The last couple of games I've reviewed (Wayfarers, A/O) and the one I'm working on now (omnifray) have all been games that have a kind of rules-heavy vibe to them, and all three are entirely point-buy in character creation.

Especially with the two fantasy games, this just kills me.  The whole idea of having to wheedle around beancounting to get your attributes rather than rolling them and taking your chances like a man instantly drops a game at least one or two points in my level of appreciation.  I remember thinking with Wayfarers that I would have loved it if they hadn't sucked all the randomization out of it, which to me is like sucking the life out of it. Especially with a game that could almost, almost be called "old school" otherwise. Its like they're missing the point!

RPGPundit

Point buy has it's disadvantages true.  But rolling dice for stats is Manly?  '

If I'd only known I would never have joined the Foreign Legion, stayed at the Shaolin monastery for special training and worked my way across the US in a road gang.

I could have just stayed home and played that ugly, stupid, clumsy fighter.

That premise is dumb.  With the correct amount of points, you can easily simulate the effect of dice rolls, except the player gets to play someone who is marginally competent.

The effects of stats were downplayed to the degree that they were nearly irrelevant in older editions of D&D, at the very least.  You could easily have replaced Intelligence with Magical Aptitude, and nothing else really would have been affected.  Wisdom with Mental Fortitude, and so on.  The second or third edition of Gamma World clearly demonstrates this, as they nearly pulled the character rules straight over. but renamed some of the attributes.

The best compromise is to have a small pool of points to adjust the rolls.  Mostly to bump a dismal score to something closer to average, rather than boost a good score over the top.

Older skill based games had a similar problem with abilities, in that skills were often much less expensive to upgrade, hence, the game supported nurture over nature, whether intentional or not.

So, give enough points to put the average score in each ability, and it's all good.  Five abilities from 1-8, 4.5 average, 22 points.  20 points if you want gritty.

I agree with SB.  Point buy isn't necessarily bad.

EDIT: A qualification.  I prefer random roll in games where stats aren't uber.  B/X D&D or classic Traveller, f'rinstance.

Yeah.  Dice rolling generally leads to one PC who is shit hot, and a bunch of mediocre doofuses who then spend the campaign being browbeaten.
(Given the fact almost every RPG group has at least 1 member who plays the game like its Grand Theft Auto, this can be.. not so fun.)

Point buy has its munchy side, but everyone is at least relatively on par with one another.

Not that the odd ROLL AND GO thing can't be fun.  In games where you can do either or in some things like Dark Heresy, I give XP bonuses to players who "Put their faith and trust in the Emperor's will" and roll everything.

I've come to dislike Point-Buy schemes like this because it might as well be Creation by Template.  The honest thing to do is to let the munchkins at CharOp work it over and find the optimal configerations for each relevant combination, and then build the PC Templates from their findings.  No gimped PCs, no players left unclear as to what they're supposed to do at any given point during play, and no downtime wasted on meaningless bullshit.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;301677I've come to dislike Point-Buy schemes like this because it might as well be Creation by Template.  The honest thing to do is to let the munchkins at CharOp work it over and find the optimal configerations for each relevant combination, and then build the PC Templates from their findings.  No gimped PCs, no players left unclear as to what they're supposed to do at any given point during play, and no downtime wasted on meaningless bullshit.

And that is a downside.  If you are playing the Fightery guy, then you know you are going to dump your points into Strength and distribute the rest more or less evenly among the remaining scores.

In that case, rolling or randomizing the abilities with a small pool to improve some initially would likely work better.

Quote from: RPGPundit;301645The last couple of games I've reviewed (Wayfarers, A/O) and the one I'm working on now (omnifray) have all been games that have a kind of rules-heavy vibe to them, and all three are entirely point-buy in character creation.

Especially with the two fantasy games, this just kills me.  The whole idea of having to wheedle around beancounting to get your attributes rather than rolling them and taking your chances like a man instantly drops a game at least one or two points in my level of appreciation.  I remember thinking with Wayfarers that I would have loved it if they hadn't sucked all the randomization out of it, which to me is like sucking the life out of it. Especially with a game that could almost, almost be called "old school" otherwise. Its like they're missing the point!

RPGPundit

I don't like point-buy for D&D (bean counting for other games like WoD games is okay, since just a dot of discrepency between characters could make such a difference in game play). I like to take my chances with the dice, and all the players who played at my game table did as well (I actually proposed point-buy to the players of my Ptolus campaign. They had rolled for our previous Arcana Unearthed games, and actually vehemently opposed point-buy. I was surprised, to tell you the truth). I've never met the player who went "Aw FUCK. I want Point Buy to be fair!" I hope I don't.

Point buy can be okay. I do get a bit obsessed by fairness and whilst dice are fair from the off a bad set of numbers can ruin a game for someone and the idea is for everyone to have fun.

Also its all about roleplay for me and I will often have spent some time thinking about the character I want to play and if I end up with 3 7's a 9 an 11 and a 12 I will find it hard to play a fantasy version of Zorro. We will spend an entire 3 hour session making characters often as not. I have, of course done roll em and play em games and for single games they are fine but for a character you really buy into and want to play for years not so likely.
A variation, that comes from the original Barbarian, is to do point buy with the dice. 4d6 highest three and arrange as you like is really a pool of 24d6. So pick your class and then assign the dice to the stats. So you want to play a Dwarven Warrior might have 6d6 Str, 5d6 Con, 4d6 Dex and 3d6 in the rest. I would set a minimum of 3d for any stat but a DM might allow you to drop to 2d6 in one .
but no one will like that :-)

Quote from: Cognitive Dissident;301657Point buy has it's disadvantages true.  But rolling dice for stats is Manly?  '

If I'd only known I would never have joined the Foreign Legion, stayed at the Shaolin monastery for special training and worked my way across the US in a road gang.

I could have just stayed home and played that ugly, stupid, clumsy fighter.

:rotfl:

Cognitive Dissident has the right idea.

Sometimes I like point-buy, and sometimes I like rolling randomly. I guess it depends on my mood. We're using 30 point-buy in our D&D 3.5 campaign, and it works fine. On the other hand, if I were playing WFRP 2e again, I'd probably stick with rolling randomly, because for that game, it just feels right. It has nothing to do with "manliness" for me.

Quote from: KenHR;301673EDIT: A qualification.  I prefer random roll in games where stats aren't uber.  B/X D&D or classic Traveller, f'rinstance.

That's about where I'm sitting. For supers, going gonzo like MSH FASERIP or V&V isn't my cuppa anymore, and powers tend to be pointed enough that I don't experience the same sort of toe-stomping and pattern builds I do in modern and fantasy.

But boy howdy... get it away from me in Fantasy, SF, and Modern.

I don't believe in the whole "take your chances" thing. I don't see the chance of sucking as being a benefit of random rolling. I see increased variety, "dice-as-a-muse", lack of bean-counting, and limits on overspecialized builds as being the advantages. As such, my preferred rolling methods limit the spread, allow mulligans or (best yet), use cards instead of dice to make sure that while you don't have total freedom (burden) to pick your stats, all PCs have the same stat total.

This is not official, but:- Omnifray Random Chargen:-

Each stat is 2d4+2 except Alacrity which is roll d6:- 1 gives you Alacrity 6, 2-5 gives you Alacrity 7, 6 gives you Alacrity 8. Size/Target you determine in the normal Omnifray way (not randomly).

If you find you have two stats which are unfeasibly far apart (e.g. Strength 4, Agility 4 and Alacrity 6, Melee Prowess 10), then reduce a stat by 1 point and raise another stat by 1 point (randomly select which of several possible candidates to raise or reduce), and repeat until you have a feasible set of stats (ref's discretion as to when you do). Or just live with really weird stats.

You then get 2d8+1 CGP to spend on traits.

My problem with point-buy is that most players take ages to create their characters as they agonise over a point here or there, all in a desperate attempt to munchkin out - and then they do such a shitty job of munchkining. They become so focused on maxing out whatever they think is the most important stuff that they give themselves crippling weaknesses; or else they try to be jacks of all trades, and end up being shitty at everything.

If you're going to end up with an overly-focused or overly-spread-out character anyway, you may as well just roll them up - at least it's quick.

Another aspect of point-buy is that while minimaxing, players forget about character. They work the numbers first and come up with the personality and background later; these characters are invariably boring, as someone tries to justify why they have Sword-201% and only two other skills.

Particularly imaginative players may make an interesting character with point-buy, but these same imaginative players make amazing characters with random roll.

Random roll is quick, and may give interesting results, or may give boring results. Point-buy is slow, and usually gives boring results.

Quote from: jibbajibba;301702Point buy can be okay. I do get a bit obsessed by fairness and whilst dice are fair from the off a bad set of numbers can ruin a game for someone and the idea is for everyone to have fun.

That's my view, too.

One option is to have a baseline stat total, and allow players to re-roll if their PC comes in under that.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;301755Random roll is quick, and may give interesting results, or may give boring results. Point-buy is slow, and usually gives boring results.

Your experience can't be generalised to cover everyone else's.  I believe the Americans have a term - YMMV?