This has been on my mind lately.
I am in a game where my character was built on 25 point buy (which is claimed to be "Powerful" by some) and I like the way my Oracle is built. However, the issue, another player used "Roll dice til yer happy" technique and has *INCREDIBLE* Stats. After racial mods, a 20, an 18, at least one 16 and the difference is 14s.
The game is good enough, I am not upset, nor worried about balance (that comes up for other reasons ;) ) So, my question is, "Why would a player feel the need to be good at everything? Seriously?
A few possibilities for why a player would do this,
1) Holdover from 1st/2nd ed. If your stat wasn't a 16, you didn't have a stat.
2) Needs to be valuable in *EVERY* situation; cannot let other characters (players) have the spotlight.
3) Too much TV/Movie hero models. For example, (don't laugh) Xena: she's strong, smart, fast, tough, and can be 'sociable' (intim, bluff) when she needs to.
For me, it's more interesting to play a PC that is good at what they do, but has weaknesses that sometimes come to the fore. "Ok, Bennie, roll to bluff the guards so they don't search the wagon" "Me? Crap. 'Don't do that' [roll]d20-1[/roll] I got a 4, they don't buy it." I would call character flaws (even mechanical) RP gold!
Any other thoughts?
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Given the option of essentially choosing your own point buy, why would one opt for actual point buy?
It's like having the option of receiving $25, or receiving an amount of your own choosing up to $100. Sure, one might say "Well I can't buy as many unhealthy snacks with $100, so I'll take the $25," but most people are going to take the $100.
This is why point buy isn't an option in my games; it's point buy or nothing.
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Holdover from 1st/2nd ed. If your stat wasn't a 16, you didn't have a stat.
As a grognard, I look at it the opposite way: if a 15 stat in 1e gave you a +1 modifier, then all your 15s become 12s when playing 3.X/PF.
From that perspective, 15-point buy looks pretty good!
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This has been on my mind lately.
I am in a game where my character was built on 25 point buy (which is claimed to be "Powerful" by some) and I like the way my Oracle is built. However, the issue, another player used "Roll dice til yer happy" technique and has *INCREDIBLE* Stats. After racial mods, a 20, an 18, at least one 16 and the difference is 14s.
The game is good enough, I am not upset, nor worried about balance (that comes up for other reasons ;) ) So, my question is, "Why would a player feel the need to be good at everything? Seriously?
A few possibilities for why a player would do this,
1) Holdover from 1st/2nd ed. If your stat wasn't a 16, you didn't have a stat.
2) Needs to be valuable in *EVERY* situation; cannot let other characters (players) have the spotlight.
3) Too much TV/Movie hero models. For example, (don't laugh) Xena: she's strong, smart, fast, tough, and can be 'sociable' (intim, bluff) when she needs to.For me, it's more interesting to play a PC that is good at what they do, but has weaknesses that sometimes come to the fore. "Ok, Bennie, roll to bluff the guards so they don't search the wagon" "Me? Crap. 'Don't do that' [roll]d20-1[/roll] I got a 4, they don't buy it." I would call character flaws (even mechanical) RP gold!
Any other thoughts?
It's the misconception that the super powerd PCs supported by the rules created - techincaly, a PC with a 12 or 13 in all of her stats is faster, tougher, smarter and more socialable than most humans - sure, some can match her or surpress her sometimes in some of these specialties, but all around she's an amazingly capable human. However for adventurers, anything less than 14 in an ability score is "low", and nothing short of 18 is "high".
The way I see it, you don't have to succeed every single time whenever you do something that is your specialty - a rouge may sometime be detected while sneaking, sometimes the bad guys sea through the wizard's illusion, and the monk might just lose a fist fight. Granted most of the time what you are doing should work, but I'm ok with occasional misses.
The way most people see it, if you are a rouge you have to take at least a 16 in dexterity, because you are useless if enemeis are capable of detecting you sometimes. So what if you had to take an 8 in charimsa and 10 in wisdom as your dump stats? at least you are sneaky!
And since people want characters capable of pulling off more than one trick, the list of ability scores that should be "high" gets longer and longer until it includes all 6 of them. I don't like it.
Most people have weaknesses in real life. When they play a game, they don't want just be better than themselves in real life. They want to be something they could never be. If I could have all 18's in real life, I would take it.
As for what is interesting in a game, that is a personal decision. There is right or wrong answer. When I play I don't need super strong characters, but I wont intentionally make my character weak(in any area) either if I can help it.
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I put all my players through a demanding series of physical, mental, and social tests to determine their "real world" stats which they then use for their character stats. So far the highest stat has been a 13.
Ever since the option has existed, we have ALWAYS used dice rolling instead of point buy. No GM in my area has used the point buy method. However it is rare for a player to come to the table with perfect stats.
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Some folks like to be good at everything and twice so on Sundays. Cant abide any weakness. Want to be able to solo the game if necessary.
Some people want a MAD class to work out.
Some people put a lot of emphasis on stats and what they mean. For example, some one once posted that they couldn't accomplish their concept via point buy. They wanted a "smart fighter" and 18 strength and 13 intelligence wasn't good enough. Even though many posters thought it would work out fine. Person was dead set on the idea that 18 strength and 18 Intelligence was an absolute must.
/shrug
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I know this is gonna get flack
It probably deserves a bit more flak than I'll give it, but:
but it's kind of a video game mentality to want to be the uber-character at everything.
Because Odysseus is a videogame character, right?
(also, Conan, Rostam, Beowulf, Aeneas...)
Some people put a lot of emphasis on stats and what they mean. For example, some one once posted that they couldn't accomplish their concept via point buy. They wanted a "smart fighter" and 18 strength and 13 intelligence wasn't good enough. Even though many posters thought it would work out fine. Person was dead set on the idea that 18 strength and 18 Intelligence was an absolute must.
Is that you, Batman?
The game is good enough, I am not upset, nor worried about balance (that comes up for other reasons ;) ) So, my question is, "Why would a player feel the need to be good at everything? Seriously?
Look, from my own personal point of view, if you hand me a character that has a 6 in three stats and the highest score is 12, I'll find a way to make it work somehow. And as a GM, I am sometimes one of those mean, horrible, awful people who makes people create their PCs with 15 point buy.
BUT...
Why wouldn't you want to play a character who was as effective as possible at as much as possible if you can get away with it?
This rhetorical question is about as reasonable as yours.
People have different motivations for playing. In a game where the die roll modifiers are important, and especially your ability score modifiers are important at low levels because they're about all you've got to improve your chances of success, some players who want to feel "effective" are going to want as high as possible stats as they can get. Heck, I remember playing oldskool computer RPGs like the Gold Box games and clicking "reroll" dozens and hundreds of times till all my PCs had 16-18 in everything, because it made the games easier to play (especially since, as you say, in AD&D there was no point to any stat that wasn't 16 or higher). Granted, I was about 12 years old at the time and more likely prone to that attitude, and it was a video game, and I can understand the temptation 'cause I took it.
While some people love to play characters with weaknesses as well as strengths, some people prefer the "easier time" of it. That just is what it is, and questioning it ain't gonna change that sort of preference. And if the GM allows an ability score generation method that allows people to basically get the best stats possible, then of course there are going to be characters with crazy high attributes all around.
If you dislike it, bring it up with your GM. That's the only thing that's going to resolve the situation, if at all. You can't change human nature, though.
TL;DR: If some people are presented what appears to them to be a "win button," they are going to press it, even if that doesn't seem to be the most interesting or fulfilling option to you personally.
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I know this is gonna get flack, but it's kind of a video game mentality to want to be the uber-character at everything. Traditional roleplaying assumes the character is like a person: someone who has strengths and weaknesses and is imperfect.
Video games have nothing to do with it. The attitude has been around since the first time role-playing games offered benefits for having high stats.
This has been on my mind lately.
I am in a game where my character was built on 25 point buy (which is claimed to be "Powerful" by some) and I like the way my Oracle is built. However, the issue, another player used "Roll dice til yer happy" technique and has *INCREDIBLE* Stats. After racial mods, a 20, an 18, at least one 16 and the difference is 14s.
The game is good enough, I am not upset, nor worried about balance (that comes up for other reasons ;) ) So, my question is, "Why would a player feel the need to be good at everything? Seriously?
Even with awesome stats across the board, they're really not going to be good at everything. It's probably really more a question of never being hampered by a penalty so they will always have the best chance of being good at everything they want to do - particularly resist adversity (with all those bonuses to saves, AC, initiative, hit points, etc).
The real problem I see here is the pairing 25 point buy with effectively unlimited dice rolling. One player elects to operate under a restriction of limited (if fairly generous) points, while another elects to operate under a nigh unrestricted system. Roll enough times and you will come up with a superior character to 25-point buy.
Thank you all for your feedback :)
The only snark was about someone's consistent mispelling of Rogue ;)
The only reason the Point-Buy got paired to "Choose Stats" was because we were not given *any* guidelines, so I went with what is "normal" for me, and the other went for "normal" for him.
In any event, I think I am just gunna restat my character and see if my wife wants to do the same with hers (both are 25pt).
GNOME
DQ, not only could you just reroll, you could also go back to a previous Save Game ;) And since you are gunna win your video game anyway, why make it take longer than it has to? lol
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I never played point-buy until I tried some Pathfinder games. Ever since my fairly brief 2nd edition days, I have always used 4d6 6x, drop the lowest for generating scores. Honestly, point-buy feels weak to me, even though sometimes the dice rolls equate to a certain point-buy. Why does a 20 point buy feel weak to me? Because I am restricted in what I can build, in my mind. With the random generation using dice rolls, I have no real choice in what the numbers are.
Not sure why, but if I roll nothing but 14s for all 6 scores, I am fine with that. But give me a point buy that lets me put 14s in everything, and I just can't get into the character. I have joined 2 games where the rolls were random, and 2 where they were point-buy. For some reason, I couldn't feel attached to the point-buy characters and dropped from the games (one reason). I don't know. I guess since I am used to the randomness of the rolls (15 years of that method), point-buy is too foreign to me.
DQ, not only could you just reroll, you could also go back to a previous Save Game ;) And since you are gunna win your video game anyway, why make it take longer than it has to? lol
Exactly. :) Sadly I think some people see TTRPGs the same way. I'm not one of those "video games killed the tabletop star" people, but I think there are people who approach ANY game with the same attitude.
Hopefully your GM will let you roll. Good luck!
I played AD&D 1st & 2nd edition through college. In college, I ended up playing Champions and GURPS more than D&D, and they both use point-buy systems for character creation.
After college, I pretty much only played GURPS, Champions, and Amber DRPG for about ten years, and when D&D 3rd edition came out, it had point-buy rules. Since we were all fans of point-buy for game balance reasons from other game systems, we naturally used point-buy for our D&D characters when we started playing 3.x.
I haven't "rolled up" a character by actually rolling dice in close to 20 years!
In the game I'm running, I don't even have PCs roll their hit points. I use the "average die, round up" method. (max hp at level 1, and a fixed number of hp per level: d6=4; d8=5; d10=6; d12=7). It's just easier that way.
Back to the OP: In my opinion, the GM should make all players use the same stat generation method, for reasons of fairness and game balance.
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TL;DR: If some people are presented what appears to them to be a "win button," they are going to press it, even if that doesn't seem to be the most interesting or fulfilling option to you personally.
:: Presses WIN button. ::
In my opinion, the GM should make all players use the same stat generation method, for reasons of fairness and game balance.
My issue is that a "fair" point-buy skews the whole game firmly to the wizard, and leaves the monk out to dry. Because wizzo can boost his Int to 18 (or 20 with racial mods), keep Con and Dex OK, and dump everything else for enough points to make it work. The poor monk, using the same point buy total, is going to be below-par in all of the various MAD stat scores he needs to have high scores in just to be relevant (Str, Dex, Con, Wis).
If point-buy made you start with different numbers of points, depending on the degree of MAD-ness of your starting class, then it would work well "for reasons of fairness and game balance." Until then, it skews a game even further in favor of classes that are already too strong, compared to their supposed peers.
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Video games have nothing to do with it. The attitude has been around since the first time role-playing games offered benefits for having high stats.I know this is gonna get flack, but it's kind of a video game mentality to want to be the uber-character at everything. Traditional roleplaying assumes the character is like a person: someone who has strengths and weaknesses and is imperfect.
Agreed, I know I saw more 18/00 strength fighters in earlier D&D versions than I saw 17 strength fighters. Of course all were rolled honestly (eyeroll).
Would a steeper curve, making middling stats relatively cheaper and high stats more expensive solve that problem?
Yes, I think it might -- especially if there were a limit on how many points you could scrounge by dumping other things.
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Well, in my home game, I've ruled that you can only lower one score below 10, and your final scores after racial modifiers can't go lower than 8 or higher than 18. We use 15-point buy.
Point-buy is part of the constraints of the system. I have no complaints from the players in my game. Honestly, my players tend not to min-max, so all the PCs have fairly well-rounded stats.
Background and personality are, frankly, more important than stats in my games anyway. But my group likes to emphasize role playing over combat. We've gone five sessions without a fight in the past. But that's more a question of play style than rules.
Run what works best for your table.
I have found that I have a couple of players who like rolling stats, but I worry about the possibly unbalanced results. The DM in our current Pathfinder game got around that problem by letting the one player most insistent on rolling stats roll them, then totaled up the point value of his stats and gave that to the rest of us as our point buy. Fortunately for us, that guy got really good stats, so we have a rather high powered game.
I think the only real way to make rolled stats work is to take the point buy value of the rolled stats out of a pool of points that can be spent on race, feats, traits, and extra character levels in any combination that uses up the allowed points. I might impose some broad limits on the results -- say, any stats with a point buy total value under 10 or over 30 are too far away from the expected power level to work.
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I have found that I have a couple of players who like rolling stats, but I worry about the possibly unbalanced results. The DM in our current Pathfinder game got around that problem by letting the one player most insistent on rolling stats roll them, then totaled up the point value of his stats and gave that to the rest of us as our point buy. Fortunately for us, that guy got really good stats, so we have a rather high powered game.
I think the only real way to make rolled stats work is to take the point buy value of the rolled stats out of a pool of points that can be spent on race, feats, traits, and extra character levels in any combination that uses up the allowed points. I might impose some broad limits on the results -- say, any stats with a point buy total value under 10 or over 30 are too far away from the expected power level to work.
I consider rolling for stats better. Not everyone is dealt a good hand in life. Plus as long as you follow the rule that the combined modifiers of all the stats must be higher than a +3, you're fine.
I consider rolling for stats better. Not everyone is dealt a good hand in life. Plus as long as you follow the rule that the combined modifiers of all the stats must be higher than a +3, you're fine.
First time I've seen the "+3 or better" rule, but I like it.
I've been playing this silly game for a good many years, but with the exception of two games run by the same DM (neither of which lasted very long) I have never used point buys. I'm not knocking the idea - I can see where it would be a good "averaging" mechanic in group play like RPGA or PFS - but rolling for stats has just always been the norm at tables where I've run or played the game.
Our current group uses a modified 4d6 system - roll 4d6 (rerolling any "1"s once) and drop the lowest die. Do this six times, then arrange results as Abilities as desired. We usually allow a complete redo if two or more stats are below 10 ("Yeoman Smith decides he's not really cut out for the adventuring life and goes back to his plow" ;D ), which probably gives the same general result as Hama's +3 rule.
This can result in some rather strong characters (particularly once racial modifiers are figured in) but our DMs are not shy about throwing some pretty tough encounters at us from Level 1 on so it seems to work out.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Some people have argued that all characters have to have the same attribute totals, or the same point-buy budget, or else the game isn't fair.
I think you can still have a fair game without even stats. These days, I'm spending most of my time running Pathfinder Society games, but here's how I ran it in my last home campaign.
1) You assign 27 d6 to your stats, at least 3 d6 per stat.
* So one player could assign:
STR 3d6 -- DEX 5d6 -- CON 5d6 -- INT 8d6 -- WIS 3d6 -- CHA 3d6 and hope for a good wizard.
* Another player could assign:
STR 5d6 -- DEX 5d6 -- CON 5d6 -- INT 3d6 -- WIS 6d6 -- CHA 3d6, going for a monk.
* The third player isn't sure what she wants. She'll just roll and see what happens.
STR 4d6 -- DEX 5d6 -- CON 5d6 -- INT 5d6 -- WIS 4d6 -- CHA 4d6,
2) Roll, take the best three from each attribute. (More than three dice coming up '6' add 1 for each additional die.)
* So player one gets:
STR:
DEX: best of is 14
CON: best of is 15
INT: best of is 15
WIS:
CHA:
Not as high an Intelligence as he'd hoped, but overall not bad at all.
* And our monk player gets:
STR: best of is 13
DEX: best of is 15
CON: best of is 14
INT:
WIS: best of is 17
CHA:
About what you'd expect. (Best 3 of 6d6 is supposed to be around 15, so this guy made out better than he might have hoped.)
* The third player gets
STR: best of is 12
DEX: best of is 13
CON: best of is 16
INT: best of is 16
WIS: best of is 14
CHA: best of is 15
Looks like a spellcaster of some sort!
3) Calculate each character's attribute total as if you were running a point buy
* Player one's character would cost 5 + 5 + 7 + 7 + 5 + 0 = 29 points
* Player two's character would cost 3 + 7 + 5 + 1 + 13 + 2 = 31 points
* Player three's character would cost 2 + 3 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 7 =37 points.
4) The compensation: The PC with the highest attribute point cost doesn't get anything. Every other player gets a free trait for every two points his character is undercosted. So in this case, PC 1 would get 4 extra traits and PC 2 would get 3 extra traits. (If player three weren't around, then PC 1 would only get a single extra trait, because PC 2 would be the top scorer.)
5) Apply racial modifiers.