If you draw your career AFTER points are spent it would help prevent that sort of thing. But a person that draws a troll slayer, or a racketeer is naturally going to want their character's stats to complement the career whether it would realistic for that to happen or not.

We can start a poll here after 3 is released to see how many players design their characters in a min maxing fashion. My prediction is that most people will as control over a character rarely results in purposefully gimped characters.

Hellebore

I say roll the dice. You may get something you didn't want but play it anyway. You may find you really enjoyed that character. Random generation makes you try different things, which makes you better at playing in character.

Refusing to play any game where you can't make exactly what you want seems like actions of a spoiled brat, who feels they are entilled to have everything given to them. The kind where PCs can only die for plot reasons and only if the GM gets permission from the player before hand. I've turned away players like that in the past because my game worlds are not made of nerf.

You could roll random design points at character generation as a method of putting randomness into the game. I would probably have it something like 5+2D5 or something (depending on the amount of design points FFG is giving you to start with of course). BUt I doubt you could roll random characteristics for the game due to the lack of variety in Dice as stats.

Hellebore

There is a place for both point buy and random generated. Although I'm pretty sure that if I need a point buy I'll turn to GURPS. In my opinion a point buy system needs depth. Lots of it. It generates the feeling that I need to have all of these talents and skills for the char. So the points spread out more naturally even for the munchkin.

Unfortunately 3rd ed doesnt look like it will have that depth, I think it should have stick with the random. I have to agree with some people here that randomness is also an important part of the grim Old World.

Either way it's no biggy and by far not on the top list of my worries about the new edition.

lordmalachdrim said:

No. Some people just like playing certain types of character, or don't like playing others. Some people feel that having random characteristics is an amazingly stupid way of creating a character, that it isn't a character, it's a random selection of traits, not a personality. Some people like coming up with a background and a concept for a character and having the traits reflect that concept.

macd21 said:

Which i prefer also. I hate Randomness for char creation. I have a design in my head and i like to see it implemented as good as possible.

Most of the min/maxing can be avoided by having GM approval over characters - just like GM's have over characters with crazy concepts. Ie. even if the Initiate has a good stat-spread you might still want to disallow it when he tells you his concept is "a halfling eating, nun-sucking vampire wannabe holier-than-thou Sigmar priest..."

42!

For my games, I just have a mandatory stat spread or players have to roll. I used to get all worked up over min-maxing. Now I just perpetually SCREW my players over by FORCING them to use their skills ..but I'm an adversarial **** that way.

jh

I think the points-buy system here may be being blown out of proportion. Yes, the pc generation system outlined does use a points-buy system for buying stat increases and skills, but the actual career choice is still random. IMO, the career is at least as significant , if not more-so, than the expenditure of creation points. Characters are going to be a product of both randomness in the career selection (and race if you use the table mentioned), and points-buy.

macd21 said:

2nd ed gave you Shallaya's Mercy for this reason, so in the case above the player could have taken it on fellowship and had a 31 fellowship instead of the 24.

macd21 said:

lordmalachdrim said:

Refusing to play any game where you can't make exactly what you want seems like actions of a spoiled brat, who feels they are entilled to have everything given to them. The kind where PCs can only die for plot reasons and only if the GM gets permission from the player before hand. I've turned away players like that in the past because my game worlds are not made of nerf.

No. Some people just like playing certain types of character, or don't like playing others. Some people feel that having random characteristics is an amazingly stupid way of creating a character, that it isn't a character, it's a random selection of traits, not a personality. Some people like coming up with a background and a concept for a character and having the traits reflect that concept.

Which i prefer also. I hate Randomness for char creation. I have a design in my head and i like to see it implemented as good as possible.

Having random Stats realy doesnt prevent you playing the character you want to play, sure the character may not be of the best natural talent, but thats about it.

The random character selection would be more of an impact to the concept, but if 3rd ed keeps the ability to move basic careers like 2nd ed had it's unlikely to be a huge issue. Not to mention Im sure most GMs would let you play the career you want if you have a good back story and concept in mind.

Edit: gah.. at the mercy of the quote crap again

Actually many people in real life think that they are good at something, yet they arent. A bad FEL does not hinder you from playing a social character. Neither does a bad WS stop you being a mercenary. What they can do is build real good stories.

As I love to give examples here's one:

Vasili is a mercenary. He is a good guy and boys in the group like him as their leader. They've learned to look after him as he himself is totally ignorant when it comes to his skill with the sword. He is heroic. Foolishly so. He can run to the front with a silkshirt on. Nobody questions his bravery. He just needs a bit of protection sometimes.

I dislike point buy for various ill-defined reasons, but I think part of it is that after various experiences I've come to consider character "optimisation" as the antithesis of roleplaying, and find that point buy systems only encourage such an approach.

Having come from a group (and game) where point buy was encouraged, I found WFRP's system very liberating as I didn't have to think about how to build the character. It removes the whole "dump stat" principle, too- you can end up with high scores in an attribute you'd never otherwise have considered maxing out. I liked having the stats in front of me and then figuring out the character based around them. For NPCs I find it particularly handy; you usually have an idea about one or two of their attributes, but a random roll that throws up an interesting result can lead to character traits that you'd never have thought of otherwise.

Not to mention, of course, that the random method of generating characters in WFRP gave the players the right idea from the outset. You are not a special or unique snowflake; you're a normal guy who's not necessarily as good at some things as he'd like to be. Get over it, and get raking that muck.

I don't think point buy should be banned by any means and I don't really care whether it's included in the new edition, but I do prefer random generation and am saddened if it's indeed not even going to be a listed option in v3.

Until we learn more about the point buy method that FFG is using for v3, should we be getting so worked up about it? I can understand the likes and dislikes for random and point buy methods, but perhaps FFG has considered that? And, we don't know how many points are allowed to be placed in a particular stat. We may be limited so that we don't get huge min/max characters and we still remain in the WFRP normal guy in abnormal circumstances mode.

I'm putting a lot of faith in FFG, but I'm optimistic that they have it figured out.

E

ejacobs said:

It doesn't sound like it is entirely a point buy system - sounds like there is a fair bit of randomly dolling out cards, including the player careers. For stats I think point buy is a pretty good idea - randomly generated sounds good in theory, and I've had a lot of fun with it at times, until it gets to the point where one of your players rolls terribly and doesn't enjoy the game as much because they are so under-powered. For me the funnest character generation ever was in Palladium's T.M.N.T., where it was a combination of random rolls and point buy, and everyone came out with characters that were fun, unique, surprising, but also capable and reasonably balanced.