Now from personal experience with GURPS, The Fantasy Trip, and Mutants and Masterminds I've played a couple games that featured point buy character leveling.

the two biggest complaints I personally have is that they 1. character creation can take forever depending on the concept, 2. it can sometimes be prone to jank or powergaming depending on the group.

These seem like valid complaints, but typically at least from RPGPundit and other OSR blogs and videos I see, there seems to be an implied but never described inherent "badness" as though there is some fundamental violation of game design that it incurs and must make up for in other game design choices?

To me at least the way I've handled my core complaints with point buy is I simply made character generation randomized with templates that are roughly equal point value or effectiveness (like The Fantasy Trip)

But I was wondering if there was more to this?

Point buy is not how it was done when everyone played B/X, therefore it is the Wrong Way to Play.

I hate random char gen, and believe it's only held up because it was that way at the beginning, and people can't mentally get out of that paradigm.

It's like insisting modern cars have a hand-crank, and a man that walks in front with a little flag, because that's how it was done when you were starting out as a motorist.

If my stance seems reductive or biased, well, that's how the random roll purists look from the outside. People get a little BroSR-ish about it.

I'm not even totally against a mixture of the two.  I run WFRP 2e and Dark Heresy. Character creation in them is salad-bar style choice, with initial stats being a modifier plus random roll. It's kind of a controlled randomness.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 16, 2023, 05:09:30 PM
I hate random char gen, and believe it's only held up because it was that way at the beginning, and people can't mentally get out of that paradigm.

It's like insisting modern cars have a hand-crank, and a man that walks in front with a little flag, because that's how it was done when you were starting out as a motorist.

If my stance seems reductive or biased, well, that's how the random roll purists look from the outside. People get a little BroSR-ish about it.

I'm not even totally against a mixture of the two.  I run WFRP 2e and Dark Heresy. Character creation in them is salad-bar style choice, with initial stats being a modifier plus random roll. It's kind of a controlled randomness.

To my understanding in a system that is very deadly, point buy can become tedious if a new character needs to get generated mid session, and since games of that nature are by default deadly, that made logical sense.

games like WFRP 2e hit a nice compromise on that point.

I think the concept of point buy is awesome, but often the execution fails. The basics of point buy should be:

(1) if you want to do something cool, you need to pay for it.

(2) what you get to do should match the cost.

I first encountered this in the Champions RPG (I think) but the biggest memory I have comes from D&D 2E where there was an optional point-build system where she picked an elf and spent points to get some cool extras, then picked a magic-user and spent points to get some other cool extras. The problem is that she didn't seem to grok the concept that getting one cool option meant NOT getting another. "But I'm an elf. Why can't I see in the dark?"

Amber is a great example of point-buy, as the entire system is based on it.    Problem is that folks don't seem to realize (or don't want to realize) that a 50-point power will kick the 5-point power's ass every time. Um, what did you pay for it again?

Point buy is not inherently more time consuming than class/level systems. Character creation time in either type of system is dependent on the level of detail and the complexity of the chargen rules.

For example, the WEG Star Wars d6 system is point-buy, and chargen takes roughly a third as much time as standard D&D. Fewer/broader skills, simpler mechanics.

<snip>

Nevermind, misread the question.

The one thing that random character generation apologists tend to ignore is that player get an infinite number of rerolls. Every time a character dies, you can roll another, so you can effectively churn through characters until you have an above average roll. So any class or race balanced by die roll requirements, such as a Paladin, are really just a matter of persistence.

With a point buy system there is no advantage to a reroll-by-death so there is no incentive to kill off a loser character. IME this alone leads to better play.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on December 16, 2023, 07:52:20 PM
The one thing that random character generation apologists tend to ignore is that player get an infinite number of rerolls. Every time a character dies, you can roll another, so you can effectively churn through characters until you have an above average roll. So any class or race balanced by die roll requirements, such as a Paladin, are really just a matter of persistence.

With a point buy system there is no advantage to a reroll-by-death so there is no incentive to kill off a loser character. IME this alone leads to better play.

I am fine with random chargen for classic D&D. I understand why GURPS has point buy and use that. It isn't an all or nothing, or a one size fits all for every type of game or system. I randomly generated a character for WFRP 4E and had a blast playing it. I have carefully built characters for GURPS and enjoyed playing them. The whole notion that these methods must be universal across all games is a bit absurd.

My favorite PC generation system is that of Traveller.  It's a dice roll system that allows players to make choices along the way. 

IMO, point buy isn't necessarily bad but I feel that at least some randomness is creation is important.

I used an idea for D&D stat rolling for kids a few times that seemed to work well.  It worked like this:
   1. Assign a number to each stat.  1 for strength, 2 for dexterity, etc.;0
   2. Roll 5d6 and add one point to each stat for each result of the stat number that came up; ie. a result of 22356 would be Str:0 Dex:2 Con:1 Int:0 Wis:1 Cha:1.
   3. Roll 2d6 and subtract one point from each stat for each result of the stat number that came up.
   4. Final results are the stat bonuses and you can retro the base stats with the stat/bonus table.
This works really well for kids because it is even amongst the players.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on December 16, 2023, 07:52:20 PM
The one thing that random character generation apologists tend to ignore is that player get an infinite number of rerolls. Every time a character dies, you can roll another, so you can effectively churn through characters until you have an above average roll. So any class or race balanced by die roll requirements, such as a Paladin, are really just a matter of persistence.

With a point buy system there is no advantage to a reroll-by-death so there is no incentive to kill off a loser character. IME this alone leads to better play.

This is one of those complaints that ranks right up there with old school tables being exclusionary and min-maxers can't roleplay.  I hear it from time to time, but I've never seen it in 40+ years of gaming.  Sounds like something theoretical that people make up to support their preferences and not an actual observation at the table...

Point-buy systems are inherently kind of flawed because it presumes that choices can be assigned values in a way that's context-neutral. But the RPG hobby is not context-neutral. That might be possible to achieve for videogames (although rarely is everything in a videogame well-tested and tuned), but it's not possible for RPGs where the people at the table are important factors in how the game works at a fundamental level.

Even if you're playing murderhobo-style PointBuy RPG ruleset you are going to find that different GMs and different group compositions mean certain features of the game are more or less important. Your point-buy flying ability that costs 50 points doesn't do jack in an Underwater-Atlantis campaign. Your ultra-optimized warrior might be theorycrafted to be the best possible DPS in the game, but that doesn't mean anything if your group members are all focused on maximizing Stealth & Diplomacy to sneak & charm rather than fight.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on December 16, 2023, 07:52:20 PM
The one thing that random character generation apologists tend to ignore is that player get an infinite number of rerolls. Every time a character dies, you can roll another, so you can effectively churn through characters until you have an above average roll. So any class or race balanced by die roll requirements, such as a Paladin, are really just a matter of persistence.

With a point buy system there is no advantage to a reroll-by-death so there is no incentive to kill off a loser character. IME this alone leads to better play.

While I have no doubt there is some Munchkin out there who is that persistent, any table would catch that shit instantly, besides I've never heard of this being some sort of meta strat, so I call BS on this being some sort of hidden random generation downside.

I think the main reason is that you can really optimize your character. Rather than dicing and getting a 16 Strength for your Fighter, you can always get an 18, for example. It also means that your character's abilities aren't as "natural", so your fighter will always have great Strength and Constitution, but be average everywhere else. I think the importance all comes down to the kind of game you like to play.

Personally, I like 4d6 drop the lowest die roll and apply where you want. It lets you optimize a bit, while also having to work with what you get.

IMHO, it's not point buy that is the problem, but games like GURPs where you can buy disadvantages to get more points to spend on making your character more powerful. It's worse in GURPs as well because it has only the 4 stats.

Also a problem when the disadvantages end up affecting everyone, not just the character (like the enemy disadvantage, where randonly the character will get attacked by enemies during play)