Give players an "average" ability score

No one said d20 either. I don't see where you're drawing these conclusions.

>playing a system that doesn't have a budget for choosing ability scores

>18s

>I want to fill a niche!
>with 18s across the board!
Holy shit, would you fuck OFF

And? D&D and derivatives use 3d6 (or 4d6, drop the lowest) to determine ability scores, but so do other non-d20 systems. For example, Runequest, a d100 system, uses 3d6 to determine the characteristics of human characters, i.e the bulk of all characters.

>Everybody has several 18s
>Everybody is balanced that way
>You just need to amp the enconters
>People feel challenged and still feels important
Win/Win, dunno what's the problem
That's why I allow point buy (around 28-30 on 3.5, 20ish in PF).

Pretty much this. I understand the idea of sifting people who care more about story and fun than powergamers but there will also be players who simply due to utilitarian nature and feeling of strong need to be a boon for the party will try to be as good as possible in given boundaries.

So if you make those boundaries stretched far beyond the point you're okay with, expect the risk that some will get close to that point.

Also, I question the idea of having to do special "ability score" test to sift through potential players. Shouldn't you already be rid of/done adjusting powergaming assholes before you even sit by the table or otherwis ebegin the session?

That's why you have a limited number of points.

I have read the GURPS Core and maybe a third of all the GURPS books and I'm born in 1995 but idk if that means I'm a millenal.

>all 18s
So 18's across the board except for Cha, which is 17 is fine?

Don't be such a pedant.

>hurr millennials
Fuck off gurpsfag

>expecting sane and reasonable people who are mutually committed and capable of building a good narrative
Cop out. You can say the same about any system - truth is, great storytelling and roleplaying abilities are rare enough that even in community of games dependant on such (where said abilities statistically ARE above average) you'll find more people who are crap at it than wonderful.

You're still going to be only filling a niche because of how classes work no matter what your stats are, fuckboy.

He's far more likely to fill the niche then the guy with 15 as his top score.

You're going to want the best attribute score for your class anyways. Why not just eliminate them altogether and give characters flat bonuses so the math still works? There's a 13th Age variant rule that does this and it works very well.

I want to try this in a game at some point, actually, I think most of my playgroup are mature enough for it

It can work, but only recommended with players you know well. I'm actually doing basically what you said, and they did fine. There will always be that one chucklefuck though.

I don't do it because I don't want to kick out everyone in my group who owns a pair of balls.

Let's be honest with ourselves for one moment. How often do you honestly see people talking about any of the non-D&D systems that you just mentioned?

That's what point buy is for.

Why is having a character that's strong enough to competently do what the player envisions they can do looked down upon in the PnP community?

It's a type of autism I've never understood. Sure, no one likes a munchkin whose intention is to be the best at everything or solo every encounter, but there's a huge difference between that and "I want My Dude to be a beastly warrior so I'll give him high strength and toughness and low leadership".

>Why is having a character that's strong enough to competently do what the player envisions they can do looked down upon in the PnP community?
Because most people are suffering from PTSD from a time when THAT GUY ruined the campaign for them so they decided to go in the opposite direction and equate mechanical aptitude for power gaming and consistency in the rules as being a "filthy rollplayer."

It's one of those "system depending" things.
If a system doesn't account for one player being dramatically more powerful than the rest of the party, it can't be played straight through. It needs the GM adjusting for the Powered Up character. This most likely means the GM has pulled a friend in to play Gandalf instead of just running him as a GMPC.
Try running a straight dungeoncrawl with a Wizard 5 levels ahead of everyone. It won't go well.

And like the other user said, munchkin PTSD.

Systems that account for it would be something like Black Crusade, where the Space Marines will just be better at everything, at all times, because they're the best of humanity. Statwise there's no downside, it's up to the GM to ensure that the narrative accounts for them being huge and attracting more attention than David Bowie with a microphone.
It's also not a system meant for doing dungeoncrawls to being with.

20 PB is quite weak, though.

My examples overlap some. Excuse me.
The distinction is that something like D&D is meant for the players to be all about the same level. If they're not, it's the Gandalf scenario I described. There should be no other reason for a player to start off with more levels than another player.
Black Crusade meanwhile, Space Marines are in the book, as a starting option. They're 100% fair game. It's also a system without strict levels, but that's not the major divide.

That's the distinction I was attempting to describe.

>The distinction is that something like D&D is meant for the players to be all about the same level.
AHAHAHA no.

Is there some edition that operates differently? 1e AD&D's DMG is a pain to dig through, while the 3.x DMG uses the example of a party with one level 3, three level 4s, and one level 5.

There's no one sitting five levels above the party average.

A high level wizard might as well be five levels ahead of fighter, when it comes to effectiveness.

>might as well be

user please. This is RAW we're talking about.Sticking a level 10 Fighter into a party with level 5 Wizards might work short-term, but due to reward assignment, they're going to catch up to him. That's just how RAW is misdesigned.

Yes. Yes you are.

>18
>16
>15
>14
>12
>8
Would this be acceptable, or is the fact that there are more that 1 stat above 15 too OP for ya?

To be fair, that Level 10 Fighter is only really going to take on CR5 encounters due to the fact that a lot of creatures past that point start to become harder to damage, let alone hit.

Found the entitled "high fantasy" 25 point-buy fag.

What is so wrong with being a millienal?

1 and 2 E basically have you start over from square one. It wasn't until 3.P that they went "Maybe you should bring in new characters at around the same level as the rest of the group."

If you don't like high fantasy, you might as well get rid of your PF books because it's a terrible system for anything else. Low point-buy just makes casters even MORE overpowered compared to everyone else since they're SAD.

The established narrative is that millennials are ruining the economy for not saving enough money and spending everything on consumables like avocado toast.

The real talk is that millennials are just applying business principles like leveraging debt and reinvesting all income possible to maximize wealth. Which means

>Businesses complaining Millennials don't buy luxury items
>After Boomers ruined the housing and job markets.

Why the fuck would anyone ever buy a luxury item?
That shit is for the wasteful elderly. As is fancy trips to the bahamas, and all that other shit they do.

Technically everything discussed on Veeky Forums is luxury items. Most entertainment products are. BUT

you and the guy you're responding to both seem to be using the colloquial definition of luxury, that is, things like fancy cars and nice watches or $900 dress shirts. Any non-essential or general-use item is a luxury using specific definitions.

Yeah.
Like, who gets a thing for recreation that costs more than almost no money?
The most recreational thing I own is worth less than a two way flight.

There's the Magic players (Legacy especially) but that's theoretically (theoretically) an investment since it's easy to sell out for 3k cash and buy a mountain bike or somesuch due to cards holding value.

I really like those numbers. My groups tend to roll 4d6 (when using a 3.pf system or similar) and we take nothing below 10 because we like to feel high fantasy and like to fight ever so slightly better/more monsters.

But a 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8 would be fun to min max with.

And yes my groups tend to do a fine job focusing on character and role play. (Depending on which group)

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, but what do levels have to do with points? In pretty much every RPG I've ever been involved in, DnD and 40kRPGs mostly, all the players are the same level and have the same number of points, they're just allocated at the player's choosing.

>Give the entire party a giant pool of ability points to split between themselves
>"I'll leave all you to decide how to best distribute them."
>Watch the chaos ensue

20 is more than fine.

Gives maritals enough to work with while making casters struggle with just putting an 18 in their cast stat while making everything else a massive weak point.

>you don't like high fantasy, you might as well get rid of your PF books because it's a terrible system for anything else

(You)

>all the players are the same level and have the same number of points
That post isn't directly related to the OP topic. It's dealing with the idea that in certain systems, allowing the player to set his own stats without any sort of limitations will work, while other systems it won't.

A generalization might be that old school systems break, while new school systems can handle it, since they were designed with allocating stats in mind.
If you're unfamiliar, changing your stats in OSR is a big no-no. Gear is the only customization you get. There's no +1 to an ability every few levels, and no spending exp to increase stats either.

>that one faggot who tries metagaming by saying "I don't need points, you all go ahead," thinking you'll reward his selflessness.

I basically do this when we play 3.Pf.

>each player rolls 3d6 per stat all at once
>sort
>talk about character concepts
>decide about where everyones stats should be
>distribute dice fairly amongst themselves

They each end up with an array that looks like: 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8. Or something similar. Plus it makes session 0 really fun when you roll 90 dice at once.

>Plus it makes session 0 really fun when you roll 90 dice at once.

Try doing that every turn, multiple times. TTRPGfags really need to play a different type of game if all they want to do is roll dice and kill things.

>Try doing that every turn, multiple times.

Why would anyone do that to themselves?

You don't bring out da boyz when you want to win, but merely make a racket and bother everyone else.

Only in good systems. Not in shit ones like 3.PFft with their caster supremacy.

I wish d20 systems worked without high stats

I said 20ish, 20 for full casters, 25 for martials

>I wish d20 systems worked
FTFY

>The distinction is that something like D&D is meant for the players to be all about the same level.
Except it's not. In 1/2e a level 5 magic user required more xp to get to that level than the level 5 fighter did. Then for some reason they opted to get rid of every class having a unique xp chart (which was dumb admittedly), except there doesn't really seem to have been much thought as to why everyone had a different xp chart.

He didn't say he would have 18 across the board.
You're a human being, not a projector.