Point Buy System

[Indure]

To be honest, I like the point buy system. It's far more balance than rolling for stats and it provides more tension and freedom of choice than the Standard Array. I also understand having limits on abilities (8 as the hard low cap, and 15 as the soft high cap), to stop players from dumping non essential stats to 0-2 in order to maximize builds.

What I'm struggling to understand is why the ability score is soft capped at 15? At 15, it does nothing except for encourage class and race combinations to exist. For example if you wanted to play a wizard you really are tied to High-elf, Half-elf, Human, Githyanki, and Tiefling, or else you are going to be 5% worst at the main thing you are suppose to be good at, until level 12 (which if I had to guess will be 80% of BG3). In my mind this goes beyond just a min/max conversation. A 5% deficiency to your #1 stat doesn't sound bad, but it really adds up, especially when it is going to exists for such a huge portion of time. Players who want to have 20 in their main stat by the end of the game, but don't start off with 16, have maybe 1 chance to pick up a single feat.

I'm not sure why the point buy system doesn't soft cap at 16? This allows all races+classes to at least maximize their main stat, while still allowing certain races to generally be better at certain classes, because they get more stats in secondary attributes. If there is concern about classes that have +2 bonuses being able to get to 18 at level 1, I think an easy fix would just be to add a hard cap at 17, which would limit what +2 races currently can achieve.

[guard65]

That almost sounds like there is no magic items in the game that add stats.

There are actually a lot of them in the game already but probably not place in act 1. The game does limit ability advancement to 20 through feats. However the actual hard cap on abilities is 30 in the game.

Tomes and elixirs that add an ability point or that nasty ogre crown of stupidity that bumps you int to 19 are examples of some of them.

[Kami]

I have no response really to your main point, but I highly doubt lvl 12 will be 80% of the game frankly. Even with just chapter 1 out of 3 (and usually in their games Chapter 2 is far meatier than the first) you could easily hit lvl 6 or 7 if there was no cap. I hit lvl 4 well before I even made it to the underdark. If lvl 12 were really 80% of the game then you'd only be gaining about 5-6 levels in all of chapter 2 and some of chapter 3, I find that somewhat dubious. I assume they aim to end the game with your party around level 20 myself, but it's certainly possible it will go even higher.

[Valiantheart]

I'd prefer the option for rolling them. This is a dnd single player game, not some multiplayer compete against others game.

[tomal07]

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

It's a single player rpg. It should have all the different options for stats.

What do you mean? It has multiplayer

[Something completely different]

Pointbuy is the default (and imho best) 5E generation method so they're merely following the books here.

Having that said, it can't hurt to have an option to roll.

[Damashi The Kaotic]

Originally posted by Something completely different:

Pointbuy is the default (and imho best) 5E generation method so they're merely following the books here.

Having that said, it can't hurt to have an option to roll.

Rolling for stats will be in the final game. The reason point buy is the only option in early access is to make balancing the experience easier on themselves.

[Coldhands]

Originally posted by Something completely different:

Pointbuy is the default (and imho best) 5E generation method so they're merely following the books here.

Having that said, it can't hurt to have an option to roll.

Customizing your ability scores via Point Buy is actually listed in the PHB as a variant. Rolling the default, and the standard array is the second option.

Hopefully, they'll just put all three in BG3.

[Indure]

Originally posted by Kami:

I have no response really to your main point, but I highly doubt lvl 12 will be 80% of the game frankly. Even with just chapter 1 out of 3 (and usually in their games Chapter 2 is far meatier than the first) you could easily hit lvl 6 or 7 if there was no cap. I hit lvl 4 well before I even made it to the underdark. If lvl 12 were really 80% of the game then you'd only be gaining about 5-6 levels in all of chapter 2 and some of chapter 3, I find that somewhat dubious. I assume they aim to end the game with your party around level 20 myself, but it's certainly possible it will go even higher.

Obviously I have no solid evidence to refute your point. All I've heard from the developers is that the game originally was going to have a level cap at 10. They spoke on how they were increasing it and they seem to steer very clear of any suggestion that it will be level 20. My guess is it will be level 14, which seems like a good cut off so they can avoid bringing in the complicated level 8 spells.

[Ertwin]

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

It's a single player rpg. It should have all the different options for stats.

They have already confirmed that rolling for stats will be in at release. They have only point buy available now for balancing reasons.