Well, if anyone cares, the previous topic, which CJMPinger mentioned and which discussed this was
there. Arguably it ended up being a lot about definitions of what people mean be roleplay, power-gaming, and whether the Custom Origin is more of a boost to roleplaying or power-gaming. I nearly thought of bumping it, but I like the title of this thread better.
So I'd like to ask : what do people generally against TCoE's Custom Origin rule (as well as those in favour) think of the following character creation custom rule :
- Ability Scores are limited to 17 or 18, at level 1, after character creation (GM's choice).
- Start with M Ability Points in each Ability (say M=8, like in the PHB), as well as N Purchase Points (say N = 75, for the sake of giving a number).
- Buying one Ability Point (AP) costs 1 Purchase Point (PP) until and including 14, then 2 PP until 17, then 3 PP for the 18th AP (if made available).
- Apply standard Ability Score Improvements after purchase.
Would that be acceptable ?
ps : obviously, Roll should be included in the game. I kind of take it for granted, but I hope it makes it.
I'm confused - is this not just a slightly modified version of point buy, where the ceiling is higher and you have way more points to spend (for RAW point buy, N=27)? I generally like point buy for tabletop games, so all characters are at comparable power levels - it's usually not that fun to be the guy who rolled rolled 60 when other folks at your table rolled 80s. I'm fine with it here, too, though there's probably less of a need to balance power between different players in a video game.
I would want the ability to go below 8, but that's not critical. Being bad at things and failing can be very fun in a tabletop game - it's just another way to advance the story. As it is currently implemented failing in BG3 just feels bad; I'm not sure how much of that is Larian's fault or if it's just something that's prohibitively difficult to deal with in video games, but I imagine there's some low-hanging fruit for at least small improvements.
I don't have strong feelings about the Custom Origin stuff. I can see both sides of it, but don't really care that much. Getting +1 in one or two ability modifiers just seems so inconsequential compared to the choices you make in the game (it impacts ~5% of rolls using those stats). If people care enough to really want to change it, that's fine. I'm also fine with just letting people set the numbers manually to whatever they want.
On the other hand: For newer players (especially, but not exclusively), having more restrictions can be helpful. Character creation is a time when you're asked to make a lot of decisions without having a solid understanding of how those will impact the game going forward. I tend to be in favor of (at least by default) imposing some restrictions (e.g. your race selection dictates your ability score bonuses) to streamline this process.
