I was really excited about 3rd edition and I steal am. But after reading the neww design diary about character creation I was very discouaged to see that its a point buy system. I'm not surprised. I had been wondering how you were ggoing to randomly generate characteristics witth the special dicce in the new game. But tell me whathappened to the good old days when you sat down to make a character and never new what you would come up with? Tell me am I the only person left on the planet who wants random character generation in there RPG's? Oh well I'm still going to buy the game if for no other reason thaen I'm a RPG collector and its good to see boxed sets of RPG's making a comeback.

Think it would not be a big deal to transfer it to a roll generation system... with a little bit of effort I think it can be easly houseruled...

Point by is superior, a legacy mechanic that is slowly dying a well deserved death.   If you really want to I'm sure you can easily generate a half dozen different random systems.  The system will include what an average stat for every race is, because every system does, and you can just tailor a random system to that with very little work. 

Personally, I always hated random dice rolls for attributes.

I know that life isn't fair and that not everyone is created equal, but these games are supposed to be escapism. It really sucks when you want to be a larger than life character when everyone else in the party is stronger, faster, smarter and more skilled than you through no fault of your own except for bad luck.

I guess that this was one of the few things that I really liked about World of Darkness: a point system.

I understand why alot of people like point buy. its more balanced and you dont get punished for a bad roll of the dice. I just thought it was fun to roll up a character and not know what your going to get. I found that it actualy encouraged you to roleplay a characer you might not have chosen. For example you might roll a meercenary but your weapon skill you rolled low on your weapon skill but high on fellowship. well now you know you have mercenary that relys on fast talking more then his sword arm. Yes p[oint buy is more balanced and you get the character you wanted. But personaly I think games are getting to balanced (4th editions problem). But Im still excited about the game and will preorder it as sonn as its available. I just wish that all the old games that gave you an exciting random method werent all going to point buy.

To say the truth this is one of the things that I actually like in 3-rd edition.
I use kind of point buy system in 2-nd edition. So I'm happy It will be included from the beginning in 3-rd ed.

Ok in my games if your character is bad at everything I would let you re-roll the character but in general I don't really like points buy because I find they usually cater to Power Players and Bad Losers, the kind of people that get upset because their Weapon Skill is 4% lower than average!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Point buy and random generation both have their places. However, I've had way more fun with random generation.

In my longest running WFRP campaign, everyone started out with a randomly generated character.  That particular campaign had three different phases over an 8 year period, and was my most popular campaign ever, having about 22-24 players overall, and as many as 13 players at one point, and only stopped because I moved. By the time the campaign was 2 years old, I wasn't even the one enforcing the random generation rules for new players, it was the existing players - and not because they had originally been forced to, but because "it was more fun."

One of the guys who was in all three phases spent the first three weeks complaining about his Begger PC, Gris. By the time the campaign wrapped up, he admitted to me that Gris was his favorite PC ever, and he was sorry he ever complained about being forced to randomly generate his PC.

It is all a matter of points of view...

Personally I like more the point buy system than the random stats one, but both gave me really good experiences and really bad ones...

I think giving the players the choice, as a group, which one of them to use it's the better solution...

As far as I can go with speculation/immagination the new system seems to be based on 10, rather than 100, so it would just need a roll of a d10+race mod to come up with the characteristic rating...

Adding a little bit of maths to this baseline (once more details on how many points a starting char has) awarding a certain ammount of "skill/action/talent/whatever points" divided by race shouldn't be difficult...

Or at least this is my tought, as naive as it can be... :P

Random is more fun.

I'm not going to hold a point-buy against v3, but I've always found it rather ..bleh. Rolling attributes jogs the mind, makes me improvise and envision the character step by step and roll by roll. Always fun. Pointbuy is very neat and structured, but not fun. And I can't help myself, I automatically go into min-max mode..

Looking at the previews, it seems that there aren't a whole lot of points to juggle. Which is nice. So, I don't think this particular aspect of the game is going to put me off. There are other things that makes my inner grognard want to cry, but not this one so much

Necrozius said:

A larger than life ratcatcher, barber surgeon or coachman?

Along with condensing statistics down to single die values point buy systems suck even more individuality out of the game. In a point buy system no one creates a dwarf troll slayer with high Fel and int. They stack it in Strength and WS. Whether the character was originally a smart and personable person or not.

This leads back into the same mentality behind dice having 'story telling elements' on them. As soon as you do it for the player, they player doesn't do it for themselves.

Give a player a choice in their stats and they aren't going to do anything but the optimum. Have them roll them randomly and their character will take on a personality immediately.

I hate point buy.

hellebore

I'm definitely a fan of random character generation.  Personally, I think both types have their place.  I've never liked randomness in D&D, for instance, where the game depends on a unified party of very capable heroes - and where you can choose everything about your character except for his Attributes, which never made much sense to me.

The complete randomness of WFRP, however, is a large part of the appeal.  Just watching another player roll up a character is a lot of fun, something that can't be said about any other game, at least one that I play.  I can definitely understand why some players don't like it, but to me, switching to point-buy is missing the point (no pun intended) of the bleak British humor the game is known for.

The Britishness of WFRP gave it such a unique feel and I the last thing I'd want from a new edition is to remove that atmosphere.  Though I will say in defense of the new edition, that the most important random element - at least to me - is career selection, which they seem to have kept.

Watching your buddy roll or draw the Soldier career while you end up with Barber-Surgeon and just laugh, shrug it off, and not only make due, but make the best of it is a key part of the experience.  I can remember the campaign in which I decided to play instead of GM and rolled a Valet, which caused the GM to laugh at me because the other players were more adventurous or heroic.  But that character, who helped save Nuln and was able to mix with high society and eventually became a Knight, ended up being one of the best characters I've ever played.

Hellebore said:

Completely disagree with you hellebore.  I'd say that given the choice a player is going to do exactly what they think will be the most fun for them.  If that's optimizing a powerhouse, then that's just what they're interested in for the game.  But I've often seen folks build their characters in an intentionally suboptimal way, in regards to brute power anyway.  Your whole statement though hinges upon the presence of a true optimal build in the first place.  Optimal for what?  Are there optimal builds in WFRP anyway?  Some folks want to play average duds trying to make it, so what's the optimal build for that?

And I'm not even against random builds.  I like both styles.  What I find strange is that they've given us the random career selection but then not maintained randomized stats/skills.  Of course maybe that'll be cool too....you can't pick your lot in life but you can affect your position within that lot?  I don't think its a big deal one way or the other overall though, personally.

So you hate the dice because they're supposed to be injecting specific story points into the narrative with each role, thus confining players and making them lazy roleplayers?  But you do like for the system to choose your role for you and artificially confine you in that capacity?  But one makes you a lazier roleplayer while the other forces you to be a stronger roleplayer?

At this point in time I simply disagree.  I don't see the dice doing anything except possibly benefiting the roleplay.  And the character building, eh, I just don't think it matters.  Folks that want to roleplay and build a good story, are going to do it regardless of the method.  Folks that are only in it for the powergaming, I don't think they're gonna magically have a good time and roleplay well because you force them to go random.

I prefer point buy systems to random stat rolls because characters are supposed to be a cut above the average joe.  Thats probably why the gods singled them out and bestowed them with Fate Points.  One important thing to remember is that point buy is really for PCs only.  So you can still have your weak but uncharacteristically bright Troll-Slayer, or dull-witted but oddly tough Wizards Apprentice... as NPCs.  You can explore all the unfair inequality that the Old World has to offer through the NPCs and allow the PCs to be on more equal footing with each other.  Just because the system is point buy doesn't mean all Troll-Slayers need be equal, it just means that all PC Troll-slayers will be equal and unless you are running a group entirely composed of Troll-slayers, I don't really see a problem with it.

I'm sure if asked (which I'm not asking) all the proponents of random stat generation can give great anecdotes about how fun it was to play their old Beggar, Servant, or whatever character who suffered from bad die rolls during character creation.  I would rather have a player happy with his character from the outset and who genuinely wants to roleplay his character rather than one who isn't happy with his character and has no choice but to roleplay his character because it is so ineffectual at everything compared to the rest of the group.  Every character deserves their chance to shine in the spotlight and its much easier when each character has an equal chance to contribute something.

Hellebore said:

I use a point buy system, and can assure you that NONE of my players ever created dwarf troll slayer, an outlaw, or anything like that from the beginning. The reason is, I use theese professions to actually punish the players for their actions. When the player character does something very wrong in a game, I take his current profession (if he has one - yes they can have no profession at a given moment at all) and replace it with chosen by me. Dwarf troll slayer is no hero, and great warrior that is fun to play, it's a death warrant with postponement. Such professions means that players has done very wrong, is not accepted within normal society, has a bounty on his head, or seeks death himself.

Also I only allow to spend 60 points on 6 main % stats (yup, no more WS, and BS - replaced with skills in chosen type of weapon that base on Strenght or Agility). That means that they can max out 3 of 6 stats, and suck in other 3, go average on everything, or try to mix it somehow. And believe me their choices have great impact on what they can do, and how they do in the future (as I redesignet warhammer into a skillbased game, they are only allowed to upgrade another 20 points over their base stats - skills got 40 points, which means if they start with fellowship 20 it will never be higher than 40, and skills based on fellowship 60). And professions rolled in the beggining are only to check what skills and talents they have in the beginning, like what they did in life before the day they went on adventure.When they start an adventure they have NO current profession. They need to find one, and for that there need to be a demand on such a profession in a given place, they need to meet the requirements, they need to find a person that will hire them, or teach a required skill. Fellowship is very important in the process, Inteligence tells how fast they learn etc., so whatever they choose in the beggining has its consequences, benefits and drawbacks in the future. There are no Power Players on my sessions.

You can hate point buy, but as it was mentioned before it has it's place in a game. Everything is about balancing it as you see fit.

I really like that they've gone for a point buy this time around.

Sure the 2nd Ed random rolling can be fun, but it often leads to very silly combinations of stats and careers. I know you can raise one to average level making sure your student isn't completely stupid or soldier has average weaponskill, but you can still end up in a fighting career with bad fighting and good social/mental stats, with an unintelligent wizards who has average willpower etc. etc. Which is typically why most GMs allow for either redistribution of the rolled stats or rolling several times - which reduces the randomness a lot.

The most important thing with a point buy system is that it allows for variation between characters, too few points and everyone will be alike (NWOD seems to have reduced the amount of dots too much and there's very little to work with). Its also a good idea to add extra cost for going really high in a stat so you penalize min/maxing.

I realize that a point buy system may be (and will be) abused by some players but I prefer being able to decide what my character is good at rather than taking my chances with a randomly generated one as it's too much of a crapshoot whether or not you get something interesting and playable than way.

42!