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. 8) 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)
I don't like point buy for a few reasons:
- 3d6 down the line or 4d6 drop the lowest is very easy to remember and goes quickly compared to memorizing the advancement rates and options.
- If you can take disadvantages or lower stats one place to boost them in another, it encourages min-maxing and strains the boundaries of the math.
- The idea of designing the intrinsic attributes of a character just feels wrong to me. Random generation was great partially because it helped immerse players and enforce some of the worldbuilding through the experience players see at the table. A player knows Paladins are rare because it's hard to meet the requirements. With point-buy, it's impossible to convey anything about the world or even how I should think about the default stats of characters in the world.
In a game where stats matter less (AD&D 2e and prior), random generation was fine. From 3e onward, good stats can boost your success rate in your core competencies by 20-25% and the unified mechanics meant that instead of getting carved out benefits under select circumstances, a high stat gave very broad bonuses to attacks, skills, saving throws, and other stuff across the board. One of the problems I see in modern D&D design is that attributes matter a ton but designers can't make assumptions about what attributes the characters have (since any generation method might be used). A baseline swing of -10% to +20-25% chance of success on any given roll is too big to design around.
I personally use 4d6 drop the lowest when I run D&D. The worst thing about random generation in modern D&D is that you can end up with either a godly or a borderline unusable character.
What I'd probably do if I were to write my own generation method: roll dice and consult a table to get your attribute array (arrange scores as desired). The table is a bell curve - results towards the center are more evenly distributed across all attributes, while results towards the extremes look more like a min-maxer's stat block. This has the world-building effect of showing how attributes distribute unevenly, but it also means you can design adventures targeting a stat block in the center of the curve. It's also "balanced" in a sense because you can ensure the modifiers ultimately sum to the same value across the stat block. Players, especially new ones, also don't need to think too hard about their character's attributes, they'll get a functional character at the end of the process.
As an example: Top of the curve is something like 12,12,11,10,10,8 (+1 total in modern D&D), and one extreme end of the curve is maybe 18,12,10,9,8,6 (still +1 total). The numbers are just for example, you could scale the total expected attribute bonus to match the genre or game, but I think this blends the strengths of random generation and the standard array method. If we want a process more like 3d6-down-the-line, we can skip the arrange step and have the table specify the attributes in exact order. If that feels too random and we want to let people pick their character class first and foremost but still skip the arrange step, then a table can be provided per-class. That might even streamline the character creation process since all your info is on one page.
All of that is still slower than a 3d6/4d6 roll, but it guarantees a usable character at the end, simplifies math, avoids min-maxing incentives, and conveys a little bit of worldbuilding information.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 16, 2023, 09:43:26 PM
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...
Yeah, far more common in my experience is the GM just not giving a shit what the players rolled because he can always just adjust things behind the screen and feel no guilt at all about turning that "yup, I rolled straight 18s and max hp" PC into paste.
By contrast, I also don't know of a single GM who uses random rolls that uses 3d6 in order or even 4d6 drop lowest and arrange.
Most typical from my experience when the GM isn't just using the honor system is either "4d6, drop lowest, reroll 1s and 2s until they're not 1s or 2s, place in any order" or occasionally "roll 1d10+8 six times and place in any order."
By far the most common though in my experience is to use a point buy or array (with the bar none most common array I've seen from GMs being 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13; with my first exposure to that being Boy Scout summer camp in the 80's and continuing up through today).
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 17, 2023, 07:08:10 AM
I personally use 4d6 drop the lowest when I run D&D. The worst thing about random generation in modern D&D is that you can end up with either a godly or a borderline unusable character.
What I'd probably do if I were to write my own generation method: roll dice and consult a table to get your attribute array (arrange scores as desired). The table is a bell curve - results towards the center are more evenly distributed across all attributes, while results towards the extremes look more like a min-maxer's stat block. This has the world-building effect of showing how attributes distribute unevenly, but it also means you can design adventures targeting a stat block in the center of the curve. It's also "balanced" in a sense because you can ensure the modifiers ultimately sum to the same value across the stat block. Players, especially new ones, also don't need to think too hard about their character's attributes, they'll get a functional character at the end of the process.
As an example: Top of the curve is something like 12,12,11,10,10,8 (+1 total in modern D&D), and one extreme end of the curve is maybe 18,12,10,9,8,6 (still +1 total). The numbers are just for example, you could scale the total expected attribute bonus to match the genre or game, but I think this blends the strengths of random generation and the standard array method. If we want a process more like 3d6-down-the-line, we can skip the arrange step and have the table specify the attributes in exact order. If that feels too random and we want to let people pick their character class first and foremost but still skip the arrange step, then a table can be provided per-class. That might even streamline the character creation process since all your info is on one page.
All of that is still slower than a 3d6/4d6 roll, but it guarantees a usable character at the end, simplifies math, avoids min-maxing incentives, and conveys a little bit of worldbuilding information.
I think this is an interesting idea, especially when you consider that if a Fighter's strongest stat is STR, someone with a wimpy 8 wouldn't even bother becoming a Fighter. As for the slow part, I don't think this would be too much slower than random generation.
One method I adapted from the Dragon Age RPG was rolling down the line, but once you're done rolling you can swap one score with another. That way if you got a 17 INT and an 8 STR, but you really had your heart set on playing a Fighter, you can swap those scores. In a lot of ways you can still get random scores, but you have enough control to play what you want.
In classic D&D random attributes worked fine because attributes were not so connected to static bonuses that affected every aspect of play. You could play a cleric with a 12 Wisdom and be perfectly capable. Over time more and more importance was heaped on stats until high stats became mandatory for success in anything. This escalation in stat importance was mapped closely with the diminished importance of player input mattering to the outcome of play. The "game" becoming just an exercise in play acting as all matters relating to successful outcomes were transferred to the character sheet at that point.
Quote from: Socratic-DM on December 16, 2023, 04:52:34 PM
...character creation can take forever depending on the concept...
...it can sometimes be prone to jank or powergaming depending on the group...
A point buy system is prone to jank or powergaming for sure, but I think that's dependent on the developers, not the groups. If you have a system with loose stat mods you probably don't get anything out of point buy, and that's how B/X or Worlds Without Numbers is set up. WWN is sure to give you a 14 (the smallest stat possible for a +1 modifier) to at least one stat. If you have a system in the 3.0 style, where each point or second point has ramifications to a decent number of rolls, then point buy becomes more important.
If you run 5e, not only do you have the 3.0 stat progression which almost demands a point buy, you also have the ability to, as you level, either gain stats or gain feats. Meaning if you start with the stats you need, you can spam feats- an incredibly huge advantage.
Basically, if your system is tight and demands balance, then you need point buy, and the attribute spread is about your character's interaction in the game world with the rules. A loose stat system, as almost the entire OSR is all about, is about mapping your character's stats in a realistic way.
Which one is better? I think the older method is better, overall, but they both have their merits.
Quote from: Grognard GM on December 16, 2023, 05:09:30 PM
I hate random char gen....
I'm not even totally against a mixture of the two. ... with initial stats being a modifier plus random roll. It's kind of a controlled randomness.
So you like it just fine, your problem is with the variance of it, because something like "3d6 down the line" or "4d6 drop lowest" will generate really wild ass nonsense like 10% of the time, and as such many tables will often have wild ass nonsense at them. I'm glad you got in with a first post on this because in most of these conversations, the position of "your point pool is N+1d6" is buried deep, despite being something I've seen time to time for years. The player rolling low on this still has a viable character with whatever the max in his favorite stat, and the one rolling high can kinda break a bit of the boundaries without being wild like starting with three 16s or two 17s or whatever.
I think the biggest difference between point buy and random rolls is, do you want to play the preconceived character in your head or do you want to play the character the dice give you? Where "you" is really what the group and the GM want, since it should generally be the same for everyone at the table. There's nothing inherently wrong with either approach. They can even play very similar in some cases. I think the biggest difference are on the edges.
For example, if you've got a group of players that are constantly wanting to try new things, always have half a dozen ideas in their heads of what they want to play next, and tend to use mood, other players ideas, etc. to introduce almost some randomness to their character concept--then point buy is great. The randomness is all in the concept, and then the point buy is used to realize the concept. Such players tend to not push the boundaries of the system they are using. OTOH, if you have players that are quite willing to explore some new ideas giving a prod, but they need that prod to get started, then random is better. Not only are they likely to get out of ruts, they are likely do so in ways that even the other players with half a dozen ideas might not have tried.
The less likely death is to occur, the more useful point buy is. Likewise, the more likely death is to occur, the more useful random gen is. This isn't only in the negative sense of getting your lousy generated character killed, though even that has a positive aspect. I've never seen someone suicide a character with bad stats. I have seen multiple times a character with bad random stats get played aggressively on the grounds of "make something of this character quickly or die trying." This has interesting side effects on party dynamics, and is seldom the kind of notion you'll see in a crafted concept with point buy. Moreover, the statistical likelihood of death also relates directly to the time you are likely to spend with the character. A rough edge that you can't do much about is more palatable if you know you may not keep that character forever, and if you do happen to live, it even takes on kind of a badge of honor.
Note that random generation and point buy are only one way in which these dynamics can manifest. Random hit points at low level is arguably a bigger deal in some systems. Systems with life paths that are partially random have their own aspects.
Finally, I think what can happen after character generation is more important than the first pass. It's easier in GURPS, for example, to fix a mistake in the initial character, because you just spend more points. That would be true even if you used some house ruled random generation to start. It's also easier in GURPS for characters to become very similar as they get points, unless this is policed somehow by the group. Whereas something like early D&D will be a lot more palatable to many that otherwise wouldn't like it, if there were more ways to improve the character's abilities as they went (never mind those that don't care, since the level increase is much more important that the stats).
For all of these reasons, I prefer random generation at start, with some key, meaningful player choices factored in, to give a mix of preconceived concept and rolling with what the randomness gives. Then I also prefer that the system have built into it (math, model, etc.) similar meaningful chances to improve on the random bits as the game progresses.
My own preference is for a random roll with a relatively bounded set of results. I've started running my OSR-like games using 1d6+1d4+6 as the attribute roll, technically a range of 8-16, but most rolls come out in the 9-13 range, and then I let people boost an attribute every 3 levels or so. I wouldn't use that for 3rd-5th edition though. Like others said, those games presume higher attribute modifiers.
If you're not going to roll attributes, then I feel like just using a "standard array" makes more sense than point buy. It's faster and lets you to control the amount of min-maxing the players can do.
I run GURPS 4/e - for at least 20 years now - got no problem with 'point buy' systems.
However, I am not 'great' at math and don't expect my players to be either.
With GURPS what has been a minor godsend is that program called 'GURPS Character Assistant ' (GCA).
With the GCA I can choose from a template in there and then if a player is in the same room with me or sitting near me at the screen they can customize the character to their liking when its first created.
As to the other issues like 'power gaming' or unbalanced characters - I nip that in the bud from the very beginning. The players are told that the skills assortment should be reasonable and plausible, anything unusual has to be justified by an interesting back story. Of course with GURPs an interestying back story gives you disadvantages, quirks, and advantages that make the character more interesting.
Heck, take Captain Christopher Pike - "Likes To Cook" makes a mildly interesting quirk on a character sheet.
-Ed C.
Every design decision is about pros and cons. For every fault that can be found (real or imagined) in Point Buy something else (sometimes similar) can be pointed out of Random Generation. It's all a matter of implementation and what you want out of the game.
If you want customization and fine tuning your character, there's no amount "but what about teh powergaemrz!" Or "character creation takes too long!" is gonna change the fact that random generation sucks for that purpose. Plus there are ways around those issues, some of which have already been brought up, such as templates, or the GM putting their big boy pants on and saying "NO!" to certain things during character creation. So some of these cons of point buy are really just "cons" if you let them be, or if the system is designed badly.
I like point buy in principle, but in practice I find it doesn't work too well.
I've experienced two problems. The first is once you figure it out, there's a right way and a wrong way to design an effective character. Given the same point budget, someone who knows what they are doing will have a much better character than someone who is just trying to realize the concept. The second is that it's sometimes very difficult to realize a concept within a budget, and this isn't necessarily a concept that is over powered. Just that it ends up costing too many points to have mechanical fiddly bits that represent the fiction you want to convey.
I haven't come across a single point buy system, and I've looked at many, that satisfactorily solves either, let alone both, of these problems.
Quote from: migo on December 17, 2023, 04:32:45 PM
I like point buy in principle, but in practice I find it doesn't work too well.
I've experienced two problems. The first is once you figure it out, there's a right way and a wrong way to design an effective character. Given the same point budget, someone who knows what they are doing will have a much better character than someone who is just trying to realize the concept. The second is that it's sometimes very difficult to realize a concept within a budget, and this isn't necessarily a concept that is over powered. Just that it ends up costing too many points to have mechanical fiddly bits that represent the fiction you want to convey.
I haven't come across a single point buy system, and I've looked at many, that satisfactorily solves either, let alone both, of these problems.
I haven't come across a single random generation system that satisfactorily solves either of these problems either. Which is why I mentioned in my post above that "For every fault that can be found (real or imagined) in Point Buy something else (
sometimes similar) can be pointed out of Random Generation."
Every single time that threads come up where people nitpick some aspect of point buy systems. The issues brought up are almost invariably: things that also apply to random generation (or just about EVERY system out there), or stuff that's a matter of inevitable give & take/pros & cons of game design (where something's gotta give regardless, so you have to make up your mind about what you want most: the design option, or to avoid the issue you don't like. But you can't have both).
Quote from: Socratic-DM on December 16, 2023, 04:52:34 PM
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.
Yes, that plus player regret. If you choose X and Y, then when X turns out to be useless and Z turns out to be needed you regret it. In its most benign form this is simple player disappointment. But it can turn nasty, where the player gets annoyed with the system or the DM, "but you didn't
tell me X was useless and I needed Z!" Whereas if they rolled it up, they just shrug and move on, it's just the character generation of rolling minimum damage in every hit in a combat - shit happens.
For newbies, your two points also combine with my third. If someone's new to our game group, especially if they're new to gaming, we want to things to be
accessible. Rolling for everything is accessible, having to choose is not. That's because the choices require knowledge of the game system and/or campaign world - but the newbie, by definition, does not have this knowledge. So if you want to get new people in your game group and expand the hobby generally, you want systems which lean towards random roll.
Remember too that even if you have a well-established game group which somehow never sees anyone move house, change careers, have children and so on and thus have to move on, you also want their gaming to be acceptable to the people in their life. It's hard for Jen to come game if her husband Bob thinks it's demonic, or overly-complex nonsense, or the books cost more than their monthly groceries, or whatever. He's going to hassle her every week as the game session comes up, and she's going to start associating her game session with marital troubles, and eventually stop coming. But if it's obviously harmless, accessible and cheap, then Bob will at least put up with it as, as he sees it, an eccentricity of his otherwise perfect wife.
And so the best gaming is one which is accessible and understandable not only to actual gamers, but lots of other people, too. Random rolls is not always but tends to be more accessible and understandable.
So where someone like Pundit or me implies that point-buy is inherently bad, that's the unspoken assumption there: we want to expand the hobby and make newbies and current gamers
both feel welcome and comfortable.
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 05:59:22 PM
Quote from: migo on December 17, 2023, 04:32:45 PM
I like point buy in principle, but in practice I find it doesn't work too well.
I've experienced two problems. The first is once you figure it out, there's a right way and a wrong way to design an effective character. Given the same point budget, someone who knows what they are doing will have a much better character than someone who is just trying to realize the concept. The second is that it's sometimes very difficult to realize a concept within a budget, and this isn't necessarily a concept that is over powered. Just that it ends up costing too many points to have mechanical fiddly bits that represent the fiction you want to convey.
I haven't come across a single point buy system, and I've looked at many, that satisfactorily solves either, let alone both, of these problems.
I haven't come across a single random generation system that satisfactorily solves either of these problems either. Which is why I mentioned in my post above that "For every fault that can be found (real or imagined) in Point Buy something else (sometimes similar) can be pointed out of Random Generation."
Every single time that threads come up where people nitpick some aspect of point buy systems. The issues brought up are almost invariably: things that also apply to random generation (or just about EVERY system out there), or stuff that's a matter of inevitable give & take/pros & cons of game design (where something's gotta give regardless, so you have to make up your mind about what you want most: the design option, or to avoid the issue you don't like. But you can't have both).
With random generation, you're not expecting to be able to make a character according to your wishes. So the second point is automatically a non-issue. The first point, yeah, you can have character imbalance with random generation, but there you only have one issue to solve, not two.
Point buy for Dungeons and Dragons is bad because the system is built on the random method, and characters with powerful stats will be rare due to dice odds. Which is an assinie approach because players generally want a competent character, and will wheedle, cajole, and sometimes outright cheat to get a "good" character. That's why I tend to favor the Stat Array method in most cases. Here's your stats, now shut up and play.
Point buy systems in other games have their issues mentioned in this thread, but also have the advantage of being accounted for from the beginning. If you're playing Champions, you know what you're getting into, and the rulebooks mention power gaming and how the GM should keep that in mind during character creation.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 17, 2023, 11:10:54 AM
In classic D&D random attributes worked fine because attributes were not so connected to static bonuses that affected every aspect of play. You could play a cleric with a 12 Wisdom and be perfectly capable. Over time more and more importance was heaped on stats until high stats became mandatory for success in anything. This escalation in stat importance was mapped closely with the diminished importance of player input mattering to the outcome of play. The "game" becoming just an exercise in play acting as all matters relating to successful outcomes were transferred to the character sheet at that point.
Insightful. Now for those who don't know:
In AD&D1e, you need Wisdom 9 to be a cleric at all. You need Wisdom 17 to cast 6th level spells. But Wisdom 9-16 can cast up to 5th level spells, once the right class level has been achieved. Clerics don't get access to 6th level spells until 11th level, which requires 675,001 experience points - so the spell level limit wouldn't be an issue for quite a while. And it would of course not stop them, as they levelled up, getting more spells each day of 5th and lower levels, more hit points, better saving throws and so on.
Wisdom 9 gave you a 20% chance of spell failure; 10 a 15%, 11 a 10% and 12 a 5%, with 13+ no chance. 13+ also gave you extra spells to cast each day. So while 13+ was a big advantage (casting two spells at first level instead of one helps a lot!) it wasn't crucial.
Intelligence 9 was likewise necessary to be a magic-user. Since 10 was needed for 5th level spells, 12 for 6th, 14 for 7th and so on, an Int 9 character would most crucially feel this limit at 9th level, where 5th level spells were normally needed. Learning new spells for the Int 9 MU would be a slow process, with only a 35% chance of understanding a new one encountered, rising to 45% at Int 10-12, 55% at 13-14 and so on. The Int 9 MU's minimum number of spells known each level is only 4, and their maximum 6.
Strength 9 is needed for a Fighter. Damage bonus of +1 doesn't appear until Str 16, and a to-hit bonus of +1 at Str 17. But even with 18/xx Strength being common, the character's
level was always a bigger factor. The best possible bonus is with 18/00 strength, giving +3 to hit and +6 damage. But a fighter gets effectively a +1 to hit
each level (the chart has +2 every 2 levels, but we can assume that was more to keep the chart a sensible size, and simply interpolate it as +1 each level). Damage does not increase with level, but while the Strength to-hit bonus is limited to +3, the level to-hit bonus is not. And so in just a few levels, the level of the Fighter is a far bigger factor than their Strength.
Likewise Thieves and Dexterity. There are some maluses to Thief abilities at Dex 12 and below, and bonuses from 16 on. But their abilities go up on average 5% each level, and so not many levels pass before Dex becomes minimal in importance. The greater possible effect would be the missile weapon to-hit bonus coming in from Dex 16, and the AC bonus from Dex 15. But again, the to-hit bonus from Dex will be eclipsed by that from going up levels (+2 by levels 5-8), and as for AC, a thief should not be getting themselves into direct combats in any event, their job is to sneak and ambush.
And so we see that in AD&D 1st edition, attributes are of low importance. Level will be a greater factor, and in order to achieve those levels, player wits.
I think it depends on expectations and system. I played a LOT of CHAMPIONS in the 80s and 90s. But we also played Villains & Vigilantes. It was a different experience, but both were enjoyable.
I recently ran my young (~30) 5e players through Lion & Dragon, using 3d6 for stats in order. They actually really enjoyed it, with one of them describing it as "D&D Hard Mode". In 5e, since they were mostly completely new to RPGs, we used the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 ) plus racial mods, for each.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 06:52:49 PM
Strength 9 is needed for a Fighter. Damage bonus of +1 doesn't appear until Str 16, and a to-hit bonus of +1 at Str 17. But even with 18/xx Strength being common, the character's level was always a bigger factor. The best possible bonus is with 18/00 strength, giving +3 to hit and +6 damage. But a fighter gets effectively a +1 to hit each level (the chart has +2 every 2 levels, but we can assume that was more to keep the chart a sensible size, and simply interpolate it as +1 each level). Damage does not increase with level, but while the Strength to-hit bonus is limited to +3, the level to-hit bonus is not. And so in just a few levels, the level of the Fighter is a far bigger factor than their Strength.
I disagree with the fighter analysis, specifically because you brought up percentile strength. There's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
The issue is that +3/+6 is absolutely
monstrous compared to no bonus. Fighters get multiple attacks, and that +6 to damage applies to all of them, so that distortion starts high and then gets a multiplier later. Additionally, fighters don't gain access to bigger damage dice as they level- the damage is mostly tied to the weapon. The +3 to hit is also quite substantial, and if one character has +8 to hit and the other has +11, you know that second character is dealing a lot more damage.
Anyway if you're dealing 1d8 damage and hitting 60% of the time, adding +3/+6 to that is nearly
triple damage.
Of course, other stats don't have this problem. You're correct about them. But adding all this nonsense to strength specifically and then pretending that it will only happen some vanishingly small percent is
extremely weird.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 06:10:27 PM
For newbies, your two points also combine with my third. If someone's new to our game group, especially if they're new to gaming, we want to things to be accessible. Rolling for everything is accessible, having to choose is not. That's because the choices require knowledge of the game system and/or campaign world - but the newbie, by definition, does not have this knowledge. So if you want to get new people in your game group and expand the hobby generally, you want systems which lean towards random roll.
Sounds like a skill issue.
I've never had problems teasing a player concept out of the player, and guiding them with ways to build what they envision.
"What looks good? Soldier eh? Do you see them as a sniper, infantry, heavy weapons?
Sniper? Cool. There's a feat for having improved vision, interested? Would you rather have a rifle with a lower calibre but semi-auto, or a hard hitting bolt action?" Etc.
If the GM knows the system well, asking the player questions and then guiding them with suggestions is no big deal. You get to see the character emerge before your eyes.
Quote from: Venka on December 17, 2023, 07:52:31 PMI disagree with the fighter analysis, specifically because you brought up percentile strength.
It's not usually an issue with the most common generation method of 4d6 drop lowest. There's only a 9.34% chance of even getting a single 18 (https://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/) with that method, and that'd still require the DM allow rearranging, otherwise it becomes a 1.6% chance of getting Str 18.
Further, there is only a 1% chance of that percentile Strength being 00. 50% will have +1/+3, 25% +2/+3, 15% +2/+4, 9% +2/+5, and only 1% +3//+6.
Putting these two together, and you're concerning yourself with the instance of 1% of 1.6 to 9.3% of characters, or 1 in 1,000 to 6,000 of all characters. However serious an issue, it just wouldn't be that common.
QuoteThere's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
Ah, you're one of
those guys. Realism in a game about... dungeons and... dragons. Rightyo. Start shaving your neck, mate, and please discard the fedora.
In my experience, any male bringing up this "issue" (and it's always a male, though rarely a very masculine one) has nothing else intelligent to contribute to the conversation. And further perusal of your comments confirms this is so, that you are speaking more from reading AD&D1e than playing it.
QuoteFighters get multiple attacks, and that +6 to damage applies to all of them
All fighters get level attacks per round against monsters of fewer than 1 hit die. Most of them will have fewer than 6 hit points, vs the 1-6 or more of even a non-magical weapon wielded by a Fighter with Strength 9, and so the Strength bonus is neither here nor there.
Fighters of 1st to 6th levels get 1 attack per melee round. Those of 7th-12th, 3/2. 13th and up, 2/round. As noted earlier, it will take quite a while to achieve something like 7th level, and there are few campaigns where anyone has gone from 1st to 13th level (I realise that 20 year campaigns are as common on the internet as men who can bench 400lbs, but back in the real world, both are rare). Somewhere along the way the fighter is going to acquire magical items making a +1 or +2 here or there from their attributes rather a moot point.
But let's assume for a moment your concerns about high Strength are valid.
If that is so,
then it is better to have random roll than point-buy - because the problem will be far less common. And random roll vs point-buy is after all the point of the thread, though apparently you have other more important concerns, like the idea of fictional wimminz in a fictional game world with fictional physics being stronger than your puny self.
Quote from: migo on December 17, 2023, 06:34:55 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 05:59:22 PM*snip*
With random generation, you're not expecting to be able to make a character according to your wishes. So the second point is automatically a non-issue. The first point, yeah, you can have character imbalance with random generation, but there you only have one issue to solve, not two.
Even with random generation, you might still want to build a character a certain way, it's just that the system doesn't allow you to, or limits your options. So it can still be an issue (which I've personally had, or dealt with player who had it), it's just you can do nothing about it. Ever.
But with point buy you at least have more control over your character, even if you can't get 100% what you want out of the gate. But you might still get it eventually. And the GM might even make adjustments or concessions to get it right away.
Sometimes you have to manage your expectations. And it's unrealistic to expect a system to automatically accommodate every conceivable concept out of the box without adapting it to a particular setting or circumstance (maybe the GM could hand out extra points specifically for non-combat/adventuring "background" abilities, for example). Or waiting till you have enough points to get every ability you want.
The "issue" here is ultimately that you want something that you can actually eventually have. But you want to have it right away. That's a much better issue to have than not being able to get it ever.
Quote from: Venka on December 17, 2023, 07:52:31 PM
I disagree with the fighter analysis, specifically because you brought up percentile strength. There's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
The issue is that +3/+6 is absolutely monstrous compared to no bonus.
Quote from: Venka on December 17, 2023, 07:52:31 PM
Of course, other stats don't have this problem. You're correct about them. But adding all this nonsense to strength specifically and then pretending that it will only happen some vanishingly small percent is extremely weird.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 10:03:59 PM
But let's assume for a moment your concerns about high Strength are valid. If that is so, then it is better to have random roll than point-buy - because the problem will be far less common. And random roll vs point-buy is after all the point of the thread, though apparently you have other more important concerns, like the idea of fictional wimminz in a fictional game world with fictional physics being stronger than your puny self.
That reads like you're thinking that the issue is "PCs shouldn't have high stats". But that isn't inherently a problem. I've had plenty of games (especially point-buy ones) where the PCs all are exceptional with high attributes - and it hasn't been a problem.
A potential problem for point-buy is mini-maxing - where the PCs are boring because they're all narrowly focused on only the most useful skills and abilities. Like the killer swordsman who puts all his points into stats and Sword skill. And I've seen this in a few games, but I've also been in plenty of games where this wasn't a problem - because the GM and the players reined in power-gamers by saying "no" rather than allowing rules hacking.
An issue specific to random-roll is the possibility that one player rolls terribly, and another player rolls great - and the high-rolling PC then overshadows the other PC for the rest of the campaign. I've also seen this, but I've also seen plenty of games were it wasn't a problem. I don't particularly like rules that gives even greater advantages to lucky rollers, like qualifying for special classes (like Ranger) and getting a 10% boost on experience in addition to the ability bonuses themselves. I think a bit of flexibility of DMs allowing some rerolling for unlucky players can soften this enough though.
With random-roll, I prefer it to be genuinely random - like Traveller or HarnMaster. (I also in theory might prefer roll-in-order OSR or basic, but I haven't tried that much. My old-school D&D was AD&D1, where we usually did Method I.)
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on December 17, 2023, 02:41:56 PM
The less likely death is to occur, the more useful point buy is. Likewise, the more likely death is to occur, the more useful random gen is. This isn't only in the negative sense of getting your lousy generated character killed, though even that has a positive aspect. I've never seen someone suicide a character with bad stats. I have seen multiple times a character with bad random stats get played aggressively on the grounds of "make something of this character quickly or die trying." This has interesting side effects on party dynamics, and is seldom the kind of notion you'll see in a crafted concept with point buy. Moreover, the statistical likelihood of death also relates directly to the time you are likely to spend with the character. A rough edge that you can't do much about is more palatable if you know you may not keep that character forever, and if you do happen to live, it even takes on kind of a badge of honor.
This is so true. I'm running an AD&D game right now. In the game there are two warriors: A ranger who rolled an 18/40 Strength and a Fighter with a Strength of 12 (none of his stats are higher than 12). I allowed 4d6 drop the lowest and reroll 1s. His stats still sucked. I offered to let him re-roll the guy, but he decided to keep it, after his last PC- a character with awesome stats, died due to poison the previous adventure. He thought maybe this guy would be lucky. The player wanted to make a bard, but he couldn't qualify for bard.
So, that was months ago. He's liking the character and it has been a "badge of honor" for him to play this character, with the worst ability scores in the group, who is the 2nd best warrior in the party- and kills a ton of things regardless. It's created an interesting dynamic!
Quote from: Venka on December 17, 2023, 07:52:31 PM
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 06:52:49 PM
Strength 9 is needed for a Fighter. Damage bonus of +1 doesn't appear until Str 16, and a to-hit bonus of +1 at Str 17. But even with 18/xx Strength being common, the character's level was always a bigger factor. The best possible bonus is with 18/00 strength, giving +3 to hit and +6 damage. But a fighter gets effectively a +1 to hit each level (the chart has +2 every 2 levels, but we can assume that was more to keep the chart a sensible size, and simply interpolate it as +1 each level). Damage does not increase with level, but while the Strength to-hit bonus is limited to +3, the level to-hit bonus is not. And so in just a few levels, the level of the Fighter is a far bigger factor than their Strength.
I disagree with the fighter analysis, specifically because you brought up percentile strength. There's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
The issue is that +3/+6 is absolutely monstrous compared to no bonus. Fighters get multiple attacks, and that +6 to damage applies to all of them, so that distortion starts high and then gets a multiplier later. Additionally, fighters don't gain access to bigger damage dice as they level- the damage is mostly tied to the weapon. The +3 to hit is also quite substantial, and if one character has +8 to hit and the other has +11, you know that second character is dealing a lot more damage.
Anyway if you're dealing 1d8 damage and hitting 60% of the time, adding +3/+6 to that is nearly triple damage.
Of course, other stats don't have this problem. You're correct about them. But adding all this nonsense to strength specifically and then pretending that it will only happen some vanishingly small percent is extremely weird.
Exceptional STR was the scourge of TSR D&D since the publication of the Greyhawk supplement in 1975. I don't care about the male vs female STR issue just the concept of exceptional STR at all. The mere inclusion of it in the PHB means that players will see it and want to have it, just as they do the classes that require qualification. Despite the fact that the odds of rolling exceptional STR are low if a fair chargen method is used, players will still feel entitled to it simply because it exists. This leads to players of fighters feeling useless if they do not have it. It is even worse when you have one fighter character with a 17 STR and another with an 18/96 in the same party. The lower STR fighter might feel like a henchman.
In addition, these huge bonuses throw off the math considerably. For some reason, a PC gets a monstrous STR that not even the monster it is based on gets. A fighter with 18/00 is considered to have Ogre STR and gets a +6 damage on all melee attacks, meanwhile an actual Ogre gets 1d10 damage. Now where did the ogre's +6 to damage go?
All of this crap is why I prefer OD&D (sans GH), or classic B/X.
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 02:57:33 AM
because the GM and the players reined in power-gamers by saying "no" rather than allowing rules hacking.
I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but there needs to be a name for this general form of argument - that problems can be resolved by the GM or players mitigating a problem via the social contract as opposed to the rules. Even in a dysfunctional group, a sufficiently authoritative GM could simply quash any debate and resolve an issue by fiat to keep play moving. My perspective on that argument is that it doesn't really go anywhere. Pointing out that there are intentional gaps or unforeseen situations in the rules or in the fiction which need GM arbitration is fine. Suggesting that the group can figure out a solution to a problem the game itself introduced is not an acceptable answer for a ruleset, in my view. See PVP Combat rules and the related controversy regarding Candela Obscura.
Some rulesets avoid or mitigate their issues in their fundamental structure rather than inviting these kinds of disputes in the first place. The rules can serve many purposes and one of these might be to establish a sane initial consensus (or provide options for sane starting points) or even to design the problem away in the first place. The better the ruleset, the less weight falls on the shoulders of the GM to establish and maintain that consensus (a major problem in D&D).
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
Quote from: Socratic-DM on December 16, 2023, 04:52:34 PM 1. character creation can take forever depending on the concept,
2. it can sometimes be prone to jank or powergaming depending on the group.
1: Point buy should not take forever. You only have so many points to spend and you are going to have to prioritize.
2: With 5e not as much as it has some built in limiters.
2e RPGA used a point buy system. I'd have to dig out my old booklet but if recall right it used a 1 for 1 system and gave you a freakishly high amount of points. More than one would ever expect. Think it was like 75 or more points. Enough to get 12s across the board. Sufficient to start with 3 stats 18 and 3 at 6 if went full on about it.
Theres nothing wrong with point buy. It evens the field and with a proper system like 5e has, curbs the worst of min/maxing. Older systems not so much so.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
As time has gone on I've grown rather negative towards attributes that only serve as base modifiers for the actual checks and think a lot of issues could be solved if you just replaced them with more "skill" points and higher level 1 caps for the skills.
Want a strong fighter? Put your skills into Fitness and Melee. Want a smart wizard? Put your skills into Arcana and Lore. Etc.
If you must have Racial attribute-like adjustments, just make them at the skill level; Dwarves get bonuses to Fitness and Engineering, Halflings to Acrobatics and Stealth, Elves to Archery and Lore. etc.
The best RPGs I've played all used point buys. The worst RPGs I've played also used point buy.
I am not a huge fan of rolled stats. They encourage all sorts of bad player behavior, it's not that fast, the characters which come out of it don't actually feel that different from point buy or standard arrays, and the needless exposure to RNG consistently goofs with game balance and quite often with party composition, too. I don't understand why anyone would play this way beyond one-offs, but if you insist on being a fool, it's your game to ruin.
Point buys (especially non-OSR point buys) can wind up going off the rails level of crunchy. The biggest problem a point buy system can have is that it takes ice ages to put a character together and you either need to have a dedicated Session Zero or players just bring completed characters. However, this is by no means a universal problem in point buy systems (in fact, it's the exception). Good point buy systems are some of the fastest and most flexible character creation systems out there. It's not that hard to not goof them up, either; a unified point pool is usually what sinks these games, so you just don't take Attribute Points and Skill or Feat points out of the same point pool.
Problem solved.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2023, 10:01:06 AM
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
As time has gone on I've grown rather negative towards attributes that only serve as base modifiers for the actual checks and think a lot of issues could be solved if you just replaced them with more "skill" points and higher level 1 caps for the skills.
Want a strong fighter? Put your skills into Fitness and Melee. Want a smart wizard? Put your skills into Arcana and Lore. Etc.
If you must have Racial attribute-like adjustments, just make them at the skill level; Dwarves get bonuses to Fitness and Engineering, Halflings to Acrobatics and Stealth, Elves to Archery and Lore. etc.
There is a big advantage to such a system though: it provides a measure of niche protection. If you have a high strength, frex, it makes sense to get mostly strength based skills because you have a bonus to all of them. Lack of niche protection is often cited as a disadvantage of skill based vs class based games. This is one way to get around that.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 02:57:33 AM
because the GM and the players reined in power-gamers by saying "no" rather than allowing rules hacking.
I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but there needs to be a name for this general form of argument - that problems can be resolved by the GM or players mitigating a problem via the social contract as opposed to the rules. Even in a dysfunctional group, a sufficiently authoritative GM could simply quash any debate and resolve an issue by fiat to keep play moving. My perspective on that argument is that it doesn't really go anywhere. Pointing out that there are intentional gaps or unforeseen situations in the rules or in the fiction which need GM arbitration is fine. Suggesting that the group can figure out a solution to a problem the game itself introduced is not an acceptable answer for a ruleset, in my view. See PVP Combat rules and the related controversy regarding Candela Obscura.
Some rulesets avoid or mitigate their issues in their fundamental structure rather than inviting these kinds of disputes in the first place. The rules can serve many purposes and one of these might be to establish a sane initial consensus (or provide options for sane starting points) or even to design the problem away in the first place. The better the ruleset, the less weight falls on the shoulders of the GM to establish and maintain that consensus (a major problem in D&D).
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
The issue with this is that there are certain problems that are going to exist regardless. And the only way around them is GM fiat and/or establishing their own campaign guidelines to fit their circumstances.
In the specific issue jhkim was addressing, for example, power disparities are going to exist regardless of whether point buy or random generation are used. The idea of "pOwEr GaMeRs" is also extremely subjective, and there's next to no objective measures to properly anticipate exactly what ability combinations might be an "issue" in actual play, or which combinations any given group will take issue with. The designers can't determine that for the group. All they can do is try to mitigate the most egregious and obvious examples as best they can. Which admittedly they don't always do well—for any system, including random gen+class & level ones.
Otherwise the only way around it is for the GM to step in and set their own limits for their game. Cuz the game designers can't anticipate what every game group's peeves are going to be when it comes to ability selection. Or what sort of standards any GM might want for their campaign when it comes to players building their character. Some might focus more on "background skills", while others might handwave them. But how important background skill vs combat/adventuring/power gamey skill selection is considered to be (and how many points they might need to round those out in a point buy game) is going to vary from game group to game group.
Quote from: Mishihari on December 18, 2023, 10:23:57 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2023, 10:01:06 AM
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
As time has gone on I've grown rather negative towards attributes that only serve as base modifiers for the actual checks and think a lot of issues could be solved if you just replaced them with more "skill" points and higher level 1 caps for the skills.
Want a strong fighter? Put your skills into Fitness and Melee. Want a smart wizard? Put your skills into Arcana and Lore. Etc.
If you must have Racial attribute-like adjustments, just make them at the skill level; Dwarves get bonuses to Fitness and Engineering, Halflings to Acrobatics and Stealth, Elves to Archery and Lore. etc.
There is a big advantage to such a system though: it provides a measure of niche protection. If you have a high strength, frex, it makes sense to get mostly strength based skills because you have a bonus to all of them. Lack of niche protection is often cited as a disadvantage of skill based vs class based games. This is one way to get around that.
The trick there is you need to have the attributes hold equal value.
When all Strength does is melee attacks and lifting things with just the Athletics skill associated with it, and then the system also allows you to use Dex for melee attacks for just a net -1 to damage, and also applies to Ranged Attacks, Armor Class, Acrobatics and Thievery and Stealth, and avoiding some of the most common spells... and the lifting things is almost never important because they set the Encumbrance values so that even average Strength can carry 150 pounds of stuff without being slowed down because most players can't be bothered to track equipment...
Why the heck would you ever take Strength in such a system? (yes, this is exactly how 5e handles it which is just one of the reasons 5e sucks).
By contrast if instead, Melee, Ranged, Agility, Fitness, Thievery and Stealth were all separate skills and, say, fighters get proficiency in Melee, Ranged, Fitness and a choice of one other skill, while Rogues get Agility, Thievery, Stealth and a choice of one other skill... you'd still have the niche protection without having to worry about entire categories (attributes) needing to be balanced with each other. The fighter doesn't need a High Dex in addition to Strength to be good with both melee and ranged attacks... his skills take care of that for him.
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 10:34:20 PM
Quote from: migo on December 17, 2023, 06:34:55 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 05:59:22 PM*snip*
With random generation, you're not expecting to be able to make a character according to your wishes. So the second point is automatically a non-issue. The first point, yeah, you can have character imbalance with random generation, but there you only have one issue to solve, not two.
Even with random generation, you might still want to build a character a certain way, it's just that the system doesn't allow you to, or limits your options. So it can still be an issue (which I've personally had, or dealt with player who had it), it's just you can do nothing about it. Ever.
But with point buy you at least have more control over your character, even if you can't get 100% what you want out of the gate. But you might still get it eventually. And the GM might even make adjustments or concessions to get it right away.
Sometimes you have to manage your expectations. And it's unrealistic to expect a system to automatically accommodate every conceivable concept out of the box without adapting it to a particular setting or circumstance (maybe the GM could hand out extra points specifically for non-combat/adventuring "background" abilities, for example). Or waiting till you have enough points to get every ability you want.
The "issue" here is ultimately that you want something that you can actually eventually have. But you want to have it right away. That's a much better issue to have than not being able to get it ever.
Sure it's an inherent problem of random generation, but it's not an inherent problem of random generation failing at its stated goal. Point buy, on the other hand fails at its stated goal. You move from random generation to point buy being expected to create the exact character you envisioned, and you still can't.
Quote from: migo on December 18, 2023, 11:10:42 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 10:34:20 PM
Quote from: migo on December 17, 2023, 06:34:55 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 05:59:22 PM*snip*
With random generation, you're not expecting to be able to make a character according to your wishes. So the second point is automatically a non-issue. The first point, yeah, you can have character imbalance with random generation, but there you only have one issue to solve, not two.
Even with random generation, you might still want to build a character a certain way, it's just that the system doesn't allow you to, or limits your options. So it can still be an issue (which I've personally had, or dealt with player who had it), it's just you can do nothing about it. Ever.
But with point buy you at least have more control over your character, even if you can't get 100% what you want out of the gate. But you might still get it eventually. And the GM might even make adjustments or concessions to get it right away.
Sometimes you have to manage your expectations. And it's unrealistic to expect a system to automatically accommodate every conceivable concept out of the box without adapting it to a particular setting or circumstance (maybe the GM could hand out extra points specifically for non-combat/adventuring "background" abilities, for example). Or waiting till you have enough points to get every ability you want.
The "issue" here is ultimately that you want something that you can actually eventually have. But you want to have it right away. That's a much better issue to have than not being able to get it ever.
Sure it's an inherent problem of random generation, but it's not an inherent problem of random generation failing at its stated goal. Point buy, on the other hand fails at its stated goal. You move from random generation to point buy being expected to create the exact character you envisioned, and you still can't.
This kind of problem stems not from a point buy system but rather from player desires not aligning to the power level of the campaign. If a player is told to create a 150 point character, but the super duper character they have envisioned requires 275 points to build then the player has to adjust the desired concept to something 150 points will buy. Some players always want more than the campaign starting level gives their characters regardless of creation method. In point buy they never have enough points. In random generation the rolled stats are not high enough for the character that they envision. NO creation method will help with that.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 10:03:59 PM
QuoteThere's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
Ah, you're one of those guys. Realism in a game about... dungeons and... dragons. Rightyo. Start shaving your neck, mate, and please discard the fedora.
No one is giving you a social credit point here for this, so just don't bother. Women are physically weaker than men, and the last version of D&D that recognized this was AD&D 1e. Me pointing this out in passing isn't actually a prompt for you to do a big feminism.
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In my experience, any male bringing up this "issue" (and it's always a male, though rarely a very masculine one) has nothing else intelligent to contribute to the conversation. And further perusal of your comments confirms this is so, that you are speaking more from reading AD&D1e than playing it.
In my experience anyone mad enough about a true point brought up factually is done contributing usefully to any conversation, especially once they start calling people fedoras and other made up internet quasislurs.
Anyway, back on track- your point about 18/00 being a vanishingly small percent of things if rolled naturally is not as good of a point as it should be. My actual experience involved a lot of tables that mysteriously had one of these supposedly vanishingly-rare people. Did they roll it? Get it as a reward? I don't know, but there were a lot of character sheets from people in games that weren't mine with 18/51 or up, something that continued well through second edition.
Also note that there were no equivalent rules for transcendent-but-not-divine wisdom, intelligence, or dexterity. These special strength scores were there to be played, and played they were, in numbers far more than any of the generative abilities in 1e or 2e ever implied.
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QuoteFighters get multiple attacks, and that +6 to damage applies to all of them
All fighters get level attacks per round against monsters of fewer than 1 hit die.
This is not actually what I'm talking about- fighters get more attacks per round as they level up, and I showed a fighter of reasonable level. I didn't bring up the multiplicative effect to imply AT ALL that this is when it BECOMES distortive. It's OBVIOUSLY distortive to add damage to attacks when enemies have less than 10 hit points. My point is, that as fighters go up to 2/round, these extra attacks apply. Also there are other ways to get extra attacks besides just leveling, and all of them
stack multiplicatively.
AD&D 1e's huge strength bonus totally changes all combat at every level when it's available, compared to when it is not. The triple damage I pointed out is true even at a level where the attack roll bonus from fighter levels is substantial.
That is the point of the math- to show that that +3 to hit is a big deal, and the +6 to strength is a huge deal, and a bonus-less fighter compared to the full one is an incredibly huge difference, at every single level, even at high level when the extra chance to hit might at a glance seem to outweigh the strength bonus. It never does.
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But let's assume for a moment your concerns about high Strength are valid. If that is so, then it is better to have random roll than point-buy - because the problem will be far less common. And random roll vs point-buy is after all the point of the thread,
You're quite confused. Under point buy, stats have caps you can't buy above. I don't know where you'd want to put that cap, but it's below 18/00.
Quotethough apparently you have other more important concerns, like the idea of fictional wimminz in a fictional game world with fictional physics being stronger than your puny self.
Seethe about bell curves more. Feminism delenda est.
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You're quite confused. Under point buy, stats have caps you can't buy above. I don't know where you'd want to put that cap, but it's below 18/00.
Point buy probably is the best solution to the mess that is percentile strength. With one point being 1 step. So you basically take Dark Sun Revised and map it to the percentile table.
There are some systems that let you roll percentile strength if you get an 18, which is probably not a great idea, and others that make you pay 1 point for every 10%, which is also pretty terrible.
Quote from: migo on December 18, 2023, 12:47:29 PM
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You're quite confused. Under point buy, stats have caps you can't buy above. I don't know where you'd want to put that cap, but it's below 18/00.
Point buy probably is the best solution to the mess that is percentile strength. With one point being 1 step. So you basically take Dark Sun Revised and map it to the percentile table.
There are some systems that let you roll percentile strength if you get an 18, which is probably not a great idea, and others that make you pay 1 point for every 10%, which is also pretty terrible.
Regardless of how it is generated or purchased, exceptional STR ruins the math assumptions and severely weakens many combat encounters that should prove more difficult for characters of a given level.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 02:57:33 AM
because the GM and the players reined in power-gamers by saying "no" rather than allowing rules hacking.
I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but there needs to be a name for this general form of argument - that problems can be resolved by the GM or players mitigating a problem via the social contract as opposed to the rules. Even in a dysfunctional group, a sufficiently authoritative GM could simply quash any debate and resolve an issue by fiat to keep play moving. My perspective on that argument is that it doesn't really go anywhere. Pointing out that there are intentional gaps or unforeseen situations in the rules or in the fiction which need GM arbitration is fine. Suggesting that the group can figure out a solution to a problem the game itself introduced is not an acceptable answer for a ruleset, in my view. See PVP Combat rules and the related controversy regarding Candela Obscura.
I don't disagree on the general principle that GM overruling doesn't paper over all rules, but also, games should be designed to be run by an active and intelligent GM. I think we're disagreeing on what are intentional gaps. (BTW, I don't know about the Candela Obscura controversy.)
The question is if closing the gap would make the game more fun for the players and GMs. If a new GURPS version were to be released that had random-roll and/or vastly restricted options to eliminate min-maxing, I don't think it would be hailed as an improvement by GURPS players and GMs. Being able to custom design a wide range of characters is one of the appeals of GURPS. It is a popular feature of the game.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
I don't get this. AD&D1 has five different methods of generating attributes. AD&D2 has six methods. D&D3 has one method (3/4d6 and arrange), while 4E and 5E each have three (4d6, standard array, or point-buy).
At least from 3E onwards, they all have in common that the player can arrange the scores as they like once generated. From experience, I don't find the generation method makes much difference. If a 5E group were to only use 4d6 and disallow standard array, I don't think it would make much difference to how the game plays out.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 18, 2023, 12:59:51 PM
Regardless of how it is generated or purchased, exceptional STR ruins the math assumptions and severely weakens many combat encounters that should prove more difficult for characters of a given level.
This exactly. If everyone did the suggested roll method the number of games disrupted with 18/51 and up would be small enough and legitimately interesting to all involved, just because of the sheer novelty of him vastly overperforming. But that's not what happens when it's presented on the same table as the realistic scores. It was always much more common than stats would dictate, and if you had a point buy that made it, or a rolling system that let you cheese it, it would dominate many encounters and twist the game experience away from intended quite a bit. A point buy with sensible stat caps would, of course, prevent it. Honest rolling would minimize it. But tables that allegedly rolled stats would have these way more often than you'd think.
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 01:34:26 PM
If a 5E group were to only use 4d6 and disallow standard array, I don't think it would make much difference to how the game plays out.
I think I disagree here- or at least, I have a contrary point to make.
In previous versions, stats were pretty much a bunch of statistical things. A really high int might give you an unlimited spellbook, but overall you were getting higher chances of learning your spells, or a better chance of surviving a system shock roll. 3.X brought us to the "one modifier for every two stats", which is generally a pretty big deal. If you look at a game where you could from +0 to +3, that's a pretty big change, but here in 5e that rolling method goes from +0 to +5. In practice, your 5e character is assumed to have a +3 (16 or 17) in their mainstat at the start of the game, and the actual upgrade range goes from +3 to +5.
But 5e went beyond just this- it also attached
feats, an optional rule that almost all tables allow. If you roll up something really solid at the start, you may be able to just take feats at levels 4, 8, and 12 (and sometimes more depending on your class), instead of having to up your stats. The point buy is supposed to have you making real choices between "do you take the feat that does cool stuff, or do you go from +3 to +4" (there's a powergamer option in one of the books that can let you start with an 18 and half a feat, but it's optional and everyone knows it is the purest cheese).
With rolled stats in 5e, a bad character won't just get a -1 or whatever, they'll probably never get the feat they want. The opposite end isn't just a +1, it's early access to strong feats with no downside. Basically, the 5e stats have pointy growths that punish rolling tables in 5e more so than 3.5, which in turn punishes rolling tables more than AD&D.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2023, 10:49:26 AM
When all Strength does is melee attacks and lifting things with just the Athletics skill associated with it, and then the system also allows you to use Dex for melee attacks for just a net -1 to damage, and also applies to Ranged Attacks, Armor Class, Acrobatics and Thievery and Stealth, and avoiding some of the most common spells... and the lifting things is almost never important because they set the Encumbrance values so that even average Strength can carry 150 pounds of stuff without being slowed down because most players can't be bothered to track equipment...
Why the heck would you ever take Strength in such a system? (yes, this is exactly how 5e handles it which is just one of the reasons 5e sucks).
I'm not defending 5e for something that they are actually guilty of, but I will point out that 5e's design intent appears to be that the highest damage weapons are all melee weapons that can only use strength. There's no two-handed or versatile finesse weapons, and a weapon of some random type- say, a +3 warhammer will never be able to be wielded with dexterity. But if you want a greatsword with greatweapon master, or a glaive with greatweapon master and polearm master, there's no way to do that except strength.
The issue is that the edge granted by these things is pretty vanishing. If no one in the party can use strength weapons effectively and weapons are rolled randomly, then the party will miss out on some loot, but there's no guarantee that weapons will be random so it's not a universal critique, and dealing a couple more points of damage per round than a ranged build is hardly worth all the restrictions melee comes with. Also note that once you have your ranged equivalents of those feats, the only thing you miss out on compared to a melee guy is really opportunity attacks- you can shoot people point blank all day long once you have crossbow expert, whether you are using a hand crossbow, a long bow, or eldritch blast.
So it's a totally valid complaint- but that's because of the implementation, not the design.
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 01:34:26 PM
I think we're disagreeing on what are intentional gaps. (BTW, I don't know about the Candela Obscura controversy.)
The question is if closing the gap would make the game more fun for the players and GMs. If a new GURPS version were to be released that had random-roll and/or vastly restricted options to eliminate min-maxing, I don't think it would be hailed as an improvement by GURPS players and GMs. Being able to custom design a wide range of characters is one of the appeals of GURPS. It is a popular feature of the game.
I agree regarding GURPS and that we disagree over what a reasonable gap is. GURPS has a design ethos that more clearly articulates what a sane approach is and what is dissonant. Random gen and point buy are not quite diametrically opposed, but they're close.
Some Candela Obscura reviews have been pointing at gaps in the ruleset that are big problems, notably PVP Combat. Candela Obscura knows it doesn't have a solution to the problem, but it just argues the GM should decide how best to handle it. To me, that's an example of an unreasonable and unacceptable gap.
In D&D character generation, random rolling and standard array are both options that make sense in similar contexts (if the standard array approximates the average of the random method). Point buy is the aberration and it enables the min-maxing behavior. The solution to that IMO cannot be "the GM/group should prevent that" because the problem was introduced by this method in the first place and there isn't a clear guiding principle to establish consensus on what's min-maxing with point buy and what's not.
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 01:34:26 PM
I don't get this. AD&D1 has five different methods of generating attributes. AD&D2 has six methods. D&D3 has one method (3/4d6 and arrange), while 4E and 5E each have three (4d6, standard array, or point-buy).
At least from 3E onwards, they all have in common that the player can arrange the scores as they like once generated. From experience, I don't find the generation method makes much difference. If a 5E group were to only use 4d6 and disallow standard array, I don't think it would make much difference to how the game plays out.
All 6 methods in AD&D 2e are random generation, to my recollection. There is guidance in the text about when/why each method could be used that helps guide consensus. I don't recall AD&D 1e's methods but I'd guess they're similar variations on a theme. 3e is packe with vestigial stuff that made sense as part of a broader design. Point-buy in 4e/5e is the weirdness that definitely played into the direction modern D&D was heading, but to have these options side-by-side is unreasonable because of the design of the game.
In 3e, a Fighter with 18 STR hits as accurately as a 5th-level fighter with average stats and hits roughly as hard as if they had an extra d6 damage (on average). A 3e character with 18 DEX and a finesse or ranged weapon not only hits as accurately as the 18 STR fighter, but gets +4 AC (the difference between light chain shirt and full plate), +4 to initiative (the equivalent value of a Feat), and gets +4 to their Reflex saving throw (Much more than a 4-level jump). By contrast, the difference between a Fighter with 10 STR and 17 STR in AD&D 2e is +1 to hit and damage, so the character fights about as well as a 2nd level character. I dislike percentile STR but from 17 up through 18 or 18/50, you're only getting boosts to damage.
Assuming your campaign makes it to 12th level (which is quite a feat in AD&D 2e and where the game starts totally breaking down in 3e), the 3e character with an 18 is at least 25% better than the baseline (in some instances, much better). The AD&D character with 18 STR by contrast (assuming 50 or less percentile strength) is about 5-10% better than baseline (equivalent Thac0 of 8 vs. 9). And it doesn't really affect saving throws (Wisdom etc. some exceptions).
So in AD&D, the stats are mostly important during character generation to qualify for classes (to establish immersion and worldbuilding expectations) and they play a more minor role during play until they get into really high values (usually due to magic items). In that context, random generation makes sense. Introducing point buy makes some sense to me given modern D&D's apparent goals and how much of a difference an 18 stat makes vs. a 10, but it introduces the min-maxing problem and I don't find "the GM/group should prevent that" to be a satisfying solution for this new problem.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2023, 10:01:06 AM
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
As time has gone on I've grown rather negative towards attributes that only serve as base modifiers for the actual checks and think a lot of issues could be solved if you just replaced them with more "skill" points and higher level 1 caps for the skills.
Want a strong fighter? Put your skills into Fitness and Melee. Want a smart wizard? Put your skills into Arcana and Lore. Etc.
If you must have Racial attribute-like adjustments, just make them at the skill level; Dwarves get bonuses to Fitness and Engineering, Halflings to Acrobatics and Stealth, Elves to Archery and Lore. etc.
Kind of like how the White Wolf Games somewhat handled it, where you picked a primary, secondary, and third stat, and at the end of character gen got a couple freebie points to spend (though the ratios for freebies were pretty steep)
What do you think of negative XP? a player buys and advantage or a race at level 1, but it has to buy it off with XP before he can progress in level?
Quote from: Socratic-DM on December 18, 2023, 04:16:23 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2023, 10:01:06 AM
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 08:56:46 AM
Modern D&D introduces the attribute problem by making attributes central to a character's competency in everything they do, while limiting the situations where min-maxing is a real liability. It then blows up any established consensus and invites controversy by providing a dozen different attribute generation methods, each with wildly different characteristics. If these at least orbited around some kind of core assumptions that the rest of the design was built atop, we could reason about what identifies a sane generation method.
As time has gone on I've grown rather negative towards attributes that only serve as base modifiers for the actual checks and think a lot of issues could be solved if you just replaced them with more "skill" points and higher level 1 caps for the skills.
Want a strong fighter? Put your skills into Fitness and Melee. Want a smart wizard? Put your skills into Arcana and Lore. Etc.
If you must have Racial attribute-like adjustments, just make them at the skill level; Dwarves get bonuses to Fitness and Engineering, Halflings to Acrobatics and Stealth, Elves to Archery and Lore. etc.
Kind of like how the White Wolf Games somewhat handled it, where you picked a primary, secondary, and third stat, and at the end of character gen got a couple freebie points to spend (though the ratios for freebies were pretty steep)
What do you think of negative XP? a player buys and advantage or a race at level 1, but it has to buy it off with XP before he can progress in level?
Not a fan, mainly because it rests on an assumption that specifically tracked XP will even be used for a given campaign (vs. say, Milestone leveling) and that the benefits will be universally advantageous over the entire span of the campaign to be X far behind everyone else (this was one of the problems with ECL Races in 3e).
Far better is to just have a baseline (or an adjustable baseline) that accommodates said advantages/races... i.e. if the GM wants a campaign where Drow are common PCs, then the default human PC (not necessarily all humans, but PC ones) gets roughly equivalent features. If you want weaker starting PCs then put Drow into the NPC only category (or make the default Drow in the setting weaker).
Alternately, just accept the Palladium mantra that fun in RPGs can be completely independent of power level and Vagabond and Glitterboy Pilot can both have adventures together (because the GM will do the work of giving both of them interesting things to do; though probably not at the same time).
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2023, 05:14:47 PM
Alternately, just accept the Palladium mantra that fun in RPGs can be completely independent of power level and Vagabond and Glitterboy Pilot can both have adventures together (because the GM will do the work of giving both of them interesting things to do; though probably not at the same time).
Just because this is true doesn't mean that some kind of pursuit of balance is fruitless, and putting everyone on the same tactical battle grid and using well defined combat minigame rules is something that a lot of players and DMs really enjoy- though it is definitely not some requirement for ideal gaming or whatever. It's definitely something I prefer though, so if a system makes some effort in that direction, it's doing work I'd otherwise have to do, and I tend to appreciate that.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 03:48:54 PM
Assuming your campaign makes it to 12th level (which is quite a feat in AD&D 2e and where the game starts totally breaking down in 3e), the 3e character with an 18 is at least 25% better than the baseline (in some instances, much better). The AD&D character with 18 STR by contrast (assuming 50 or less percentile strength) is about 5-10% better than baseline (equivalent Thac0 of 8 vs. 9). And it doesn't really affect saving throws (Wisdom etc. some exceptions).
Comparing to Strength 10 isn't relevant, though. Basically zero PC fighters will have a 10 Strength.
A more relevant question is: compare a 5th percentile fighter vs a 95th percentile fighter. i.e. If twenty characters are rolled, what would be the worst out of those and the best out of those. I'm assuming that the method is best 3 out of 4d6 and then arrange, and that the fighter puts his highest stat in Strength. The 5th percentile fighter has 13.8 Strength, which I'll consider 14. The 95th percentile fighter has 18 Strength, or in AD&D, has 18/43.
In AD&D, the 5th percentile fighter is +0/+0 while the 95th is +1/+3. In D&D3, the 5th percentile fighter is +2/+2 while the 95th is +4/+4.
So in AD&D, the lucky-rolling player gets a
bigger boost in damage compared to D&D3, but one less boost in to-hit. That's because in the smoother progression of D&D3, even unlucky rollers still get some bonus.
Also, AD&D stats might not be used for saving throws as much, but they have many other uses, like the 10% experience bonus - or qualifying for advanced classes like the Ranger.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on December 18, 2023, 03:48:54 PM
So in AD&D, the stats are mostly important during character generation to qualify for classes (to establish immersion and worldbuilding expectations) and they play a more minor role during play until they get into really high values (usually due to magic items). In that context, random generation makes sense. Introducing point buy makes some sense to me given modern D&D's apparent goals and how much of a difference an 18 stat makes vs. a 10, but it introduces the min-maxing problem and I don't find "the GM/group should prevent that" to be a satisfying solution for this new problem.
Having played with point-buy in 5E for many years, I don't recall ever needing to say "no" to any attribute buy as GM. Under point-buy, an 18 starting stat is very expensive and many players don't go for it, because they want to have more total bonus in other stats.
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 05:26:17 PM
Having played with point-buy in 5E for many years, I don't recall ever needing to say "no" to any attribute buy as GM. Under point-buy, an 18 starting stat is very expensive and many players don't go for it, because they want to have more total bonus in other stats.
5ed point buy goes up to 15. Using PHB races, everyone can bump that to 16 or 17, and nothing goes to 18 ever. There's one wacky splatbook thing, custom lineage, where you start with a 15, get to add +2, and then for some reason get a feat, which could be say,
slasher or
heavily armored, half feats that add one more stat. This is how you start with an 18 in D&D 5e, it's a cheeseball powerpick, and if it's allowed it is often your best pick and recommended in all the build guides (because yes there are build guides, and yes 1d3-1 players at your table have read them for some reason).
And the reason you go for this 18 is because by bounded accuracy standards you aren't expected to have that 18 until level 5 or so, and you don't start missing out on assumed accuracy until around level 12- meaning you can take your two favorite feats at levels 4 and 8, and for a lot of classes and combos (probably all of them these days, given how many feats exist), and be playing the character you wanted with all your mechanics online much earlier than they would be.
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 05:26:17 PM
Comparing to Strength 10 isn't relevant, though. Basically zero PC fighters will have a 10 Strength.
Nowadays, and with most game groups, yes. But it needn't be so. I rolled up 4d6 drop lowest, and ended up with Strength 10 (or maybe 12, I can't remember - it wasn't enough to get a to-hit or damage bonus, anyway) but Charisma 17. The DM said I could swap it around, I said no. "He will be Fabio, the Most Beautiful Fighter in the Cosmos." Fabio hired men-at-arms, and between his generous pay and Charisma, they were insanely loyal. They made a
very effective first rank going through the dungeon.
That's the statistics of AD&D1e - 3-5 fighters of 0-1st level doing their 3-5 attacks each round will on average do more damage than 1 fighter doing his 1 attack, even if he has exceptional Strength. That's why everyone dreads pissy little monsters like rats, and why MUs can be horribly effective with darts - lots of attacks!
Fabio perished at 7th level after meeting the gaze of a medusa. The other players were intent on bringing him out and recovering him somehow. I said, "No - that Fabio is immortalised in stone, that is the way. A later party of adventurers will find him and admire his beauty."
I'd never have had that story to tell with point-buy.
What I've found over the years is that high attributes can actually be dangerous for a character in combat - it makes the player
over-confident with their character, they charge in. After all, thinking of 1st level Fighters, one with 10 hit points who gets hit twice has the same chances of being knocked down as a 5 hit point one who gets hit once. If you have 5 HP and leather armour you're more likely to just stand in the doorway and wait for them to come at you one-by-one, compared to having 10 HP and banded mail.
And so in practice, higher attributes are dangerous. Game design has to take into account human nature, thus for example understanding that point-buy will take longer than random roll, given the same level of complexity in the game system otherwise, which means players will be more pissed off if their character dies, so point-buy systems tend to encourage hero point or other systems reducing lethality, etc. Human nature.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 18, 2023, 11:58:46 AM
This kind of problem stems not from a point buy system but rather from player desires not aligning to the power level of the campaign. If a player is told to create a 150 point character, but the super duper character they have envisioned requires 275 points to build then the player has to adjust the desired concept to something 150 points will buy. Some players always want more than the campaign starting level gives their characters regardless of creation method. In point buy they never have enough points. In random generation the rolled stats are not high enough for the character that they envision. NO creation method will help with that.
No. It's not that. Certain abilities only come presented a certain way, so a concept ends up being quite expensive even if the character concept wasn't that powerful.
Quote from: migo on December 18, 2023, 11:10:42 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 10:34:20 PM
Quote from: migo on December 17, 2023, 06:34:55 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 05:59:22 PM*snip*
With random generation, you're not expecting to be able to make a character according to your wishes. So the second point is automatically a non-issue. The first point, yeah, you can have character imbalance with random generation, but there you only have one issue to solve, not two.
Even with random generation, you might still want to build a character a certain way, it's just that the system doesn't allow you to, or limits your options. So it can still be an issue (which I've personally had, or dealt with player who had it), it's just you can do nothing about it. Ever.
But with point buy you at least have more control over your character, even if you can't get 100% what you want out of the gate. But you might still get it eventually. And the GM might even make adjustments or concessions to get it right away.
Sometimes you have to manage your expectations. And it's unrealistic to expect a system to automatically accommodate every conceivable concept out of the box without adapting it to a particular setting or circumstance (maybe the GM could hand out extra points specifically for non-combat/adventuring "background" abilities, for example). Or waiting till you have enough points to get every ability you want.
The "issue" here is ultimately that you want something that you can actually eventually have. But you want to have it right away. That's a much better issue to have than not being able to get it ever.
Sure it's an inherent problem of random generation, but it's not an inherent problem of random generation failing at its stated goal. Point buy, on the other hand fails at its stated goal. You move from random generation to point buy being expected to create the exact character you envisioned, and you still can't.
Except that you
can have the character you want. You just can't have 100% the entire laundry list of abilities that you want right out of the gate. Same way you can't have a level 20 (or whatever) character out of character creation in D&D.
So you're now framing it as some fundamental failure of point buy as a design concept. As opposed to your own inability to wait a few sessions to get 100% every single ability you want.
And while I'm sure that there might be some point buy game out there making some hyperbolic claims about the customization potential of their system. That doesn't make getting 100% without fail the precise character you envisioned right out of character creation the "stated goal" of point buy as a design concept. The point of point buy is having a la carte character creation and progression, with greater control over your ability selection. Getting the exact "character you envisioned" might at best be described as an aspirational aim of that type of system. But that doesn't mean that your dream character is gonna be handed to you the moment you show up at session 0.
The most I'd give you about the point (I think) you're trying to raise here is that most point buy games suck at giving you enough points to get BS background skills that are of limited use in an adventure. Because they're too stingy with their character creation budget, and make you weigh the limited points you have for actual adventuring skills against limited use secondary skills that are mostly picked for color and rarely come up in play. Which at most can be said to be a design oversight in terms of implementation (to the degree that it can be blamed on any particular system, rather than your own impatience), as opposed to a complete failure of point buy as a concept.
But as I already tried to explain, it is extremely easy to get around that oversight by simply giving characters extra points specifically for background skills, like crafting, languages, lore, etc. But how many points exactly those should be can vary a lot depending on the group and their campaign standards.
Quote from: Socratic-DM on December 16, 2023, 04:52:34 PM
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?
I don't think it is bad. I like Point Buy. But I do think it isn't suitable for certain things and 1&2 are both likely issues. I would just add that I think the two types of players I see gravitate towards it are A) players who are competitive and want to do a little power building, B) players who like compete control of building a character concept. Often A and B can be in conflict so that is another thing to be mindful of depending on the system.
Every time someone spouts something hyperbolic and ignorant about point buy systems:
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 05:26:17 PM
Comparing to Strength 10 isn't relevant, though. Basically zero PC fighters will have a 10 Strength.
My point was to highlight the force multiplier that attributes represent in 3e/4e/5e vs. AD&D, but I think 10 is a good benchmark. 10.5 is the average on 3d6, 10 is the stated baseline for average/default humans, and 10 isolates the magnitude of impact attributes can have in either system. In the 3e attribute system, you can gain 4 levels of impact vs. AD&Ds 1 level of impact. That impact is mostly washed out in AD&D by level 12, whereas in 3e a +4 (or +7 if they pump the stat with level increases) is still a big chunk of the character's overall efficacy. Min-maxing your DEX in 3e can get you: 4 or more levels of improved accuracy, derived bonuses which meet or exceed the equivalent of 2 feats (improved initiative and catlike reflexes I think), and ~800 GP worth of material (chain shirt vs. full plate). You won't find anything even remotely close in AD&D so the whole question of generating the stat block is less significant.
As a thought experiment, imagine there were no attributes at all but everything else remained the same. There are two systems: one where you roll on a table and sometimes you get a +1 magic sword. Another, your roll can get you a +4 sword. Now imagine there's an alternate option where instead of a roll you can just pick your result in exchange for the best prizes imposing a -1 penalty on some vestigial reaction rolls and some other stuff that just isn't important to your class role. Why should the roll and the choice co-exist?
As for percentiles, they're only relevant to random generation whereas I was trying to highlight that the ability to guarantee an 18 in a system with 3e attributes (or a 16 or whatever you'd like) is way more impactful than luck in AD&D either way. I agree with you that the 10% experience boost is significant enough to be annoying and I dislike that rule.
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 05:26:17 PM
Having played with point-buy in 5E for many years, I don't recall ever needing to say "no" to any attribute buy as GM. Under point-buy, an 18 starting stat is very expensive and many players don't go for it, because they want to have more total bonus in other stats.
Well, there's nothing to object to because the system functions as-intended if somebody pumps one stat and tanks another. You can buy 15,15,15,8,8,8 prior to racial bonuses in 5e and it's valid. Is that stat block min-maxing or is it trying to fit the stats to the character concept? When exactly could the GM ever legitimately reject the player's choices in a point buy system when the underlying goal is to let the player make those choices? The ruleset offers no real solution because the ruleset doesn't really consider it a problem. Min-maxing is an acceptable and even intentional part of the modern game (along with builds and character optimization culture).
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 18, 2023, 05:58:56 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 05:26:17 PM
Comparing to Strength 10 isn't relevant, though. Basically zero PC fighters will have a 10 Strength.
Nowadays, and with most game groups, yes. But it needn't be so. I rolled up 4d6 drop lowest, and ended up with Strength 10 (or maybe 12, I can't remember - it wasn't enough to get a to-hit or damage bonus, anyway) but Charisma 17. The DM said I could swap it around, I said no. "He will be Fabio, the Most Beautiful Fighter in the Cosmos." Fabio hired men-at-arms, and between his generous pay and Charisma, they were insanely loyal. They made a very effective first rank going through the dungeon.
OK, fair enough - my specific quoted statement was off. Still, on the bigger point, this doesn't dispute the statistical analysis about the effect of luck in attribute rolls. You rolled a 17 that by the rules could have gone to Strength, but you chose to put it in Charisma instead - and assigning it there was highly effective. So you got effectiveness out of your assigned high attribute score, which suggests that high attribute scores are important in AD&D.
Obviously, real campaigns are different than mathematical analysis of stats, and characters are more than just their stats. In my current 5E campaign, one of the players went for a high-Charisma fighter as noblewoman Purix Hultin.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 18, 2023, 05:58:56 PM
Fabio perished at 7th level after meeting the gaze of a medusa. The other players were intent on bringing him out and recovering him somehow. I said, "No - that Fabio is immortalised in stone, that is the way. A later party of adventurers will find him and admire his beauty."
I'd never have had that story to tell with point-buy.
I haven't made exactly that character, but I've made plenty of other oddball characters in point-buy systems. I made a cunning social-focused old lady for a Burning Wheel campaign, say, or my half-orc cleric Thokk the Holy in 5e D&D, who wasn't especially wise but was very zealous and forceful, or my Dungeon World character Rat who lied about being a halfling. (He was actually a really short human.)
It's fine for you to choose random-roll out of personal preference, but it's not universal. I've had lots of weird and/or suboptimal characters in point-based systems.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 18, 2023, 05:58:56 PM
What I've found over the years is that high attributes can actually be dangerous for a character in combat - it makes the player over-confident with their character, they charge in. After all, thinking of 1st level Fighters, one with 10 hit points who gets hit twice has the same chances of being knocked down as a 5 hit point one who gets hit once. If you have 5 HP and leather armour you're more likely to just stand in the doorway and wait for them to come at you one-by-one, compared to having 10 HP and banded mail.
And so in practice, higher attributes are dangerous. Game design has to take into account human nature, thus for example understanding that point-buy will take longer than random roll, given the same level of complexity in the game system otherwise, which means players will be more pissed off if their character dies, so point-buy systems tend to encourage hero point or other systems reducing lethality, etc. Human nature.
But point-buy doesn't have higher attributes than rolling. It guarantees a median level of luck, but particularly in 5E, you're more likely to get a high primary attribute by rolling than by point-buy.
As for quick chargen and lethality, standard array is even faster than rolling. For experienced players, all three methods take roughly the same time. It's arranging the scores that takes the most time. As for lethality, Call of Cthulhu has point-buy skills, and other high-lethality horror games like Dead of Night are fully point-buy. They just have fairly simple point-buy choices.
If I may wade into the fray here...
Isn't it a question of preference to some extent?
Rolling adds an element of randomness which allows for the possibility of overpowered and underpowered characters. This allows for greater potential for role play in some ways. It is at least, dynamic role play.
Point buys add a sort of generic element to characters as it brings a certain conformity to scores. Most characters will be created within certain predictable thresholds with a bounded limit on deviation. This adds some consistency and makes it easier to DM. It means class designs will more or less apply equally as (someone said) players are unlikely to venture out as 10 Str fighters.
To sum up... neither is "bad." It's just a matter of preference.
Quote from: Captain_Pazuzu on December 19, 2023, 04:40:58 PM
Rolling adds an element of randomness which allows for the possibility of overpowered and underpowered characters. This allows for greater potential for role play in some ways. It is at least, dynamic role play.
Point buys add a sort of generic element to characters as it brings a certain conformity to scores.
While random rolling methods do traditionally result in a range of possible outcomes in terms of power level, that is not necessarily the case: distribution can be random while power level is constant.
So for me those are separate concerns: I like random not because it results in a power distribution, but because it challenges me to conceive and play of a character within the parameters defined by the roll. I like point-buy because I can wholly determine the character to play from my imagination alone.
I don't like systems that result in (much) power difference between characters actually, because that's not really fun in my experience. But I
love randomness in character generation, and my players prefer it too.
Quote from: Zalman on December 19, 2023, 05:36:03 PM
So for me those are separate concerns: I like random not because it results in a power distribution, but because it challenges me to conceive and play of a character within the parameters defined by the roll. I like point-buy because I can wholly determine the character to play from my imagination alone.
I actually miss that part, looking at the scores and seeing what would work. Going from there.
Quote from: Zalman on December 19, 2023, 05:36:03 PM
While random rolling methods do traditionally result in a range of possible outcomes in terms of power level, that is not necessarily the case: distribution can be random while power level is constant.
So for me those are separate concerns: I like random not because it results in a power distribution, but because it challenges me to conceive and play of a character within the parameters defined by the roll. I like point-buy because I can wholly determine the character to play from my imagination alone.
Can you (or anyone) suggest games that have randomness without a power distribution? Mathematically, it seems straightforward have random rolls but the total of all attributes stay fixed -- but I can't think of any games offhand that do that.
I like the randomness especially of lifepath systems where you roll for different background and other details of the character. For example, I recently tried out and got a copy of _Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation_ which has a lot of random tables of interesting background of characters. However, I don't find just attribute scores very inspirational.
This can even be used in point-buy systems. Roll up some ideas and then buy them.
Quote from: Zalman on December 19, 2023, 05:36:03 PM
I don't like systems that result in (much) power difference between characters actually, because that's not really fun in my experience. But I love randomness in character generation, and my players prefer it too.
I don't like differences in power levels that start stark and never get any better (or in some cases, even get worse). What I don't mind, and actually prefer, is difference in power levels due to randomness and characters of different "levels" adventuring together, and then it tends to smooth out over time. Early D&D's experience point track is a great example of the latter, because of the exponential costs of the levels combined with not much difference in any two adjacent levels (notwithstanding exceptions such as B/X levels 4 to 5).
This is why my own system uses some fairly strong randomness early, but fixes the scale and adjustments such that people who start weak get more oomph out of the adjustments. For example, ability scores are 3d6, in order, but scale is -3 to +3 (in that range, with the +0 off center at the 8-10 values). Then a character will typically get a couple of chance to improve scores of their choice early, and then several more as they level. The higher your score, the harder it is to improve. Net effect is that the gap narrows considerably as the levels are gained. However, unlike point buy, some of the effects of randomization are still there. A character that starts with great stats gets the advantage of them longer. A character that starts with lousy stats gets more say in how their stats improve.
Quote from: jhkim on December 19, 2023, 06:06:57 PM
Can you (or anyone) suggest games that have randomness without a power distribution? Mathematically, it seems straightforward have random rolls but the total of all attributes stay fixed -- but I can't think of any games offhand that do that.
My own homebrew is the only one I'm aware of, in my limited knowledge.
People think point buy is tedious because they only have experience with shitty, inelegant systems that think you need to simulate the rate at which your toenails grow. A good point buy system lets you make ten characters in the time it takes you to make one in 3.5.
Quote from: jhkim on December 19, 2023, 06:06:57 PM
Can you (or anyone) suggest games that have randomness without a power distribution? Mathematically, it seems straightforward have random rolls but the total of all attributes stay fixed -- but I can't think of any games offhand that do that.
Reign does it. It also lets you mix and match random generation with point buy. If you don't like a random result you just change it and it doesn't break anything.
Yes
No
Maybe it depends
No but it is inherently evil. :o
I give my players options, Standard Array, Point Buy or 4D6D1 and if you don't have two 15's then raise your two highest to 15's. No one wants to play a character of all 10's to 12's.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on December 20, 2023, 04:33:54 PM
I give my players options, Standard Array, Point Buy or 4D6D1 and if you don't have two 15's then raise your two highest to 15's. No one wants to play a character of all 10's to 12's.
Doesn't the Standard Array have only one 15 (and point buy basically only lets you get two at significant cost to your other scores)? Or do you use a different array and enough points to be roughly equivalent to the average rolled results?
Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 20, 2023, 04:15:08 PM
Yes
No
Maybe it depends
No but it is inherently evil. :o
:) Indeed. And to beat the devil out of sinners at my table I forbid point buy, make you roll 3d6 straight down the line, and accept that first roll as your PC. Then we'll watch you roll HP, Money, and other things publicly to make sure the anguish squeezes out the last temptations you have lingering. 8) I oppress you because I love you. It makes you a better person. ;D
I prefer point buy to random rolling. However, I also restrict what options players can take (e.g. no characters with super powers because they chose blindness and crippled as hindrances). I also don't allow social hindrances that are too disruptive on the game.
I like a character generation system that gives me the illusion of competence. If I want to portray a character who is weak, forgetful, lazy, uncoordinated, sickly and unlikeable, and who doesn't qualify for any of the cool jobs, I have the real world for that.
You'll always get that guy who says: "I played a 10 STR fighter and I loved it!". You can build that character with point buy. It's called: "playing against type" and it's been a thing since the dawn of RPG's.
If you want randomness, then you can take the standard array and randomly determine where the 15,14,13,12,10, and 8 go. At least your character will have aptitude in some field.
Quote from: migo on December 18, 2023, 11:10:42 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 10:34:20 PM
Quote from: migo on December 17, 2023, 06:34:55 PM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 17, 2023, 05:59:22 PM*snip*
With random generation, you're not expecting to be able to make a character according to your wishes. So the second point is automatically a non-issue. The first point, yeah, you can have character imbalance with random generation, but there you only have one issue to solve, not two.
Even with random generation, you might still want to build a character a certain way, it's just that the system doesn't allow you to, or limits your options. So it can still be an issue (which I've personally had, or dealt with player who had it), it's just you can do nothing about it. Ever.
But with point buy you at least have more control over your character, even if you can't get 100% what you want out of the gate. But you might still get it eventually. And the GM might even make adjustments or concessions to get it right away.
Sometimes you have to manage your expectations. And it's unrealistic to expect a system to automatically accommodate every conceivable concept out of the box without adapting it to a particular setting or circumstance (maybe the GM could hand out extra points specifically for non-combat/adventuring "background" abilities, for example). Or waiting till you have enough points to get every ability you want.
The "issue" here is ultimately that you want something that you can actually eventually have. But you want to have it right away. That's a much better issue to have than not being able to get it ever.
Sure it's an inherent problem of random generation, but it's not an inherent problem of random generation failing at its stated goal. Point buy, on the other hand fails at its stated goal. You move from random generation to point buy being expected to create the exact character you envisioned, and you still can't.
You certainly can make exactly the character you want with point buy, assuming you're not playing d&d.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 18, 2023, 05:58:56 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2023, 05:26:17 PM
Comparing to Strength 10 isn't relevant, though. Basically zero PC fighters will have a 10 Strength.
Nowadays, and with most game groups, yes. But it needn't be so. I rolled up 4d6 drop lowest, and ended up with Strength 10 (or maybe 12, I can't remember - it wasn't enough to get a to-hit or damage bonus, anyway) but Charisma 17. The DM said I could swap it around, I said no. "He will be Fabio, the Most Beautiful Fighter in the Cosmos." Fabio hired men-at-arms, and between his generous pay and Charisma, they were insanely loyal. They made a very effective first rank going through the dungeon.
That's the statistics of AD&D1e - 3-5 fighters of 0-1st level doing their 3-5 attacks each round will on average do more damage than 1 fighter doing his 1 attack, even if he has exceptional Strength. That's why everyone dreads pissy little monsters like rats, and why MUs can be horribly effective with darts - lots of attacks!
Fabio perished at 7th level after meeting the gaze of a medusa. The other players were intent on bringing him out and recovering him somehow. I said, "No - that Fabio is immortalised in stone, that is the way. A later party of adventurers will find him and admire his beauty."
I'd never have had that story to tell with point-buy.
What I've found over the years is that high attributes can actually be dangerous for a character in combat - it makes the player over-confident with their character, they charge in. After all, thinking of 1st level Fighters, one with 10 hit points who gets hit twice has the same chances of being knocked down as a 5 hit point one who gets hit once. If you have 5 HP and leather armour you're more likely to just stand in the doorway and wait for them to come at you one-by-one, compared to having 10 HP and banded mail.
And so in practice, higher attributes are dangerous. Game design has to take into account human nature, thus for example understanding that point-buy will take longer than random roll, given the same level of complexity in the game system otherwise, which means players will be more pissed off if their character dies, so point-buy systems tend to encourage hero point or other systems reducing lethality, etc. Human nature.
This doesn't follow. Point buy characters can be petrified. I've also never seen a player get upset because of defeat. Why would they? It's part of the game.
Quote from: Domina on December 21, 2023, 11:13:50 AM
You certainly can make exactly the character you want with point buy, assuming you're not playing d&d.
No you can't. If you have no particular concept in mind you have a great deal of flexibility with point buy, but if you had a concept first, then point buy can fail you.
Quote from: migo on December 21, 2023, 12:42:02 PM
Quote from: Domina on December 21, 2023, 11:13:50 AM
You certainly can make exactly the character you want with point buy, assuming you're not playing d&d.
No you can't. If you have no particular concept in mind you have a great deal of flexibility with point buy, but if you had a concept first, then point buy can fail you.
You're being unnecessarily pedantic.
"I want to build Superman" and being unable to in a fantasy game is not a failure of point buy. It is a failure of the concept to meet the game's parameters for what a starting PC should look like. It would fail equally hard if things were rolled.
Perhaps to clear it up to account for your excessive pedantry, "using point buy you can make exactly the character you want within the constraints of the genre and mechanical options."
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 21, 2023, 04:42:44 PM
Quote from: migo on December 21, 2023, 12:42:02 PM
Quote from: Domina on December 21, 2023, 11:13:50 AM
You certainly can make exactly the character you want with point buy, assuming you're not playing d&d.
No you can't. If you have no particular concept in mind you have a great deal of flexibility with point buy, but if you had a concept first, then point buy can fail you.
You're being unnecessarily pedantic.
"I want to build Superman" and being unable to in a fantasy game is not a failure of point buy. It is a failure of the concept to meet the game's parameters for what a starting PC should look like. It would fail equally hard if things were rolled.
Perhaps to clear it up to account for your excessive pedantry, "using point buy you can make exactly the character you want within the constraints of the genre and mechanical options."
No, you're making a strawman. No point buy system lets you create any character concept, and no the reason is not that the concept is too powerful. Perfectly reasonable concepts end up not working because they need a combination of abilities that are priced arbitrarily to begin with, and those abilities contain aspects that aren't necessary for the base concept.
Quote from: migo on December 21, 2023, 05:08:32 PM
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 21, 2023, 04:42:44 PM
Quote from: migo on December 21, 2023, 12:42:02 PM
Quote from: Domina on December 21, 2023, 11:13:50 AM
You certainly can make exactly the character you want with point buy, assuming you're not playing d&d.
No you can't. If you have no particular concept in mind you have a great deal of flexibility with point buy, but if you had a concept first, then point buy can fail you.
You're being unnecessarily pedantic.
"I want to build Superman" and being unable to in a fantasy game is not a failure of point buy. It is a failure of the concept to meet the game's parameters for what a starting PC should look like. It would fail equally hard if things were rolled.
Perhaps to clear it up to account for your excessive pedantry, "using point buy you can make exactly the character you want within the constraints of the genre and mechanical options."
No, you're making a strawman. *snip*
Says the guy insisting that you can't build the character you want with point buy (despite ALL objective, verifiable evidence to the contrary), because you can't get your dream character out of the gate without putting any work into it. And that this is a failure of the idea of point buy itself, and not your ABSURDLY unrealistic expectations.
I feel like as with any game, a codified point buy system will have limits in what it can effectively make based on authorial creativity. That and players may just not have enough points to make what they want. Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. My favorite character creation system is Ascendant, which uses point buy but with attribute caps based on total point budget to avoid folks going too far with a single attribute or ability. Keeps things interesting, and there's a lot of freedom in character concept and the like, without things going super incredibly off the rails balance-wise.
Point buy is cool in that it can allow and account for more variety of character builds, I'd say. As well as guaranteed clarity of concept if you want to pursue it even if the dice aren't feeling kind. The mini game aspect of character creation can even add connection/personal value to your build.
That said, there are arguable downsides as well. One is that build mistakes are very possible, whereas with random chance or even standard arrays, less so. This cost hits newbies and folks who aren't as invested in the game hardest, too. I guess also there's strategy as opposed to just chance in character creation, which on average is a bit slower, though of course it will depend on the system in question. I also feel like it's easier to make calculation mistakes, should that matter, though for me the math and meta-concerns of making a build fit are part of the fun. Characters may mean more to folks, which decreases interest in seeing them die, usually. Also, there's opportunity cost for all the perks that different methods like random rolling and the like can bring into play.
I'd say it depends on what you're looking for, and the circumstances at hand, whether one wants to go for point buy or not.
One thing I also find amusing is the assumptions that seem to go along with decrying point buy as if every variety of it uses points for everything (ex. HERO or M&M) instead of say, point buy of attributes for the old RPGA and similar organized play campaigns (Living City used point buy from its inception in 1987 and is standard for virtually all organized play groups).
"You can't express your concept in point buy" makes ZERO sense in relation to a level/class system where you point buy your attributes. Being able to put your points where needed to let you run what you want is precisely what it facilitates.
Something I've only seen touched on a bit is that these two things do accomplish different goals.
For instance, lets assume your table wants to generate stats and then play the character that the stats have. As jhkim says, you could be choosing between several stats with the same totals or similar values. I'll go further- you could, as DM, build several stat matrices, each one capable of being at least one powerful character, and then simply have the characters roll 1dN, where N is how many you made. Now everyone is guaranteed to be able to make equally powerful characters AND they don't know ahead of time whether they will get something that qualifies for paladin in AD&D 2e, or something that would make a good charisma caster in 5e, or whatever. It would work in every version.
The real question is, is this what you want? Point buy always gets you what you want (within the bounds of the budget), and things like "4d6 drop lowest arrange to taste" will get you much stronger characters than "3d6 down the line", and will generally allow you to play most things that you want (you may not qualify for every class in every edition, but unless you got balls rolls, you'll have something you want).
So that's our first axis: Should the Players be able to roll dice and then see what fits for their rolls, or should they come with a character in mind, roll dice, and try to make the best version of that character than they can??
Second, do you want different power levels at the table? This is much easier, because everyone knows how it works. Older editions have this problem in much smaller amounts. If an 18 is +3 and a 10 is +0, then the average table is going to have a runt and an alpha and the difference won't be huge. Play that in 3.0 and it will be a larger difference. Play that in 5e and it will be totally wild, with one guy having basically two or even more extra feats that no one else gets. There's millions of ways to get around this too- you could have everyone at the table generate part of the stat block, and then everyone gets that exact stat block but arranged to taste. On reddit, 5e players mention everyone rolling and then everyone can take any stat block generated (this is obviously an incredibly huge buff compared to point buy, as one guy will roll good and everyone will feast on those stats). So the second axis is Should the Players have significant power differences amongst themselves? Note that a fine answer is "who cares".
Am I missing an axis? Rolling is obviously more old school, and much more authentic to the older editions, but that's not a statement about whether it's good or bad, that's also a big preference thing. You definitely miss out on stuff when you point buy.
Personally I have run point buy almost exclusively in every edition (I didn't actually run 4e though, so not that one), with some mild variance about how many points are available, and I did so with the idea that I wanted players to be able to instantiate an idea. This obviously made the characters generally stronger than the book stated- though of course, I didn't make every stat available (IIRC I didn't let players dump below 5 or pump above 17 normally). But I did all this knowing it was a buff compared to rolling, even when I was a kid, because you had control and could always, for instance, make a paladin, if you wanted to.
GURPS is point buy, their source books are top notch bar none.
The thing that drives me away is the time it takes to build a character.
There's worst offenders (HERO 6th edition I'm looking at you).
I want a system with fast chargen.
Those other systems could benefit from having prebuilt characters (classes by any other name).
Ascendant does templates that make creation relatively simple, but they're closer to pregens built around a theme that you can tweak a bit than actual classes or the like. Not as bad as GURPS, but wouldn't call it nearly as fast or intuitive for creation as it is in play.
Anyway, some point buys have that, I guess, but I doubt it's common or extensive for most systems. Assuming the point buy is super varied in potential builds.
Quote from: KindaMeh on December 21, 2023, 08:18:09 PM
Ascendant does templates that make creation relatively simple, but they're closer to pregens built around a theme that you can tweak a bit than actual classes or the like. Not as bad as GURPS, but wouldn't call it nearly as fast or intuitive for creation as it is in play.
Anyway, some point buys have that, I guess, but I doubt it's common or extensive for most systems. Assuming the point buy is super varied in potential builds.
GURPS does have racial / class templates. they are useful but from a newbie point of view GURPS isn't always best at relaying how it got to the point values it got to, aka not showing it's work.
I notice this sometimes in point buy systems.
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 21, 2023, 06:27:44 PM
Says the guy insisting that you can't build the character you want with point buy (despite ALL objective, verifiable evidence to the contrary), because you can't get your dream character out of the gate without putting any work into it. And that this is a failure of the idea of point buy itself, and not your ABSURDLY unrealistic expectations.
No, I ran into this with a character concept that the game's designer thought was both really cool and appropriate, and I had already played a number of games using one of his pre-generated characters, so I had no unrealistic expectations about the power level. Even with his help, we couldn't get the concept to work with the points he had laid out. It's an inherent problem with point buy.
It simply doesn't do what it's supposed to. Given that's the case, you're much better off using some kind of life path system where you discover your character through generation, and then you're simply not expecting to start with a particular template.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 06:27:56 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 21, 2023, 06:27:44 PM
Says the guy insisting that you can't build the character you want with point buy (despite ALL objective, verifiable evidence to the contrary), because you can't get your dream character out of the gate without putting any work into it. And that this is a failure of the idea of point buy itself, and not your ABSURDLY unrealistic expectations.
No, I ran into this with a character concept that the game's designer thought was both really cool and appropriate, and I had already played a number of games using one of his pre-generated characters, so I had no unrealistic expectations about the power level. Even with his help, we couldn't get the concept to work with the points he had laid out. It's an inherent problem with point buy.
It simply doesn't do what it's supposed to. Given that's the case, you're much better off using some kind of life path system where you discover your character through generation, and then you're simply not expecting to start with a particular template.
Details or I refuse to believe you. I have tried myriad point buy systems and have never experienced anything like this (which you then extend to ALL point buy systems as a blanket statement of truth I might add).
So at least give us the system and the concept you failed to achieve so we can actually judge for ourselves.
Your statement is too extreme on its face to be just taken as gospel truth.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 22, 2023, 07:48:18 AM
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 06:27:56 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 21, 2023, 06:27:44 PM
Says the guy insisting that you can't build the character you want with point buy (despite ALL objective, verifiable evidence to the contrary), because you can't get your dream character out of the gate without putting any work into it. And that this is a failure of the idea of point buy itself, and not your ABSURDLY unrealistic expectations.
No, I ran into this with a character concept that the game's designer thought was both really cool and appropriate, and I had already played a number of games using one of his pre-generated characters, so I had no unrealistic expectations about the power level. Even with his help, we couldn't get the concept to work with the points he had laid out. It's an inherent problem with point buy.
It simply doesn't do what it's supposed to. Given that's the case, you're much better off using some kind of life path system where you discover your character through generation, and then you're simply not expecting to start with a particular template.
Details or I refuse to believe you. I have tried myriad point buy systems and have never experienced anything like this (which you then extend to ALL point buy systems as a blanket statement of truth I might add).
So at least give us the system and the concept you failed to achieve so we can actually judge for ourselves.
Your statement is too extreme on its face to be just taken as gospel truth.
Sweet Dreams by Allan Dotson. I had tried making a character who was the tooth fairy who collects teeth, and because she's in high school she has to get them by starting fights. That's not some crazy powerful concept for the system or premise, nor is it a concept that's out of place. It failed specifically because of the point buy system which wasn't noticeably different from what you'd see in GURPS or BESM.
It's not extreme at all. Point buy, like GURPS, is just fundamentally flawed. You can have fun with it, sure, but it doesn't let you do what it leads you to believe it can do. Various systems made some effort to compensate. For instance BESM had genre based skill costs, but the most common post you'd see on the GoO forums was asking for help to create a particular character concept. JAGS allocates a certain amount of points to skills, attributes and special abilities, so you can't distribute the points however you want, but it still has the same fundamental flaws. In GURPS if you want to play a character who is ageless, which is largely meaningless fluff background and doesn't imbalance the game at all, you end up paying a ton of points for it.
The point buy is simply a budget you have to work in, it's a mini game. It doesn't create balanced characters and it doesn't let you realize any character concept you want.
HeroQuest 2e, lets you create any character concept you want as long as you can summarize it in 100 words. And it doesn't suffer balance problems as a result. Why waste time with point buy when you can use something that's much better?
Sounds more like a "chose a crappy game engine" and "I am incapable of RP without perfect mechanical support" than an "all point buy is bad" problem.
Also, again, we need a term here to distinguish things just because "point buy" can mean both "build the entire PC with points" and "determine your six starting attributes before picking race/class" depending on who's doing the talking.
You're complaining more about the former. Others are comparing the latter form of point buy to random stat generation and finding it a superior option to random rolls creating a random character.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 22, 2023, 11:08:08 AM
Sounds more like a "chose a crappy game engine" and "I am incapable of RP without perfect mechanical support" than an "all point buy is bad" problem.
Also, again, we need a term here to distinguish things just because "point buy" can mean both "build the entire PC with points" and "determine your six starting attributes before picking race/class" depending on who's doing the talking.
You're complaining more about the former. Others are comparing the latter form of point buy to random stat generation and finding it a superior option to random rolls creating a random character.
Point buy is a crappy game engine. All it does is add complexity for its own sake.
There are so many systems to choose from, there's no reason to stick to one that fails at its ostensible objective. Of course you can houserule every piece of crap out. But you save yourself a lot of grief by simply not using point buy.
Simply assigning points to stats is stat allocation, not point buy. Point buy is a system like GURPS.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 12:37:44 PM
Simply assigning points to stats is stat allocation, not point buy. Point buy is a system like GURPS.
In prior discussion around D&D, other posters have consistently been referring to buying stats with points as "point buy" -- especially since that is the name used in the rules. You might disagree, but you should at least be aware of how other posters are using the term.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 06:27:56 AM
No, I ran into this with a character concept that the game's designer thought was both really cool and appropriate, and I had already played a number of games using one of his pre-generated characters, so I had no unrealistic expectations about the power level. Even with his help, we couldn't get the concept to work with the points he had laid out. It's an inherent problem with point buy.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 09:38:35 AM
Sweet Dreams by Allan Dotson. I had tried making a character who was the tooth fairy who collects teeth, and because she's in high school she has to get them by starting fights. That's not some crazy powerful concept for the system or premise, nor is it a concept that's out of place. It failed specifically because of the point buy system which wasn't noticeably different from what you'd see in GURPS or BESM.
It's not extreme at all. Point buy, like GURPS, is just fundamentally flawed. You can have fun with it, sure, but it doesn't let you do what it leads you to believe it can do.
In general, I agree that there are reasonable character concepts that will be priced out-of-whack in GURPS or HERO, but I also think "you can have fun with it" is a sufficiently good reason to play something - and there's a huge variety of characters that can be handled, and even more if the GM is willing to be flexible with the rules for the player. I've had HERO system characters ranging from a Klingon warship shrunk to the size of a dinner plate, to an intergalactic teleporter, to a Timelord.
I've heard of Sweet Dreams, but I don't know the rules. Can you explain why your tooth fairy character couldn't be bought?
Quote from: jhkim on December 22, 2023, 02:14:00 PM
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 12:37:44 PM
Simply assigning points to stats is stat allocation, not point buy. Point buy is a system like GURPS.
In prior discussion around D&D, other posters have consistently been referring to buying stats with points as "point buy" -- especially since that is the name used in the rules. You might disagree, but you should at least be aware of how other posters are using the term.
That's fair, but given how long GURPS and HERO have been on the market, they ought to know that those are point buy systems.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 06:27:56 AM
No, I ran into this with a character concept that the game's designer thought was both really cool and appropriate, and I had already played a number of games using one of his pre-generated characters, so I had no unrealistic expectations about the power level. Even with his help, we couldn't get the concept to work with the points he had laid out. It's an inherent problem with point buy.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 09:38:35 AM
Sweet Dreams by Allan Dotson. I had tried making a character who was the tooth fairy who collects teeth, and because she's in high school she has to get them by starting fights. That's not some crazy powerful concept for the system or premise, nor is it a concept that's out of place. It failed specifically because of the point buy system which wasn't noticeably different from what you'd see in GURPS or BESM.
It's not extreme at all. Point buy, like GURPS, is just fundamentally flawed. You can have fun with it, sure, but it doesn't let you do what it leads you to believe it can do.
In general, I agree that there are reasonable character concepts that will be priced out-of-whack in GURPS or HERO, but I also think "you can have fun with it" is a sufficiently good reason to play something - and there's a huge variety of characters that can be handled, and even more if the GM is willing to be flexible with the rules for the player. I've had HERO system characters ranging from a Klingon warship shrunk to the size of a dinner plate, to an intergalactic teleporter, to a Timelord.
I've heard of Sweet Dreams, but I don't know the rules. Can you explain why your tooth fairy character couldn't be bought?
[/quote]
Mechanically it was more or less like GURPS. Had a few other elements, but was a normal RPG for the time period. There were a few special abilities I needed for the concept, one with supernaturally induced sleep, and the ability that resembled it most closely was quite expensive and just put the concept out of the budget. It had some additional capabilities that weren't needed for the concept, that somewhat justified the cost that had been selected. The problem you have there is either have a package of abilities and streamline character generation if you don't have a concept in mind, or you break each part down to its own thing, and it makes the process long and involved, and sometimes so arcane that you can't figure out how to arrive at the destination (BESM's problem).
Out of whack pricing is a problem with a particular game's design, not with point buy as a design approach.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 05:38:14 PM
Quote from: jhkim on December 22, 2023, 02:14:00 PM
In general, I agree that there are reasonable character concepts that will be priced out-of-whack in GURPS or HERO, but I also think "you can have fun with it" is a sufficiently good reason to play something - and there's a huge variety of characters that can be handled, and even more if the GM is willing to be flexible with the rules for the player. I've had HERO system characters ranging from a Klingon warship shrunk to the size of a dinner plate, to an intergalactic teleporter, to a Timelord.
I've heard of Sweet Dreams, but I don't know the rules. Can you explain why your tooth fairy character couldn't be bought?
Mechanically it was more or less like GURPS. Had a few other elements, but was a normal RPG for the time period. There were a few special abilities I needed for the concept, one with supernaturally induced sleep, and the ability that resembled it most closely was quite expensive and just put the concept out of the budget. It had some additional capabilities that weren't needed for the concept, that somewhat justified the cost that had been selected. The problem you have there is either have a package of abilities and streamline character generation if you don't have a concept in mind, or you break each part down to its own thing, and it makes the process long and involved, and sometimes so arcane that you can't figure out how to arrive at the destination (BESM's problem).
So as I understand it, there was a package of stuff together that you only wanted a part of, and paying for the whole thing made your character too expensive. It sounds like a pretty easy GM ruling to let you have part of the power for part of the price.
I am not sure how "could not build sensible concept for a starting character in point buy" is an inherent failure of point buy anymore than "desired concept did not exist as a single class in a level and class system for a level 1 character to take" is a condemnation of the latter.
"Can build anything" maybe a false promise of point buy, but it is demonstrably more customizable than class & level.
It can be used to build ineffective characters, as can multicalssing in class & level or poor RNG in random generation. Protecting a player from the consequence of poor decisions is not a feature of games built around decision making, and trap options are a design problem than can occur in any system with meaningful choice.
The Fantasy trip is one of my only RPGs I play, even though I don't financially support it any more. It is deadly, but the point-buy system makes character creation extremely quick. I also like the simplicity and elegance of such a system.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 06:27:56 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 21, 2023, 06:27:44 PM
Says the guy insisting that you can't build the character you want with point buy (despite ALL objective, verifiable evidence to the contrary), because you can't get your dream character out of the gate without putting any work into it. And that this is a failure of the idea of point buy itself, and not your ABSURDLY unrealistic expectations.
No, I ran into this with a character concept that the game's designer thought was both really cool and appropriate, and I had already played a number of games using one of his pre-generated characters, so I had no unrealistic expectations about the power level. Even with his help, we couldn't get the concept to work with the points he had laid out. It's an inherent problem with point buy.
It simply doesn't do what it's supposed to. Given that's the case, you're much better off using some kind of life path system where you discover your character through generation, and then you're simply not expecting to start with a particular template.
I didn't mention "power levels", that's immaterial to this. You're insisting, over and over again, that if you don't get 100% the EXACT character you envisioned right out of character creation that's somehow a failure of point buy as a design concept. IN GENERAL.
And you're basing this view on your experience with ONE game, making ONE character. That you later admitted--after multiple probes from different posters--had one powerful ability that warranted the cost that set the character outside the starting point budget. Meaning that this ENTIRE exchange had been bullshit to begin with, cuz your character really would've been too powerful. It's just that you didn't want that precise ability, but it was the closest one to fit your concept.
ALL of these are absurd, unrealistic expectations regardless of how powerful the character might turn out to be.
The idea that a game system has to achieve such a level of perfection that you can craft the EXACT character you want without fail is unrealistic.
The idea that the system has provide you with the ENTIRE laundry list of abilities for your concept since character creation, rather than having to wait to pick some of them later once you earn more points is unrealistic.
The idea that if ONE game fails to accomplish all this unrealistic stuff for even ONE character means that ALL games that use a similar design concept are also a failure is unrealistic.
The idea that if ONE game that uses a certain design concept fails to meet your unrealistic expectations due to a specific and EASILY changeable set of parameters (starting points) that applies only to that game when played with that GM means that the design concept needs to be scrapped not just for that game with that GM, but across the board in general is unrealistic.
This ENTIRE exchange is ABSURD.
GM: We're going to be running street-level heroes in Mutants & Masterminds, so it's power level 8 and 120 points.
Migo: I can't build Superman with 120 points.
GM: I said we're doing street-level heroes.
Migo: Superman stops street-level crimes. Point buy is stupid. It doesn't allow you to build something even though the concept totally fits the setting.
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 09:38:35 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 22, 2023, 07:48:18 AM
Quote from: migo on December 22, 2023, 06:27:56 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 21, 2023, 06:27:44 PM
Says the guy insisting that you can't build the character you want with point buy (despite ALL objective, verifiable evidence to the contrary), because you can't get your dream character out of the gate without putting any work into it. And that this is a failure of the idea of point buy itself, and not your ABSURDLY unrealistic expectations.
No, I ran into this with a character concept that the game's designer thought was both really cool and appropriate, and I had already played a number of games using one of his pre-generated characters, so I had no unrealistic expectations about the power level. Even with his help, we couldn't get the concept to work with the points he had laid out. It's an inherent problem with point buy.
It simply doesn't do what it's supposed to. Given that's the case, you're much better off using some kind of life path system where you discover your character through generation, and then you're simply not expecting to start with a particular template.
Details or I refuse to believe you. I have tried myriad point buy systems and have never experienced anything like this (which you then extend to ALL point buy systems as a blanket statement of truth I might add).
So at least give us the system and the concept you failed to achieve so we can actually judge for ourselves.
Your statement is too extreme on its face to be just taken as gospel truth.
Sweet Dreams by Allan Dotson. I had tried making a character who was the tooth fairy who collects teeth, and because she's in high school she has to get them by starting fights. That's not some crazy powerful concept for the system or premise, nor is it a concept that's out of place. It failed specifically because of the point buy system which wasn't noticeably different from what you'd see in GURPS or BESM.
It's not extreme at all. Point buy, like GURPS, is just fundamentally flawed. You can have fun with it, sure, but it doesn't let you do what it leads you to believe it can do. Various systems made some effort to compensate. For instance BESM had genre based skill costs, but the most common post you'd see on the GoO forums was asking for help to create a particular character concept. JAGS allocates a certain amount of points to skills, attributes and special abilities, so you can't distribute the points however you want, but it still has the same fundamental flaws. In GURPS if you want to play a character who is ageless, which is largely meaningless fluff background and doesn't imbalance the game at all, you end up paying a ton of points for it.
The point buy is simply a budget you have to work in, it's a mini game. It doesn't create balanced characters and it doesn't let you realize any character concept you want.
HeroQuest 2e, lets you create any character concept you want as long as you can summarize it in 100 words. And it doesn't suffer balance problems as a result. Why waste time with point buy when you can use something that's much better?
Then it was a shit system. Describe your character's abilities and I'll create it.
Quote from: KindaMeh on December 21, 2023, 07:15:14 PM
I feel like as with any game, a codified point buy system will have limits in what it can effectively make based on authorial creativity.
Hardly.
Quote from: Domina on December 23, 2023, 12:28:16 PM
Quote from: KindaMeh on December 21, 2023, 07:15:14 PM
I feel like as with any game, a codified point buy system will have limits in what it can effectively make based on authorial creativity.
Hardly.
In the sense of DM adjudication, adaptation and potential homebrew, or just there being a very solid system or set of systems you know of with wide allowance for creativity? Do you have a system you might potentially recommend, if the latter? (Also, how do they handle balance, if that potentially becomes an issue? Or does it, within the context of how the game plays and is set up at a given table?)
What limits have you encountered, specifically?
I guess sometimes it's just weird or esoteric abilities that folks in their right mind wouldn't really anticipate and give clear point costs to. (Ex: What should be the cost for lactose control where you can turn milk into cheese and the like? Or I had to homebrew for someone who wanted a suite of powers similar to Gara from Naruto, I guess might be the best fictional character comparison? But at a notably lower level, so not nearly as broken. I did a bad job on that one, arguably, and undershot a fair bit.) Ascendant is cool in that they help you build powers, but even within that context there are limitations based on power type templates and the like. You can stray off the beaten road, but past a certain point you're just making things up on your own and blindly guessing, I guess. Of course, for something like the "Storytelling" system things are notably more codified and constrained despite that also I guess being point buy, so I'm sure it probably varies somewhat based on system and style. Ascendant is arguably the most varied and adaptable that I have personally tried, though I guess maybe something like GURPS or the like could do that even better.
Lactose control would just be Elemental Control or Transmutation with the Very Limited con. I don't know anything about Naruto.
Apparently I'm a bit of an idiot. That does make sense in retrospect. (Probably just have the player pay for both individually to simulate the full power. Was too focused on thinking of it as a separate and indivisible thing.) I'll work a bit harder on my DMing skills and rule comprehension.
Also, how do you like Ascendant, relative to other point buys and the like? For me it's been great, relatively flexible/balanced, and very simple resolution mechanics in play even when I and my players struggle occasionally in character creation. I think compared to other point buy things I've played like Vampire 20th anniversary Dark Ages and the like it's got a pretty broad focus for creation that's pretty cool. But still sticks to mirroring comic book flavor pretty well in fights and the like, what with hero points and cetera.
I wasn't sure if you were asking me or if that was the general "you" addressing everyone in the thread, but I've never played it
Dang. I'll admit you must be pretty good with systems then. (Or at least possessed of solid reading comprehension, which for myself is not always a given.)
It was open to members of the thread, but mainly geared towards you, I guess. Thought you might be a fellow fan. ;D
I was using the rules from p&p, since that's what I'm most familiar with
Wait, so they both have those types of powers and the concept of power flaws? Makes sense, I guess, but interesting.
Edit: I did apparently get the names wrong for the drawbacks and I think one of the powers, but yeah, interesting. I guess any system trying to cover its bases would probably have to think of that kind of thing, though. Similar concepts existing across game lines for powers and the like.
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 22, 2023, 11:59:50 PM
And you're basing this view on your experience with ONE game, making ONE character. That you later admitted--after multiple probes from different posters--had one powerful ability that warranted the cost that set the character outside the starting point budget. Meaning that this ENTIRE exchange had been bullshit to begin with, cuz your character really would've been too powerful. It's just that you didn't want that precise ability, but it was the closest one to fit your concept.
I said in the beginning that was the issue.
QuoteJust that it ends up costing too many points to have mechanical fiddly bits that represent the fiction you want to convey.
The cost of the ability is justified, but I don't want the whole ability, I only want part of it. And that becomes the problem. Either you have it accessible like GURPS, with the problems of reaching a budget, or you have it like BESM, that lets you create anything, but you need half a dozen people poring over the idea to figure out how to bring the idea to life.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 23, 2023, 08:24:43 AM
GM: We're going to be running street-level heroes in Mutants & Masterminds, so it's power level 8 and 120 points.
Migo: I can't build Superman with 120 points.
GM: I said we're doing street-level heroes.
Migo: Superman stops street-level crimes. Point buy is stupid. It doesn't allow you to build something even though the concept totally fits the setting.
Well, you've clearly shown your character with this post.
Quote from: Domina on December 23, 2023, 12:26:53 PM
Then it was a shit system.
Well yes, it was point buy. That's the point I've been making from the start.
Quote
Describe your character's abilities and I'll create it.
You're a special kind of arrogant to think you could accomplish something in a system you have no familiarity with that the system's designer couldn't.
So was there a non-point-buy system or setup you've found that has greater freedom of potential character concept and the like than the average point buy system? If so, would you characterize this as an outlier or common for whatever the generation type?
Usually when I think point buy I think of random generation and/or prebuilt classes/levels as the alternatives, which I usually feel are less likely to allow for a wide variety of concepts in attempted character creation... though to be fair, that's probably not everything that's out there. Also, it depends on the specific system, I am sure, so not every point buy will intrinsically offer more options than every random or cetera. Ex: Some PbtA games are basically point-buy-ish, but I wouldn't call those characters more customizable than even 5e, necessarily.
Were you trying to say that point buy in and of itself is not a guarantor of creative freedom? I'd agree with that, though I would probably also agree that it can sometimes help with that kind of thing compared to, say, random generation. Kind of like, it helps allow for creativity on average, but it doesn't guarantee it, and it depends on what it's up against.
It is neither good nor bad, it is a tool. Whether it is good or bad depends on how it is used.
Quote from: pawsplay on December 23, 2023, 06:11:33 PM
It is neither good nor bad, it is a tool. Whether it is good or bad depends on how it is used.
For sure. Though I would also probably argue it tends to have certain advantages and prospective drawbacks/disadvantages as part of the template. So in certain instances it may be more or less appropriate to the situation at hand.
Quote from: migo on December 23, 2023, 05:03:46 PM
Quote from: Domina on December 23, 2023, 12:26:53 PM
Then it was a shit system.
Well yes, it was point buy. That's the point I've been making from the start.
Quote
Describe your character's abilities and I'll create it.
You're a special kind of arrogant to think you could accomplish something in a system you have no familiarity with that the system's designer couldn't.
Where did I say I would be using your system? I already said it was shit, obviously I wouldn't use its rules.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 23, 2023, 08:24:43 AM
Migo: Superman stops street-level crimes. Point buy is stupid. It doesn't allow you to build something even though the concept totally fits the setting.
I can't tell you how often I've had some player say, "I don't have enough points for my character concept." Random roll helps deal with these egotistical unimaginative players. At first it humbles them so they have a chance of learning to play properly, and the worst of them simply move on.
Quote from: Domina on December 23, 2023, 07:31:49 PM
Quote from: migo on December 23, 2023, 05:03:46 PM
Quote from: Domina on December 23, 2023, 12:26:53 PM
Then it was a shit system.
Well yes, it was point buy. That's the point I've been making from the start.
Quote
Describe your character's abilities and I'll create it.
You're a special kind of arrogant to think you could accomplish something in a system you have no familiarity with that the system's designer couldn't.
Where did I say I would be using your system? I already said it was shit, obviously I wouldn't use its rules.
You don't understand.
They don't WANT a solution.
They want to be a whiny snowflake who gets sympathy for having their feefees hurt and if you call them out for being a thin-skinned self-entitled drama queen who got mad because the game wouldn't give them everything they wanted right from level one without any effort and this experience is enough to label an entire broad concept of character creation as objectively awful.
If they wanted solutions they wouldn't be using a game from some obscure guy known mostly for self-published storygames (and even finding that much took a little digging) as their example for why point buy mechanics suck.
There you go. Low level Supes. Took me about seven minutes.
(https://i.imgur.com/M6rjLQh.png)
Players not having enough points for their concept is not a problem that's inherent in points buy systems. I don't think it's a system problem at all. It's more a problem with players who don't understand or ignore the power level of the game and what sort of character you can actually make with the points available. The GM needs to be clear about this from the start. I am running a PL 8 game using Mutants and Masterminds 3e. Characters will be young mutants who are new to their powers. PL 8 is entry level superheroes. Your character will probably be able to afford only one significant power. Make concepts accordingly. Your character might not be able to do everything you want them to do right away. They probably won't. If people come to the table with a concept that involves being an actual god, that's not a problem with the system.
Quote from: Domina on December 24, 2023, 12:17:24 AM
There you go. Low level Supes. Took me about seven minutes.
(https://i.imgur.com/M6rjLQh.png)
Doesn't have Invulnerability, Super Hearing or X-Ray Vision.
Point Buy is objectively shit and needs to die in a dumpster fire. I would rather be eternally constrained by random rolls and character classes than get a single option if I can't get 100% EXACTLY what I want--with ZERO qualifications--out of that option. And don't tell me I need to play a bit to get there!
How am I ever going to recover from this unbearable disappointment?
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 24, 2023, 07:13:02 AM
Quote from: Domina on December 24, 2023, 12:17:24 AM
There you go. Low level Supes. Took me about seven minutes.
(https://i.imgur.com/M6rjLQh.png)
Doesn't have Invulnerability, Super Hearing or X-Ray Vision.
Point Buy is objectively shit and needs to die in a dumpster fire. I would rather be eternally constrained by random rolls and character classes than get a single option if I can't get 100% EXACTLY what I want--with ZERO qualifications--out of that option. And don't tell me I need to play a bit to get there!
How am I ever going to recover from this unbearable disappointment?
Personally, if limited to PL8 I'd have aimed for Golden Age Supes before he had all that other stuff and was just a stronger (locomotives of the era had a pull strength of about 430kN/so lift of c. 48-50 tons; able to leap an eighth of a mile; 660'), faster (speeding bullets were later; 100-200mph), more resilient (nothing less than a bursting shell is pretty easy at PL8) and with sharper (but still limited to the normal five) senses.
Then in play I could spend gained points on unlocking other powers, add flight as an alternate power for jumping, add x-ray vision to super senses (then make heat vision an alternate power of x-ray vision just like in the comics).
Slowly increase the values of Strength and Toughness, add Kryptonite as a complication (first it only removes my powers per K-Metal from Krypton, scale it up with time) for extra Hero Points.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 24, 2023, 08:28:16 AM
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 24, 2023, 07:13:02 AM
Quote from: Domina on December 24, 2023, 12:17:24 AM
There you go. Low level Supes. Took me about seven minutes.
*snip*
Doesn't have Invulnerability, Super Hearing or X-Ray Vision.
Point Buy is objectively shit and needs to die in a dumpster fire. I would rather be eternally constrained by random rolls and character classes than get a single option if I can't get 100% EXACTLY what I want--with ZERO qualifications--out of that option. And don't tell me I need to play a bit to get there!
How am I ever going to recover from this unbearable disappointment?
Personally, if limited to PL8 I'd have aimed for Golden Age Supes before he had all that other stuff and was just a stronger (locomotives of the era had a pull strength of about 430kN/so lift of c. 48-50 tons; able to leap an eighth of a mile; 660'), faster (speeding bullets were later; 100-200mph), more resilient (nothing less than a bursting shell is pretty easy at PL8) and with sharper (but still limited to the normal five) senses.
Then in play I could spend gained points on unlocking other powers, add flight as an alternate power for jumping, add x-ray vision to super senses (then make heat vision an alternate power of x-ray vision just like in the comics).
Slowly increase the values of Strength and Toughness, add Kryptonite as a complication (first it only removes my powers per K-Metal from Krypton, scale it up with time) for extra Hero Points.
That sounds like proof positive that point buy is shit to me. If point buy worked I wouldn't have to play a bit to work my way into the full fledged character I "envision". I would be able to get a fully realized version of it, without exception, from day one. And the GM would pay me to play this character, then thank me for the opportunity.
Why should I have to work to eventually get 100% the character that I want, when the "stated purpose" of point buy is to be unabated, universal and without setbacks or constraints, automatic wish fulfillment engine?
PS: I would've done the same thing, but basing it on Smallville, since that's the source material I'm familiar with.
Superman isn't invulnerable. But thanks, you reminded me to add his vulnerability to kryptonite.
I'm sure you would let a player play a character that can't be harmed in your game, right? Lmao. What a clown.
(https://i.imgur.com/0qEtqbE.png)
Quote from: VisionStorm
Why should I have to work to eventually get 100% the character that I want
You don't.
It is not inherently bad, the big names that use it are more complicated games that offer so many options I do see it creating "paralysis by analysis" with newer players making characters. This I have solved for years by asking players what sort of character they would like to play, finding a template to match up to the archetype and doing most of the work for them in 5-10 minutes and letting them do the last bit of customizing (which if we are running fast will take me 2-5 minutes with them and me making suggestions based on what they told me they want to be/play).
For session 0 games where players make their own characters and I just sort of answer what questions they ask and let them do it...the less schooled players looking for archetypes themselves will take a long time to make a character (3-4 hours) and that is with me stepping in to help. The biggest weakness I see from the bigger two (Hero and GURPS) is it takes a great deal of "study" time for the GM to take new players and get characters rolling. I had and read the GURPS base books for a few years before we played it, and I read them like I was studying for an exam. I am not saying it takes that level of effort to get characters made and run a game, but it is certainly a bit of a barrier for a GM and players who have never played it before and want to try a new game.
I can not speak to other point buy systems ( I own a couple of Eden Studios games, but never ran or played them) unless we are counting SW, but its no where near the same level of front loaded options.
That's funny, I'm running a play by post right now and both players gave me finished character sheets after like a day with almost no assistance, and I only found a few minor errors in one of them (they were both new to the system)
Quote from: Domina on December 24, 2023, 08:00:05 PM
That's funny, I'm running a play by post right now and both players gave me finished character sheets after like a day with almost no assistance, and I only found a few minor errors in one of them (they were both new to the system)
System?
prowlers and paragons
That makes sense...that system seems more comparable to Savage Worlds on options and complexity so not so surprising new people could whip up a character solo and being new. I thought you were saying they made GURPS or Hero system characters on their own in short order.
Quote from: oggsmash on December 25, 2023, 12:33:19 PM
That makes sense...that system seems more comparable to Savage Worlds on options and complexity so not so surprising new people could whip up a character solo and being new. I thought you were saying they made GURPS or Hero system characters on their own in short order.
LOL, you'd have a better chance of writing a master's thesis in the same amount of time
Quote from: oggsmash on December 25, 2023, 12:33:19 PM
That makes sense...that system seems more comparable to Savage Worlds on options and complexity so not so surprising new people could whip up a character solo and being new. I thought you were saying they made GURPS or Hero system characters on their own in short order.
Eh, 4th Edition HERO wasn't awful. I was mid-teens when I was first introduced to it as an alternative to Palladium's Heroes Unlimited. I honestly had a harder time playing out the combats (the phases + calculating OCV-DCV + counting dice for both stun and kills, etc.) than I ever did with building a PC using it.
I mean, it wasn't as easy as Mutants & Masterminds, but it wasn't so awful that a teenager with a desire to create their own superhero couldn't muscle through it.
Quote from: jhkim on December 19, 2023, 03:20:55 AM
But point-buy doesn't have higher attributes than rolling.
Not in theory, but in practice, yes. We saw this many times in my GURPS days, and to this day you can go on their forums and see people saying that a 25 or 50 point character is "basically unplayable". Try this: "okay guys, the average of 3d6 is 10.5, so we'll give you 10.5 points for each stat, there are six, that's 63 points. Spend as you wish, minimum 3, maximum 18." You're going to hear the good old, "but that's not enough points for my character concept" straight away. Let alone giving them
less than average dice results.
Whereas if they roll and get equivalent results, most players tend to just go with it and make the best of it, like I did with the charismatic fighter - and yeah, attributes do matter, but you still have to play the character intelligently, making use of their individual strengths and avoiding their weaknesses becoming a vulnerability.
Quote from: Captain_PazuzuIsn't it a question of preference to some extent?
Of course. But there's a reason we don't have an entirely blank page for the rules systems: certain rules encourage or discourage certain kinds of play. They don't
determine it, but they do
influence it. Obviously if you have rules for X but not Y, you'll usually get more X than Y in the campaign, overall. But it starts with character generation. Are there classes? Skills? Attributes? Are some random, some chosen, and which?
As well, players' tastes aren't fixed for roleplaying games as for any other media. Not many of us watch only action movies, or only romantic comedies, or whatever. We have our favourites, of course, but most of us have had the experience of someone sitting us down to watch something we wouldn't have chosen on our own - and we end up enjoying it. This happens at least as often as choosing a movie in our favourite genre and hating it.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on December 18, 2023, 11:58:46 AM
This kind of problem stems not from a point buy system but rather from player desires not aligning to the power level of the campaign. If a player is told to create a 150 point character, but the super duper character they have envisioned requires 275 points to build then the player has to adjust the desired concept to something 150 points will buy. Some players always want more than the campaign starting level gives their characters regardless of creation method. In point buy they never have enough points. In random generation the rolled stats are not high enough for the character that they envision. NO creation method will help with that.
So very very true. You just have to tell the player they will have to grow into that power like everyone else. If they throw a tantrum then thats likely s good sign they are not going to be good at that table (or likely most any table)
Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 12:27:29 PM
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 10:03:59 PM
QuoteThere's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
Ah, you're one of those guys. Realism in a game about... dungeons and... dragons. Rightyo. Start shaving your neck, mate, and please discard the fedora.
Heres the real kicker with this argument.
The limit is only for STR and only effects Fighters, Rangers and Paladins as those are the only classes that made use of exceptional STR and the limit was not all that big. Women capped at 18/50 I believe.
So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing.
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
Same. I've had players bitch about "Rule of X/Power Level" caps, but never actual point totals.*
Similarly, Most attribute points buys that replace random rolls tend to deliver the same results as a standard array; which itself is a mathematical distribution based on the dice. 5e's array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 is basically that for 4d6 drop the lowest (technically the 15 should be a 16, but hey, perks of rolling). 5e Point Buy can duplicate the array if you allocate its points the same way (and includes a cap of 15... a base stat of 16+ is only possible by rolling in 5e).
The only real advantage of point buy over arrays is if the system includes elements that leverage having more or fewer even or odd numbers (ex. Basic 5e humans benefit from having all odd ability scores since their racial bonus is +1 to each ability).
The main advantage of array/point buy in my experience is that my dice (who hate me) can't screw me over for an entire campaign like they so often do.
* This is largely because most of the systems used have significant cost saving bit for multiples of similar things that can't be used at the same time (i.e. arrays/alternate powers) and limiters to shave points off something in exchange (ex. I had a superstrength character in one campaign who pulled off an extremely high lifting capacity at relatively low power levels by buying up the levels past the PL limit for combat with "only for lifting" and "requires concentration"; in combat he could throw a truck, outside of combat he could bench press a building... or temporarily stand it for one of its supports... if he gave up the ability to defend himself).
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
I've had players jealous over what other characters would have as attributes. So yeah, they exist.
People wasting time on jealousy aren't putting their energy into making a cool character. If they had, the character would actually stand out as something special.
Falsely inflated attributes do not make up for being cookie-cutter or just plain unimaginative.
Often times when a Player at one of my tables is trying to create a character type, they are looking for a particular play experience. With that in mind, I often will talk to the player to try and ferret out what he really wants. 90% of the time, I can help guide the player to creating a PC that fits the play experience even if it's not how he envisioned the PC. The other 10% of the time, I have to steer the player to another game. Players that want to be the badass loner edge lord really need to go play skirmish games for a while and get it out of their system. (I've had a few that come to realize that's what they really wanted to play and never come back to RPGs. Still friends and still nerds.)
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
It's not unreasonable for a new player to want to play a character as powerful as Conan or Aragorn, or Kratos from God of War. Their expectations are set by other media, which often work very differently.
They have to learn how RPGs work, and in particular, how the character growth mechanics work.
They also have to learn that there is way more to the game than dice mechanics.
Quote from: Lurkndog on December 26, 2023, 12:03:48 PM
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
It's not unreasonable for a new player to want to play a character as powerful as Conan or Aragorn, or Kratos from God of War. Their expectations are set by other media, which often work very differently.
Why is it required to introduce new players to roleplaying via a system or setting where they can't be a Conan or Aragorn or Kratos (with challenges appropriate to their status)?
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 26, 2023, 01:10:30 PM
Quote from: Lurkndog on December 26, 2023, 12:03:48 PM
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
It's not unreasonable for a new player to want to play a character as powerful as Conan or Aragorn, or Kratos from God of War. Their expectations are set by other media, which often work very differently.
Why is it required to introduce new players to roleplaying via a system or setting where they can't be a Conan or Aragorn or Kratos (with challenges appropriate to their status)?
I think one problem with that being an introduction is (at least in most of the games I play) a character that experienced will have several abilities and skills that when utilized well make that character a super bad ass. A very inexperienced player can make a mess of that lots of times. On the other hand I do think games like SW (if char is started at say seasoned level) GURPS and HERO allow a character to start at a level that is immediately competent at the areas they want to excel in. Adult King Conan level? Not on 150 pts, but certainly 17 year old Conan.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 25, 2023, 03:48:38 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on December 25, 2023, 12:33:19 PM
That makes sense...that system seems more comparable to Savage Worlds on options and complexity so not so surprising new people could whip up a character solo and being new. I thought you were saying they made GURPS or Hero system characters on their own in short order.
Eh, 4th Edition HERO wasn't awful. I was mid-teens when I was first introduced to it as an alternative to Palladium's Heroes Unlimited. I honestly had a harder time playing out the combats (the phases + calculating OCV-DCV + counting dice for both stun and kills, etc.) than I ever did with building a PC using it.
I mean, it wasn't as easy as Mutants & Masterminds, but it wasn't so awful that a teenager with a desire to create their own superhero couldn't muscle through it.
My experience with Hero starts at 5th edition. It seems to me (this is my own perspective and bias) Hero is easier to create a character in than GURPS (assuming 5th or 6th edition of Hero) but the game itself is more complicated to me than GURPS in actual play. I suspect if I played it for lots of sessions that might change. I also think the background for Hero (assumes most people want to get it for supers) motivates the players. My son was able to figure out making a character in a few hours (he had played GURPS, but I do not think he ever even made a character in GURPS) and largely because his attention and motivation were driven by his desire to make a cool super hero.
Quote from: Chris24601 on December 26, 2023, 01:10:30 PM
Quote from: Lurkndog on December 26, 2023, 12:03:48 PM
It's not unreasonable for a new player to want to play a character as powerful as Conan or Aragorn, or Kratos from God of War. Their expectations are set by other media, which often work very differently.
They have to learn how RPGs work, and in particular, how the character growth mechanics work.
Why is it required to introduce new players to roleplaying via a system or setting where they can't be a Conan or Aragorn or Kratos (with challenges appropriate to their status)?
Yeah. There's nothing wrong with starting out playing Conan or Aragorn. That's how Marvel Superheroes approaches it, by having players play Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, and so forth.
I suspect making playing Spider-Man into a forbidden fruit only possible after years of play just makes players more eager to do so, and contributes to things like jealousy over stats. If they are allowed to try it, then they find that it isn't such a big deal.
Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 10:41:37 AM
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
I've had players jealous over what other characters would have as attributes. So yeah, they exist.
wtf lmao
Quote from: Domina on December 26, 2023, 05:06:53 PM
wtf lmao
I've also been in groups in which a player made a literal Nazi to be their character. And honestly? It was the same campaign the jealousy happened in.
Bad players suck the life out of gaming.
Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 10:41:37 AM
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
I've had players jealous over what other characters would have as attributes. So yeah, they exist.
I've only ever had that happen with random generation. People never really bitch about attributes with point buy, but they might still occasionally run into issues having enough points for minor background skills, such as languages (if they're foreigners, for example, and need to invest in the common language for the region the campaign is set on) and the like. Because point buy systems tend to be very stingy with points, usually giving only enough to make characters competent in a few areas focused on adventuring skills, but not enough to spread out for non-essential stuff that's just for "flavor".
Although people don't normally "bitch" about that strictly speaking. But it can be a show stopper when the game is about to start and they suddenly realize that their Japanese character in a Cyberpunk game can't speak English, for example, when the campaign is supposed to be set in the US. IMO, all games should give spare points or selections of some type for "Background" stuff, similar to 5e Backgrounds.
Quote from: Omega on December 25, 2023, 09:32:38 PM
Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 12:27:29 PM
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 10:03:59 PM
QuoteThere's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
Ah, you're one of those guys. Realism in a game about... dungeons and... dragons. Rightyo. Start shaving your neck, mate, and please discard the fedora.
Heres the real kicker with this argument.
The limit is only for STR and only effects Fighters, Rangers and Paladins as those are the only classes that made use of exceptional STR and the limit was not all that big. Women capped at 18/50 I believe.
So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing.
"So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing."
This isn't true.
If you have a 50% hit rate as a strength 10 guy and are swinging for 1d8, going to strength 14 doesn't add any damage, but it is the highest for a female halfing. Strength 15 likewise doesnt add any damage, despite being a legitimately good strength, and is the highest for a female gnome. Strength 16 entitles you to +1 damage, which will increase your damage in this example by about 20%, and this is the highest for an elfess. A female dwarf or half elf can get to strength 17, which is +1/+1 and is a 34% boost over the strength 10-15 case. If you rolled up a strength 18 (itself a +1/+2, a 59% boost over the Strength 14-15 case, and an 18% boost over Strength 17!), and you are NOT a fighter, the only two girls you can pick and not lose strength are female human, and female half orc.
Now, this is arguably very unrealistic; men are much stronger than women in reality, like 50% stronger just among average people with a much greater difference at the top end; if this was done with reality in mind, the difference would be much more stark.
But as written, we've still excluded and penalized
most of the available female characters in the PHB. If you think the figleaf that halflings, gnomes, elves, and dwarves don't exist in our world makes this acceptable in the twisted eyesight of modernity, please head over to reddit and propose such a system in any of the DND subreddits. "No, this isn't about female HUMANS, just things that are closely based on them!" you'd say, from under a mountain of drooling downvoters. Ideally not on your main account, should you have one, as you are definitely at risk of banning.
Now I've demonstrated that this is not an issue only for fighters and their subclasses (a human female rogue and a human male rogue at strength 18 will perform the same, but this is definitely not the case for an elfess rogue versus the elf rogue), but lets move on to the meaty portion that is related just to the fightery types.
Just how good is 18/50, the female maximum human strength in this version, compared to 18/00? Well, we go from "+1/+3" to "+3/+6". You probably don't need me to do the math for you here, but I sure will. With my baseline assumption in this post (50% accuracy for the strength 10 character), the 18/50 case is 83% better, and the 18/00 case is over 200% better (around triple the damage). This also means, of course, that 18/00 is about
two thirds again more damage than the 18/50 character.
It's a very large difference.
Earlier in the thread I discussed what I considered to be the most important issue; these stats, despite allegedly being very rare, in practice were not that rare. Their existence made players and DMs assume they were to be used, and used they were, in amounts far exceeding their statistical expectation. That was the bulk of my post, not the strength difference between sexes. But even with Gygax's very generous assignment of human females to strength 18/50 as a maximum, it's still enough of a difference because of the rather preposterous scaling of the percentile strengths.
Anyway, the math says it matters enough such that people discussing it are not discussing a non-issue.
Quote from: Venka on December 26, 2023, 06:36:16 PM
Quote from: Omega on December 25, 2023, 09:32:38 PM
Quote from: Venka on December 18, 2023, 12:27:29 PM
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on December 17, 2023, 10:03:59 PM
QuoteThere's almost no reason for that to have been in the book, the one merit is that it prevents the strongest woman from being as strong as the strongest man, a piece of realism that all later versions have left out.
Ah, you're one of those guys. Realism in a game about... dungeons and... dragons. Rightyo. Start shaving your neck, mate, and please discard the fedora.
Heres the real kicker with this argument.
The limit is only for STR and only effects Fighters, Rangers and Paladins as those are the only classes that made use of exceptional STR and the limit was not all that big. Women capped at 18/50 I believe.
So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing.
"So its one side bitching about nothing and the other side defending nothing."
This isn't true.
If you have a 50% hit rate as a strength 10 guy and are swinging for 1d8, going to strength 14 doesn't add any damage, but it is the highest for a female halfing. Strength 15 likewise doesnt add any damage, despite being a legitimately good strength, and is the highest for a female gnome. Strength 16 entitles you to +1 damage, which will increase your damage in this example by about 20%, and this is the highest for an elfess. A female dwarf or half elf can get to strength 17, which is +1/+1 and is a 34% boost over the strength 10-15 case. If you rolled up a strength 18 (itself a +1/+2, a 59% boost over the Strength 14-15 case, and an 18% boost over Strength 17!), and you are NOT a fighter, the only two girls you can pick and not lose strength are female human, and female half orc.
Now, this is arguably very unrealistic; men are much stronger than women in reality, like 50% stronger just among average people with a much greater difference at the top end; if this was done with reality in mind, the difference would be much more stark.
But as written, we've still excluded and penalized most of the available female characters in the PHB. If you think the figleaf that halflings, gnomes, elves, and dwarves don't exist in our world makes this acceptable in the twisted eyesight of modernity, please head over to reddit and propose such a system in any of the DND subreddits. "No, this isn't about female HUMANS, just things that are closely based on them!" you'd say, from under a mountain of drooling downvoters. Ideally not on your main account, should you have one, as you are definitely at risk of banning.
Now I've demonstrated that this is not an issue only for fighters and their subclasses (a human female rogue and a human male rogue at strength 18 will perform the same, but this is definitely not the case for an elfess rogue versus the elf rogue), but lets move on to the meaty portion that is related just to the fightery types.
Just how good is 18/50, the female maximum human strength in this version, compared to 18/00? Well, we go from "+1/+3" to "+3/+6". You probably don't need me to do the math for you here, but I sure will. With my baseline assumption in this post (50% accuracy for the strength 10 character), the 18/50 case is 83% better, and the 18/00 case is over 200% better (around triple the damage). This also means, of course, that 18/00 is about two thirds again more damage than the 18/50 character.
It's a very large difference.
Earlier in the thread I discussed what I considered to be the most important issue; these stats, despite allegedly being very rare, in practice were not that rare. Their existence made players and DMs assume they were to be used, and used they were, in amounts far exceeding their statistical expectation. That was the bulk of my post, not the strength difference between sexes. But even with Gygax's very generous assignment of human females to strength 18/50 as a maximum, it's still enough of a difference because of the rather preposterous scaling of the percentile strengths.
Anyway, the math says it matters enough such that people discussing it are not discussing a non-issue.
You have to have players stats roll at the table- or else there will be a mysteriously high level of 18/00's. I am currently DMing an AD&D Greyhawk Campaign. One of my players is playing a 3rd level Fighter with 12 Strength. Another player is playing a 4th level Ranger with 18/40 Strength. The Ranger out-performs him in battle. Clearly! He's 1 level higher, has a higher strength, and uses two-weapon fighting. But the Fighter isn't useless. He has a better AC with better armor and shield, though sometimes uses a Polearm weapon. (Both warriors currently outperform the poor Monk in battle, though the Monk should get better with time).
And if there ever is a strength enhancing item to be found (Gauntlets of Ogre Power or Girdle of Giant Strength) guess who will get it. As DM, I'm not going to put such an item in there on purpose, but... some of these old modules I use have stuff like this in there.
Both players are happy with their characters. (The Fighter plays his PC as a scrappy farm boy who is learning the ropes and succeeding despite the odds, while the Ranger is more a steryotypical 'bad ass')
Anyway, how stats translate to the table isn't always obvious. That's why I always tend to use real examples from games I play in or run.
Btw, "elfess?"
Quote from: VisionStorm on December 26, 2023, 06:14:57 PM
Quote from: Darrin Kelley on December 26, 2023, 10:41:37 AM
Quote from: Domina on December 25, 2023, 10:26:06 PM
I've genuinely never had a player bitch about not having enough points or whatever. Are you guys playing with children or something?
I've had players jealous over what other characters would have as attributes. So yeah, they exist.
I've only ever had that happen with random generation. People never really bitch about attributes with point buy, but they might still occasionally run into issues having enough points for minor background skills, such as languages (if they're foreigners, for example, and need to invest in the common language for the region the campaign is set on) and the like. Because point buy systems tend to be very stingy with points, usually giving only enough to make characters competent in a few areas focused on adventuring skills, but not enough to spread out for non-essential stuff that's just for "flavor".
Although people don't normally "bitch" about that strictly speaking. But it can be a show stopper when the game is about to start and they suddenly realize that their Japanese character in a Cyberpunk game can't speak English, for example, when the campaign is supposed to be set in the US. IMO, all games should give spare points or selections of some type for "Background" stuff, similar to 5e Backgrounds.
I usually solve the language issue with what I like to call the "Lingua Franca Rule": every player chooses one language that everybody in the party can speak. Then if it happens to be their native language, or if they normally can't speak that language due to low int, etc. then every larty membergets a free language (with at least one of their languages being the Lingua Franca).
LANGUAGES
Self • Default Rank • 1 Hero Point
All characters can speak one or two languages, but you speak a number of extra languages equal to your Intellect. You can select these languages ahead of time or during play.
So even with the base level 2 ranks in intellect that everyone gets, you can speak three or four languages. One hero point in a standard level game is less than 1% of your budget - it's such a small cost that it doesn't even really compare to attribute point buy, it's more like spending five copper on a bag of potato chips with your starting gold. Also sidesteps the problem of picking irrelevant languages since you can leave slots open. If it turns out during play the the power was a waste, do a retcon between sessions and spend the point on something else.
In Ascendant, languages are similarly cheap. You pay notably less than 1% your total for the first extra even as a peak human type build, then it doubles the benefits for every level further you buy, capped at basically the intelligence stat for how many times you can buy it. You can know literally every language on earth at a reasonable cost.
But I get what folks are saying. If you forget to allocate spend to that and other cheap but vision-critical background traits, it will leave you bummed out as you have to weaken a pricier power to make it work. User error and frustration can come into play, to some extent. Not because the system overcharges per se, but because with any point system it typically takes at least a little bit to figure out how to best realize your character concept with the points available. Most folks can't hold all the point costs and such in their head all at once, and have to do some adjustment and trial/error.
Quote from: KindaMeh on December 29, 2023, 12:16:15 PM
But I get what folks are saying. If you forget to allocate spend to that and other cheap but vision-critical background traits, it will leave you bummed out as you have to weaken a pricier power to make it work. User error and frustration can come into play, to some extent. Not because the system overcharges per se, but because with any point system it typically takes at least a little bit to figure out how to best realize your character concept with the points available. Most folks can't hold all the point costs and such in their head all at once, and have to do some adjustment and trial/error.
When I was introducing lots of new people to Hero System, this aspect got so pronounced that I deliberately kept back 5 points from the original total, just to use to buy cheap but missed things as they were discovered. Also stole "quirks" from GURPS, and let people develop up to 5 in play, each one allowing another 1 point of cheap flavor things. You'd think that the normal point gain from adventuring would take care of that, but I found that the new players always had something more substantial that they wanted to save for, whereas having essentially 10 points set aside for "missing stuff" worked fine.