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View Full Version : [3.5] Point Buy question.



Coidzor
2008-11-21, 02:33 AM
So right now I'm wondering about how powerful our character creations' point-buy was.

For character creation we did a 30 points point buy, starting with 10 in every stat(w/racial adjustments being added after the points being spent), with the option to lower a stat to 8 for extra points.

(which meant that, in helping the new guys create their characters, I had them give themselves 15 in 5 stats, 10 in their "dump," and then adjust from there for what they wanted)

I went ahead and figured out that in comparison with base-8 pb, we were doing a 42 point pool.

Another_Poet
2008-11-24, 12:47 PM
Hi! I'm really surprised no one answered this.

Yep, that's 42 points, which is uber uber. Your players will pribably rebel if you ask them to lower all their stats by 2 points, so this is what I'd do: fix it on the monsters' end.

Basically you bumped every player stat by 2 points. Do the same for monsters. In short that gives you +1 to-hit, +1 damage, +1 hp/HD, +1 to the DC of all SLAs and the like, +1 to all their saving throws. You can also get away with bumpuing them by one or two skill ranks here and there.

On occasion, optimise those monster a bit - your players could drop a stat to 8 in order to get bonus points, so do that with BBEGs and such.

If this gets hard to manage, you can slowly fade the problem out by limiting access to stat-bumping items.

ap

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-24, 01:00 PM
Hi! I'm really surprised no one answered this.

Yep, that's 42 points, which is uber uber. Your players will pribably rebel if you ask them to lower all their stats by 2 points, so this is what I'd do: fix it on the monsters' end.

Basically you bumped every player stat by 2 points. Do the same for monsters. In short that gives you +1 to-hit, +1 damage, +1 hp/HD, +1 to the DC of all SLAs and the like, +1 to all their saving throws. You can also get away with bumpuing them by one or two skill ranks here and there.

On occasion, optimise those monster a bit - your players could drop a stat to 8 in order to get bonus points, so do that with BBEGs and such.

If this gets hard to manage, you can slowly fade the problem out by limiting access to stat-bumping items.

ap

Why do you assume that he is having a problem?

To the OP: Power increase wise it's like +2 LA and with LA buy off in effect.
Treat them as ECL +2 for levels 1-5.
Treat them as ECL +1 for levels 6-11.
Treat them as ECL +0 for levels 12+.

Devils_Advocate
2008-11-24, 04:14 PM
Well, you have to take into account that in demonstrating to these guys how to generate stats using point buy, you showed them how to do it poorly. :smalltongue: 15 15 15 15 15 10 isn't all that great for anything, although if everyone uses it it'll probably help balance out some power discrepancies between classes.

See, 15 isn't better than 14 for most purposes. They'll likely only be raising their primary stats every 4 levels, and points stuck in a dump stat are pretty much wasted, so for most practical purposes they're no better off than they would be with an array of 15 14 14 14 14 8. That's a 30 point buy, which is perfectly reasonable.

If you want to illustrate how the trade-offs in point buy really work, point out that 14 14 14 14 12 8 is a 28 point buy, with each stat raised as far as you can raise it without costing extra points. From there, you can raise your higher-priority stats at the cost of lowering lower-priority stats by a greater amount. E.g. lowering that 12 to an 8 lets you turn the first 14 into a 16. If you lower the 4th 14 to 8 too, that lets you boost your first stat all the way to 18. But to raise your second-priority stat from 14 to 16 only requires you to lower your 4th stat to 10 instead. So you could make a wizard with Int 16 Dex 14 Con 14 Wis 14 Str 8 Cha 8, Int 18 Dex 14 Con 14 Wis 8 Str 8 Cha 8, or Int 16 Dex 16 Con 14 Wis 10 Str 8 Cha 8, for example.