It is one of many ways to determine the starting ability scores of a character. A few are:
Standard Array where you allocate the numbers 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8 into seperate ability scores, Point Buy where you have 27 points and then use those points to buy a fixed ability score number between 15 and 8, and the most common option for rolling for stats is 4d6 Drop Lowest, where you roll the six sided dice four times and remove the lowest number, leaving the sum of the three higher numbers to be the ability score of whichever one you prefer. Try making a character on this website and when in "3. Abilities", try the different methods described.
Personally I prefer Point Buy as it has a degree of certainty, and most players that roll low with 4d6 will instead opt to use point buy as a backup because they didn't like what they rolled (which defeats the whole point of that method).
When you go to make a character, different DMs use different ways of generating the character's stats, but the most common two are some form of rolling d6s and point buy. With point buy, all your stats start at 8, and you spend points to raise them. The established version is that you have 27 points to spend, and raising a stat costs one point per stat point up to a 13, then two points for 14 and 15, capping there. Then you'd add in racial adjustments and the like.
You can mess with this a fair bit by just creating a character sheet, going over to abilities, and selecting point buy from the dropdown. Beyond makes it pretty intuitive to use.
Point buy is also what the game is more or less balanced around (which is probably where a chunk of people saying PCs are too strong for monster CR are coming from).
Point buy is also what the game is more or less balanced around (which is probably where a chunk of people saying PCs are too strong for monster CR are coming from).
You know... that makes a lot more sense why I'm having so much trouble with my irl group.
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Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
Point buy is also what the game is more or less balanced around (which is probably where a chunk of people saying PCs are too strong for monster CR are coming from).
You know... that makes a lot more sense why I'm having so much trouble with my irl group.
Another major factor is CR does not really account for magic items (which is kind of short sighted if you think about it, obviously tier 3 characters are going to have a few magic items).
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I'm a new player and have been looking for a group. There's some terminology that I don't quite understand. In particular, what does "point buy" mean?
It is one of many ways to determine the starting ability scores of a character. A few are:
Standard Array where you allocate the numbers 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8 into seperate ability scores, Point Buy where you have 27 points and then use those points to buy a fixed ability score number between 15 and 8, and the most common option for rolling for stats is 4d6 Drop Lowest, where you roll the six sided dice four times and remove the lowest number, leaving the sum of the three higher numbers to be the ability score of whichever one you prefer. Try making a character on this website and when in "3. Abilities", try the different methods described.
Personally I prefer Point Buy as it has a degree of certainty, and most players that roll low with 4d6 will instead opt to use point buy as a backup because they didn't like what they rolled (which defeats the whole point of that method).
When you go to make a character, different DMs use different ways of generating the character's stats, but the most common two are some form of rolling d6s and point buy. With point buy, all your stats start at 8, and you spend points to raise them. The established version is that you have 27 points to spend, and raising a stat costs one point per stat point up to a 13, then two points for 14 and 15, capping there. Then you'd add in racial adjustments and the like.
You can mess with this a fair bit by just creating a character sheet, going over to abilities, and selecting point buy from the dropdown. Beyond makes it pretty intuitive to use.
Thank you! My son has been teaching me and just had me roll for stats. I'll try out the other options on new characters.
… and Point Buy is much quicker if you need to generate an NPC Adventurer on the fly. Good luck and Enjoy!
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Point buy is also what the game is more or less balanced around (which is probably where a chunk of people saying PCs are too strong for monster CR are coming from).
You know... that makes a lot more sense why I'm having so much trouble with my irl group.
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
Another major factor is CR does not really account for magic items (which is kind of short sighted if you think about it, obviously tier 3 characters are going to have a few magic items).