Lofgeornost
Feeling Martian!
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- Jul 8, 2020
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That's true, to a point. But point-buy can also start characters out at a rather low power/expertise level, depending on the system and the number of points starting characters are given. There is more flexibility--a character can be better at some particular skill, or activity, or whatever--but usually at the cost of other things.One thing to remember about optimisation in point buy games is that it's not necessarily a bad thing. Many character concepts are optimised. If I want to play an amazing pilot or a super skilled hacker, I can do that in many point buy systems. If I was playing something like a level based system I would basically be beginning as a something like a novice pilot or hacker and have to work my way up zero to hero.
But that's not the way characters in a lot of genre media work. It's a refreshing element for many gamers that these systems allow you to play super-skilled specialists. The weakest element has always been more that it was just generally more fun to be a combat specialist then any other kind of specialist.
Of course, you can change this by simply upping the points available for starting characters. What people tend to ignore, though, is that you can do precisely the same thing for level-based games; start characters at a higher level.