AleBelly wrote:It comes down to this - I enjoy the randomness of 4d6drop1 stat generation. I find point buy systems too restrictive.
See, this is what fascinates me about the divergent views. Point buy systems restrictive? How can this be? Point buy systems, by their very nature, are *as versatile as possible*! You can put together ANY set of ability scores you want from a point buy system. Any! The only "restriction" is the amount of points available for you to spend -- which is set by the DM, the same fellow who, in a parallel universe, is telling you how many dice to roll to generate your ability scores in a randomly-based system.
Whereas: it's the random rolls that are restrictive, insofar as that you're restricted to whatever template your results will allow. Want to play a paladin? Oh, poopy-pants; you didn't roll a 17. Want to play a ranger? Oh, but you don't have enough 13's and 14's, tsk. Druid? Illusionist? No soup for you. And so forth. With a properly built point-buy system, on the other hand, such restrictions melt away. (Emphasis on
properly built, mind you.)
Here's what I haven't really seen, though, AleBelly, and its conspicuous absence gnaws at my soul. Never once, in all the years I've been foaming at the mouth about this very concern, have I come upon a person who says, yup, I run campaigns where the players roll random dice for their ability scores; and yup, it's possible that one guy will roll up a character with three huge stats and make a god-awful amazing character, and the guy next to him will roll all 9-14's and get soup; and yup, I LIKE THAT VERY MUCH; yup, I
WANT this randomly-determined, extreme diversity in my group of players; yup, I'd actually be displeased or disappointed if all the players started with the same amount, or even a *comparable amount*, of potential at level 1.
Does such a person exist? Or am I chasing phantoms?
Here's another fun thought for us to chew on: what about a randomly-determined point-buy system? How about everybody rolls 20+2d10 for the number of points they have to spend on ability scores? What aspects of such a system would appeal to you, and which ones would not?