Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Simulating a Deterministic "Point Buy" System in AD&D/Infinity Engine Chargen

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
DraQ There's no need to go that far, you can use the CTRL-8 cheat to get whatever stats you want. The only question is, what number of free points is fair? My algorithm calculates the average number of points you're "supposed" to get.
Why not just steal the points system from D&D 3E? Attributes in those editions are similar enough that it will work OK in the game.

D&D 3E doesn't have minimum required stats for races and classes. And it has stat improvements on level-up. In short, it is balanced completely differently.
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
I've never really liked "random rolling" for stats in a cRPG's. I prefer Point buy personally.
There is NO personally about it.

Point buy is superior since it automatically implies balanced game. When a char with 3 stats at 18 and no stat at <10 is equally viable as a char with All stats <14 then you know the game is cheesy.
 

sea

inXile Entertainment
Developer
Joined
May 3, 2011
Messages
5,698
There is NO personally about it.

Point buy is superior since it automatically implies balanced game. When a char with 3 stats at 18 and no stat at <10 is equally viable as a char with All stats <14 then you know the game is cheesy.
Considering that tabletop experiences have always been less about extremely strict, harsh rules and absolute win states, and more about the experience of play in a structured environment, it's pretty dumb to say that one is better than another. They both have different strengths which apply to different games, even computer games, although we have seen almost no titles (except like, Everquest?) even attempt a tabletop-like experience that wasn't focused almost exclusively on combat.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
I've never really liked "random rolling" for stats in a cRPG's. I prefer Point buy personally.
There is NO personally about it.

Point buy is superior since it automatically implies balanced game. When a char with 3 stats at 18 and no stat at <10 is equally viable as a char with All stats <14 then you know the game is cheesy.
Balanced characters in no way imply balanced game.

More, if a system is tested with characters with various points total it can be made much more robust than the one potentially hinging on all characters being equal point-wise.

Finally, what point buy does imply is inescapable alternative between LARPing and minmaxing.
Adding random factor to the chargen helps offset that.
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
There is NO personally about it.

Point buy is superior since it automatically implies balanced game. When a char with 3 stats at 18 and no stat at <10 is equally viable as a char with All stats <14 then you know the game is cheesy.
Considering that tabletop experiences have always been less about extremely strict, harsh rules and absolute win states, and more about the experience of play in a structured environment, it's pretty dumb to say that one is better than another. They both have different strengths which apply to different games, even computer games, although we have seen almost no titles (except like, Everquest?) even attempt a tabletop-like experience that wasn't focused almost exclusively on combat.


Thank you for your input that concerns tabletop games. I will keep that in mind.
 

wormix

Augur
Joined
May 22, 2011
Messages
204
Location
Australia
Personally I'd prefer a system that's a hybrid between GURPs (character points for everything) and what you see in most games (each 'section' of your character has its own points).

It'd be more interesting if having a stat really high meant you had to take some disadvantage, or limit your other stats. Fallout had the traits system (inspired by GURPs?) and RoA had negative attributes.

Daggerfall had something similar but it was laughably exploitable, and only modified your experience gain.
 

Daemongar

Arcane
Joined
Nov 21, 2010
Messages
4,706
Location
Wisconsin
Codex Year of the Donut
Well, I think that a point system like Ultima 3 would be ideal for IE. That is, you pick sex, class, race, THEN you select ability scores. BG and other IE games do this, but as you note, roll dice as well. I guess I'd just get rid of the dice rolling altogether.

So, in U3, every stat starts with a base (lets say 10) which is taken up by the selection of sex (Males +STR, Females +DEX?), selection of class (Primary class stat +), selection of race (Race Primary stat +). Once this is done, the base scores are shown. Plus, the player gets a fixed number of points to spend. If you want customizable chars, allow players to decrease primary stats/class bonuses, etc.

As someone pointed out, you ain't playing a tabletop rpg. Why should anyone role-play a warrior with a 8 strength in a crpg? Let those people hex edit their scores.
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Finally, what point buy does imply is inescapable alternative between LARPing and minmaxing.
Adding random factor to the chargen helps offset that.

That's an unnecessary attempt to patch up shitty design. If every class or playstyle had use for all attributes it would not be necessary. It's no coincidence that in BG or IWD I min/max without shame with your annoying rolls doing nothing to stop me whereas in the NWN games I go for more balanced builds because nearly all attributes are helpful and diminishing returns discourage dumping all points in one or two attributes.
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
That's an unnecessary attempt to patch up shitty design. If every class or playstyle had use for all attributes it would not be necessary. It's no coincidence that in BG or IWD I min/max without shame with your annoying rolls doing nothing to stop me whereas in the NWN games I go for more balanced builds because nearly all attributes are helpful and diminishing returns discourage dumping all points in one or two attributes.

Too true.

But still I believe the scaling is poor (it is TOO FAST) for these games. You can cheese games that level fast especially with retarded items like Wisdom +5.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Finally, what point buy does imply is inescapable alternative between LARPing and minmaxing.
Adding random factor to the chargen helps offset that.

That's an unnecessary attempt to patch up shitty design. If every class or playstyle had use for all attributes it would not be necessary.
If every class had use for all attributes (which should absolutely be the case), they would still benfit more from some of them (wizard *has* to be smart) - it would just replace minmaxing with midmaxing, yielding the same kind of boring, fine-tuned characters


It's no coincidence that in BG or IWD I min/max without shame with your annoying rolls doing nothing to stop me
Yes, it's no coincidence that games allowing free reallocation of the entire point pool fail to prevent minmaxing. :roll:
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Finally, what point buy does imply is inescapable alternative between LARPing and minmaxing.
Adding random factor to the chargen helps offset that.

That's an unnecessary attempt to patch up shitty design. If every class or playstyle had use for all attributes it would not be necessary.
If every class had use for all attributes (which should absolutely be the case), they would still benfit more from some of them (wizard *has* to be smart) - it would just replace minmaxing with midmaxing, yielding the same kind of boring, fine-tuned characters

Not true. NWN2 (and 1, I don't remember) has feats with steep attribute requirements. If you want this you're going to have to make sacrifices.

It's no coincidence that in BG or IWD I min/max without shame with your annoying rolls doing nothing to stop me
Yes, it's no coincidence that games allowing free reallocation of the entire point pool fail to prevent minmaxing. :roll:

Preventing reallocation would not remove min-maxing, it would just make it even more tedious. Given that character creation in these games is tedious enough as it is the most likely result is that I will go and play a game that doesn't use a shit mechanic to cover up the designer's inability to create a class system where variety is derived from having a wealth of viable options available to the player rather than dumb luck.
 

Wyrmlord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 3, 2008
Messages
28,886
It's no coincidence that in BG or IWD I min/max without shame with your annoying rolls doing nothing to stop me
Yes, it's no coincidence that games allowing free reallocation of the entire point pool fail to prevent minmaxing. :roll:
It still serves a purpose.

To get a decent Fighter/Mage/Cleric, for example, you need a 93 point-roll. To get a Paladin that can still read scrolls, that's a roughly 100-point roll. With allocation points being anywhere between 54 and 108, that's about one-third chance and one-sixth chance for each of those two respectively.

So you are really discouraged from picking these classes. A simple Fighter, by comparison, requires a 63-point roll. A Fighter/Thief or Fighter/Illusionist a 78-point roll. That's a five-sixth chance and a seven-tenth chance for those two respectively. This way, you don't easily build a party of jack-of-all-trades half elves without spending a lot of time just rolling.
 

waywardOne

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2010
Messages
2,318
Stat allocation is always shit because (a) not all stats are equally valuable, and (b) if a demigod can be rolled/bought, it's impossible to reject that it must be.

In PnP a good DM can fuck you for having average out-of-class stats. Dumb fighters can unwittingly instigate a lot of detrimental fights, uncharismatic clerics can lose prestige within his order/church/temple, etc. CRPGs tend to reinforce the lack of negative repercussions in manifold ways.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
Same with Paladins and Monks in D&D. The path of a paladin or a monk involves extreme sacrifice and a high level of intellectual, social, and physical ability. The payoff is becoming a semi-divine creature by the end of the game. By making their stats very difficult to roll, the game pretty much emphasises that not everybody becomes a paladin or a monk. Think about it - if becoming a paladin or a monk were easy, every farmer, peasant, bureaucrat, street sweeper,.etc in Faerun would be a paladin or monk, because they would all be immune to fear, resistant to spells, difficult to hit physically, and in the good books of the gods.

But this is not pen and paper where the number of potential journeys and plotlines and quests is only limited by the DM's imagination. CRPGs have to be (by comparison) linear and a fixed, one-off storyline. If your party got a series of bad rolls, but managed to make it about ten hours deep into the game before meeting an encounter they could not overcome (due to their bad basic stats) what would be the fun in knowing "well I could have beaten the goblin king but my warrior got bugger all strength at character creation and my wizard is as dumb as a sack of bricks". Would you expect people to go "oh well guess I'll just play through those ten hours again, I hope I get good rolls on creation this time!".
 

Wyrmlord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 3, 2008
Messages
28,886
With allocation points being anywhere between 54 and 108, that's about one-third chance and one-sixth chance for each of those two respectively.

False, read the OP.
That's okay. History shows that Wlord can't into mathematics.
Looks like you failed to read the OP as well, since he was just referring me to the part where it says that values below 75 are discarded. Not about mathematics.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Fun Fact: The 75 point minimum threshold alone eliminates the bottom 95 percent(!) of all possible rolls.

Looks like you failed to read the OP as well, since he was just referring me to the part where it says that values below 75 are discarded. Not about mathematics.

Actually I'm not sure about your math either. Note that the value is not uniformly distributed between 75 and 108.
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
With allocation points being anywhere between 54 and 108, that's about one-third chance and one-sixth chance for each of those two respectively.

False, read the OP.
That's okay. History shows that Wlord can't into mathematics.
Looks like you failed to read the OP as well, since he was just referring me to the part where it says that values below 75 are discarded. Not about mathematics.
I rest my case.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Here's how you can do the math.

The probability distribution function (pdf) for a six-sided die is of course:

P(X) = 1/6 for X=1...6​

From that, you can get the function for a 3d6 roll using convolution. This is easily done by converting the 1d6 pdf to its equivalent generating function:

G(z) = 1/6(z+z^2+z^3+z^4+z^5+z^6)​

and then cubing it:

(G(z))^3 = ....​

and then converting that back into a pdf.



You can find the pdf for rolling up all six stats in much the same way, ie:

((G(z))^3)^6 = ....​

although it is a bit more complex since you need need to remove the terms corresponding to stats that are below race and class minimums, and in the final function remove the terms corresponding to rolls below 75, and renorm the coefficients to get the correct result.

(In my algorithm I just enumerated all possible rolls in "brute force" fashion rather than do this)
 

Captain Shrek

Guest
(In my algorithm I just enumerated all possible rolls in "brute force" fashion rather than do this)

Which makes sense since the combinatorial space is very small and has arbitrary rules which is difficult to put into the formula.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Not true. NWN2 (and 1, I don't remember) has feats with steep attribute requirements. If you want this you're going to have to make sacrifices.
You will still not be sacrificing your primary stat, so whatever.

Preventing reallocation would not remove min-maxing, it would just make it even more tedious.
Sometimes you can make something sufficiently tedious to make it effectively impossible. How often have you legitimately rolled 6x18 characters in IE?

Given that character creation in these games is tedious enough as it is the most likely result is that I will go and play a game that doesn't use a shit mechanic to cover up the designer's inability to create a class system where variety is derived from having a wealth of viable options available to the player rather than dumb luck.
So all randomness is now "shit mechanics"?
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Not true. NWN2 (and 1, I don't remember) has feats with steep attribute requirements. If you want this you're going to have to make sacrifices.
You will still not be sacrificing your primary stat, so whatever.

I usually consider strength the primary stat for melee characters (even rogues) since it adds both damage and to hit, and even with finesse you give up the extra damage to go dex, but for that build I'd definitely need to sacrifice it. You need to spend 3 or 4 feats on great dexterity to hit 30 in time to take all 5 levels of self concealment, and that's after starting with 20 dex (the maximum for a halfling).

Preventing reallocation would not remove min-maxing, it would just make it even more tedious.
Sometimes you can make something sufficiently tedious to make it effectively impossible. How often have you legitimately rolled 6x18 characters in IE?

Don't need 18 in everything, just 2 or 3. Would still be time consuming enough that I just won't play the game or use a tool to hack them up to 18. I have no qualms about cheating to remove unnecessary tedium.

Given that character creation in these games is tedious enough as it is the most likely result is that I will go and play a game that doesn't use a shit mechanic to cover up the designer's inability to create a class system where variety is derived from having a wealth of viable options available to the player rather than dumb luck.
So all randomness is now "shit mechanics"?

That's what I said. :hero:

Randomness has its place, but character creation, where it provides no challenge whatsoever (unless you have arthritis and clicking the reroll button causes you genuine pain) and simply requires you to perform the same brain dead task over and over again isn't that place. It's like grinding with godmode on.
 

waywardOne

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2010
Messages
2,318
Ego tangent interlude:

I loved Ultima IV's method where you answered ethics questions, which determined your class, which determined the range of your stats.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Ego tangent interlude:

I loved Ultima IV's method where you answered ethics questions, which determined your class, which determined the range of your stats.

Well, your stats were determined directly by your answers to the questions, not intermediately by your class. Although yes, you could say that each class in effect had a range of possible stats.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom