Point buy is more likely to be less fun then dice roll

[111111111]

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.


2. Min-max and perfect information playthroughs are BORING

lets face the reality of the situation.

Point buy is designed for the min maxer or even the munchkin.

It is in a players best interest to become as powerful as possible so he can beat the game. This incentivizes players to always go for the min max playstyle. A dice roll start eliminates that and can FORCE the player to make perhaps even somewhat creative decisions at the start. Assuming this is a competent rule-set of course.

I mean sure i guess if you just want to do the same thing then go ahead. I personally find repetitiveness really unenjoyably.


3. initial dice roll Randomness is not overbearing and can create emergent game play

I mean come on this isnt like a unplayable thing to get a less then ideal stat sheet. Its early in the game so all the munchkiners can just rereoll or quit to their hearts contents. Also it being early makes it able to be played around.



I personally believe that point buy is very deceptive in nature and actually can make the game less fun then a random dice start.

 

[Sacred82]

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.

if randomness was fun to roleplay, that would apply to everything, not just stats.

"Gee, I rolled a wizard... I actually wanted to play a fighter though, but computer says no." "Let's see what I got for alignment... chaotic evil. Hoo boy. I had come up with this Minsc like character with an ineffective but loyal animal companion and sort of good alignment. Neutral would have been ok, but this is actually going to be hard to roleplay in my group with the paladin." "Race die says I'm a faerie now. That's a new one."

 

[111111111]

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.

if randomness was fun to roleplay, that would apply to everything, not just stats.

"Gee, I rolled a wizard... I actually wanted to play a fighter though, but computer says no." "Let's see what I got for alignment... chaotic evil. Hoo boy. I had come up with this Minsc like character with an ineffective but loyal animal companion and sort of good alignment. Neutral would have been ok, but this is actually going to be hard to roleplay in my group with the paladin." "Race die says I'm a faerie now. That's a new one."

There is a way bigger difference between randomness in classes/alignment and randomness in stats.

A dice-roll start doesnt completley inhibit your vision of playthrough and can even help it.

It merely is an uncertanity in powercurve through the game

 

[mondblut]

Point-buy is designed for min-maxing.

Dice-rolling is designed for max-maxing, making it a superior choice

Also, dicerolling closer emulates the p&p origins, making it a superior choice by definition. If you don't want to pretend playing AD&D in a videogame, find yourself another genre.

 

[luj1]

I personally believe that point buy is very deceptive in nature and actually can make the game less fun then a random dice start.

Strictly speaking I agree. See this thread. Too much of point buy can cause OCD-like symptoms in the long run.

 

[frajaq]

get away from stat attributes entirely, use traits/talents/feats for everything instead

 

[Sacred82]

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.

if randomness was fun to roleplay, that would apply to everything, not just stats.

"Gee, I rolled a wizard... I actually wanted to play a fighter though, but computer says no." "Let's see what I got for alignment... chaotic evil. Hoo boy. I had come up with this Minsc like character with an ineffective but loyal animal companion and sort of good alignment. Neutral would have been ok, but this is actually going to be hard to roleplay in my group with the paladin." "Race die says I'm a faerie now. That's a new one."

There is a way bigger difference between randomness in classes and randomness in stats.

Not really, an 18 Dex character could make an effective archer, no matter if it's a Ranger, Fighter, Barb, Paladin, Thief, Monk, Cleric, or Druid.

An 8 Dex character isn't going to be an archer regardless of class.

A dice-roll start doesnt completley inhibit your vision of playthrough and can even help it.

Let's say my concept for the character above was that of a dual wielding striker. How would you make that work if the randomness fairy bestows a Dex of 8 on you?

get away from stat attributes entirely, use traits/talents/feats for everything instead

triangles.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I'd go one step further and say I'd like to see a system built around dice-rolls with a consistent point buy value. As an example, say in Baldur's Gate each time you roll stats you will roll a random combination equaling 75. That way you can't cheese the system and roll a 90 or 87. Also, it would make for more unique values in the various stats that you'd have to "live with" and roleplay and plan around. Rather than being an obsessive RPG Control Freak, this could promote elements like solving your gameplan around the stats, and figuring out ways to get through the game with a less-than-optimal build.

 

[Ismaul]

Point buy is designed for the min maxer or even the munchkin.

Depends on the point buy system. A good one makes it so if there's a munchkin, he has to make a flawed character to be the best at something else. Then it's up to the GM to enforce it, create situations where the character's weaknesses are at the forefront. Static cRPGs suck at that shit though; they don't adapt well.

Standard array is fair, does not rely on randomness and kills min/maxing. You can even have the player choose between 2-3 possible arrays for variety.

 

[Beastro]

Strictly speaking I agree. See this thread. Too much of point buy can cause OCD-like symptoms in the long run.

And people sitting there until they roll the stats they want isn't?

 

[111111111]

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.

if randomness was fun to roleplay, that would apply to everything, not just stats.

"Gee, I rolled a wizard... I actually wanted to play a fighter though, but computer says no." "Let's see what I got for alignment... chaotic evil. Hoo boy. I had come up with this Minsc like character with an ineffective but loyal animal companion and sort of good alignment. Neutral would have been ok, but this is actually going to be hard to roleplay in my group with the paladin." "Race die says I'm a faerie now. That's a new one."

There is a way bigger difference between randomness in classes and randomness in stats.

Not really, an 18 Dex character could make an effective archer, no matter if it's a Ranger, Fighter, Barb, Paladin, Thief, Monk, Cleric, or Druid.

An 8 Dex character isn't going to be an archer regardless of class.

A dice-roll start doesnt completley inhibit your vision of playthrough and can even help it.

Let's say my concept for the character above was that of a dual wielding striker. How would you make that work if the randomness fairy bestows a Dex of 8 on you?

get away from stat attributes entirely, use traits/talents/feats for everything instead

triangles.

the thing is in an RPGs, there are multiple people/npcs in the party and they are subjected to the same stuff as your charachter. Some will might get obscenely godlike rolls for their stats making them the real powerlifters of the group and some will be wet tissue. This nullifies the need for your person to even be good at the archetype that you want it to. On top of this creates emergent gameplay and hidden storylines in your party by designating who are the real brawn or brains of the group and it is all done by randomness. You cant do this by point-buy because you can safely keep your character in his safe space power level of the ubermensh catagory.

This creates diverging gameplay patterns as your main guy happens to sucks in combat and needs powerful companions to help him or vice verca.

of course if you are still arnt satisfyed you could you know.... just rerolll.
Cuz its in the beginning of the game and barely any time is wasted.

 

[Lurker47]

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.

if randomness was fun to roleplay, that would apply to everything, not just stats.

"Gee, I rolled a wizard... I actually wanted to play a fighter though, but computer says no." "Let's see what I got for alignment... chaotic evil. Hoo boy. I had come up with this Minsc like character with an ineffective but loyal animal companion and sort of good alignment. Neutral would have been ok, but this is actually going to be hard to roleplay in my group with the paladin." "Race die says I'm a faerie now. That's a new one."

There is a way bigger difference between randomness in classes and randomness in stats.

Not really, an 18 Dex character could make an effective archer, no matter if it's a Ranger, Fighter, Barb, Paladin, Thief, Monk, Cleric, or Druid.

An 8 Dex character isn't going to be an archer regardless of class.

A dice-roll start doesnt completley inhibit your vision of playthrough and can even help it.

Let's say my concept for the character above was that of a dual wielding striker. How would you make that work if the randomness fairy bestows a Dex of 8 on you?

get away from stat attributes entirely, use traits/talents/feats for everything instead

triangles.

the thing is in an RPGs, there are multiple people/npcs in the party and they are subjected to the same stuff as your charachter. Some will might get obscenely godlike rolls for their stats making them the real powerlifters of the group and some will be wet tissue. This nullifies the need for your person to even be good at the archetype that you want it to. On top of this creates emergent gameplay and hidden storylines in your party by designating who are the real brawn or brains of the group and it is all done by randomness. You cant do this by point-buy because you can safely keep your character in his safe space power level of the ubermensh catagory.

This creates diverging gameplay patterns as your main guy happens to sucks in combat and needs powerful companions to help him or vice verca.

of course if you are still arnt satisfyed you could you know.... just rerolll.
Cuz its in the beginning of the game and barely any time is wasted.

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.


2. Min-max and perfect information playthroughs are BORING

lets face the reality of the situation.

Point buy is designed for the min maxer or even the munchkin.

It is in a players best interest to become as powerful as possible so he can beat the game. This incentivizes players to always go for the min max playstyle. A dice roll start eliminates that and can FORCE the player to make perhaps even somewhat creative decisions at the start. Assuming this is a competent rule-set of course.

I mean sure i guess if you just want to do the same thing then go ahead. I personally find repetitiveness really unenjoyably.


3. initial dice roll Randomness is not overbearing and can create emergent game play

I mean come on this isnt like a unplayable thing to get a less then ideal stat sheet. Its early in the game so all the munchkiners can just rereoll or quit to their hearts contents. Also it being early makes it able to be played around.



I personally believe that point buy is very deceptive in nature and actually can make the game less fun then a random dice start.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I remember the first time I rolled a character and I chose to use 3d6 and people wondered why I had such low stats and I said "I thought that was what I was supposed to be doing?". Then I learned about 4d6(-lowest) and like how most people like to use high stats and whatever, but I always thought that having low stats in things was supposed to make it interesting for roleplaying purposes (not for crpg purposes, since you kinda need to min/max to enjoy anything). Though I only really ever played like a session so I'm not experienced enough to tell you what's right or wrong.

 

[Crispy]

I remember when 15 Strength was considered very good.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Arrays are much better than point buy. You still get to customise your stats and it still keeps things balanced since they're no randomness, but it stops people making stupid characters who have 18 in all the attributes they want and 8 in the ones they don't care about. Much better.

 

[Tavernking]

I remember when 15 Strength was considered very good.

You can get that in 2 hours in Runescape

 

[user]

Yes, rolling is more satisfying for some reason, even if you can keep rolling infinitely to get the exact result you want. We can't have both, buying points kills the joy of rolling. It's a mystery, or we just need some help.

 

[Darth Roxor]

if randomness was fun to roleplay, that would apply to everything, not just stats.

wfrp chargen has an option to random roll everything including race and starting profession, and anyone who's ever played it will tell you it's the superior option

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I remember when 15 Strength was considered very good.

For halflings and other assorted manlets, sure.

 

[CryptRat]

Dice rolling when classes determines what a character can do or wear, Point buy for "classless" games where stats determines what a character can do or wear.

 

[Johannes]

Yes, rolling is more satisfying for some reason, even if you can keep rolling infinitely to get the exact result you want. We can't have both, buying points kills the joy of rolling. It's a mystery, or we just need some help.

You can combine the two, like say in KoTC - you first roll your stats, then you can reroll one stat, and do one switch between two stats.

Or in IE games - first you roll how many stat points you get, then you redistribute them all as you like.

 

[laclongquan]

We are talking about computer games, right?

Then in this case obviously pointbuy is better than dicerolling.

True, pointbuy allow for minmaxing. It's a gamer thing, you wouldnt understand.

But dicerolling allow for 181818181818 kind of thing or 181818333. It's a free-rolling thing in computer, you certainly wouldnt understand.

Dicerolling only fit for pnp sessions, because no human GM would let gamers roll for 30 minutes straight to get a version overall better than normal. Paper and Pencil games, not Computer games~

 

[NatureOfMan]

I support random rolling for PnP since it would be fun to roleplay a less optimal character and try to work with it by RPing dumb shit that's omly possible in a PnP game. Random rolling in CRPGs especially if you will be playing alone sucks unless you want to handicap yourself on purpose.

 

[user]

Yes, rolling is more satisfying for some reason, even if you can keep rolling infinitely to get the exact result you want. We can't have both, buying points kills the joy of rolling. It's a mystery, or we just need some help.

You can combine the two, like say in KoTC - you first roll your stats, then you can reroll one stat, and do one switch between two stats.

Or in IE games - first you roll how many stat points you get, then you redistribute them all as you like.

First sounds like a very nice system. Spent more time than I want to admit rolling for stats in IE games. I'm certain I have played a couple of games where you could roll and distribute a *fixed* number of points, which was pretty much pointless. Can't remember which games they were.

 

[Sacred82]

1. It is worse for Role-playing.

Yea okay maybe you can just keep dicerolling to get the outcome you want but there is a hidden joy to having to roleplay an uncertain stat table. Table top players know.

if randomness was fun to roleplay, that would apply to everything, not just stats.

"Gee, I rolled a wizard... I actually wanted to play a fighter though, but computer says no." "Let's see what I got for alignment... chaotic evil. Hoo boy. I had come up with this Minsc like character with an ineffective but loyal animal companion and sort of good alignment. Neutral would have been ok, but this is actually going to be hard to roleplay in my group with the paladin." "Race die says I'm a faerie now. That's a new one."

There is a way bigger difference between randomness in classes and randomness in stats.

Not really, an 18 Dex character could make an effective archer, no matter if it's a Ranger, Fighter, Barb, Paladin, Thief, Monk, Cleric, or Druid.

An 8 Dex character isn't going to be an archer regardless of class.

A dice-roll start doesnt completley inhibit your vision of playthrough and can even help it.

Let's say my concept for the character above was that of a dual wielding striker. How would you make that work if the randomness fairy bestows a Dex of 8 on you?

get away from stat attributes entirely, use traits/talents/feats for everything instead

triangles.

the thing is in an RPGs, there are multiple people/npcs in the party and they are subjected to the same stuff as your charachter. Some will might get obscenely godlike rolls for their stats making them the real powerlifters of the group and some will be wet tissue. This nullifies the need for your person to even be good at the archetype that you want it to.

Ok, fair point. Let's say there is party creation and I get to create 4-6. One of them is probably going to be a high Dex character. Let's just hope he won't also get a low BAB class from the RNG, because my point still stands, if randomness enhances roleplay, then this can't only apply to stats. OTOH, maybe I could multiclass to a high BAB class on first level up. So yeah, I do see a very limited point there.

What if my party of 4 was supposed to include both a high Dex dual wielder and a high Dex archer? I already have to get pretty lucky to make that result. IOW, this principle only applies if there is full party creation and I only want 1 of each archetype. It already stops working that way with companions. If I want to start out playing a Rogue kind of character, and I got low Dex and Int, and I have to play for 1-3 hours to even get to pick up a Rogue companion, you're ruining the player's experience for... what benefit exactly?

I could also keep re-rolling until I get two high Dexers, in which case the real question is why I even had to reroll to get there. Now one of them has a 17 Dex and the other has an 18 Dex. Roleplaying mission achieved?

On top of this creates emergent gameplay and hidden storylines in your party by designating who are the real brawn or brains of the group and it is all done by randomness.

It emerges through gameplay that the Wizard is the real brawn in the group (Str 19) while the Fighter has trouble carrying his own stuff without tripping over his feet (Str 8). This creates a hidden storyline where the muscle wizard allows the weakling Fighter to play the brawler, but the Wizard is actually the one who starts trashing tables in bars when drunk.

Oh, you mean LARPing.

Problem #2, the Wizard can't really make use of his immense Strength outside of checks because his BAB is still too low, and anyway, he's better served/ the party is better served with nuking things from the back. Meanwhile the Fighter is (literally) crippled by his lack of Strength. Is your goal to actually try to create an arbitrary difficulty mode by slapping peasant characters on the player?

You cant do this by point-buy because you can safely keep your character in his safe space power level of the ubermensh catagory.

Yes I can, I can do anything with point buy that I could do with randomness

If I really want to have... 1,2,8 characters who are unsuited to their role, I can do that. What's better, with point buy, I can actually make effective oddball characters. Characters who kind of go against the grain of their class (like the Muscle Wizard), and who therefore need good stat allocation rather than just high overall stats. With those characters, you need to pick race, class, stats, equipments and feats more carefully. So I end up with a character who may not be as effective individually as other members of his class (Muscle Wizard is still attacking things with magic swords when his peers are already throwing 16D6 AoE spells around), but they do make sense within the concept you came up with for your party. And that's exactly not what you get out of RNG. What RNG can easily do is create a peasant character for you who is just going to stay behind the usual power curve for that class/ build, without bringing anything new to the table.

This creates diverging gameplay patterns as your main guy happens to sucks in combat and needs powerful companions to help him or vice verca.

Yeeeaaah... except the devs can already ensure this without RNG.

Question is ofc why the PC would need to outshine the companions that much (unlikely, there are several of them, and a maxed BG char still couldn't outshine the whole party) or why the companions would need to outshine my PC. You know, the one guy I actually created because devs expected me to identify with him.

In JRPG's it's been the case since a long time that your character is kind of middle of the road. He may be stronger in combat than some support character (usually younger), but weaker than some beast of a man (usually an older guy). That's because your character is pre-defined as being kind of a non-descript normie before he went on da great advenshure. Pre-defined, rather than randomly generated.

of course if you are still arnt satisfyed you could you know.... just rerolll.

Yep, or I could just save me the hassle by allocating points. Thing is, this is usually not how it works. RNG character creation doesn't support point buy... but it can work the other way around. If the player randomly generates stats outside the game, and then buys those stats in-game, and you're given the option to start the game without spending any excess points, we've got random creation in a point buy system. So point buy is still superior by making both players happy.