Oh yes - I mentally lumped e.g. the old Vampire system (where attributes and skills are each lumped into three “blocks” and your character has one strong block, one middling block, one lame block ; and further minor tweaking down the line) with DnD’s “true” point-buy. Same for 7th Sea and L5R, and even the old Star Wars system where each character archetype came with a fixed set of skills/stats and you only allocated a handful of pluses here and there.
Basically I don’t want randomness to enter my chargen process - or character progression for that matter. Getting screwed forever because you rolled 1 on your barbarian’s HP levelup die : fun ! Not.
This is a big piece of it for me. Intellectually I know that dice are random, but at the same time I am absolutely certain that I’m a lousy roller for stats. In an ideal game, I think, every character has the opportunity to shine at some point, which means they should be the best in the group at something. Random rolls carry the risk that one character will be worse than the others at everything. Point buy carries the same risk, but in that case, I’m okay blaming the player :). (And yes, I’ve been that player).
After 36 years roleplaying, it’s point-buy all the way:
it’s fair
it’s balanced
you can arrange to get any class you want
it’s easier for the DM
it can be done over the phone
My groups also give maximum hit points (hp) @ 1st level. (Who wants to die in the first combat?)
Once a new DM (charming, imaginative chap) said we had to roll hp @ 1st level. I asked what would happen if a character without a constitution bonus rolled a 1. He explained that would be bad, since he also played that a character with 1hp was unconscious. :eek:
I think low-level ineptness is a deeper flaw in D&D than stat generation can fix by itself. It’s especially a problem when hit points are very low. When I’ve played, I usually start all the PCs at level 3. Sometimes we role-play out non-lethal adventures (especially when those can be used to introduce the PCs to each other) and other times I just throw enough XP at them.
Correct, but stats are part of the problem. Even if you have enough HP to survive a couple of hits, if you’re saddled with a penalty to hit things, it’s unlikely end well for you. There is a reason later versions of D&D modified all sorts of things about low levels.
Of course, if you like the “For some reason, Slobnik the peasant, Blart the thief, Ignominous the Not-Actually-At-All-Powerful-Wizard and, of course, Carl the Initiate Cleric have decided to plunder a dungeon so perilous that any one of them would die should they fail to be sufficiently alert to avoid every peril in the place, and which most of the monsters can catch them if they decide to run away.” then random stats aren’t really a problem. Of course, people will assert that in that sort of game, fast chargen is a bonus (which it is, because you are gonna need to make a lot of 'em), and therefore 3d6 in order is the best chargen method. And they’ll be wrong, because with point buy, you can just say “I spend all my points the same way.” and you’re back in the game.
Well, most (modern) adventures meant to be tackled by level 1 Manure Farmers generally account for the ineptitude. For example, in the Pathfinder campaign I currently run, the first scenario features an encounter with a solo, dual-wielding goblin sporting a healthy -5/-8 attack bonus. With d4 20x2 weapons, just in case you confirm a crit or something.
But then, that is its own issue. You don’t play DnD to redoubt an encounter with the Dread Housecat.
My point is : start play at level 3-4, for fuck’s sake. Y’alls don’t seek out dark, cowled strangers in disreputable taverns at level one ; and what’s more dark, cowled strangers in disreputable taverns aren’t looking for your single magic missile a day flinging arse !
If you don’t use point buy, you’re a bad person and should be locked in a dungeon, and/or fed to a dragon.
Having a shitty character for an entire campaign because you happened to roll poorly is asinine. Similarly, having a clearly superior character for no reason other than the random roll of dice is silly.
I primarily GM, I don’t really play as a player very often, and I feel like I’d be a colossal prick if I made people’s character choices dependent on random dice rolls. I don’t make them roll class, alignment, skill selection or whatever. Why attributes?
Rolling attributes is a left-over from the shuddering patchwork of rules that was early D&D. It’s better without it.
I’ve never done level 3-4 but I have started characters at level 2 before. Just gives them a little more fighting chance, let’s the magic user do something twice a day, etc. Especially in smaller groups where you have two people who could both be killed/incapacitated by a d8 sword hit each in a single round.
Well… in the interest of full disclosure: I never DM’d a game where a character lived past level 14. And he only lived that long because of stupid random treasure tables that gave him the Freaking Sword of Awesomeness +10,000.
After that, I kind of swore off D&D and stuck mostly to Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, where the critical hit tables make it explicitly clear that you are expected to die early, often and horribly.
Of the given options, I prefer point buy. Randomness is fine when it averages out over time, but rolled stats don’t give a chance for that to happen. If you’re screwed (or blessed) now, you’ll remain screwed (or blessed) for the entire campaign.
However, I prefer fixed arrays over point buy, since point buy makes it too easy to min-max. The exact array depends on the intended power level of the game, of course, but I like something along the lines of 16, 15, 15, 13, 10, 8 for a d20 game: That prevents casters from getting an 18 in their casting stat, but gives mundanes one ability that they’re very good at and two more that they’re pretty good at, plus one score good enough for feat prerequisites, one average, and one below-average.
The funny thing is that all of these problems that people seem to lament are fixed in the much maligned 4th edition; Casters always have something they can contribute, all classes have enough HP that they’re not in danger of getting killed just because an Unusually Lucky Orc hit them for max damage…once. Etc.
And the skill system is just as comprehensive (read: Not very, but whatever) as earlier editions, and way less fiddly than 3.5.
And the standard ability score method is the array.
I don’t remember these being touted as weaknesses. …well, the change to the magic system, yes it was, and not having played 4th I can’t say if it was good or bad.
Beginning HP being frowned upon, not so much. Not every bad system is entirely bad.
This. I’m considering my character the moment I know I’m going to be in a game, so I want to be able to make the character I’ve been thinking of when I sit down to roll her up.
I’ll just throw this out there: in terms of point buy, several iconic D&D characters are way way above the standard 25 or 32 points. Drizzt is at least 54, Elminster is at least 63 points (and his early adventures were rather humble), and Manshoon is at least 64 points.
Many iconic characters are basically impossible to make by the normal character generation rules - there’s a reason they eventually get to be so awesome. I’ve sometimes idly wondered about how to make Conan in GURPS or Warhammer 3rd Ed and it is clear his stats would go way above the normal allotment of points in either system.
