as far as point buy goes, what do you reccomend? I want to nip minmaxing, but I want to make the PCs a little bit tougher than your average bandit, but I want combat to still be tough. like, more brains less power gaming, trying to keep it away from the anime/video game realm and more into the way fantasy roleplaying used to be. So, what points do you reccomend?
What I do is allow 25 point buy with one major caveat: I don't want to see negative modifiers. I also don't allow two stats of 18 (after racial adjustment).
That prevents people from making a truly max/min build. I most commonly see a 16/14/14/14/14/10/10 build (before racial modifiers). What that does is give me fighters with Str, Dex, Con and some social stat. It's a lot more common to see barbarians with skill points to dump on more than the most useful four. I can see occasional wizards with good Str or Con, and so on. Basically, I see more variety this way.
When you've got 15 points to spend, the urge to get your hands on more points somehow -anyhow- is overwhelming.
well I'm obviously going to lay down the law and let them know this is the type of game I'm looking to run. Dont have my PCs set in stone yet,
I let my players have a 20 pt build in reign of winter so that they could feel like epic heroes without being overly powerful, (they're used to rolling scores and getting 40+pt buys) which would make it to where I can gauge their strength and determine if I need to up some monsters in power. I already kinda cut back on loot, but not too bad. And when it comes to the power gaming and meta gaming, which they are notorious for and I am trying to break them of that habit, if they dump a stat, and don't RP it, I'll take it from them
Ex. Our barb has an 8 int, I let him because Ulfen from Irrisen are kinda dumb, the moment he does something above an 8 int (laying out elaborate battle plans with his low mental stats (10 wis, so not too bad on decision making) I'm going to take 2 points from his str and put it in his int. He's going to QQ. I'll explain it to him as his racial modifier was moved, he still has the same points. But he wasn't playing his character "correctly" in an already stated, rp heavy game. So I made his stats more appropriate to how he was playing. I do this with alignment and ex-Monks, Paladins, Clerics etc too. They take True Neutral so that they can't be smite good'd, and then play essentially a LG character, I'm changing that in a heartbeat.I'm a jerkbear. I know.
It irks me when they do that, they ALREADY know. Communication is key, inform them that you're not picking on them, and make sure that if they all do it, they all get adjusted. Its a game, they're meant to have fun.
I told them that if they don't like my style they can DM and I'll play along with their rules. Until then, you volunteered to play in an RP focused game.
I've recently changed my stance on point buy. I've come to the realization (after playing in 2 15 point buy games) that 15 points is just about right in terms of pure power the game expects. CR appropriate monsters are for the most part appropriate when your primary stat is right around a +3 to start. If its a +5, things skew in your favor, particularly at low levels, and ofcourse it can go up from there. 15 point buy makes it rather painful to have over a +3 in a stat. But it also encourages stat dumping, which i hate, and it favors single ability score depandent characters.
So for my upcoming game I am doing 25 point buy, however no stat can be bellow 10 before racial modifiers, and no stat can be higher then 17 after racial modifiers. Basically I want to give more points for MAD characters, or for to have non-mechanically focused positive abilities (like charisma for a wizard for example), without skewing the amount of 'power' the characters have (in terms of to hit bonus or save dcs) as compared to 15 point buy.
This sounds awful, why are you purposely forcing your players to make mediocre characters? What all else do you micro manage?
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I'd like to take a moment and promote the grid system...it's a 3x3 grid...a roll for each (usually 3 of 4d6, but it could be 3d6, or whatever) with the stats labeled...Str, Dex, and Con down the side...Int, Wis, and Cha along the columns...any of the three can be used for the stat associated (row or column) and once they get used, mark it off. 3 of 4 produces powerful characters...they feel pretty epic...but you have an element of randomness, and not everybody starts with a massive stat. Straight 3d6 would produce more average characters, but with some variability.
I can't remember where I found it, but I've made it my standard.
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Grid method, with stat generator.
Bookmarked. You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman. Or rogue, if that's your preference. :)
My solution:
20 pts.
16 is the highest you can buy and 8 is the lowest.
This grants flexibility without min/maxing.
Stat array is my personal favorite, it makes character creation a lot faster, and usually you get a lot less whining from players who want things like stat boosting items at early levels.
I like taking the Heroic NPC stats and bumping them a little, my current games I give my players:
18 16 15 13 12 102 good stats, 2 mediocre stats, 2 meh stats, and one dump, essentially I took the Heroic NPC stats and added 2 to all of them, and modified a little bit to give them an 18.
Actual stats from the Heroic NPCs are 15 14 13 12 10 8, you can work from that to see if your players need more/less power. Personally, I feel like both when I play, and when I DM, that spending too much time worrying about above average stats leads to a lot of wasted time that really doesn't break the game in the grand scheme of things.
This sounds awful, why are you purposely forcing your players to make mediocre characters? What all else do you micro manage?I've recently changed my stance on point buy. I've come to the realization (after playing in 2 15 point buy games) that 15 points is just about right in terms of pure power the game expects. CR appropriate monsters are for the most part appropriate when your primary stat is right around a +3 to start. If its a +5, things skew in your favor, particularly at low levels, and ofcourse it can go up from there. 15 point buy makes it rather painful to have over a +3 in a stat. But it also encourages stat dumping, which i hate, and it favors single ability score depandent characters.
So for my upcoming game I am doing 25 point buy, however no stat can be bellow 10 before racial modifiers, and no stat can be higher then 17 after racial modifiers. Basically I want to give more points for MAD characters, or for to have non-mechanically focused positive abilities (like charisma for a wizard for example), without skewing the amount of 'power' the characters have (in terms of to hit bonus or save dcs) as compared to 15 point buy.
When you're handing out 39 point buy equivalents, I guess 25 would look mediocre in comparison. Kolokotroni's 25 point method seems very generous to me.
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Grid method, with stat generator.
Yes! Some day I am going to run a game with this method.
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As long as you're equally bugged by the "How dare you limit the GM in anyway you disgusting little peon!"Nope. Just a different perspective.I am fine with perspective. It is the "How dare you punish your players by putting any limit on they, you are GMing WRONGBAD!" that bugs me.
And I do.
I just tend to see many more of the former than the later on the boards.
I wrestled with whether or not I wanted 15pb or 20pb in my RotRL-campaign for a while, but after rolling up a few trial characters I found, like others have already mentioned, that low pbs make the SAD classes even better and the MAD classes even worse. A (normal non-archetype) monk on 15pb is a sad sight to behold.
I settled on 20pb, which feels just about right.
Lot of contoversy surrounding point buy on the boards of late. Anyone else notice this?
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Yeah, they will crank up until a bunch of people get so hot and bothered they go away for awhile.
Then in a few weeks someone will start it up again.
When I ran Council of Thieves I used the standard elite array.
(15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8)
We had a great time with that campaign and the PC's were just about the perfect power level to allow the Players to feel powerful while the Characters were still simultaneously vulnerable against APL+2 or worse encounters.
Just my $.02.
Weslocke of Phazdaliom
Stat array is my personal favorite, it makes character creation a lot faster, and usually you get a lot less whining from players who want things like stat boosting items at early levels.
I like taking the Heroic NPC stats and bumping them a little, my current games I give my players:
18 16 15 13 12 102 good stats, 2 mediocre stats, 2 meh stats, and one dump, essentially I took the Heroic NPC stats and added 2 to all of them, and modified a little bit to give them an 18.
Actual stats from the Heroic NPCs are 15 14 13 12 10 8, you can work from that to see if your players need more/less power. Personally, I feel like both when I play, and when I DM, that spending too much time worrying about above average stats leads to a lot of wasted time that really doesn't break the game in the grand scheme of things.
...This sounds awful, why are you purposely forcing your players toI've recently changed my stance on point buy. I've come to the realization (after playing in 2 15 point buy games) that 15 points is just about right in terms of pure power the game expects. CR appropriate monsters are for the most part appropriate when your primary stat is right around a +3 to start. If its a +5, things skew in your favor, particularly at low levels, and ofcourse it can go up from there. 15 point buy makes it rather painful to have over a +3 in a stat. But it also encourages stat dumping, which i hate, and it favors single ability score depandent characters.
So for my upcoming game I am doing 25 point buy, however no stat can be bellow 10 before racial modifiers, and no stat can be higher then 17 after racial modifiers. Basically I want to give more points for MAD characters, or for to have non-mechanically focused positive abilities (like charisma for a wizard for example), without skewing the amount of 'power' the characters have (in terms of to hit bonus or save dcs) as compared to 15 point buy.
Just seems like there's a dimension of the game you are making not exist anymore, as in the stats can never go above 16, it's the highest you can get. It screws with the mechanics of the game, and your CRs better compensate for the fact that characters will be under the bar in favor of your ideal game world.
The way my group discourages min/maxing with Point Buy:
15 Point Buy, but instead of all scores starting at 10, start with the basic array (8 9 10 11 12 13) and lowering stats is not allowed.
You can still have a below average stat if you want, but no dumping three scores down to 7. You can also have and 18 before modifiers, but your next highest score will be a 12.
This method does yield an 18 point character, so if you prefer, just lower the Point Buy to 12.