Point buy or roll? Best of both worlds.

[The Mentalist]

A system that I have taken to using is to divide the rolls for stats among the players.

Example: Three players
1 rolls 16 14
2 rolls 17 17
3 rolls 11 9

So each player gets 17 17 16 14 11 9 to play with.

I personally like having rolled stats but I have people tend to get upset when their stats blow compared to the rest.

What do you all think?

[Temotei]

Alternatively, come up with a system just like this, except instead of just getting those scores, you make a point-buy table with increments of two or four points based on the rolls.

For example:
{table=head]Point Buy|Rolls
16|<12
18|One equal to 12, all others below 12
20|One above 12, all others equal to or below 12[/table]

I'm not sure where you would go after that. That was just off the top of my head with very little calculation...

[The Mentalist]

That could work too. I may poke my head back in to refine that system actually.

[JaronK]

Your system solves one big problem with rolling (uneven character power based on stats between players) but doesn't solve the other (rolls being possibly unable to support the character the player wants). For example, if you rolled something like 18, 12, 10, 11, 8, 8, you'd have great Wizard or Druid stats, but terrible Monk or Paladin stats. This discourages players playing MAD classes. That's a problem because the SAD classes tend to be extremely powerful.

JaronK

[Jack Zander]

If you want randomness in stats but still want a fair game to MAD classes, I'd do your method, except have the players only roll 3d6. Then give them something like 6 extra points to put wherever they want to. Maybe let them take up to 3 points off a single stat and put those points on another one.

[Superglucose]

D&D is about rolling dice, so I prefer rolling dice to determine stats.

[Temotei]

D&D is about rolling dice, so I prefer rolling dice to determine stats.

Did you...did you read the thread at all past the title?

[Emmerask]

roll 4d6 per stat take the 3 highest rolls and write them all down
after that you have an array of 18d6 (6*3d6) now you can distribute each d6 however you wish (maximum 3d6 / stat)

for example you rolled 3 times a six in your 18d6 you can take all those three 6 and put them into str.

Did it for our new campaign and the characters are looking good stat wise while still being different then what you get with normal point buy

[SensFan]

I still don't see why people dislike rolling so much. D&D shouldn't be a game about seeing who can make the best character, or how you can refine your character perfectly to perfect your needs while ignoring unneeded stats.

Yes, you may want to play a Wizard but end up with a high strength score. Just like how Ruffus the Elf may aspire to be a Wizard for all his life, but be stronger than he is smart.

As far as I'm concerned, using Point Buy ruins the game.

[JaronK]

I still don't see why people dislike rolling so much. D&D shouldn't be a game about seeing who can make the best character, or how you can refine your character perfectly to perfect your needs while ignoring unneeded stats.

Yes, you may want to play a Wizard but end up with a high strength score. Just like how Ruffus the Elf may aspire to be a Wizard for all his life, but be stronger than he is smart.

As far as I'm concerned, using Point Buy ruins the game.

Playing a Wizard who gets a high strength but an Int of 8 means you're not really a Wizard. You're a strong guy who wants to be a Wizard, and isn't. It doesn't "ruin the game" to tell a player that he can be the bookish weak type if he wants to play that. It DOES ruin the game if he wants to play a bookish weak type and instead gets stuck with a strong idiot. Now that player can't be the character he wanted to roleplay.

The characters who wanted to be a Wizard but ended up being super strong and not very smart are not the big heroes. They're the NPCs who never made it big.

JaronK

[Temotei]

Playing a Wizard who gets a high strength but an Int of 8 means you're not really a Wizard. You're a strong guy who wants to be a Wizard, and isn't. It doesn't "ruin the game" to tell a player that he can be the bookish weak type if he wants to play that. It DOES ruin the game if he wants to play a bookish weak type and instead gets stuck with a strong idiot. Now that player can't be the character he wanted to roleplay.

The characters who wanted to be a Wizard but ended up being super strong and not very smart are not the big heroes. They're the NPCs who never made it big.

JaronK

...which is why we allow scores to be assigned in different orders than we rolled them.

I agree with JaronK that the most important thing is allowing players play who and what they want.

[SensFan]

Playing a Wizard who gets a high strength but an Int of 8 means you're not really a Wizard. You're a strong guy who wants to be a Wizard, and isn't. It doesn't "ruin the game" to tell a player that he can be the bookish weak type if he wants to play that. It DOES ruin the game if he wants to play a bookish weak type and instead gets stuck with a strong idiot. Now that player can't be the character he wanted to roleplay.

The characters who wanted to be a Wizard but ended up being super strong and not very smart are not the big heroes. They're the NPCs who never made it big.

JaronK

And you can still put that 18 in intelligence if you rolled an 18.
With point buy, especially low-ish point buy, every Wizard out there is sickly and frail, but smarter than anyone in the world.

[Temotei]

And you can still put that 18 in intelligence if you rolled an 18.
With point buy, especially low-ish point buy, every Wizard out there is sickly and frail, but smarter than anyone in the world.

Not necessarily. It depends on the player.

Plus, rolling, being as random as it is, could give you the same results--or worse.

[Emmerask]

...which is why we allow scores to be assigned in different orders than we rolled them.

I agree with JaronK that the most important thing is allowing players play who and what they want.

I agree somewhat ^^ The who and what though should be within the campaigns limits

[cheezewizz2000]

D&D is a game that is ultimately about the enjoyment of the players, and people have the most fun in a fair and ballanced environment. While you can argue that rolling is fair and ballanced because "everyone rolled the same dice" and "everyone had the same chance", you often end up with characters with vast gulfs in their personal power, and as JaronK has said, if a character wants to play a monk, but rolls one high stat and a mess of 10s, they can still play that monk, but they'll probably not make it much past level 1.

Point buy eliminates that and makes sure everyone starts off on the same footing. Granted you might not be able to play a super-strong wizard, but if that's the case and your players don't like that then you just tell the players to pick what ever stats they want. With a group of mature people, you'll get vaguely sensible results and everyone has a good time right from the get-go. If one person in the group is having a bad time because "my monk keeps getting hit" or "my druid barely has any hit-points", then their whining will bring the mood of the whole group down.

D&D is ultimately a game and needs to be played so everyone has a good time. The GM's opinion on what constitutes a good time doesn't matter if it is vastly different from his group's, and if they disagree the group is doomed from the start.

[SensFan]

I started a thread about a similar topic a few years back, though its still relevant:

Before joining these forums a few months ago, I had never built a character, or played in a campaign, using Point Buy. Here, using Point Buy seems to be the norm, or at least thats my perspective of it, from the registration threads I've seen. Hopefully I'm wrong on that note.

The first chapter of the Player's Handbook explains that the attributes of characters are determined by rolling four (4) six-sided dice (d6s), and removing the lowest roll. It does not say that rolling is one of the ways to do it, it says that rolling is the way to do it. No other ways of determining ability scores are mentioned in the PHB.

The DMG has a whole host of variants availible to be used, some of which most people probably don't even know/remember. Many variants see use in a few games, perhaps even in half or so. Some of the very popular ones, possibly even the most popular ones, are the alternative systems for determining the six (6) ability scores.

I don't have an issue with variants being used in the game. I personally use a handful of those presented in the Unearthed Arcana in the games I run. I don't even care all that much that there is a variant on one of the basic principles of the game. No, what I dislike about Point Buy is I feel it is becoming the standard. I'm worried that people are seeing Point Buy as the normal way of doing it, being surprised, or even upset, at a DM that uses rolling.

To me, rolling is the best way of determining ability scores. Since joining this forum, I have made more than a few characters with the Point Buy method, due in large part to the huge number of DMs that use it. What I have found is that the characters are way too customizable. Primary spellcasters can sacrifice their Strength score to put their casting ability through the roof. Melee builds (well, alot more than just Melee builds, but they're the most common offenders) can completely ignore Charisma. And that's not even going into the complete exclusion of odd scores. Your character will be tuned to perfection. No more having moderate scores where you don't need them to be that good. Make the scores you need amazing, and the rest horrible. Someone trying to succeed as an Archer in the real world can't become dumber to make them stronger. They can't remove every bit of social grace from their body to improve their agility. No, sometimes in life you have to make due with what life gives you.

With rolling, you get some of that variety back in the game. You still get the choice to decide what you are best at. Is that not enough? Is it that horrible that your character doesn't have the maximum natural Intelligence for his race? Or that he isn't as strong as some of the world's strongest men? Is him being stronger, faster, smarter and wiser that the vast majority of people will ever be not good enough for you? Enough of this nonsense. Point Buy is akin to making people robots, as far as I can see. Fine tuning them to to what they want to do as well as they can, with no regard to doing much else.

Maybe some of you want impecably-tuned robots. Me? I'd rather play with a character that has to make due with his shortcomings, not eliminate them.

[Godskook]

For my first game, I'm trying something different. Rolled, but you can pay xp to boost the point-buy value of your stats, to a maximum of pb = Lvl + 30. I'll let you know how it turns out.

[Superglucose]

Did you...did you read the thread at all past the title?

What do you all think?

Apparently I did so much better than you, because while I can't find anywhere in the op or title about making snarky comments about other posts, I was able to find the part where the OP asked my opinion about stat generation!

Again, i think the 5d6b3 guarantees enough high stats (with liberal application of allowing a reroll of course) that it shouldn't matter too much what the variance between players is.

[greenknight]

Personally I prefer point buy because it's the most reliable method for me to get the scores I want where I want them. However, if you really want a die roll method of ability score generation, someone a long while ago suggested rolling 3 or 4 full sets of scores as a common pool, allowing the players to choose the set each player wanted for his or her character (re-arranging the rolls to taste). And yes, multiple players can choose the same set of scores if they want to. To me, that's the best compromise.

[Devils_Advocate]

SensFan, if each player were to roll up a random humanoid representative of the general population, most of the characters would be level 1 Commoners. If you really wanted to pick everything randomly, they'd each be living in a different location and never meet each other. Not only would they be prevented from forming an effective party, they would be prevented from forming a party at all.

To invoke the Godwin's Law of RPGs, FATAL has you roll for pretty much everything. And this works about as well as one might expect. (Though, to be fair, I expect that playing FATAL doesn't make one's brain want to crawl out of one's ears because of the randomness in character creation and leveling so much as because one is playing FATAL.)

Not that randomness in character creation is necessarily a bad thing. MAID, I believe, does random characters, and in a way that fits with the game's general silliness. But I imagine that it's designed so that the different possible results are reasonably close to balanced with each other. And I think that the default assumption is that the adventures are all one-offs anyway, so if you dislike your character, you're not stuck with her for a long time.

[JaronK]

And you can still put that 18 in intelligence if you rolled an 18.
With point buy, especially low-ish point buy, every Wizard out there is sickly and frail, but smarter than anyone in the world.

If that's the case then you're not going to have this super strong Wizard, now are you? The 18 goes into Int, the next highest likely goes into Con, maybe the third into Dex... it's the same as before, really.

And I never make my Wizards smarter than anyone in the world, though I almost always use point buy. 16 Int is sufficient. I'd rather have a decent Con and Dex. Certainly he won't be sickly and frail... that sounds like your group's problem, but certainly not mine.

Anyway, players should be able to play basically the character types they want, within campaign limits (if the DM wants a skillfull stealth group, obviously a Warmage is inappropriate, for example). Point Buy allows that. Rolled stats usually don't, unless you roll rediculously high stats or use a roll gen system that always rolls super high.

JaronK

[cheezewizz2000]

Actually on topic, In a game of 5 players we used the same system that the op suggested, with the DM rolling the 6th stat. That worked out reasonably well, except for the 5 that got rolled. Many hijynx insued with the bard, wizard and rogue being weak as kittens and the barbarian about as charismatic as mud.

The game was a one-shot though, so no one suffered long-term.

[Drend]

Personally, I agree with SensFan. I see it in DDO all the time, though it is an MMO, and it is moderately expected there. I know my wizard has minimum possible charisma, wisdom, and strength to pump his intelligence to near god levels. He has 12 natural dex and con, and 25 natural intelligence. In my campaign, we use 5d6b3, reroll 1's. It produces enough high stats to keep people happy, and allow them to play what they want, but within reason. In reality, a wizard with 6 strength will NOT be adventuring. He would not be able to handle the strain. He wouldn't be able to keep up with the party, and most certainly would not be able to carry his fair share of the load. Carrying a standard hiking pack can wind even athletes when out in the world. How exactly do you expect your wizard who would lose an arm wrestling match to a 4 year old to do it? The classic example of a stat deficient wizard is Raistlin from the Dragonlance Chronicles. Without his strongarm brother Caramon to haul his stuff around for him, he would have been left behind at the beginning. And you expect a complete stranger to help your wizard the same way? Not likely. Stat-buy just works too much into optimization. The average human, according to the DMG, has 10 on every stat. When walking out into the world, yeah, I see people with lower stats. Unless they are in a wheelchair, I've never seen someone with 6 STR walking around, and I've met some very, very intelligent people. The rolls at least allow for realism to take place. Sure, your half orc should be dumb, but he shouldn't be so stupid he can't tell up from down. Yeah, your wizard should be weaker than a fighter. But a fighter with 18 strength leaves a lot of room to be weaker in. If you are going stat-buy, I personally feel that you should (before racial adjustments) fill all stats to 10 before pumping the primary stats. Adventurers are supposed to be above average all around, not just in one ability.

[Volkov]

What if you rolled all 18s? Then your entire party would be physically and mentally perfect, and there's something weird about that.

[tcrudisi]

Again, i think the 5d6b3 guarantees enough high stats (with liberal application of allowing a reroll of course) that it shouldn't matter too much what the variance between players is.

It might with your players, but certainly not mine. I have a lot of fluctuations within my group.

Players 1 and 2: with a 4d6b3 will rarely get below a 16 and complain that a 16 is bad.
Player 3: with 4d6b3 will end up with a bunch of 8-12 and one 15-16
Player 4: with 4d6b3 will roll several times before breaking the "minimum total bonus of +1" ... and will do it with a total of +1. (Example, in case that didn't make sense: 8 (-1), 7 (-2), 9 (-1), 11 (0), 13 (+1), 12 (+1) is a total of -2, so by the rules it is unplayable and he would have to reroll)
Players 5+: their rolls are very much random and tend to be average (one 16, a couple of 14s, a couple of 10's and an 8).

What does each player prefer to do? Well, the first two players obviously prefer to roll. The rest? They like point buy -- they do not enjoy getting one good stat and the rest crap while the other two guys always get the good rolls. I prefer point buy, as I want the players to be able to choose what they play first, not roll and go, "Well, I can't play a Paladin with these stats." I also like having balance right from the start -- if that balance changes through playing, that's fine... but I do everything I can to keep the game balanced. (It does help that none of my players understand how to make a non-blaster Wizard or non-healing Cleric).

... The average human, according to the DMG, has 10 on every stat. ... If you are going stat-buy, I personally feel that you should (before racial adjustments) fill all stats to 10 before pumping the primary stats. Adventurers are supposed to be above average all around, not just in one ability.

For starters, the default stat buy in 4e starts with 5 stats at 10 and the 6th at 8 before spending your points. Secondly, adventurers are supposed to be above average, but not in everything. If the Fighter had Str 18, Con 18, and Dex 18 with Int 13, he would be smart enough to know that his chosen profession should be as a Wizard, as that's where he'd be most likely to survive as. All adventurers should not have above average stats in everything. Having a low stat just makes sense. You can either be well-rounded or a specialist. Who makes it further in life? The specialists do. The specialist doctors make a lot more money than the family doctors.

[Greenish]

The average human, according to the DMG, has 10 on every stat. When walking out into the world, yeah, I see people with lower stats. Unless they are in a wheelchair, I've never seen someone with 6 STR walking around, and I've met some very, very intelligent people.

Where can I get those snazzy goggles that allow me to see people's stats in real life?

[Petrocorus]

Playing a Wizard who gets a high strength but an Int of 8 means you're not really a Wizard. You're a strong guy who wants to be a Wizard, and isn't. It doesn't "ruin the game" to tell a player that he can be the bookish weak type if he wants to play that. It DOES ruin the game if he wants to play a bookish weak type and instead gets stuck with a strong idiot. Now that player can't be the character he wanted to roleplay.

The characters who wanted to be a Wizard but ended up being super strong and not very smart are not the big heroes. They're the NPCs who never made it big.

JaronK

This is exactly why rolling stat is not good. I personally don't understand why so many games keep or have kept stat roll for so long.


The only good thing with rolling is that if you're really lucky, you can solve the problem of MADness. This is how the paladin class have been created originally (AD&D 1), and why it is so MAD now.

But anyway, i think it's better to give to all player the same amount of point to spend, while maybe forbidding them of going too low, and sadly allowing some of them to over optimizing is far better that having players that just don't like their PC and thus that don't really enjoy the play.

[Gnaritas]

Players 1 and 2: with a 4d6b3 will rarely get below a 16 and complain that a 16 is bad.
Player 3: with 4d6b3 will end up with a bunch of 8-12 and one 15-16
Player 4: with 4d6b3 will roll several times before breaking the "minimum total bonus of +1" ... and will do it with a total of +1. (Example, in case that didn't make sense: 8 (-1), 7 (-2), 9 (-1), 11 (0), 13 (+1), 12 (+1) is a total of -2, so by the rules it is unplayable and he would have to reroll)
Players 5+: their rolls are very much random and tend to be average (one 16, a couple of 14s, a couple of 10's and an 8).

There are several scenarios i see here;
- You only created characters with your group once.
- You are mistaken and only remember the rolls that confirm your believes.
- You lie.
- This is actually happened several times.

I do not believe the last one :P
Even the first one is highly unlikely (1 in approximately 20 million just for having 2 players roll 16 or higher 5 out of 6 times)

[Satyr]

We had a campaign were characters were built with 32 + 1d6 points. Thus, characters had all a small chance to play a bit better or worse characters.

I like games where characters are competent and powerful in themselves and not so much because they are a nice christmas tree full with lametta... so I like games where characters have extraordinary abilities.

The campaign I currently play in used a 5d6b3 approach, and players could reroll all ones and twos (but had to accept them when they came up again). The results were... interesting, in a good way.

What I'd really like but am too lazy to make would be some kinf of life path system which modifies a character with random results and offer a neat orientation for a character background as well.

[Amphetryon]

To satisfy players that want the 'fun' of rolling without unduly punishing them for bad luck, I recommend 24 point buy +3d4 additional points. Everyone is between 27 pb and 36 pb, generally sufficient for SAD or MAD characters.