I have played D&D 3.5 with a DM who let us randomly roll up our own characters. I've generally insisted on rolling up the character in front of the DM precisely because I know I'm going to roll decent stats and I don't want to feel that I'm under suspicion for it. When it wasn't possible for the DM to supervise, I got a mate of mine to supervise who's not in that gaming group but is a roleplayer. It might also have helped to lessen any temptation to say to myself "hang on that dice was crook'd" - when that might have been questionable - and at least I had an arbitrator there to make the decision for me if it became necessary!

My current Pathfinder Beta group (I'm playing a gnome sorcerer) have lots of dice which some of them have tested and they stick to the dice which roll the best numbers, i.e. the dice are probably not perfectly evenly weighted although there's no suggestion that they're deliberately loaded. TBH it fux me right off, the need for biased or loaded dice is symptomatic of being a fuckmunch*, with the greatest of respect to those involved. (I'm not saying that they personally are fuckmunches, just that wanting biased or loaded dice is, in isolation, a very fuckmunchy thing indeed.)

* fuckmunch:- typically, a man who performs orally on his wife after another man has had her, i.e. someone who is pathetic or at best very unfussy indeed

PS this may be the most obvious advantage of points-buy:- you can do it in the comfort of your own home without the rest of the group being there, submit the character for the ref to approve, job done - no QUESTION of any need to have anyone standing over you physically while you roll dice. So, VERY convenient.

I would like to think that in a mature group of players you don't need supervision to roll dice but as I stated above I personally REQUEST supervision when rolling dice because otherwise I'll be thinking people aren't utterly convinced unless the result is pretty mediocre or terrible.

And one of the refs of a LARP game I play tells me that from his experience of reffing boffer LARPs, EVERYONE lies about the hits they take. I have to say I try to be accurate about mine, but sometimes the temptation to think to yourself "well, that blow didn't really make contact with me properly - I hardly felt it" or "I think I only took 3 or 4 blows, let's say 3" when in reality you may have taken anywhere between 3 and 10 blows and you're not sure --- is a real temptation. And OFTEN in high-hit systems it's hard to remember accurately if there are big fights and long periods of time between reporting hits (battleboarding). This is not quite the same as cheating at dice-rolls but very similar.

I would like to think that mature adults could handle the results of random character generation and make it their own to have a positive and fun experience rather than becoming jealous because their character is "inferior" to the others in the group.

And all these points for and against are why I appreciate both methods of chargen equally. Building a character lets me indulge my munchkinism, and random lets me stretch my imagination.

Quote from: Sigmund;301857And all these points for and against are why I appreciate both methods of chargen equally. Building a character lets me indulge my munchkinism, and random lets me stretch my imagination.

Well said, and I agree.

Quote from: FASERIP;301781Point Buy is okay, but tends to be too damn slow.

Combine that with a lethal rules-set (such as Aces & Eights, which has a lot of PB options), and you really disincentivize me from wanting to run or play your game.

Lethality of the system is a good point.  Any complex character generation system is a drag if characters can die in one strike.  RoleMaster defeated me when a one-hit crit destroyed a carefully prepped NPC; it was my fault for happening (mishandled his walk-on, I guess), but still....

Do both point buy and random.  Let a player use point buy for the stats he really thinks are important and make him randomly roll the rest.  This gives some control to the player plus some room for the unexpected.  For example, I want to create a Fighter. His three most important stats are Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. Spending 20 points between these three, gives me stats of Str- 16, Dex- 14, Con-12. Now I roll 3d6 in order for the rest. I end up with Int- 8, Wis-9, Cha- 15. Hmm... sounds like a rather dim witted, blond, muscle man - much more interesting than straight 10's. It also pushes his point value to 29 which is higher than the standard 25 point build. But as the higher value is due to a stat that won't have much effect due to the Fighter's lack of Charisma based skills it won't really cause him to overshadow any other character.

Quote from: Sigmund;301857And all these points for and against are why I appreciate both methods of chargen equally. Building a character lets me indulge my munchkinism, and random lets me stretch my imagination.

Points-buy frees me to stretch my imagination.

Random allows teenagers to indulge feelings of self-loathing by forcing themselves to play a character that they would never have chosen.

;-)

Quote from: Omnifray;301971Random allows teenagers to indulge feelings of self-loathing by forcing themselves to play a character that they would never have chosen.

;-)

It might do that for teenagers, but for this adult it allows me to be surprised by what i end up with, and encourages me to think of why this end product would be doing what it's doing.

I don't understand why there seems to have to be an either/or thing here. What is wrong with using both methods occasionally?

Quote from: Omnifray;301971Points-buy frees me to stretch my imagination.

Random allows teenagers to indulge feelings of self-loathing by forcing themselves to play a character that they would never have chosen.

;-)

Quote from: Sigmund;301975It might do that for teenagers, but for this adult it allows me to be surprised by what i end up with, and encourages me to think of why this end product would be doing what it's doing.

I don't understand why there seems to have to be an either/or thing here. What is wrong with using both methods occasionally?

I think that was supposed to be in the Damning with Faint Praise thread.  

Quote from: Omnifray;301971Random allows teenagers to indulge feelings of self-loathing by forcing themselves to play a character that they would never have chosen.

;-)

hehehehe... that was so silly it was funny.

I prefer random attributes because I find it fun but I'd hardly declare point buy to be a universally bad or pussy way to go.  I've made some well rounded characters with point buy before.

I've played both point buy and random roll systems, and neither is superior to the other. They just cater to different tastes.

I prefer point-buy overall, but that's just me and my GURPs talking.

Quote from: Daztur;301801I agree, Amber would be a far better game if the horrible point buy system of character building were removed and replaced with a far more sensible system of randomly generated stats.

Amber isn't point-buy; it runs on an attribute auction. If you think that the attribute auction doesn't result in unexpected developments, you've never played Amber.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;302001Amber isn't point-buy; it runs on an attribute auction. If you think that the attribute auction doesn't result in unexpected developments, you've never played Amber.

RPGPundit

Now, that is interesting.  I haven't heard about the attribute auction method.  Briefly, how does it work?