I'd say my personal preference is to use point buy when character is going to matter, when there's a plan that is being crafted and worked on by the participants. For example, the group wants to run a stylish noir game that focuses on characters righting the wrongs of their past. I'd rather not have a bunch of random stuff during character creation for a game like that.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;467082I'd say my personal preference is to use point buy when character is going to matter, when there's a plan that is being crafted and worked on by the participants. For example, the group wants to run a stylish noir game that focuses on characters righting the wrongs of their past. I'd rather not have a bunch of random stuff during character creation for a game like that.

Seanchai

I learned that the hard way with a Lace & Steel game I tried to run once. We imagined a swashbuckling campaign with musketeers and deering do. The characters produced by entirely random generation? Didn't make for such a game.

Quote from: Soylent Green;467034I'm okay with point build as long as it's pretty simple like D6 or Savage World. If it's it's going to take over an hour to do and involve a lot of calculations and referring back to the rulebook, frankly it starts feeling a less like a game and more like filling in my tax returns.

Agreed. Another thing I dislike about most point buy systems is that they favor players who study the rules. If I'm going to use a point buy system in a game I run, I don't want it to give players who study the rules for hours and hours much of an advantage over a person who is either new to the game or who simply has a life that doesn't have the spare time to cram rules for the character build "test day."

I realize that "Charop" is fun for a lot of people, but it is also hated by a lot of people who don't want to have to master a complex character gen system just to be able to create an acceptable character.

Just not a fan of it in most games; I'd rather fit a concept around a randomly rolled character than the other way round, and it works better for my creativity as both player and GM. It takes me to new places. One of my problems with 3.x was how pervasive builds were integrated into it - even if your stats are random, it is a de facto point buy system when you figure in multiclassing, feats and skills. Some of it is nice, but when you add it all up, it just becomes too much.

I've recently started playing in a 12th level 3.0 Realms campaign as a Wizard (I wanted a Fighter or Thief, but those positions were already taken), and dear God did creating those stats suck, even though I was doing it with PCGen, and I did not even have to go into the magic item economy/wealth level thing (which is of course another point-buy layer).

QuoteI'm okay with point build as long as it's pretty simple like D6 or Savage World. If it's it's going to take over an hour to do and involve a lot of calculations and referring back to the rulebook, frankly it starts feeling a less like a game and more like filling in my tax returns.

This.

To add, I like how it is handled in WFRP. You start with an almost completely random character (very much in keeping with the "wheel of Fortune"-feel that pervaded the centuries the Old World is modelled on - see Villon, Carmina Burana, Boccaccio or Grimmelhausen!), and afterwards, you have a random, career-appropriate menu to choose advancement options from. If you'd really like to, you can stray out of the lines at a cost. Then you switch to a different career that makes sense in the campaign. It's an excellent compromise.

Point buy is the hobgoblin of little minds.

The poster children for the problems with point buy are GURPS and Hero. (Though I don't know Hero nearly as well, so I wouldn't press the point if challenged.)

They're slow. They require study and fiddly math, or computer assistance. And they still need GM-vetting in the end.

Some random systems can be nearly as bad in these respects, but point-buy seems to be epitomized by the GURPS approach of working from a single pool and using that to buy not only attributes, but also skills and advantages/disadvantages. (In fact, ads/disads are themselves somewhat more associated with point-buy than non-point-buy.)

The best point-buy systems I can think of off the top of my head basically avoid the drawbacks found in GURPS. Talislanta is a fairly fast laundry-list, and it doesn't use a single pool. You choose your archetype, you modify the attributes within a certain range, you choose your skills, and you're ready to go.

Swasbuckler is straight point buy, and Shades of Fantasy is mixed (random attributes but bought skills/talents); I think those are both good too, but I don't have time to get into details at the moment.

Point buy makes more sense to me in, the more competitive the game is, and the more similar characters are.

When you're in a game where there's a sword user or an axe user and you're going to be competing in gladiatorial combats, possibly even player versus player, then, yeah, point buy is the way to go.

When you're in a game where there's a sword user and a guy who plays the banjo and they're trying to defeat a band of orcs for reward money, then rolling up stats is fine, the sword user who rolled all 18's isn't really going to be able to outplay the banjo user whose best stat is 12.

In 2E, I didn't mind random generation. In general I favour point-buy over random for 3.5 -  I usually have some idea of what sort of character I'd like to play and unless its a one-shot, will have to play them for quite awhile. I don't like that you can basically tell what ability scores scores someone has when you know their class ("Oh, he's a monk so he'll be ugly and dumb to raise Str/Dex/Wis/Con"). And by the time it gets to 4E and every fighter has a Strength of 20, the wheels have clearly fallen off the wagon.

Different things work for different games, though. I think Palladium, for example, works fairly well for random roll since it has more attributes (making it less likely someone rolls up someone who's just better than you in every way), because you have the opportunity to boost up low scores through physical skill/OCC picks, because low stats aren't penalized, and because the bonuses of some of the attributes are less overpowering than, say, D&Ds (no to-hit bonus off Strength since its off PP instead, PE bonus having much milder effect on hit points).

In general the more stats a game has, the better random-roll is looking since its less likely someone will roll very high on everything, and the worse point-buy will be since the math will get more cumbersome, and since buying a high attribute means you can shave a couple of points off multiple stats instead of being faced with a significant tradeoff for pumping a stat high. (Haven't played any Hero, but I have some unfond memories of this portion of DC Heroes 3rd Ed).

I certainly prefer not to use point-buy if it can be avoided.  If not, its much better if there's a mixed element of randomness and point-buy.  3e does a fairly good job of this, for example.

The worst of all situations is where there's point-buy and a long list of advantages and (especially) disadvantages.  That's just a fucking invitation to have people try to min-max and game the system.

RPGPundit

For me, point-buy is acceptable when there are a lot of restrictions. Instead of getting a huge pool of points to spend as you wish, I'd rather have a pool of points to spend on characteristics, another to spend on skills, etc. If I get restrictions like "you can't spend more than x points on a skill", the better. The less options, the easier.

I also like point-buy combined with some randomness.

For me, either point buy or random character creation can be fun, depending upon my mood. I guess I like a mixture of both, as long as it's not overcomplicated.

Quote from: MelanTo add, I like how it is handled in WFRP. You start with an almost completely random character (very much in keeping with the "wheel of Fortune"-feel that pervaded the centuries the Old World is modelled on - see Villon, Carmina Burana, Boccaccio or Grimmelhausen!), and afterwards, you have a random, career-appropriate menu to choose advancement options from. If you'd really like to, you can stray out of the lines at a cost. Then you switch to a different career that makes sense in the campaign. It's an excellent compromise.

Which edition? I've only read WFRP 2e, but I consider it a good example of random character creation. I like the game very much.

I am only familiar with the first.

Point buy is always preferrable. I don't get the criticism at all - even of allowing peopel to get points for taking on flaws/negatives. If a game can be minmaxed then it's badly made, but not because of the players nor the point buy principle. It just has variables that are broken. I used to play ccg's with some of the world's best players (i wasn't one) and these guys could break a game just by looking at it. Wasn't that the game wasn't fun, it was that these people could see right through the variables instantly. My preference is probably more along the lines of Feng Shui: pick an archetype and customise points then off you go.