Detailed point-buy character creation no longer considered harmful
Me hating on point-buy and character builds after only playing D&D 4e I'm going to play a few sessions of Champions Now with Vivit, Jon, and Riku. In that game, players make a detailed character before play, using some extremely cumbersome point-buy interfaces and byzantine rules. Thus I made a Champions Now character, and learned some of the rules to the game. This was a bit like pulling teeth at first, but now I am wholly on board. Let's start with a brief review of Eero's article on the pitfalls of point-buy design , to wit: Optimization is encouraged but not taught Random access interface chokes up Point-pricing is arbitrary Flaws are externally motivated Most point-buys are dull His discussion of these flaws leads into the "royal conundrum": why are we using point-buy at all? In this blog post, I won't be able to answer all these questions fully, but I'll give them a go and talk about what I like about the game after making a character for it. ...