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So, wanted to talk about the ability score when we make our character a bit, and am just wondering why the devs decided to go with point buy instead of standard array or random rolls? I get with random rolls you can just roll as much as you want until you have high numbers for everything basically, which can be silly and OP but considering it's mainly a single player video game then letting us make our characters silly and OP doesn't seem like a terrible thing. If I finish my first play through and decide I want to do another run but with a character who has rolled decently high numbers for all ability scores, why shouldn't I be able to?

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I agreed, I would love to roll for my stats, makes for a better rpg feeling and you can personalise your character more.


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I think it’s very likely they will add rolling for stats later. But for early access and especially for balance data, it’s better that everyone’s characters have the same limitations on stats (still could have been standard array as well).

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I believe it was confirmed at some point that the other standard methods of deriving your ability scores (Roll at least) would be coming eventually.

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It is confrimation older than half year tho ...
But Swen certainly was talking in some interview about that they plan to implement Rolling for stats in character creation ...

Honestly i only hope they will also implement option to buy stats with infinite points ... since some of us will re-roll stats as long as they get what they want ... so the outome would be just the same, it only saves the time. :P


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Originally Posted by Pupito
So, wanted to talk about the ability score when we make our character a bit, and am just wondering why the devs decided to go with point buy instead of standard array or random rolls? I get with random rolls you can just roll as much as you want until you have high numbers for everything basically, which can be silly and OP but considering it's mainly a single player video game then letting us make our characters silly and OP doesn't seem like a terrible thing. If I finish my first play through and decide I want to do another run but with a character who has rolled decently high numbers for all ability scores, why shouldn't I be able to?

Standard array is EXTREMELY boring, dice-rolling can cause inconsistencies with attributes, make balancing the game hard I would presume. Point buy gives some customization while putting limits to attribute scores.

Edit* Like several others said, rolling for ability scores might be a thing later.

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In general I prefer a point buy system over a roll-for system, but D&D's point buy has always felt like it's too restrictive. In general when I run I gave my players 30 pt buy. And then there's my brother's game and he was thoroughly uninterested in running average statted characters so had us roll 5d6, 7 times, keep the best... then he compared stats and boosted everybody to the number of points the person with the highest scores rolled.

I've had a couple GMs like that "The stronger you are, the more interesting things I can throw at you." and "If your abilities are higher, you'll get more feats and those are more interesting than ability scores." are sentiments given.

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It's the method that does the best job of keeping things balanced while giving the player a sense of control.

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I only support point buy when you complete the scale: that is, you can buy up AND down, using the same scaling increase of cost, all the way to 3 and 18, just as you could theoretically get for dice.

This means, from base 8, buying down gets you one point back per rank down to 4, and two back for the rank from 4 to 3, while above 15 it costs three points for 16 and 17, and four points for 18.

This would means that buying a single 18 is permissible, but will cost you 19 of your 27 points and is largely impractical unless you leave the character very lacklustre elsewhere, and it does allow characters to buy down weak stats that they want to have lower than an 8 for character purposes. You get far less for buying back low scores than buying in high ones, so it's not practical to use it to force your numbers.

This is the only form of Point Buy I feel is really worth actually using.

I think the accusation that rolling leads to broken high scores is silly, really. A player having one 17 or 18 starting out isn't going to break the game or end the world, or even really change things over much, other than make them feel a little bit more confident in the first four levels of play (after which the difference is effectively nullified by the potentials of player choice). Even a character that rolls one 18, puts it in their racial ability bonus ability score, and starts with a 20, is only going to have a relatively small buff to their specific by-class capabilities for the first four levels or so, after which the difference goes away. I've had a character that has started with a 20 in her core offence state, and she didn't overshadow the group or obliterate encounters or break the game. She was *competent*, and generally hit what she shot at, early game. Past level 4 there was really nothing to report. I've also had characters that started with a 15 in their core offence stat, no racial bonus, but who has, by level 11 now, had quite a lot of occasions where her actions have unwittingly overshadowed the attempts of others, and I've been trying to let it happen less by making different choices. Ultimately, it's not a big deal, beyond the first few levels, and it's not much of a big deal even then.

The accusation that it will mean players starting out with super high stats across the board is ridiculous - in reality, no-one is going to sit at their computer hitting re-roll for the literal hours on end it would take to get three 18s... and if they want to waste hours and hours and hours of their life doing that instead of actually playing the game, that's on them.

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Originally Posted by Niara
I think the accusation that rolling leads to broken high scores is silly, really. A player having one 17 or 18 starting out isn't going to break the game or end the world, or even really change things over much, other than make them feel a little bit more confident in the first four levels of play (after which the difference is effectively nullified by the potentials of player choice). Even a character that rolls one 18, puts it in their racial ability bonus ability score, and starts with a 20, is only going to have a relatively small buff to their specific by-class capabilities for the first four levels or so, after which the difference goes away. I've had a character that has started with a 20 in her core offence state, and she didn't overshadow the group or obliterate encounters or break the game. She was *competent*, and generally hit what she shot at, early game. Past level 4 there was really nothing to report. I've also had characters that started with a 15 in their core offence stat, no racial bonus, but who has, by level 11 now, had quite a lot of occasions where her actions have unwittingly overshadowed the attempts of others, and I've been trying to let it happen less by making different choices. Ultimately, it's not a big deal, beyond the first few levels, and it's not much of a big deal even then.

The accusation that it will mean players starting out with super high stats across the board is ridiculous - in reality, no-one is going to sit at their computer hitting re-roll for the literal hours on end it would take to get three 18s... and if they want to waste hours and hours and hours of their life doing that instead of actually playing the game, that's on them.
I wonder if you would use the same arguments for infinite point buy system ...
I mean, the result is the same ... you can create stupidly overpowered character, just as if you either "waste hours and hours and hours and hours ... wich is on you" ... or if you simply get lucky and roll good numbers anytime sooner. laugh

So what if someome will want go on adventure with his hero named OPMasterPWN ... whos statistic are 18 18 18 18 18 18 laugh
"Ultimately, it's not a big deal, beyond the first few levels, and it's not much of a big deal even then."
"and if they want to ... doing that instead of actually playing the game, that's on them."


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Originally Posted by Niara
The accusation that it will mean players starting out with super high stats across the board is ridiculous - in reality, no-one is going to sit at their computer hitting re-roll for the literal hours on end it would take to get three 18s...
No, that's why modders wrote an autoroller for that in BG2. laugh

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Why would I? They're completely different cases unrelated to one another.

There's a marked difference between having one particularly strong stat, and having high stats across the board. There's also a marked difference between clicking the re-roll button two or three times until you see something acceptable, versus sitting at that roller for hours, even days, to get the 'ideal' roll. Conflating the two just makes it look a bit like you don't understand the discussion.

Would it interest you to know that the average expected roll spread of rolling 4d6 drop lowest six times is: "16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9" Which is, in reality, very close to the standard array. If you need me to provide the maths, it can be arranged, but I'd urge you to trust that I don't provide false information.

If you think it's not a counter argument to note the extreme waste of time taken to roll even three 17-18 stats in one roll set (a chance so small that measuring the percentage it to three decimal places still registers as zero percent), Rag, then by all means, go and roll a six 18s stat spread with normal rolling. Come back when you have done this, and then tell us how long it took you to get that extremely unbalanced character. We can review, and let others decide if that balance of time is worth ignoring as a consideration. If it's something that someone might feasibly do to start a character in a game, then surely it's no real stretch for you to do it to make your own case in this discussion stronger, no? Go ahead... Assuming you have a REALLY quick hand and eye, and it only takes you one second to roll, check, record and move on per roll, and that you never eat or sleep or take any breaks... I'll see you in circa fifteen years.

I argue in favour of a direct point setting character generation for a completely different reason: The creation of older existing characters that individuals might want to remake, or give new life to in this game.

Originally Posted by ash elemental
No, that's why modders wrote an autoroller for that in BG2. laugh

I'm puzzled why a modder would ever do that.... if you're going to do that, then surely it would be faster and more efficient just to write a mod that lets you set your starting scores?

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@Niara

Anyone who remembers the old Infinity Engine games can attest that it certainly did not take hours or days to roll a character with a stat sum of 87 or 88. One could probably get a 90 without that much trouble. Getting higher than that usually required some class restrictions and racial bonuses on stats, but it was possible. Getting above 100 would be ridiculous, though.

But consider that a sum of 90 means an average of 15. That's rather nuts already, but there would probably be some way to adjust the rolled dice values to fit with the chosen class. The IE games let one simply readjust the results, meaning one could take an unnecessary 3 points out of int and put them into dex instead, if that was what one felt the character needed.

Now consider what this does to the variance of how powerful newly created characters are. If Larian is using our EA gameplay data for balancing purposes then that variance would make it a fair bit harder to draw strong conclusions. I mean, obviously a warlock is going to be potentially strong, but imagine a lucky roll of 18 cha, with a natural +2 racial bonus on top of that. That's 20 off the bat and the ASI at level 4 can then be spent on a feat like moderately armoured. Or one go shield dwarf for medium armour right away and then use the ASI to get 20 cha. Either way we have a neat 19 AC warlock with a maxed out attack only a handful of hours into EA. Surely this is just a tiny bit stronger, all things considered, than the current EA warlocks that either get armour or 18 cha at level 4.

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Originally Posted by Niara
There's a marked difference between having one particularly strong stat, and having high stats across the board. There's also a marked difference between clicking the re-roll button two or three times until you see something acceptable, versus sitting at that roller for hours, even days, to get the 'ideal' roll. Conflating the two just makes it look a bit like you don't understand the discussion.
It was just example. wink
Maybe i should mention that more clearly ... yes, i understand there is difference between 1x18 and 6x18 ... but there are at least 4 more options in between them ...

Maybe i dont want to spend thousand of hours to get "all 18" ... maybe i just want "at least three 18" or "at least two 18" ... wich certainly shorten the whole proces conciderably, even if it still may take some time. wink
(Just note here: You are talking with person who is able to spend half hour in character creation switching between two hair styles, or collors to decide wich i like more. laugh )
Then there is question if i would be able to asign specific rolls to specific stats after rolling ... Like ok, i have two 18 ... i want to be a Wizard, so lets give one to Intellect and another one to either Constitution or Dexterity ...
Or if every roll will have its place allready set (pretty stupid idea imho, but i have seen it before in tabletop ... when GM wanted us to roll for each stat separately) ... wich would on the contrary prolong the rolling part conciderably ... just imagine: I wanted to be a Wizard, but i rolled 18 for Str and 18 for Con, so maybe i try Barbarian this time? (Horrible idea i repeat.)

But if you simply allow people to use infinite point buy ...
They can create just the same, with conciderably less amount of time ... there is no way to create starting character on level 1 wich 50Str ... that would certainly need some hard moding. laugh
If you will have taste for Rolling ... you can ...
If you will be discuisted of rolling after few failures, you just take your points and finish the differences however you want. :P

And if it dont "actualy matter" to have 18Str & 18Con Barbarian at level 1 ... bcs he either rolled lucky, or simply rolled long enough (it dont really matter how long it takes, he just did for need of this example) ... why, or how should matter that some else Barbarian used different metod to get 18Str & 18Con? wink

Originally Posted by Niara
Would it interest you to know that the average expected roll spread of rolling 4d6 drop lowest six times is: "16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9" Which is, in reality, very close to the standard array. If you need me to provide the maths, it can be arranged, but I'd urge you to trust that I don't provide false information.
Math would not be necesary ... i have some basic education in statistic. smile
The point here is the word "random" ... it could be 18Billionth atempt ... but, even tho odds are incredibly thin, it "could" be 5th atempt. laugh

Anyway as long as its possible, game should count with that option ...
(And i know there is ways to make it impossible ... but im not quite sure how would people react of the fact that there actualy is some "inner brain" that is preventing them to have ridiculously over, or even underpowered characters while rolling statistics ... i believe that when someone want to use random number generator, s/he does that bcs s/he wants actualy random outcome)
And while game count with that option, i see no reason to deny people to get just the same outcome with conciderably less amount of time. wink

Originally Posted by Niara
If you think it's not a counter argument to note the extreme waste of time taken to roll even three 17-18 stats in one roll set (a chance so small that measuring the percentage it to three decimal places still registers as zero percent), Rag, then by all means, go and roll a six 18s stat spread with normal rolling. Come back when you have done this, and then tell us how long it took you to get that extremely unbalanced character. We can review, and let others decide if that balance of time is worth ignoring as a consideration. If it's something that someone might feasibly do to start a character in a game, then surely it's no real stretch for you to do it to make your own case in this discussion stronger, no? Go ahead... Assuming you have a REALLY quick hand and eye, and it only takes you one second to roll, check, record and move on per roll, and that you never eat or sleep or take any breaks... I'll see you in circa fifteen years.
I used https://g.co/kgs/ynin7o ... with 6d20
My rolls:
2 - 16 - 19 - 20 - 6 - 12 (personaly concidering it great roll, funny enough it was my first ... 20Str, 19Con, 16Dex, 12Cha, 6Wis, 2Int ... great Barbarian in my eyes)
7 - 4 - 12 - 16 - 15 - 5 (not so good, but it could work)
12 - 11 - 3 - 1 - 9 - 20 (again, acceptable)
12 - 20 - 14 - 15 - 14 - 9 (exceptional!)
20 - 12 - 2 - 17 - 18 -7 (exceptional!)
11 - 13 - 3 - 16 - 5 - 5 (acceptable)

So ... as i said, "random" is a bitch. laugh
It didnt take me fifteen years, not even fifteen minutes to get exceptional character. smile

No, it was not Mr. OPMasterPWN ... but as i said, you take me too litteraly there. smile

Originally Posted by Niara
I'm puzzled why a modder would ever do that.... if you're going to do that, then surely it would be faster and more efficient just to write a mod that lets you set your starting scores?
Exactly my point. smile


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Originally Posted by Niara
Originally Posted by ash elemental
No, that's why modders wrote an autoroller for that in BG2. laugh

I'm puzzled why a modder would ever do that.... if you're going to do that, then surely it would be faster and more efficient just to write a mod that lets you set your starting scores?
Having used character editors & near infinity to change characters, I'd say the autoroller is faster (rolls quicker than a player can) and easier if you simply want high stats. With editors it was possible to screw up a character.

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Originally Posted by Niara
I only support point buy when you complete the scale: that is, you can buy up AND down, using the same scaling increase of cost, all the way to 3 and 18, just as you could theoretically get for dice.

This means, from base 8, buying down gets you one point back per rank down to 4, and two back for the rank from 4 to 3, while above 15 it costs three points for 16 and 17, and four points for 18.

This would means that buying a single 18 is permissible, but will cost you 19 of your 27 points and is largely impractical unless you leave the character very lacklustre elsewhere, and it does allow characters to buy down weak stats that they want to have lower than an 8 for character purposes. You get far less for buying back low scores than buying in high ones, so it's not practical to use it to force your numbers.

This is the only form of Point Buy I feel is really worth actually using.

I think the accusation that rolling leads to broken high scores is silly, really. A player having one 17 or 18 starting out isn't going to break the game or end the world, or even really change things over much, other than make them feel a little bit more confident in the first four levels of play (after which the difference is effectively nullified by the potentials of player choice). Even a character that rolls one 18, puts it in their racial ability bonus ability score, and starts with a 20, is only going to have a relatively small buff to their specific by-class capabilities for the first four levels or so, after which the difference goes away. I've had a character that has started with a 20 in her core offence state, and she didn't overshadow the group or obliterate encounters or break the game. She was *competent*, and generally hit what she shot at, early game. Past level 4 there was really nothing to report. I've also had characters that started with a 15 in their core offence stat, no racial bonus, but who has, by level 11 now, had quite a lot of occasions where her actions have unwittingly overshadowed the attempts of others, and I've been trying to let it happen less by making different choices. Ultimately, it's not a big deal, beyond the first few levels, and it's not much of a big deal even then.

The accusation that it will mean players starting out with super high stats across the board is ridiculous - in reality, no-one is going to sit at their computer hitting re-roll for the literal hours on end it would take to get three 18s... and if they want to waste hours and hours and hours of their life doing that instead of actually playing the game, that's on them.

Yeah... D&D point buy is poorly implemented. Granted it was initially built on rolling... and better implemented point buy systems (Hero, M&M, even BESM's got better point buy then D&D) have a pool of points to buy all features... or are like Storyteller and Storypath with points pre-allocated to different sections of the sheet...

And also, the "high stats will break the game" again... not terribly true... granted, a computer RPG doesn't adjust as well as a human GM does, but also the impact of high stats is proportionally higher at low levels than higher ones.

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Originally Posted by Pupito
So, wanted to talk about the ability score when we make our character a bit, and am just wondering why the devs decided to go with point buy instead of standard array or random rolls?
Because there is no DM to limit you or tailor the experience to your character.

Yes, you can create overpowered characters, you can create underpowered. As long as you know what you are doing and understand consequences, it’s fine I suppose, but it’s bad thing to have - you don’t know what game s balanced around, and you are essentially asked to set up your difficulty level, without understanding what is what.

Pointbuy system, means some resemblance of predictability, and that leads to better, more balanced design.

I have nothing against adding point buy as an option though. If Larian still plans to add it later on, it makes sense to only have point buy for now - balance is something they are actively looking at, so having players running with varying level of available power would be more confusing then helpful.

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Originally Posted by Niara
I only support point buy when you complete the scale: that is, you can buy up AND down, using the same scaling increase of cost, all the way to 3 and 18, just as you could theoretically get for dice.

This means, from base 8, buying down gets you one point back per rank down to 4, and two back for the rank from 4 to 3, while above 15 it costs three points for 16 and 17, and four points for 18.

This would means that buying a single 18 is permissible, but will cost you 19 of your 27 points and is largely impractical unless you leave the character very lacklustre elsewhere, and it does allow characters to buy down weak stats that they want to have lower than an 8 for character purposes. You get far less for buying back low scores than buying in high ones, so it's not practical to use it to force your numbers.

This is the only form of Point Buy I feel is really worth actually using.

I think the accusation that rolling leads to broken high scores is silly, really. A player having one 17 or 18 starting out isn't going to break the game or end the world, or even really change things over much, other than make them feel a little bit more confident in the first four levels of play (after which the difference is effectively nullified by the potentials of player choice). Even a character that rolls one 18, puts it in their racial ability bonus ability score, and starts with a 20, is only going to have a relatively small buff to their specific by-class capabilities for the first four levels or so, after which the difference goes away. I've had a character that has started with a 20 in her core offence state, and she didn't overshadow the group or obliterate encounters or break the game. She was *competent*, and generally hit what she shot at, early game. Past level 4 there was really nothing to report. I've also had characters that started with a 15 in their core offence stat, no racial bonus, but who has, by level 11 now, had quite a lot of occasions where her actions have unwittingly overshadowed the attempts of others, and I've been trying to let it happen less by making different choices. Ultimately, it's not a big deal, beyond the first few levels, and it's not much of a big deal even then.

The accusation that it will mean players starting out with super high stats across the board is ridiculous - in reality, no-one is going to sit at their computer hitting re-roll for the literal hours on end it would take to get three 18s... and if they want to waste hours and hours and hours of their life doing that instead of actually playing the game, that's on them.
Aside for the fact that I agree that the default "point buy" system feels a bit too restrictive, I disagree with basically any other sentence or assumption in this post, but the last one in particular is spectacularly disingenuous. "No one is going to sit at its computer rerolling for hours" is bullshit. You don't need "hours". In merely few intense(ly tedious) minutes you can have HUNDREDS of unsupervised rerolls.
Many of us did it with BG2, after all. And that game had a "the worst of both worlds": dice rolling and still freedom to move points around from a stat to another.

That aside, honestly when I say I don't like roll systems it's not even just a matter of not liking the potential for "overpowered characters. I genuinely don't like the extreme unpredictability/unfairness of the system overall, included how much your outcome can SUCK to comical degree if you try to put some reasonable restriction to the infinite reroll.
Even sticking with rolling for character generations, I always imagined that a better system would have been a hybrid one. Something like "roll 3D6 10 times, keep the six highest results out of ten, and have a FREE PASS to replace the lowest value among them with a 18 by default".

Unlimited reroll in a computer game UNSUPERVISED by a DM is BULLSHIT. May as well give people a free pass to type down their own stats. And many will anyway, in some way or another through cheating.
Except CHEATING is an outside influence and it shouldn't be confused with a game FORMALLY giving you license to whatever the fuck you want and expecting restrain on your part.

Anyway, as we said one hundred times already, rolling is coming regardless of what I think of it, so there's that.

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Originally Posted by Niara
I only support point buy when you complete the scale: that is, you can buy up AND down, using the same scaling increase of cost, all the way to 3 and 18, just as you could theoretically get for dice.

This means, from base 8, buying down gets you one point back per rank down to 4, and two back for the rank from 4 to 3, while above 15 it costs three points for 16 and 17, and four points for 18
I'm not a fan of getting additional points (on a 1-to-1 basis) for taking scores <8. This just incentivizes dump stats even more than currently, and 5e already has a big problem with certain stats being dump-able. At the very best, going from 8->7 should get you a fraction of a point. You'd need to go from 8->6 or 5 to get one point.

I do agree that point buy should allow purchasing scores up to 16 at least, maybe even 17 or 18. Possibly we could get 3 extra points to spend with this: either a free upgrade to a 16 or getting a couple additional stats to 11-14. Particular, this would very much help with MAD classes and encourage more feat-taking at ASI levels.

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Originally Posted by Tuco
May as well give people a free pass to type down their own stats. And many will anyway, in some way or another through cheating.
See? Even Tuco agreed. laugh


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