesn't help me in combat ergo it is useless)
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1. Rolling is great if you are lucky, a cheater or like playing the chump when you roll it.
2. Also, it's nice to be able to plan a character concept out in advance without having a bad set of rolls mucking things up.
1. This sentence is nothing but a bunch of pointless insults and cheap shots that aren't necessarily even accurate.
2. This sentence contains a useful point.Notice the difference?
The point buy, the spawn of video games, so much wrought! *faints*
1. Rolling is great if you are lucky, a cheater or like playing the chump when you roll it.
2. Also, it's nice to be able to plan a character concept out in advance without having a bad set of rolls mucking things up.
1. This sentence is nothing but a bunch
of pointless insults and cheap shots that aren't necessarily even accurate.
2. This sentence contains a useful point.Notice the difference?
Yes, but it was born from experiencing those issues in game. Also, I notice you didn't bother trying to refute it.
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Point taken there, but the odds of rolling a 7 on 4d6 drop the lowest are remarkably low (average roll on 4d6 drop lowest is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10.5, as opposed to the average of 8.66 on straight 3d6).
Nitpick (but in support of your point): Average of 3d6 is 10.5. Average of 4d6 drop lowest is about 13. This is why 10 costs 0 points in point buy.
Average roll of 1d6 = 3.5, so multiply that by 3 for 3d6 and you get 10.5.
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Also, I notice you didn't bother trying to refute it.
I'd thought that any number of instances were already pretty well refuted in a number of my and others' earlier posts.
That is a similar but different thread.Any chance we can get a merge here, PMG, anyone?
A thread full of interesting discussion on the topic and a whole lot of "nothing new" that we're going to see here as well.
Always struck me as part of the 'World of Warcraft-isation' of D&D, responsible for cookie-cutter characters and blandness.
Now, I'll reiterate what I said in the last thread and say that I much prefer the elite erray to either option. thenobledrake put it better than I could when he said it had
...the fairness of point buy, the not quite perfectness of rolling, and faster than both.
And where can I find these arrays to which you refer? Since the array is not listed on p. 15 of the Core Rules, with the methods of generating ability scores. (Granted I don't remember where it was that I found the other methods in 3.0 / 3.5 since all the PHB lists on p.7 for character generation is method 1).
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Last time I played a Pathfinder Adventure Path campaign, we were rolling up characters for Council of Thieves. Was told we could use Heroic point buy or roll 4d6 drop lowest re-roll ones.
I obviously chose rolling. Started rolling up at the table everyone was at...didn't know I had to announce to the DM for him to watch it. Midway through rolling I hear "no no no no homey, I gotta watch"...as if I'm going to cheat in front of 5 others who may be watching me anyways.
**Rolled**
17,
17,
15,
14,
16,
18
(Well, it was something like that I do recall having 17's up front tho)
It was something to that affect. Rolls were better than the ones he had me restart from heh.I even looked at him cockily and thanked him for letting me start over ;p Said I always wanted to try a monk ><
Just wanted to share that =)
And where can I find these arrays to which you refer? Since the array is not listed on p. 15 of the Core Rules, with the methods of generating ability scores.
Stats for NPCs.
Elite array (3.5 nomenclature) = +4,+3,+2,+2,+0,-2.Heroic array (Pathfinder) = 15,14,13,12,10,8.
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to use the scores organically in the order they were rolled.
another example of a concept killer.
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to use the scores organically in the order they were rolled.another example of a concept killer.
Even the "I roll nothing lower than 15" stuff can be. Right now in one of my PbPs I'm playing a completely unlikable ass. I gave him Cha 7 on purpose and with malice aforethought. He'd've felt 'wrong' as a Cha 15 character, for all that it would have saved me a feat (Intimidating Prowess).
to use the scores organically in the order they were rolled.another example of a concept killer.
I've generally found it to be just the opposite in fact. Then again I tend to go into character generation with no preconception before stats are rolled. I frequently get my best ideas from a single low roll in an odd place, or a truly exceptional stat on one roll and a couple moderately low ones. I suppose it depends on whether you "just have to play" one specific type of character.
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Challenge to those who say random rolls organically is a concept killer. I rolled the character's stats in order and didn't develop the concept until after rolling (warning sub-optimal race class combo), give me a stat array (20-pt buy) for a Dwarf Sorcerer,.
(I'll give the rolls after I've seen a couple)
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why would anyone use it outside of organized play?
1} It's fair.
2} It allows characters to be created away from the table.In my experience point buy systems only lead to Min-Maxing and Munchkinism.
Randomized character stats aren't fun. If I want to play a class that really needs three "good" stats and I randomly roll only two then I can't effectively play the character I want to play.
More, in my experience point-buy does away with max/min because players are able to budget and design their characters. Playing a rogue? You can - with a decent point buy pool - ensure you've got enough Str, Dex, Int and Cha to make a useful, versatile and interesting character. With random stats... you stand a decent chance of something missing. Maybe you have to sacrifice being a decent face character because you can't justify the Cha. Maybe you have to sacrifice being very widely skillful because you can't justify the Int. Maybe you're going to get hit more often and can't rely on ranged attacks because you can't justify the Dex. Maybe there's no point in throwing weapons, swinging weapons, or using a composite bow because you can't justify the Str.
With point-buy you get to decide... a little here, a little there, or focus on fewer things. With dice rolls you can't decide.
It also encourages people to build to mechanics as opposed to character.
You may as well have said "it encourages people to wear blue socks." So what? Why hasn't 32 years of gaming taught you that this game is multifaceted and there's no wrong way to play it.
Chess doesn't have any role-playing. It's 100% about the stats of the pieces. Strangely it's a fun game. Well, surprise... this game can work that way too. Yes, role-play is fun, yes it's a healthy part of the rules, and yes, I personally like a balance between the two. But your point is being BLIND to the fact that some people have fun in different ways than you do.
I'm not into BDSM but what's it to me if someone else is?
the social ability of the system in question has become the "dump-stat" because too few GMs build social challenges into their games
Again, tough. This is a condescending viewpoint. Have you seriously never encountered players who don't want, don't enjoy, and won't participate in RP-heavy content? I certainly have. I refuse to tell them they're wrong. Instead I design my game for my audience. There's enough RP content to keep the RP-lovers entertained and there's enough combat to keep the tacticians (or the simply embarrassed-to-role-play) happy.
We tried point buy when it was introduced in 3rd Ed. and didn't care for it, finding it far inferior to Method one,
Inferior. Hmmm.
and (especially when I am DM, I admit to a certain level of harshness here) a far higher rate of character mortality.
And yet.
And yet you claim it leads to max/min. Interesting. Interesting and contradictory. How odd that when your players had the opportunity to design their characters in a more optimal fashion they ended up dead more often. Must have been the plethora of social challenges that whittled away their hit-points. Or maybe you were just being a good GM and penalized them to death for role-playing a higher social ability than the characters "should have".
Something's rotten in Denmark here.
Leo... what are you trying to achieve with this thread? You've clearly made up your mind. Your opinion is clearly and strongly stated and I don't see much sign that you're open to being convinced that any other position is valid. Do you really think by posting this anyone else is going to suddenly feel guilty about the way they (allow their players to) generate their characters and start playing the game the One True Way? I'd just like clarification as to your motive/purpose in this post 'cuz I'm kind of unsure.
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My "official" answer to that is Str 10, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 14. But I think the question's basically irrelevant, because you're coming at it backwards. No one is arguing you can't develop a concept to fit a random roll. The issue is that, with a random roll, you can't develop a concept until after you see the rolls...
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To me the point-buy system feels like it punishes the player who builds a balanced character to his concept and rewards the guy who boosts the hell out STR and CON, at the expense of INT and CHA with relativly minor drawbacks at most tables. (This also works with the Wizard who builds-up INT and CON and drops STR and CHA).
This is actually my primary problem with point-buy as well. I solve it by giving out a couple of 25 point arrays to choose from. Complaints have been few (since it's 25 points), but results have been good (since it's not too munchkin-y an array).
Put another way, can you show me a balanced spread at both 15 and 20 point buys that will allow for the creation of most character types (obviously depending on placement of prime stat and choice of race without sacrificing a stat for purely mechanical reasons (i. e. this doesn't help me in combat ergo it is useless)
15 pb probably isn't doable, though I guess you could go with 16, 14, 12, 12, 10, 7.
20 pb does alright with 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8, though.
Both of those involve a single 'dump stat'...but so does most rolling, and the 20 pb one isn't too bad.
As mentioned above, I give my players the choice of two 25 pb arrays:
16, 14, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 16, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8.
I've allowed a 16, 14, 14, 14, 12, 8, as well. Or other slightly divergent 25 point arrays with the key restrictions being no stats over 16 or below 8, and only one below 10. Works fine for making, well, just about anything actually. And has the advantage of keeping the PCs balanced about right to deal with things designed for slightly more optimized 15 pb characters (APs come to mind).
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Here's another issue I haven't seen anyone mention yet. Some people like rolling because it creates an "adrenaline moment"-- that moment where you're all in suspense waiting for the dice to stop and show you your fate.
In my group, our GM alway gives us a choice of array or rolling, and some of us almost always choose to roll just because it's a more fun method of character generation.
I can't remember ever using a point-buy system, simply because our group never wanted to.
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But I think the question's basically irrelevant, because you're coming at it backwards. No one is arguing you can't develop a concept to fit a random roll. The issue is that, with a random roll, you can't develop a concept until after you see the rolls...
This.
What if I want to play a Barbarian, and get an 11, 13, 8, 14, 16, 12 (in that order)? Yes, that's technically 19 pb, and I can use it to make a decent Dwarven caster-Cleric (or Empyreal Bloodline Sorcerer)...but what if I hate playing full casters, and prefer melee characters as a rule? If so, why should I be forced to play something I don't enjoy? How does that make the game better or more fun for me or anyone else?
Rolled stats, in order, can work if you don't already have something to play in mind (and, indeed, can inspire ideas fairly readily)...but you can't go in with a concept you've been wanting to play (not even something as simple as Barbarian or Paladin...never mind something like Monk) and expect to get stats that let you play it effectively.