More on Ability Scores

I definately prefer point-buy to random rolls in character creation. The only real problem that I have with it, at least in d20, is that not all the stats are equal. Simply put, unless you have a character who needs Wisdom or Charisma for his class, there's little point in assigning points to these attributes. (Similarly, in Storyteller, the Mental attributes seem to be the weakest by quite some distance.)

The other concern I have with point-buy is that no-one will ever create a character with a penalty to an ability score. Or, perhaps they will, but the penalty will be in Charisma (maybe Strength for wizards). At least with random-roll, there's no guarantee that you can avoid a penalty. I'm not convinced that having a penalty is necessarily desirable, but it does piss me off somewhat that you never seem to see them under point-buy.

(The same is true of the Lawful Good alignment, which you never see except in paladins. And even then, you get the constant whining of people who want to see a non-LG paladin class. It seems people are perfectly happy to play NG, LN, or even LE characters, but they'll jump through all kinds of hoops just to avoid LG. Again, I'm not of a mind to force anyone to play any alignment, but it does bug me that you never see that one alignment unless it's forced. Oh, and don't get me started on the people who play paladins, have LG written on their sheet, and then play their character as anything but LG...)

Sorry about that aside.

It turns out that my stat-generation system for the current campaign has been somewhat of a failure. My theory was that you should be able to take any of the cards and create a decent character of any class. The 'better' stats were also supposed to provide a difficult choice to the player - accept a weakness for better average stats, or take weaker stats but get to assign them as you want.

What actually happened was that players looked at the best set of stats, and tried to decide what class they would best fit. They then decided whether they wanted to play that class. If not, they looked at the second-best set of stats, and calculated whether they could twist them to fit their chosen class (and get that pesky 7 into Charisma). If not, the whining began.

Of course, this wasn't true of everyone. However, it is telling that of the five characters (actually six, if you include Jerriz), two (three) have a Charisma of 7. Two have Wisdom penalties (7 and 5), leaving one character with a Wis of 5 and a Cha of 7. Only one (two) have a penalty in any of the physical stats.

I guess it's the nature of the game. I know that whenever I create characters for Baldur's Gate or the other CRPGs (I generally create characters, then never play the games, alas), I go through exactly the same process, first reducing the mental stats to the minimums allowed, then boosting the physical stats as high as possible. In NWN, assuming a fighter-type, the priorities are definately Str first, then Dex and Con, and then Int. Wis and Cha are either left at their minimum values, or perhaps Wis is boosted to 10 to avoid a Will save penalty. It's just depressing that the same mentality pervades the tabletop game.

Of course, the solution to my problems with ability scores is to make it very clear at the outset that all the ability scores will be equally useful, and then make damn sure to enforce that. I have some thoughts on that, which I'll post seperately.