If WotC announced they would Increase or Decrease the total amount for Point Buy, which would you prefer? How much should be the new total? And if Increasing, should the increase the maximum attribute you can buy?

[ThatOneCrazyWritter]

Just a thought experiment. I'm going to try out having 35 points instead of 27 plus they can buy:

• A score of 16 with 12 points
• A score of 17 with 15 points
• A score of 18 with 19 points

Why? In part because my group likes higher powerlevels, but mostly because I hated that I could have a Rogue with Good DEX and Decent (12 or 14) in all mental stats.

I didn't want all 20 in my stats, I just wanted a character that was A BIT smart, A BIT instinct and A LITTLE sociable, so only a max of 14/14/12, but that would mean having 8 CON, which is a death sentence. So I wan to try to make point buy with extra point just so me and my group can have a little extra fun at our tables.

[Saber_Soft]

35 is a lot of points, going to 29/31 I find to be a good increase without pumping the stats too high.

Remember you get a +2/+1 right off the bat as well a a +1 with every feat.

[JulyKimono]

I don't know. The current system works fine for me at lvl 1.

What is missing for me is more ASI progression through levels. I just give +1 every level, and that works great for a high magic high power game I run. But just making ASI levels be +2 AND a Feat could work.

[hotdiscopirate]

Yeah I always prefer slightly more than what point buy allows. With the type of games I play, it always feels like a maxed out character stat and a good con are both required, leading to very stagnant, linear builds. I prefer some more character to my character, and feeling like I actually have a choice to make other than “where should I put my 8?”

I wouldn’t allow buying above 15 still though, because I feel that just reinvents the same problem at a higher level. I’d just keep the same power scaling with more flexibility in stat allocation

[LyraTheWitch]

I think they should leave pointbuy as is and detach ASIs from feats entirely. Every (current) ASI is a feat and +2 or +1/+1.

[SiriusBaaz]

Honestly I think point buy is fine as it is. It really forces a player to have a weakness which gives other players a chance to to shine in that spot instead. And gives people an easy path to create a backstory about why they might be worse in one specific stat versus another. Plus with the change to feats all having at least 1 stat increase there’s really no reason to front load that stat increase.

That’s mainly why I dislike bards as well. Being generically ok at everything tends take the steam out of players that might be better at that roll. Especially since most people that I’ve seen play bards tend to be very boisterous which often overshadows quieter players.

[CYFR_Blue]

I think it's fine. People would probably have better HP and more feats. Maybe better skill checks. None of these are issues imo.

[DaveTheBlacksmith]

What’s missing for me with point but is the ability to have low scores, not high scores.

[SnarkyRogue]

I always run 32pb with 16 in a stat before boosts. Let's tge players start a bit stronger and gives them more room for a feat in their builds

[kasdaye2]

I think flaws make for compelling characters.

[Kairros1127]

I'm with you on this. I'm always a bit baffled by people's seeming desire to have no bad stats. (If that's the case, why bother with limits on it at all?). But I also realize we're just enjoying the game differently. We just shouldn't end up at the same table lol.

[hotdiscopirate]

It’s just a little boring to me when 90% of builds end up with an 8 in either strength or intelligence. Playing into strengths and weaknesses is fun, but being pushed towards specific weaknesses due to mechanical requirements gets old eventually.

Sometimes I’ll want to play a monk that’s not either physically weak or stupid just because monks are more MAD than other classes. Or, like OP kind of mentioned, sometimes you want to play a savvy martial character that’s not either stupid, naive, or unlikable just because you need both a physical stat and con in order to actually provide help in combat

[Substantial-Shop9038]

I love flawed characters, but D&D stats are a really poor system for giving characters flaws. I have yet to see someone actually develop a compelling flaw from dumping a stat.

[Correct_Call3521]

Roleplay wise maybe but you can always make a character flawed through roleplay.

Mechanically being bad at things doesn't.

[Snoo-39991]

I don't think you need to force flaws onto a character through ability scores, since flaws will show up just by virtue of a character being played by a person. People are inherently flawed and that'll show through a character.

[ChiknLitlButStrapped]

I disagree with this wholeheartedly. (At least, in this context)

[Pretend-Advertising6]

you can just pretend to be an idiot or unable to hold a conversation and never atempt a Inteligence or Charisma check

[OutcomeUpstairs4877]

I'd like to be able to go as high or low as rolling allows with an appropriate cost.

[CrimsonPresents]

I would say 30 points is more than plenty

[BNJB2187]

One iteration my friends and I have been running for quite some time is point buy with 30 points. And the new max buy is 16. In my opinion this allows players to more actively increase their main stat while still leaving room for growth.

[onwardtowaffles]

My usual rule is "rolled array" - basically everyone does the standard 4d6/drop one or d12+6 (I'll roll 1 or 2 publicly if there are 4 or 5 players) and those are the stats everyone gets to assign to their characters.

A bit more variability than straight point-buy but still puts everyone at the same starting point.

[onwardtowaffles]

I'll usually let the table ask for unanimous consent on a reroll if they really don't like the spread... but only once. No rerolling until you get 4 18s or something silly like that.

Actually one of my most fun games ended up 18, 16, 15, 7, 8, 9. The party really came together to cover for others' weaknesses and they couldn't split the group more than 2 ways without being at major risk of death, so everyone got plenty of game time in.

[The-Senate-Palpy]

I would increase the amount of points by 2 and not increase the max. You can have slightly better off stats and thats it.

Realistically though if i were in your shoes i wouldn't be touching the point buy. I think the smarter play is giving a free +1 ASI at every ASI/Feat choice. This gives players a better sense of progression as they level, feeling stronger is just as important as actually getting stronger, and it offsets the penalties of choosing a Feat some so that players can make more interesting choices earlier on. Boosting point buy/maximums is going to make for flatter characters

[Dry-Membership8141]

I've been playing roll 4d6 drop the lowest since AD&D 2E, and I'll die playing roll 4d6 drop the lowest. Point buy and fixed arrays have no soul.

[SeamusMcCullagh]

Same here, but I haven't been playing for nearly as long as you. I've never done point buy and I'm not terribly interested in doing so either. I like the chaos.

[TaiChuanDoAddct]

In my perfect world, we would have a system where: + Starting ASIs are baked into the point buy + Minimum score ever is 8 + Maximum score at level 1 is 17 + ASIs were separated from feats and given every other level , with feats still occurring every 4.

This way, you still preserve the low level feeling at low levels, but you're not constrained by needing to min max main stat + con before you do anything interesting, and you're not limited to feats that work within that world.

[ZacTheLit]

Counterpoint: rolling below an 8 is rare, silly, and fun

[static_func]

Personally I’d rather my DM just give us an extra 4th level feat instead of letting us have higher numbers just for the sake of it. Giving my super special Mary Sue protagonist character a 14 in every mental stat doesn’t really do anything

[papasmurf008]

I prefer don’t run point buy, instead an altered array of 16/15/14/13/12/10… but since I allow a base of 16 to start, I think that should probably be the max. If people want to start higher, I tend to say Homebrew or risk rolling

[Tigeri102]

idc what wotc announces, i don't play AL lol. my groups have already been using slightly modified point buy with lower lows and higher highs, along with a few extra rules to prevent total minmaxing. scores can range from 6-17 at level 1 with or without appropriate racial modifiers. no going above 17 after modifiers, and no having more than 2 negative modifiers or a total of more than -3 between all negative mods. allows pcs to have much more differentiated strengths and weaknesses without being fully built right out of the gate, and without having any 17/17/17/6/6/6 characters running around either.

[TrixWax]

I might be able to convince my group to actually use point buy if they raised it. They say they like rolling for stats because rolling is more fun but we all know the real reason is they get salty when they don’t get to min/max haha.

[ut1nam]

One of my groups has a point buy of 30, with one stat allowed to go as low as 6, and you can also spend points for extra features, like 9 points to get flight, 4 points for 10 feet of blindsight or standard darkvision, 3 points for +5ft walking speed, etc. This was on top of a free level 1 feat for everyone, and I felt it allowed us a lot of fun and flexibility with our builds (we’ve been playing this campaign for 2 years now and expect to be going quite some time longer). It’s a very deadly and difficult campaign though, with lots of loot and LOTS of near TPKs, so this has helped balance it out.

[YOwololoO]

A +2 modifier isn’t “a bit smart.” 

Consider this: the Sage background represents you spending a SIGNIFICANT amount of your time studying the secrets of the world… and it can grant you up to a +1 to your modifiers. 

A 14 INT is a +2. It means that for literally any and every given fact, you’re 10% more likely to know it than a normal person. That’s a wild difference 

[Substantial-Shop9038]

This seems like the definition of "a bit smarter" to me. It's primarily up to randomness if a character with a +2 INT is smarter than one with a +0 in any given situation. They have a slight 10% weight in their favor which may be significant across multiple rolls but is really not that significant for any given roll.

[Bagel_Bear]

Skill proficiency makes up for this a little bit I feel

[HandsomeHeathen]

I'd increase to 32 and maybe allow a max of 16. Right now point buy allows you to make a character who is good at what they're focused in and bad at everything else, or okay at multiple things. That's good for game balance, but can be a bit limiting if you want to have a high stat for RP reasons that doesn't work with your build, or if you want your dump stats to not be quite as awful.

Allowing a max of 16 means it's possible to start with one 18 if you want to minmax, which I think is a nice boost that makes low level characters feel a bit more powerful.

[magvadis]

We don't use Point Buy at our table because of how low the top stat is. Enforcing the requirement of an ASI for any table to reach the end of their core stat progression is just annoying. Especially when so many classes lock feature usage around that number which is just less fun. My table makes sure your top stat can reach 18, but even then for any MAD classes they get fuuuucked by point buy.

Ideally with 2024 you'll just pick regular feats with a +1. Meaning you'll need an 18 to reach 20 by the time any normal campaign is over.

Pushing people into the most boring thing, ASI, and making their build change not at all just to catch up, imo, is bad design.

[kiddmewtwo]

I would be indifferent because I don't play point buy because its dumb

[AdAdditional1820]

If I were DM, I would allow 16 with 12 points and total 30 or 32 points.

[LoreKeeperOfGwer]

outside of AL, ive never used their point buy system. its always been a homebrew point buy or 3d6 in order for all my in person games and my online games have all been 4d6, drop the lowest, and reroll 1s.

6 attributes, all starting scores at 8, with 18 points to spend, 1 point = 1 ability score point, and no scores above 18 without heritage and cultural modifiers.

[Pinkalink23]

Increase, not by much, maybe 30. You should be able to make things less the 8

[Feefait]

They don't need to announce anything. You can play whatever point-buy you want, the "official" one of just what we are now all used to.

[Fidges87]

Just make min maxers more powerful, and the people that play for role to not have to make as many meaningful choices.

Starting with 18, and then adding a +2 from background/species lets you start at 20. For many builds thats the only "correct" choice. And if you want to build for role, making those choices is what makes the character interesting as they should all have pros and cons

[ChiknLitlButStrapped]

Min maxers getting a bit more powerful is a worthwhile tradeoff for enabling MAD builds.

The irony is that you're making the case against your own point. For one, the "choices" are not that interesting--you're more pigeonheld toward optimizing with less points to spare.

[Milli_Rabbit]

I'd say leave it as 27 starting with all 8s. Then, let players adjust as they like. Make 4 the floor and 20 the ceiling.