Rolling dice Vs point buy

[10d10]

Exactly, and in addition, any XP bonuses are likely to either matter little (for ones in the order of 100 XP, much like with spells) or be mitigated in short order through the concept of XP Is A River. Anything that doesn't fall into either of those two is likely to be far too large. I also don't like the extra gold traits either (nor the feat that 3.5 has for it), but maybe that's just me.

Yeah I understand why. The extra GP can be a handful of trouble in one of my groups. The DM is very cheap with loot, VERY cheap. So when someone starts to have all those amazing possibilities on armor and weapons because they got +500GP, well... people get moody.

[X-Codes]

Note that Profession is a class skill for every character.

If your character isn't getting loot, then it would be totally worthwhile for him to decide "Know what?  This job sucks." and go be a farmer.

[Halinn]

Human Marshal 1, feats: skill knowledge (Perform) [UA], skill focus (Perform). 2x cha to perform. Suppose 18 charisma, and you get +15 perform. Taking 10 gets you 1d6 gold pieces a day. Scale down to a regular old bard with 16 charisma and skill focus, you're still looking at 3d10 silver pieces every day. If adventuring gets you any less than that, get a new career.

[X-Codes]

I guess if you totally pimp out Perform like that then you'll get a better benefit than Profession, but at lower ranks Profession is better.  (Better than either, though is probably Craft, since that skill scales at an unbounded quadratic rate instead of linear if you buy raw materials and sell finished goods.)

[veekie]

That sounds like the M&M game that gets tossed about ever so often, something "Masterminds" isn't it?

Mutants and Masterminds.

Correct. Mutants and Masterminds goes even farther, though, and has no classes at all, with all traits period being bought from the alloted points. Its second and third editions are worth looking into, if only to take a look at the alternative approach; 3e has a SRD here.

But it does punish high rollers, and doesn't induce any more variety than a generous point buy does. If you want to give lower tier classes extra stats to spread around, that can be accomplished just as easily by giving them a bigger point buy.

...or by significantly upping the overall point buy and then making people purchase their class, with higher-tier classes costing more.  Same end result, different way of presenting it.

Same thing under a different name, yeah. I tend to favor the former, both because it feels more like helping lower tiers than punishing higher tiers and because it's more straightforward and to the point.

The approach with a high point buy, then purchasing a class does, however, allow for other options to be tacked on to it. Want a +1 LA template/race? Sure, that'll be 10 points. Want to start with more xp/money? Sure, that'll be 20 bucks 10 points. There's a lot more possibilities that way.

True enough. You can still do the same by giving specific classes higher point buys, but it's just more elegant the other way. The LA "buyoff" is a good idea, but I don't think the extra XP or gold is - the two values fluctuate too wildly an are entirely one-shot (in the event you decide to blow some XP on a spell or gp on a consumable). Something like a bonus feat for the appropriate point buy value is doable, though.

Pathfinder goes around the "I want more money" with some traits like "Rich Parents" or "You have a store" that'll give you +200 to +500GP during character creation. But extra EXP I'm not sure that's good... The idea was to have a balance within the group with point buy, right?

Exactly, and in addition, any XP bonuses are likely to either matter little (for ones in the order of 100 XP, much like with spells) or be mitigated in short order through the concept of XP Is A River. Anything that doesn't fall into either of those two is likely to be far too large. I also don't like the extra gold traits either (nor the feat that 3.5 has for it), but maybe that's just me.

Definitely. XP and gold are tied into too many variables to easily account for.

The suggestion to restrict tier availability by roll quality is a mitigation for rolled stat's flaws(in that you may wind up with imbalanced genetically superior characters with powerful classes to boot), while retaining/amplifying its desired qualities(that of playing a character with a greater degree of variance from your norms). If you were to play rolled, you'd need either an accommodating group, liberal rerolling, or something to keep the issues at the point of quirky rather than unacceptable.

So instead of coming to the table with a concept, you roll, and from that roll, construct a concept. A good roll sends you further afield, to try normally implausible characters(which, for many classes, simply is a result of severe MAD). Even Monk isn't that completely horrible....if you had a bag of high stats to overcome the limitations, by giving you good to-hit, decent damage, two good stats to AC, strong stun DCs, practically unbreachable health and unbeatable saves, compared to the mandatory wimpy T1 classes.

[Raven2049]

i know this is almost a week dead thread, but this is how my latest group started:

4D6 rolled 2x choose 4 best, 1 middle, and 1 worst stats of the 12 diff rolls
then you got 5 points to "allocate" as you see fit.

even then we got some good rolls (i managed 2 20s and a 19) but i also got 4 13's and a 8

i kind of liked that a lot better than straight rolling, which is how ive always played, never heard of buy ins till i started reading these forums.

that being said, i think a reasonable buy in would be an improvement alltogether and a better balanced way to play.

[Halinn]

Do a cube of stats. A 6x6x6 grid of 3d6 rolls. Choose any line of 6 stats. Up, sideways or diagonal.

[sirpercival]

Do a cube of stats. A 6x6x6 grid of 3d6 rolls. Choose any line of 6 stats. Up, sideways or diagonal.

I like this -- I've done a square before, but never a cube.  Also, I do 4d6 drop lowest reroll 1's.

[10d10]

Do a cube of stats. A 6x6x6 grid of 3d6 rolls. Choose any line of 6 stats. Up, sideways or diagonal.

I like this -- I've done a square before, but never a cube.  Also, I do 4d6 drop lowest reroll 1's.

I actually had my players use the roll 4d6 (a few times), reroll the 1's, drop the lowest (I asked them, since it was a one shot with only 2 PCs, if they preferred point buy or dice rolling) and that REROLL 1'S thing made a difference. Comparing with past game, their status went up a lot. The fighter got many possibilities and the druid was pretty much good to go.

As a DM it would have been quicker and easier (specially on NPC creation) to use point buy, but they were having fun so it was OK the time spent rolling and crying over 2's and asking for another roll.

[Halinn]

Do a cube of stats. A 6x6x6 grid of 3d6 rolls. Choose any line of 6 stats. Up, sideways or diagonal.

I like this -- I've done a square before, but never a cube.  Also, I do 4d6 drop lowest reroll 1's.

I actually had my players use the roll 4d6 (a few times), reroll the 1's, drop the lowest (I asked them, since it was a one shot with only 2 PCs, if they preferred point buy or dice rolling) and that REROLL 1'S thing made a difference. Comparing with past game, their status went up a lot. The fighter got many possibilities and the druid was pretty much good to go.

As a DM it would have been quicker and easier (specially on NPC creation) to use point buy, but they were having fun so it was OK the time spent rolling and crying over 2's and asking for another roll.

It might feel lots better, but it is really just changing the spread on each die from 1-6 to 2-6. That's only .5 better on average. Assuming that negative scores scale like positive ones, we get that 4d6, reroll 1's, drop lowest equates to an average point buy of 37.4, while straight 4d6, drop lowest is about 28.5. I'd rather have the point buys with those values (rounded to the 'nicer' values 36 or 28), since I could then choose how I wanted the spread.

[10d10]

Do a cube of stats. A 6x6x6 grid of 3d6 rolls. Choose any line of 6 stats. Up, sideways or diagonal.

I like this -- I've done a square before, but never a cube.  Also, I do 4d6 drop lowest reroll 1's.

I actually had my players use the roll 4d6 (a few times), reroll the 1's, drop the lowest (I asked them, since it was a one shot with only 2 PCs, if they preferred point buy or dice rolling) and that REROLL 1'S thing made a difference. Comparing with past game, their status went up a lot. The fighter got many possibilities and the druid was pretty much good to go.

As a DM it would have been quicker and easier (specially on NPC creation) to use point buy, but they were having fun so it was OK the time spent rolling and crying over 2's and asking for another roll.

It might feel lots better, but it is really just changing the spread on each die from 1-6 to 2-6. That's only .5 better on average. Assuming that negative scores scale like positive ones, we get that 4d6, reroll 1's, drop lowest equates to an average point buy of 37.4, while straight 4d6, drop lowest is about 28.5. I'd rather have the point buys with those values (rounded to the 'nicer' values 36 or 28), since I could then choose how I wanted the spread.

I have the feeling that I would use PB with 35 points or something like that on future games. I don't know how usual is that since the books tend to put 25 as "high fantasy" on Pathfinder, for example.

[Halinn]

The point buy numbers would be massively different in Pathfinder, since that uses a completely different system.

[Agita]

One thing I see done relatively often is having the players roll, and allowing them to switch to a point buy if the roll is under that point buy - e.g., if you get a 14/14/14/8/6/6, which is far less than, say, a 32 point buy, you'd use the point buy instead. It still has a number of the same problems as rolling does, but at least it largely removes the issue of completely useless sets of stats by defining a certain baseline competence, making it easier to stomach.

[KicktheCAN]

The big thing for me is ability score prerequisites for feats. Rolling dice is all well and good until you can't qualify for combat expertise or psionic meditation and it completely destroys your build.

[Sirdanile]

I'm a fan of Point Buy, however i've been using roll 4d6 reroll 1s drop lowest method and only recently switched over to point buy. Point buy is apparently confusing to some people. 

[Agita]

I'm a fan of Point Buy, however i've been using roll 4d6 reroll 1s drop lowest method and only recently switched over to point buy. Point buy is apparently confusing to some people. 

If people have problems with it, there's plenty of point buy calculators for all systems floating around online. InvisibleCastle has a good one for 3.5.

[Unbeliever]

I just don't like it.  It's not that I'm incapable of doing the math, or that I can't find a calculator online.  I just don't like pointbuy.

I think it's b/c I end up putting a lot more thought into my stats than I normally do when rolling.  When rolling, at most you're prioritizing, usually, which is a lot less fine-grained than spending points.  And, sometimes, I find myself with either a good or a bad roll that I end up putting somewhere and that helps define the character more.  I end up thinking "oh, ok, he's like this now ..."

I play plenty of point-buy systems, but rolling, usually 4d6 though I can see the appeal of rerolling 1s, that's my preference for D&D. 

[xaotiq1]

I adopted a method of stat gen from the Deadlands RPG that I plan to use if I can ever DM again. Characters draw 8 cards from a deck of 54 with the Jokers left in. They then discard any 2 cards drawn except for 2's; and arrange the stats as desired. The card they draw represents a 10,12,14,16 or 18 per the info in the spoiler:

(click to show/hide)

2 = 10
3-8 = 12
9-Jack = 14
King-Queen = 16
Ace-Joker = 18

 If they draw a joker, they get an additional feat at character creation. If they don't like the cards that they drew, they can do so again, but they only draw 7 cards. Call it a mulligan.

[Dwarfi]

Though I like the randomness in the dice throw, it makes me worry that there are characters in the group that just totally suck compared to others.

The card draw idea is nice though. Maybe I will just try it out once and see what I would get.^^

[xaotiq1]

Though I like the randomness in the dice throw, it makes me worry that there are characters in the group that just totally suck compared to others.

The card draw idea is nice though. Maybe I will just try it out once and see what I would get.^^

Using a card drawing program, I generated 3 sets of stats.

Set1: 16,12,18,12,14,18 (PB Value: 56)
Set2: 12,10,14,18,12,16 (PB Value: 42)
Set3: 14,14,14,16,14,10 (PB Value: 36)

YMMV, but it seems to give stats on the higher end. Of course, there is the possibility of getting all four deuces (ouch).