Today, I’m here to talk to you about one of the more contentious arguments in our hobby.
No, I’m not going to talk about which edition of a particular game is my favorite. I’m also not going to talk about the GM “cheating” by fudging dice results. Instead I’m going to take you to a subject that has divided tabletop gamers for a long time.
This argument is as old as character creation itself.
More specifically I’m going to tell you why I prefer point buy over randomly generated stats for my characters. For some, brought up in the days of 1st and 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons, the very notion of buying your character’s statistics is sacrilege. You roll the dice and you play what you are given. That’s how it’s always been and how it always will be for them. They find joy in the randomness and unpredictability of the character they may be given to play.
I don’t. I find it caters to a certain style of character design that I just don’t agree with. I think we can all agree that the various numbers on the character are the skeleton that the rest of the character hangs off of. Characterization, personality, and everything else are the parts of the character that hide the ugly bare bones and muscle that propel the character through the game. But to me, randomly generating those stats is akin to building the skeleton without knowing what that character is going to look like. Is he going to be tall or short? Is he going to have the standard two arms and legs? Is he even going to be a he? And when that happens, I’ve found that having one leg be longer than the other or a shoulder joint that doesn’t work quite right is a lot more common. When I have to build a character to fit the framework I’m given, I get a lot less enjoyment out of the game, especially when the numbers aren’t able to be used to fit a given concept.
Instead, I would much rather build the skeleton to fit the concept that I have. Point buy gives a player that control to build a character that he is happy with, making the numbers fit how he wants it to play. Or at the very least you can set your character on the correct path to eventually fulfilling the concept you have for him after several sessions.
“But roleplaying a flawed character is a very rewarding challenge!” I hear some of you crying. And this is true. But in my mind, being forced into accepting a flaw is going to be more of an exercise in frustration than fun nine times out of ten. Besides, the most rewarding flaws I’ve ever played had nothing to do with the numbers. Being forced into a situation in which I have to roleplay a character with a low intelligence is not a flaw. It is not something that he can overcome. It is a truth on his character sheet.
A disease like alcoholism or drug addiction or cancer has nothing to do with a number that is on the character sheet. These are things that can be further highlighted by numbers on the sheet – a character who has sought answers in the bottom of a bottle for years may find himself with shattered health, resulting in severely diminished physical attributes, but a low Constitution score is not indicative of that. Yes, you can get there from randomly generated stats and coming up with a Constitution score of 6. But to me that is very much a case of putting the cart before the horse. You may have a vehicle, but you have no means to drive it. It can make any further characterization seem forced and shoehorned to fit into that character instead of letting the character grow organically from your original decision and your choices.
But point buy to me isn’t just about statistics and attributes. It’s about all aspects of character creation. It’s one of the reasons I think I love superhero gaming so much, even if I don’t run or play it very often. Because those superpowers are so varied those systems seem to necessitate some kind of point buy system. And in implementing that kind of system you give the player all sorts of other choices to make. How powerful do I want this ability to be? How reliable or dangerous do I want it? Am I willing to make sacrifices in one area to make it more effective in another area? And maybe it’s just the designer in me, but having full and complete control over all of those knobs and dials just makes me incredibly happy and makes the resulting character so much more fun to play.
I’ve really enjoyed seeing the industry embrace the concept of more controlled character creation over the past few years and moving away from the more random elements of character creation. In the end, what it really comes down to for me is choice. With point buy, I am making the choice to build my character this way. With anything else, that choice is being made for me. And I just don’t grok that.
Agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments!
Ben Erickson
I couldn’t agree with you more! While there’s a sense of excitement in rolling up a random character, it’s the same excitement as going to a car race. You’re there to see a wreck. Of course you don’t want anyone to get hurt, but you thrill at seeing a spin out and watching little car bits go flying up in the air.
The problem in random rolling a character is that the wreck never ends, and those flying bits are aspects of your character you’re stuck playing for numerous sessions! I’ve seen disasters of random rolling only end in the player deliberately getting their character killed. It’s no fun for the player who has to rinse and repeat this process until they get something playable, or for the players who have to strain the story to accommodate the revolving door of new party members.