This post is a response to one section of Samhaine’s latest post, so go read that first. I’ll wait. You’re looking for the “I Won this 18 in the Lottery” section.
Maybe there is a middle ground between randomly generated ability scores and point-buy ability scores that gets it all right. The appeal of random generation, to me, is that they feel “earned” (won, really) snatched from the jaws of doom. This is great and all, but… people lose that lottery all the time. A feeling of winning, of course, needs a threat of loss in order to exist, but boy does it suck when you lose the ability score lottery in games. (Admittedly, some of us lose the ability score lottery in real life; just ask some of my friends about their real-life Con or Dex scores, and whatever my theoretical Int is, I run mad with envy when I’m around people who have higher. Regrettably, this is common.) I have played characters who won the ability score lottery and characters who lost it, and I didn’t find that playing with crappy ability scores improved the roleplay; I categorically reject that old-school argument. Having “a weakness” is well and good; having “nothing but weaknesses” is not.
I have my problems with point-buy, though. In 4e, you’re never going to see a fighter with high Int, unless the player deliberately created a grossly suboptimal character. Pretty much everyone is going to have an 18, 19, or 20 in their class’s attack stat. I’ve played a character who started with a 17 in his attack stat. I don’t recommend it, and wouldn’t repeat the experience. (My issues with non-Essentials star pact warlocks are pretty serious, but not the point of this post.) My complaint about ability scores all being the same within a party comes down to Syndrome’s argument in The Incredibles.
The one piece of good news here is that +2 to your attack stat is trivially easy to come by (if all else fails, play a human); the downside to that is that it sets up a situation where some races just never have members of certain classes. Deva fighter, anyone? This is balanced somewhat by giving otherwise undesirable race/class combinations some grossly OP feats, which then come back to bite the system in some really odd ways. (My issues with Dwarven Weapon Training are also not the point of this post, but I can point to dwarf-flavored revenant assassins as part of my issue. Thank you, Kainenchen, for being a good sport about that.)
Disclaimer: I freely acknowledge that the solution I’m about to propose may simultaneously not solve the problems of point-buy while also losing the lottery feel of random generation. I don’t know if I would like this system, because I haven’t thought it out yet.
What if you randomly selected between different ability score blocks? Something like the following table, modified from the 4e PH:
Roll 2d6.
2: 15, 14, 13, 12, 12, 11
3: 15, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10
4: 16, 15, 12, 11, 11, 10
5: 16, 14, 14, 12, 11, 8
6: 16, 16, 12, 10, 10, 10
7: 17, 15, 12, 11, 10, 8
8: 17, 14, 12, 11, 10, 10
9: 18, 13, 13, 10, 10, 8
10-11: 18, 14, 11, 10, 10, 8
12: 18, 12, 12, 10, 10, 10
Introduce some or all of the following iterations on this system, seasoning to taste.
1. Deliberately unbalance the stats somewhat, within a range of 2-4 point-buy construction points, possibly buffering whichever of these stat blocks you as a GM find to be least desirable.
2. Minmax slightly more than the core rules allow, so that there are some ability scores below 8, or stat blocks with two 8s. Because players have lost some of their choice here, it’s more fair, not to say more desirable.
3. Create versions of these stat blocks that are pre-arranged, and do not allow players to arrange to taste. You could get away with higher overall scores this way, if you wanted. To water this option down very slightly, allow players to switch the positions of two and only two scores.
4. Using the PH2 as-released version of Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise (the +1 attack bonus per tier feats), add the following: You may not have an ability score higher than 17 at 4th level, 18 at 8th, 19 at 11th, 20 at 14th, 21 at 18th, 22 at 21st, 23 at 24th, or 24 at 28th. (To state this another way, you must not have had an ability score higher than 16 at character creation, after racial modifiers.) This is a feat tax on those characters, but because their points are spread out elsewhere, they do at least have a material advantage in skill-use situations.
Variants 1-3 bring a little more lottery back into ability score generation, and are only fair because the player doesn’t control what they get. Could this lead to players being unhappy? Maybe, but I think that a lot of players would still see the manifest equality of their stats and not make too much of a fuss.
Edited to add: So there I was, poking around in recent back articles of a blog much, much more widely read than this one, and I find that he too has referenced Syndrome from The Incredibles as part of an argument about ability scores. I would like to state for the record that I had not read the linked blog post before writing this one, though I had read this closely-related post.
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My reason for liking random stat generation is story. Really interesting characters are made by their restraints, their weaknesses. It is even more appealing to me that the weakness is applied by fate.
On the other end of things, point buy is great, because you can create what you intend. However, I do sort of hate that optimization is required in so many point buy systems. At least, it seems required. If I want to make a wizard who is of a "suboptimal" race, I will likely get crap from my fellow players for not doing it right. I will will be penalized by the system as well because I did not maximize and there for monsters on level for me eat my lunch or worse yet just wont be able to do anything cause I cant hit them. Yet i still want to make the suboptimal. I want to play the guy who is a fighter with no con, dex or strength bonus. It makes for good story. It is interesting to find ways around the restrictions.
I am pleased to see someone try and bring random back in play, if only as a mental exercise.
As you know, I love random generation of anything, so I'd def. try the random array. While I don't think that building for optimization is necessarily bad, it is really frustrating if you– and the rest of the party, and the GM– don't know what to do with the character story-wise. Wilden Shaman, I am looking at you.
@Basics– I think it _can_ be fun, but it really depends on the DM to make it fun. I'm not sure, for example, I'd play a half-orc paladin again, because that was bloody frustrating. I don't buy either that the weaknesses are "more interesting" or "make for better story", more often they get in the way of story unless the DM goes out of their way to cater to the handicapped character– or at least, fails to ignore the disability. Too often, I just see it being the subject of a lot of jokes, and the player still spends a lot of combat being utterly miserable. I'd go so far as to say, even, in 3.x, that an optimally min-maxed character can have the same experience if they fail to get ahold of stat-boosting magic items in mid-higher levels. It is really rude to fall behind the other characters in any way, and being left out of party stuff because you're a gimp is just not fun.
Personally I still think Reign has a good idea for random character generation: random generation that produces mechanically equal characters. It does reduce the lottery winner feelings, but you still get some of that the way the rolls are structured: you're looking for sets of the same number on d10 and while rolling 4 5 6 is mechanically equal to 4 4 4 in terms of point cost, 4 4 4 means you're a veteran soldier while 4 5 6 means you dabble in soldiery, sagery, and crime. Plus being able to create an entire character rolling 11d10 does make character creation a lot easier. Thus I am stealing something similar for GodWar.
If you want some real fun for random character creation, check out Heroes for Legend/Today/Tomorrow from Central Casting. Way out of print, but it provides the most indepth, system agnostic, character background creation system I have ever seen. Balanced? Oh hell no, but lots and lots of fun (especially combined with games like Rifts where game balance was never possible to begin with).
Hey Lee– I really liked the random aspects in Shadows of Azathoth as well. When you've got individual characters contributing to a larger, group thing, individual weaknesses seem more interesting and less… I dunno frustrating. It's easier to focus on a single concept.
Also, having a horrible weakness in a horror setting seems to fit Story more naturally than some other settings.
My main problem with randomized stats is how they can foul up the vital stats for a class. Randomized non-vital stats are interesting background fodder; randomized vital stats are a threat to a PC's effectiveness. I think the key is separating vital stats from non-vital stats:
1. Players get to point buy 2-3 stats.
2. The other 3-4 stats are randomly rolled.
Mike,
To be honest, that doesn't sound like something I'd really want to do, because shifting points between only 2-3 stats comes to represent really very few choices. Given points to do so in 4e, the Right Answer is to have a base 18 in your attack stat and as high a score as you can manage in the other stat(s). The only real point of consideration is how your race's stat bonuses might let you start with a 20, or your race's stat bonuses might let you put a 16 in that score to get your 18. Stats in 4e are painfully close to having a right answer as-is, and I would not prefer to strip down that choice further.
I have used all sorts of character generation methods from 3d6 and weep to GURPS and Hero System. And for my Pathfinder game, I have decided . . . players can use any method they want for their stats,point buy, 3d6 in order, best of 7d6, or even just choosing them right out. I can balance things in play but I want players to be happy with their character. Now in more mechanically built systems (like M&M and L5R) I stick with the system as designed.
I confess that this is an approach I would have a hard time embracing. I've written elsewhere of the difficulty of establishing the very high levels of DM-player trust that your approach requires. From gaming at your table, though, I recall that this was never a problem for you. =)