Can a character be both 20-point buy AND 25-point buy?

[Ravingdork]

I went to SwampCon last weekend and got my first taste of Society play.*

Anyways, I took several of my pre-made characters with me, but since they were all 25-point buy, I had to reduce them to 20-point buy before heading out. When I started reverse-engineering the numbers, however, I came to realize that some of them could already be considered 20-point buy characters. If I assumed that I put my 4th-level point "here" instead of "there," and started out with a slightly different array, then by the time I got to the level we were expected to play at, I'd end up with the same ability scores.

I'm terrible at math though and I just wanted to check to make sure that this kind of thing was indeed posible. It would not surprise me if I made a mistake somewhere.

* I say this lightly though as our GM was very swingy with the rules and likely knew less about PFS (and the game's rules in general) than I did.

[Jiggy]

Um, all PFS characters have to start at 1st level...

[Deidre Tiriel]

You cannot start PFS at 4th level. You can play a 4th level pregen, but must create a character and give it XP from GMing or playing from 1st level.

That said, the racial scores can be worked with in the way you are saying.

[Fergie]

Good on ya for getting out there and trying society play. I would expect that almost no one (probably including a few folks in the industry) know as much about the rules as you do. Relax and enjoy a different play style. Offer to correct rules, but always be satisfied (at least outwardly) with the GM's rulings.

Anyway, YES a character could be both a 20, and 25 pt character, although I would expect it to only happen at later levels, and or in unusual circumstances.

[Jiggy]

But anyway, it is possible for a character to fit multiple point buys. A lot of it can be from where you put your racial bonus. For instance, consider a human with final stats of 16/16/14/10/10/10. How many points did he spend? Depends on where his racial +2 is. If it's in one of those 16s, he's 20pt. If it's in the 14, he's 22pt. And so forth.

[Cult of Vorg]

Yes, an suboptimal 25 point buy can be equal to a lesser point buy once ability increases come into play. One of the challenges of doing a character audit or respec.

PFS characters start from 1st, only the pregen iconics are available if you're playing without a PFS character. (Ninjas!)

[Ravingdork]

The character I ended up playing was 1st-level. That doesn't change the fact that I didn't know that at the time, and took a range of prepared higher level characters with me.

In any case, I heard someone at the Con say that you could switch characters out between games, so that if I had earned 5th-level and boon "a" I could bring in any character I wanted, any of which would be 5th-level and potentially benefiting from the boon.

I'm more concerned about my question in any event. I'll learn about Society over on the Society forums. Let's keep this to topic.

[mplindustries]

If the +1 from leveling was added to a stat in the range where it would cost a point buy of 5, then sure.

That's not actually the case for any step, however. The closest I could see would be if you raised a stat from 15 to 16, but then lowered it to 14.

You'd need to be level 8 for it to really work (raising a 14 to a 16).

[LazarX]

Just because your point allocation may not match that deemed as "optimal" by messageboard number crunches doesn't change it's actual value. It's 20 points, irregardless of how "good" or how "terribad" the resulting number array comes out.

[RumpinRufus]

You can do it if you're (part) human and have an 18 in your stat block. Then, if you also have a 10, 11, 12, or 13, you can make the buy either 20 or 25 points. But of course the 25 point build involves putting your +2 in a weak stat.

Spoiler:

When you swap the racial +2 between two stats but keep the result the same through point buy, you must "sell" off the points from one stat and then "buy" back the points on the other one.

The stats and their costs are: 7 {-4}, 8 {-2}, 9 {-1}, 10 {0}, 11 {1}, 12 {2}, 13 {3}, 14 {5}, 15 {7}, 16 {10}, 17 {13}, 18 {17}

If you build to one stat, and then put a racial +2 in it and "sell" the +2 stat you get the difference between the costs of the two.

9 [3], 10 [2], 11 [2], 12 [2], 13 [2], 14 [3], 15 [4], 16 [5], 17 [6], 18 [7]

But then to reverse the other half of the swap, you have to "buy" back the points you lost when you moved your racial +2.

So, swapping from 16+2/13 to 18/11+2 gets you 7 points and costs you 2. This means you can make one build with both a 20 and 25 point buy. You can also swap 16+2/12 to 18/10+2, 16+2/11 to 18/9+2, and 16+2/10 to 18/8+2 and each of them make up a difference of 5 points.

This is only possible with an 18 because the next highest number, 17, sells for 6 points, so you would need to "buy" something that costs 1 to make a difference of 5, but there is no way to get a +2 with 1 buy point. Likewise, there's no other two stats with a difference in cost of 5.

If you're a transmutation wizard there might be something funky going on there, too.