Using a point buy to buy a class?

[SamsDisciple]

While perusing the post on why classes are in their tiers I was intrigued by the idea of using a point buy to let people who have the lower tier classes have better stats. For example give each player 40 points and a tier 5 class only costs 5 points and the rest can go into stats or maybe extra starting wealth etc. tier 4 costs 10 and still has 30 points to buy, tier 3 15, tier 2 20, tier 1 would cost 25 and still have 15 points to Purchase stats. This could cause a commoner to be naturally far superior to any other person but without the training they still suck pretty much. Would anybody be interested in something like this or has something similar already been done?

[Kaje]

Thing is this only takes 1st level into account. There's nothing preventing that Commoner 1 from taking Wizard 19, or Druid 1 from taking Rogue 19.

[TheIronGolem]

Thing is this only takes 1st level into account. There's nothing preventing that Commoner 1 from taking Wizard 19, or Druid 1 from taking Rogue 19.

Even this (correct) observation aside, you can't fix this problem by throwing bigger numbers at it, because it's not a numbers problem to start with.

Give a Monk or Fighter a bunch of extra ability points, and he'll do really well for the first few levels (as he tends to do anyway), but by the mid-game he's going to start lagging because he's running into more and more situations that he's not equipped to help with (which is the same problem that the game as written has).

Solving the Caster Supremacy problem for good means redesigning the classes for similar levels of versatility. Solving it for your own game in the meantime means either making all the players choose classes within a tier of each other or relying on gentleman's agreements.

[eggynack]

Either way, it is an idea that has some precedent, though it didn't use the rather unnecessary subtraction method. Among other things, the tier system presents a house rule where you assign each tier a point buy, thus increasing balance. I'ma quote it:

Option #1: Point Buy modifications. This is a quick and dirty fix that helps a bit. It's not perfect, but it's certainly something. Tier 1s get 24 point buy. Tier 2s get 28 point buy. Tier 3s get 32 point buy. Tier 4s get 36 point buy. Tier 5s get 40 point buy. Tier 6s get 44 point buy. Result? At low levels, their Tiers are nearly reversed, with CW Samurai having awesome stats while Wizards really are weak bookish types. By the high levels, the Tiers are back in order, but the difference is less pronounced through the mid levels. Obviously, you can adjust what the differences are, but this works pretty well, and most importantly it's extremely easy. The big downside is that you really can't allow much multiclassing or else it all goes out of whack. Other similar methods include rolling but letting lower Tiers get extra rerolls or bonuses after the roll, and giving free LA points to low tier classes (so, everyone Tier 3 and below gets 1 free LA, and everyone Tier 5 and below gets 2 free LA).
The fix doesn't really help that much, especially because high tier classes are often relatively SAD as well, and can work easily within the constraints presented by low point buy, even point buys that are lower than the one presented here. It's ultimately a purely numerical fix, and casters transcend numbers. It's a little helpful though.