You would have to get DK2, presuming you can find it. The website from which I downloaded it eons ago doesn't exist any more. Of course, you can always use NearInfinity, as well, which does support IWD2 file formats.
I will say that I HATED the IWD2 system. I felt that you simply didn't have enough points. If you wanted to be a good fighter, you had to be an idiot. If you wanted to use magic, you had to be a dweeb. If you wanted to be a bard you had to have the wisdom of a toddler.
All this... and I'm not even CLOSE to being a powergamer or anything. I don't want super overpowered characters, but every "guide" to IWD2 recommended having one character be the face of the party and setting everyone else's Charisma to 3. That is just too much for me, and it took away from my enjoyment of the game A LOT. And in that game you couldn't even get stat boost books.
I don't think its too much to ask for to have a little more freedom. I think you should be able to max two stats and still be able to get a 14 or two in other categories, if that is what you want. More choices=more pleased customers.
All this... and I'm not even CLOSE to being a powergamer or anything. I don't want super overpowered characters, but every "guide" to IWD2 recommended having one character be the face of the party and setting everyone else's Charisma to 3. That is just too much for me, and it took away from my enjoyment of the game A LOT. And in that game you couldn't even get stat boost books.
I don't think its too much to ask for to have a little more freedom. I think you should be able to max two stats and still be able to get a 14 or two in other categories, if that is what you want. More choices=more pleased customers.
To be fair, online guides suggest the same for the BGs and IWD1. It's not a problem with 3E per se. People always feel they have too few points, no matter the game system or point allocation mode (I only ever encountered "enough points" from a player point of view in a not-so-combat-heavy contemporary GURPS game). By the way, there are no books in IWD, but there's attribute bonus points every four character levels.
The 14s do mean very different things in the different systems. A 2E 14 is roughly equivalent to a 3E 12, I'd say. Giving everyone 14s in unneeded stats in 3E would be a lot. I don't know if you meant that, though.
I don't think its too much to ask for to have a little more freedom. I think you should be able to max two stats and still be able to get a 14 or two in other categories, if that is what you want. More choices=more pleased customers.
I feel that this comment really gets to what I intend with my original points. It's not about game mechanics per se, or about traditionalism and playing D&D "the right way" - it's about to make the game as inviting and accessible as possible for someone who doesn't yet know or care about how the game works mechanically, and who has never dealt with the game and RPGs in general. Personally, I rather prefer rolling (but then, I'm not even really interested in kits and subraces most of the time, because making clever builds doesn't thrill me...).
But, point-buy need not be viewed as dull, artificial powergaming opposed to inspired, natural rolling. On the contrary, I can imagine it to be a nice way for new people to plunge into the game, having neither to worry much about mechanics nor risking strongly disadvantaged characters.
I don't think its too much to ask for to have a little more freedom. I think you should be able to max two stats and still be able to get a 14 or two in other categories, if that is what you want. More choices=more pleased customers.
But, point-buy need not be viewed as dull, artificial powergaming opposed to inspired, natural rolling. On the contrary, I can imagine it to be a nice way for new people to plunge into the game, having neither to worry much about mechanics nor risking strongly disadvantaged characters.
Point buy doesn't really prevent new players from making suboptimal or even wrong decisions, does it? When I play a new RPG (last iteration: the Wasteland 2 beta), I'm always a little intimated at character creation, no matter what the exact specs are. You simply know there will be stuff that'll help you and stuff that won't, but you basically have no idea. Maybe it's a little worse with rolling as people might overlook the possibility of re-distributing their points or not have a grasp of statistics and what'll be a "good" point sum, but the difficulty is there with every RPG system with moderately complex character creation.
In some games, it becomes even worse as things don't do what they're advertised to do, or are very situational.
I can't see how point-buy or a re-roll would make much difference to a new or casual player, honestly. Either way it can seem overwhelming and confusing. If someone is intimidated by character creation and doesn't feel like taking a course in D&D mechanics it would be much simpler for them to grab the pregenerated characters Beamdog is going to provide. If nothing else they can play for a while to get a feel for the game and begin to understand what all the stats mean. Then, if they want to dive into the manual and the billion and one guides available online they'll eventually master the system.
Perhaps one of the many helpful and knowledgeable people here could create a batch of characters for new players to download and use. Put them in categories like powergamer, mere mortal, and challenging. No more worries about character creation, just grab a template.
All this... and I'm not even CLOSE to being a powergamer or anything. I don't want super overpowered characters, but every "guide" to IWD2 recommended having one character be the face of the party and setting everyone else's Charisma to 3. That is just too much for me, and it took away from my enjoyment of the game A LOT. And in that game you couldn't even get stat boost books.
I don't think its too much to ask for to have a little more freedom. I think you should be able to max two stats and still be able to get a 14 or two in other categories, if that is what you want. More choices=more pleased customers.
To be fair, online guides suggest the same for the BGs and IWD1.
No! In IWD or BG 1 and 2 you could get away with playing a fighter with maxed physical characteristics with the three mental attributes being around a 10. In IWD 2 if you wanted to be a good fighter you literally had to be either dim, foolish or completely unlikable.
The 14s do mean very different things in the different systems. A 2E 14 is roughly equivalent to a 3E 12, I'd say. Giving everyone 14s in unneeded stats in 3E would be a lot. I don't know if you meant that, though.
It is less about the actual numbers than the variability and especially the fact that, for some reason, having a negative modifier (and sometimes fairly significant ones!) is just... demeaning for a character, if you know what I mean? Like sure, you have +4 strength but guess what? You are -1 in intellect, wisdom and personality!
This is especially bad for characters like Paladins that have substantially high requirements and need multiple abilities. By the time you allot for the basics you have no points left to add roleplaying flavor. I want to be a paladin who can cast a spell or two, hit things with moderate competence and use lay on hands... but in order to do so I need to say "derp" a lot and have poor eye-hand coordination!
I want to be a paladin who can cast a spell or two, hit things with moderate competence and use lay on hands... but in order to do so I need to say "derp" a lot and have poor eye-hand coordination!
15 10 13 10 12 16
That fits the criteria, unless you consider anything below a +1 bonus "poor", and is possible at level 1, assuming a regular human is used. If I'd chosen Aasimar or simply bumped Charisma down a point I'd respectively have 4 or 2 more points to use on all the stats below 15. So no, you don't have to play gimped (negatives) if you want decent usable stats. You have to play gimped if you want maxed stats. Which isn't neccessary considering the difference in how the bonus modifiers work in 3E and that you get more stats every 4th level.
You would have to get DK2, presuming you can find it. The website from which I downloaded it eons ago doesn't exist any more. Of course, you can always use NearInfinity, as well, which does support IWD2 file formats.
I believe I have a copy of DaleKeeper 2 kicking around on my hard drive, if anyone wants a copy, (and if I didn't just seriously violate the forum rules).
I will say that I HATED the IWD2 system. I felt that you simply didn't have enough points. If you wanted to be a good fighter, you had to be an idiot. If you wanted to use magic, you had to be a dweeb. If you wanted to be a bard you had to have the wisdom of a toddler.
All this... and I'm not even CLOSE to being a powergamer or anything. I don't want super overpowered characters, but every "guide" to IWD2 recommended having one character be the face of the party and setting everyone else's Charisma to 3. That is just too much for me, and it took away from my enjoyment of the game A LOT. And in that game you couldn't even get stat boost books.
I don't think its too much to ask for to have a little more freedom. I think you should be able to max two stats and still be able to get a 14 or two in other categories, if that is what you want. More choices=more pleased customers.
^ This.
I absolutely agree with you.
I too HATED the IWD2 3ed rules. They perhaps work good for table top DnD sessions but for a PC or any other platform 3ed works horribly. Plus all those feats they added just made it even more stupid...so you would get this "hot and cold" feeling. For a single player game it just ruins the atmosphere for me. I love rolls and it makes you excited to create a character that you honestly feel you had something to do with it by yourself unlike the situation where you have certain amount of points and every character of a certain class looks and feels the same since you will always go for the best stats and feats anyway so you get bunch of clones in every game.
I'm not saying that the stat generation in BG, BG2 or IWD is really bad, but saying "It's fine if it's bad, because you can always use Ctrl-8 or a 3rd party editor to fix it." is really a poor excuse. Players new to the game will not know about such options.
Ultimately, BG, BG2 and IWD are neither meat nor fish:
If they were truly roll systems (without rearrangements), you could end up with situations where you stored 17str, 11dex, 11con, and then later roll 15str, 16dex, 16con. You suddenly have a meaningful choice. Would you take the higher strength for throughput, or the higher dex and con for survivability.
If they were truly point buy systems (always the same amount of points), you would also have meaningful choices to make. Would you go for that 18str, knowing it costs you a bunch of points and end up nerfing your other stats by a lot, or would you settle for, say, 16str, knowing your other stats would be quite a bit higher?
BG, BG2 and IDW fail to be either of that. What you end up doing, is spending some time rerolling, until you have a total score that you consider acceptable. Then you assign all your stat points to max out the most important stats, as there are zero consequences for maxing out scores.
I think what annoys most people about IWD2 character generation, is that they're used to have straight 18s in their primary stats from BG, BG2 and IWD, and can't really get away with that in IWD2. Having straight 18s in your primary stats is not what 2nd edition is designed around.
During character generation (roll 3d6 six times, assign at will), you had a less than 3% chance to end up with an 18 among your stats, a 10% chance to end up with a 17+ among your stats, a 25% chance to end up with a 16+ among your stats and a 45% chance to end up with a 15+ among your stats. So the chance that your highest stat was no higher than 14 was more than half.
The thing is, you aren't going to get any bonuses unless your stats are 15 or higher. For most scores, it doesn't matter if your score is 7 or 14. It doesn't provide any bonuses or penalties, so the result is the same. (Honestly, this was just not a very good part of 2nd edition, and I'm glad that 3rd edition improved that a lot.)
The problem is then that you need very high stats to even notice their effects. A character with 14/14/14/14/14/14 in 2nd edition will be called absolutely rubbish, since it gets zero bonuses. In 3rd edition, that is actually a pretty darn strong character, since it gets a +2 bonus to practically everything it does!
Take strength for instance. In 2nd edition, a strength of 17 gives you +1 attack, +1 damage. In 3rd edition, a strength of 12 does the same, and a strength of 14 already gives a much better +2 attack, +2 damage (+3 damage with 2handers), something that requires a reasonably high percentile strength in 2nd edition.
In BG, BG2, IWD, it was really important to have those 16-18 scores, since that's where you got the bonuses, and each 1 increase in ability score ramped up the bonuses quite well.
This is not the case in 3rd edition. The bonuses are a lot smoother, and they need to be much less high to get the same bonuses as in 2nd edition. Thinking you're not getting enough points in IWD2 is probably caused by the idea that you need the same scores as you needed before, which you do not!
Overall, though, the EE versions are remakes and not original games, so I expect and recommend that the stat distributions remain the same as in the original game, despite it's flaws.
I think it's more than a little insulting to suggest players just want straight 18s for their characters. That actually strikes me as quite boring.
And this whole idea that a roll generated system is not conducive to new players is silly. It was the norm on RPGs for 25 years before 3E started to change it, and D&D was never more popular than it was in the 1980s. I think it is far more exciting to play a character who is not necessarily perfectly optimized for their role. It led to a lot more actual role playing, and a lot less power gaming. And for the record, straight 14s are perfectly playable in 2E. Bonuses, of every sort, are just that; bonuses. A character is completely playable without any of them.
And this whole idea that a roll generated system is not conducive to new players is silly. It was the norm on RPGs for 25 years before 3E started to change it, and D&D was never more popular than it was in the 1980s..
Maybe that's because there weren't computers, cRPGs, tablets, gaming consoles and the internet around. Entertainment has changed a lot, and correlation is not causation. Just a side note
And this whole idea that a roll generated system is not conducive to new players is silly. It was the norm on RPGs for 25 years before 3E started to change it, and D&D was never more popular than it was in the 1980s..
Maybe that's because there weren't computers, cRPGs, tablets, gaming consoles and the internet around. Entertainment has changed a lot, and correlation is not causation. Just a side note
Not sure of your point. But I do not believe rolling vs point buy has any impact on new players at all. I've introduced dozens of players to PNP, possibly nearly 100, and I've only ever used rolling. It posses no problems for anyone. In fact, I think it's easier to understand. The starting player only has to understand what they've got, not all the intricacies of what they might want to change.
My point was that you cannot deduct 2E and traditional stat allocation was the best because D&D/RPGs in general were most popular in the 80s, where they featured said systems.
Whether it's easier to understand for a new player is another question. I'd say it is easier to understand, but it has it's own problem, such as the player realizing he rolled badly and is gimped. That wouldn't happen in BG, though.
I think it's more than a little insulting to suggest players just want straight 18s for their characters. That actually strikes me as quite boring.
And this whole idea that a roll generated system is not conducive to new players is silly. It was the norm on RPGs for 25 years before 3E started to change it, and D&D was never more popular than it was in the 1980s. I think it is far more exciting to play a character who is not necessarily perfectly optimized for their role. It led to a lot more actual role playing, and a lot less power gaming. And for the record, straight 14s are perfectly playable in 2E. Bonuses, of every sort, are just that; bonuses. A character is completely playable without any of them.
First, are you talking about BG and similar computer games, or about tabletop games? Because they're two completely different beasts.
One major important thing about tabletop games is that it has a DM/GM, who can help balance stuff. If all players on the table have 18s for all 6 ability scores, the DM/GM obviously can adapt to that, and send a lot tougher monsters at the party, than when all players on the table have 13s for all 6 ability scores. Have one player with only 18s and another player with only 13s? Feed the player with only 13s some magical items to balance things out (and obviously scrap the rule that says players with a high primary score receive an xp bonus, that rule is flat out silly).
In BG, the monsters aren't going to adapt to you having only 13s or only 18s. If you have only 13s, the game is obviously going to be harder than when you only have 18s. Ergo, the player that spends a longer time on rolling for his stats is going to end up with an easier game while the player that didn't bother with all that rolling is going to end up with a harder game, which generally doesn't make that much sense. Again, the difference is not so shockingly big that it's going to make a huge deal, so I don't recommend Beamdog overhauling it, but spending more time to make the game easier is a weird concept at best.
Second, that the roll system has been around long before the point buy system became common doesn't automatically mean it's a good system. Heck, if it was a perfect system, we would never have seen the point buy system in the first place.
But regardless of that, BG/BG2/IWD don't use that roll system, but use a crude mixture of the roll system and the point buy system, which ends up being neither.
Considering from your reply, you're referring to tabletop games and not computer games, which is not what this discussion is about at all. Rolling has it's issues in tabletop games as well (the 18/17/17/15/14/12 character and the 14/13/12/10/8/7 character being part of the same party for instance), but that's an entirely different discussion. And IIRC, did 2nd edition's skills and powers not introduce some kind of point buy system?
I've always considered PNP and CRPGs to be more or less the same thing. And I've played both with good rolls, and bad rolls. It can be a ton of fun either way. How good your scores are should have little bearing on how fun the experience is. Of anything, the weaker characters can be more fun because they require more creativity.
As far as when point buys were introduced, I believe it was either 1E or 2E. But what has changed is, it used to be like number six of six generation systems listed. Starting with 3E, point buy was listed as the first through third methods. This means little in PNP, except maybe making new DMs more likely to favor the point buy. But in CRPGs it means more games are likely to rely wholly on such systems, and the random roll method has largely disappeared.
But the random method did clearly come first, with the old White Box and later Basic sets. And that does matter, it does still prove something. It proves hundreds of thousands of gamers started and got hooked on the game with random score generation. That proves the method is no obstacle to introducing new players to the game. And that continues directly over to CRPGs too. All the early fantasy games, from Ultima to Phantasie to Wizardry to Gold Box introduced many thousands of players to CRPGs with random score generation.
And I have never claimed that random is a perfect system, or that it's implementation in BG is perfect or ideal. But I do claim that I strongly prefer it, and I consider any game to be far less for excluding it.
Kcwise ultimately you are completely correct, it's whatever is most fun for any given player. And that is a big difference with CRPGs vs PNP. As a DM, I don't allow most point shifting (only to make a class minimum, not one point more), and I haven't for the 35 years I've been running games. Obviously I'll never use a point buy system. I suppose I would have no problem with a character creation system that gave players in a CRPG the choice at the very start. Although given how easy it is to us EEKeeper, I see no reason why a point buy has any appeal at all. Any player can simply give themselves straight 14s or whatever they want. While randomly generated can only be randomly generated. Admittedly, as long as EEKeeper works, I can roll the dice myself and assign scores accordingly. But my beef remains, more recent CRPGs typically do not even allow this. Last I knew, DaleKeeper didn't even work on IWD2. And I know nothing about editing any other game.
If point-buy lacks appeal because you can just Keeper your stats, then by that same token rolling your stats has no appeal because you can simply roll your real-life d6s and buy those stats in a point-buy system.
As for Keepering IWD2, DaleKeeper II has been available for a long time. I used it to start a fresh Heart of Fury run with appropriately experienced and equipped characters. I also tried changing one of my character's sprites to Kresselack's, but unlike the BG2 version used for cambions, its collision box is huge, preventing the character from fitting through tight spaces like a normal PC.
Kcwise ultimately you are completely correct, it's whatever is most fun for any given player. And that is a big difference with CRPGs vs PNP. As a DM, I don't allow most point shifting (only to make a class minimum, not one point more), and I haven't for the 35 years I've been running games. Obviously I'll never use a point buy system. I suppose I would have no problem with a character creation system that gave players in a CRPG the choice at the very start. Although given how easy it is to us EEKeeper, I see no reason why a point buy has any appeal at all. Any player can simply give themselves straight 14s or whatever they want. While randomly generated can only be randomly generated. Admittedly, as long as EEKeeper works, I can roll the dice myself and assign scores accordingly. But my beef remains, more recent CRPGs typically do not even allow this. Last I knew, DaleKeeper didn't even work on IWD2. And I know nothing about editing any other game.
If point-buy lacks appeal because you can just Keeper your stats, then by that same token rolling your stats has no appeal because you can simply roll your real-life d6s and buy those stats in a point-buy system.
Its obvious we'll just never understand each other on this. But the appeal of random based systems is the range of poor, average and very good possibilities. Every point buy I've seen precludes the possibility of a very good character, and allows only poor or (slightly above) average. It wouldn't bother me one iota if it was only a matter of leaving five or ten points unused for some characters. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that at the other end of the spectrum; the computer won't let me say "this character has seven points fewer than allowed, but THIS character has nine points more than allowed"...
The thing that makes the poor or average character fun, is that I've also played the strong character and know the difference.
@booinyoureyes Hopefully, @Silverstar's post was informative. Personally, I ran one IWD2 party with a drow Paladin who went something like this: Str 14 Dex 12 Con 10 Int 12 Wis 14 Cha 14
By no means was she the toughest tank, but she had great AC in full plate, could serve as a competent face when an NPC auto-dialogues as soon as they see you, no slouch when it came to whacking stuff with her longsword, and was about as competent a spellcaster as a Paladin need be. Also, take a look at my number-crunching below for further insights. My example isn't the smartest guy in the world, but an 8 Intelligence isn't a total moron, just somebody who doesn't retain facts too well and probably isn't an avid reader.
Its obvious we'll just never understand each other on this. But the appeal of random based systems is the range of poor, average and very good possibilities. Every point buy I've seen precludes the possibility of a very good character, and allows only poor or (slightly above) average. It wouldn't bother me one iota if it was only a matter of leaving five or ten points unused for some characters. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that at the other end of the spectrum; the computer won't let me say "this character has seven points fewer than allowed, but THIS character has nine points more than allowed"...
The thing that makes the poor or average character fun, is that I've also played the strong character and know the difference.
I'll have to disagree on point-buy leading to a scale of poor to slightly-above average. 3E doesn't require the kind of insanely high numbers to start seeing benefits that 2E does, so in many cases the point-buy IWD2 character is going to be better all-around than the IWD equivalent.
IWD2 starts your stats at 10 before racial modifiers and gives you 16 points to distribute. Let's assume we're a human and a Fighter. The IWD2 character with 16 Strength is actually more adept at melee combat than a IWDEE Fighter with 18/73 Strength (+3/+3 vs. +2/+3). That same character could easily have a 14 Dexterity, which is equivalent to a 2E character with 16 Dexterity as far as AC goes, but makes you +1 better at ranged attack rolls. So far, we've spent 10 points. That gives us six more to play with. Let's say we also want this guy on the front lines, tanking. He's going to need some Constitution. Let's go nuts and toss those six points into Con and give him a 16 for +3 HP, equivalent to the 17 he'd need in IWD. But, wait, 3E makes the other stats at least somewhat useful for Fighters, so we might want to adjust those. Well, maybe this guy's not too interested in book-learnin' or skill points, so let's drop his Intelligence to 8. Then, since Fighter's aren't too great at Will saving throws, we'll bump his Wisdom to 12 so he's less likely to get charmed and such.
So, the IWD2 Fighter looks like this: 16 14 16 8 12 10
And let's match him up against a roughly equivalent IWD character:
18/00 16 17 8 15 (granted, the saving throw bonus for Wisdom doesn't actually work in the Infinity Engine games, but if it did...) 10
The IWD2 Fighter doesn't look as beefy, certainly, but that's merely an illusion because he has smaller numbers. The IWD Fighter needed to make a total roll of 84 and get incredibly lucky on his Strength percentile to have the same to-hit bonus, and that's no mean feat. On average, you'd probably have to re-roll a good six times to see a stat block like that. The only advantage the IWD Fighter has going for him is greater damage, but again that required quite a bit of luck.
It wouldn't bother me one iota if it was only a matter of leaving five or ten points unused for some characters. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that at the other end of the spectrum; the computer won't let me say "this character has seven points fewer than allowed, but THIS character has nine points more than allowed"...
The thing that makes the poor or average character fun, is that I've also played the strong character and know the difference.
This is actually what appeals to me as well, and exactly why I want the option to have a very strong character as well as more average characters.
The IWD Fighter needed to make a total roll of 84 and get incredibly lucky on his Strength percentile to have the same to-hit bonus, and that's no mean feat. On average, you'd probably have to re-roll a good six times to see a stat block like that. The only advantage the IWD Fighter has going for him is greater damage, but again that required quite a bit of luck.
@Schneidend I've never had a problem getting a stat roll better than 84 if I'm being honest with you. The thing is comparing Paladins to Fighters in IWDII
Supposedly they are both supposed to be equally competent at melee (or at least close). The fighter gets more feats (incredibly useful) while the paladin gets abilities and spells to make up for his lack of feats. The difference is that the paladin needs to lose some strength, constitution or dexterity to even be able to use his "special abilities". So the thing that supposedly puts them on equal footing actually doesn't, since you will need to put a bare minimum of 8 points into Charisma and Wisdom to get your paladin to that point. That means that *half* of the 16 points given to you are used to put you on "equal grounds" to a fighter. This hurts the balance of the game in my opinion, and makes using paladins quite underwhelming when compared to barbarians or fighters.
I'm not even going to go into rangers.
It would be a little better if you were given more points based on your class or whatever, but that's still not as flexible as you can be in Baldur's Gate. Sometimes I like to roll random, other times I ctrl-8 and work my way down. More freedom is just fine with me.
@booinyoureyes Well, of course you've never had a problem rolling better than an 84. You can roll infinitely. My point is that a point-buy character comes pre-packaged with an 84, without needing to ever click a re-roll button, and doesn't need to worry about his strength percentile. An IWD2 character could even put in two more points or be a half-orc in order to bump that 16 up to an 18, and have a better to-hit than any 18/x% character in IWD.
Also, to address your earlier point about IWD2's lack of tomes, you gain an extra stat point at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20.
The Paladin does have to split up his points a bit, an unfortunate side-affect of 3E making Wisdom the casting stat for Paladins instead of Pathfinder's much wiser use of Charisma for Paladin spellcasting. However, you are SORELY underestimating the Paladin's abilities and spells. Paladins are immune to disease. At level 2, they're not only immune to fear, but buff the saving throws of the rest of the party against fear by +4. At 3rd level, the Paladin can cure disease. None of these abilities rely on any stats whatsoever. The Paladin also turns one of the least useful stats, Charisma, into one of the best. Lay on Hands and Smite Evil are both based on Charisma. At second level, the Paladin adds her Charisma modifier to all saving throws, and that continues to improve if you find Charisma-boosting items or invest points into Charisma. The Charisma-based skills like Bluff, Intimidate, and Diplomacy are also quite useful in IWD2 dialogue, so that's some icing on the cake that the Paladin has her Charisma high to bolster those stats. Then, there's spellcasting. Once the Paladin gets 2nd-level spells, at level 7 or 8, she's got the awesome that is Bull's Strength. 1d4+1 Strength for 1 hour per level. This basically catches a lower-Strength Paladin up with the Fighter, and on a good roll can even catch up to a Raging Barbarian on an 18-Strength Paladin, for a long enough duration that it might as well be permanent.
I've always considered PNP and CRPGs to be more or less the same thing. And I've played both with good rolls, and bad rolls. It can be a ton of fun either way. How good your scores are should have little bearing on how fun the experience is. Of anything, the weaker characters can be more fun because they require more creativity.
But they differ in a lot of ways, which is why I recommend separating the discussions.
In a tabletop game, there is no Reroll option until you got the stats you love most. They could remove that option from computer games, but it would simply mean you'd restart the game over and over again until you get some nice scores. The Reroll button only simplifies that process. You can't just Reroll over and over again in a tabletop game.
In a tabletop game, you have a lot more options than in a computer game. In a tabletop game, your own imagination is the limit, while in a computer game, you're restricted to the options provided by the game. If combat is inevitable, then in a computer game, you're down to the combat rules as specified in the game. In a tabletop game, you could get creative by thinking up your own traps, place ambushes, scout for locations where you'd have an advantageous terrain, etc...
Computer games more often than not are played solo, where your actions don't matter to anyone else, since there is nobody else in the game. In a tabletop game, you're rarely the only player, and being there with others is the norm. Fairness suddenly becomes a much more important factor, since your game and actions affect others.
And of course, in a tabletop game, the DM can adapt the difficulty of the opposition to the strength of the players. If the players have weak scores, the DM should send weaker opposition than when the players have godlike scores.
There are plenty of other differences. Tabletop games and computer games are two entirely different beasts. They might use the same combat rules, but the way the game is played is completely and utterly different. Saying "Method X" works good for tabletop games, so we should apply "Method X" to computer games is like saying, I like sugar in my tea, so I'm going to put sugar in my soup.
As far as when point buys were introduced, I believe it was either 1E or 2E. But what has changed is, it used to be like number six of six generation systems listed. Starting with 3E, point buy was listed as the first through third methods. This means little in PNP, except maybe making new DMs more likely to favor the point buy. But in CRPGs it means more games are likely to rely wholly on such systems, and the random roll method has largely disappeared.
The rules for ability scores in the 3.5 PHB (the 3.0 PHB was similar):
Roll 4d6, discard the lowest die. Write the score down. Repeat five times.
If the highest score is 13 or lower, or if the total modifiers are 0 or lower, you may discard the results and reroll.
Assign each score to an ability score of your choice.
There is no point buy whatsoever in the 3.x PHBs. It's added as a variant rule somewhere in the DMG.
But the random method did clearly come first, with the old White Box and later Basic sets. And that does matter, it does still prove something. It proves hundreds of thousands of gamers started and got hooked on the game with random score generation. That proves the method is no obstacle to introducing new players to the game.
I never said that rolling for your stats can't work at all. Sure it can work. That doesn't automatically mean it's the best way.
And that continues directly over to CRPGs too. All the early fantasy games, from Ultima to Phantasie to Wizardry to Gold Box introduced many thousands of players to CRPGs with random score generation.
Again, just because it has been used doesn't mean it has to be the best method out there. And as I described above, tabletop games and computer games are two entirely different beasts.
And I have never claimed that random is a perfect system, or that it's implementation in BG is perfect or ideal. But I do claim that I strongly prefer it, and I consider any game to be far less for excluding it.
Honestly, the only reasons you have given in favor of rolling for your dice are: - It has been used in the past, so it works. - It feels good to me. Your whole approach to this is more a feeling of nostalgia than actually giving any good arguments why rolling should be used over point buy.
And the funny thing is, BG/BG2/IWD are more akin of the point buy system (and a bad one at that), than of the roll system, as it basically comes down to pressing reroll until you have a total score you're happy with, and then dividing the scores as you please.
The only reason I can give to keep the BG/BG2/IWD ability scores the way they are, is because Beamdog is only meant to enhance them, and any system that would replace the current system (being a more natural roll system or a more balanced point buy system) would change the game from what it used to be rather than simply enhance it.
Its obvious we'll just never understand each other on this. But the appeal of random based systems is the range of poor, average and very good possibilities. Every point buy I've seen precludes the possibility of a very good character, and allows only poor or (slightly above) average. It wouldn't bother me one iota if it was only a matter of leaving five or ten points unused for some characters. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that at the other end of the spectrum; the computer won't let me say "this character has seven points fewer than allowed, but THIS character has nine points more than allowed"...
The thing that makes the poor or average character fun, is that I've also played the strong character and know the difference.
Poor, average and strong characters are debate-able. The thing is, say we could make a computer game where you'd truly roll 3d6 6 times, and had no way to reroll it. Say the game would be online, and you were only allowed to make one character a week. The result is that there will be characters with very poor stats and characters with very strong stats.
How is the game supposed to be balanced around this? Those players that have very poor stats should still have a chance to complete the game, so the game should be balanced around their stats. That means that the players that have very strong stats are simply wading through the game without so much as a sweat, and aren't receiving the gameplay as it was intended.
We just game in different worlds. I love the organic reality of randomly rolled characters. And I dislike the sameness and forced mediocrity of point buy. That's all.
Your last suggestion about all 3d6 and no re-rolls would merely be another really lousy character generation system.
Your last suggestion about all 3d6 and no re-rolls would merely be another really lousy character generation system.
You utterly confuse me, because that seems exactly what you were preaching all the time.
Not at all. When I DM, and every game I play in, allows players to reject a rolled character they dislike. You never have to play a hopeless character, it's not forced on the player. But you don't get to assign every point either. Depending on the DM, you typically roll 4d6 or 6d6 (take the high three) in order, and decide if the result is usable. If the player really feels they can't make anything of the result they start over. But I've never seen it go more than three rolls. The result is random, but generally appealing. And even the weakest characters usually end up being good at something. But it's not predictable or assigned what the good might be.
BG is reasonably close to this. Although it does allow choosing class before you roll which obviously skews probabilities even further. But it's still better than assigned.
If you generally use 6d6, discard lowest 3, then yes, I can totally see why you think point buy is so low, as you're used to powerhouse characters... If you use 4d6, you'll notice you're not far off from the results of the point buy system. Note that point buy systems also allow a different number of credits. The default for 3.x is 25, but I've DMed a Dark Sun campaign where I gave the characters 48 points (and allowed them to buy a score of 19 and 20 for 20 and 24 points respectively). Of course, creatures were stronger around the board as well, important NPCs had more stat points as well. The characters were stronger, but the campaign was designed around that.
Either way, the computer game has no DM saying "It's fair to reroll that one, but not fair to reroll that one.", so it can't say, Adam and Betty rolled good, Carl and Daphne rolled a lot lower, so Carl and Daphne, you're allowed to reroll. There's a general layer of trust between the players and the DM that's missing in a computer game.
And I still dare say that BG/BG2/IWD is in no way close to that. Perhaps if it didn't allow stat reallocation, then yes. Then you'd actually had a diverse set of rolls. Say you play a warrior type. Getting that str 18/51+ is certainly possible if you keep rolling for a bit, but chances are your dex and con will be quite low for that roll. Perhaps that str 17 roll where your dex and con also provide some bonuses becomes a lot more interesting.
BG/BG2/IWD are much closer to a cheap point buy system with a lot of points than to a roll system.
Yeah the stat reallocation makes a mess of things. Although I don't object on the grounds of saying you either can do it, or not. The BG way of doing things puts players on their own sort of honor system. The player gets to choose what sort of power range they want to play with. But even if the end result is inflated scores, I still tend to prefer that over every character having exactly the same points.
I'd also point out another system I've seen some DMs use of rolling six scores, and then choosing where they all go. This is another system I really dislike, as it encourages overly optimized characters. I guess I just really like eccentricity.
One other thought, I thought the character creation system used back in the Gold Box games was probably the best way of dealing with it. When you created a character, you started with rolled scores. But you could then adjust up or down, with no regard for point allocation at all. You could literally give every character in your party straight 18s, and the game wouldn't object at all. That puts the entire burden for ethical game play in the hands of the gamer. Since what I normally do, is match my CRPG characters to some character I've played before in PNP, it gave me complete freedom from worries over if I had enough points available. I don't even have to pay attention to "this character needs at least 85 points to recreate". I just click up or down, and make the character I want.
And it seems like a funny thing for me to be concerned about. I'm currently playing a cleric/mage with a 14 Intelligence and a 13 wisdom. And a 17 constitution, go figure. So "high" point totals are not normally my primary concern. But I dislike being pushed into a system where I don't have the possibility of going above or below a defined norm.
Comments
I will say that I HATED the IWD2 system. I felt that you simply didn't have enough points. If you wanted to be a good fighter, you had to be an idiot. If you wanted to use magic, you had to be a dweeb. If you wanted to be a bard you had to have the wisdom of a toddler.
All this... and I'm not even CLOSE to being a powergamer or anything. I don't want super overpowered characters, but every "guide" to IWD2 recommended having one character be the face of the party and setting everyone else's Charisma to 3. That is just too much for me, and it took away from my enjoyment of the game A LOT. And in that game you couldn't even get stat boost books.
I don't think its too much to ask for to have a little more freedom. I think you should be able to max two stats and still be able to get a 14 or two in other categories, if that is what you want. More choices=more pleased customers.
The 14s do mean very different things in the different systems. A 2E 14 is roughly equivalent to a 3E 12, I'd say. Giving everyone 14s in unneeded stats in 3E would be a lot. I don't know if you meant that, though.
But, point-buy need not be viewed as dull, artificial powergaming opposed to inspired, natural rolling. On the contrary, I can imagine it to be a nice way for new people to plunge into the game, having neither to worry much about mechanics nor risking strongly disadvantaged characters.
In some games, it becomes even worse as things don't do what they're advertised to do, or are very situational.
Perhaps one of the many helpful and knowledgeable people here could create a batch of characters for new players to download and use. Put them in categories like powergamer, mere mortal, and challenging. No more worries about character creation, just grab a template.
It is less about the actual numbers than the variability and especially the fact that, for some reason, having a negative modifier (and sometimes fairly significant ones!) is just... demeaning for a character, if you know what I mean? Like sure, you have +4 strength but guess what? You are -1 in intellect, wisdom and personality!
This is especially bad for characters like Paladins that have substantially high requirements and need multiple abilities. By the time you allot for the basics you have no points left to add roleplaying flavor. I want to be a paladin who can cast a spell or two, hit things with moderate competence and use lay on hands... but in order to do so I need to say "derp" a lot and have poor eye-hand coordination!
10
13
10
12
16
That fits the criteria, unless you consider anything below a +1 bonus "poor", and is possible at level 1, assuming a regular human is used. If I'd chosen Aasimar or simply bumped Charisma down a point I'd respectively have 4 or 2 more points to use on all the stats below 15. So no, you don't have to play gimped (negatives) if you want decent usable stats. You have to play gimped if you want maxed stats. Which isn't neccessary considering the difference in how the bonus modifiers work in 3E and that you get more stats every 4th level.
This.
I absolutely agree with you.
I too HATED the IWD2 3ed rules. They perhaps work good for table top DnD sessions but for a PC or any other platform 3ed works horribly. Plus all those feats they added just made it even more stupid...so you would get this "hot and cold" feeling. For a single player game it just ruins the atmosphere for me. I love rolls and it makes you excited to create a character that you honestly feel you had something to do with it by yourself unlike the situation where you have certain amount of points and every character of a certain class looks and feels the same since you will always go for the best stats and feats anyway so you get bunch of clones in every game.
Ultimately, BG, BG2 and IWD are neither meat nor fish:
If they were truly roll systems (without rearrangements), you could end up with situations where you stored 17str, 11dex, 11con, and then later roll 15str, 16dex, 16con. You suddenly have a meaningful choice. Would you take the higher strength for throughput, or the higher dex and con for survivability.
If they were truly point buy systems (always the same amount of points), you would also have meaningful choices to make. Would you go for that 18str, knowing it costs you a bunch of points and end up nerfing your other stats by a lot, or would you settle for, say, 16str, knowing your other stats would be quite a bit higher?
BG, BG2 and IDW fail to be either of that. What you end up doing, is spending some time rerolling, until you have a total score that you consider acceptable. Then you assign all your stat points to max out the most important stats, as there are zero consequences for maxing out scores.
I think what annoys most people about IWD2 character generation, is that they're used to have straight 18s in their primary stats from BG, BG2 and IWD, and can't really get away with that in IWD2. Having straight 18s in your primary stats is not what 2nd edition is designed around.
During character generation (roll 3d6 six times, assign at will), you had a less than 3% chance to end up with an 18 among your stats, a 10% chance to end up with a 17+ among your stats, a 25% chance to end up with a 16+ among your stats and a 45% chance to end up with a 15+ among your stats. So the chance that your highest stat was no higher than 14 was more than half.
The thing is, you aren't going to get any bonuses unless your stats are 15 or higher. For most scores, it doesn't matter if your score is 7 or 14. It doesn't provide any bonuses or penalties, so the result is the same. (Honestly, this was just not a very good part of 2nd edition, and I'm glad that 3rd edition improved that a lot.)
The problem is then that you need very high stats to even notice their effects. A character with 14/14/14/14/14/14 in 2nd edition will be called absolutely rubbish, since it gets zero bonuses. In 3rd edition, that is actually a pretty darn strong character, since it gets a +2 bonus to practically everything it does!
Take strength for instance. In 2nd edition, a strength of 17 gives you +1 attack, +1 damage. In 3rd edition, a strength of 12 does the same, and a strength of 14 already gives a much better +2 attack, +2 damage (+3 damage with 2handers), something that requires a reasonably high percentile strength in 2nd edition.
In BG, BG2, IWD, it was really important to have those 16-18 scores, since that's where you got the bonuses, and each 1 increase in ability score ramped up the bonuses quite well.
This is not the case in 3rd edition. The bonuses are a lot smoother, and they need to be much less high to get the same bonuses as in 2nd edition. Thinking you're not getting enough points in IWD2 is probably caused by the idea that you need the same scores as you needed before, which you do not!
Overall, though, the EE versions are remakes and not original games, so I expect and recommend that the stat distributions remain the same as in the original game, despite it's flaws.
And this whole idea that a roll generated system is not conducive to new players is silly. It was the norm on RPGs for 25 years before 3E started to change it, and D&D was never more popular than it was in the 1980s.
I think it is far more exciting to play a character who is not necessarily perfectly optimized for their role. It led to a lot more actual role playing, and a lot less power gaming. And for the record, straight 14s are perfectly playable in 2E. Bonuses, of every sort, are just that; bonuses. A character is completely playable without any of them.
Whether it's easier to understand for a new player is another question. I'd say it is easier to understand, but it has it's own problem, such as the player realizing he rolled badly and is gimped. That wouldn't happen in BG, though.
One major important thing about tabletop games is that it has a DM/GM, who can help balance stuff. If all players on the table have 18s for all 6 ability scores, the DM/GM obviously can adapt to that, and send a lot tougher monsters at the party, than when all players on the table have 13s for all 6 ability scores. Have one player with only 18s and another player with only 13s? Feed the player with only 13s some magical items to balance things out (and obviously scrap the rule that says players with a high primary score receive an xp bonus, that rule is flat out silly).
In BG, the monsters aren't going to adapt to you having only 13s or only 18s. If you have only 13s, the game is obviously going to be harder than when you only have 18s. Ergo, the player that spends a longer time on rolling for his stats is going to end up with an easier game while the player that didn't bother with all that rolling is going to end up with a harder game, which generally doesn't make that much sense. Again, the difference is not so shockingly big that it's going to make a huge deal, so I don't recommend Beamdog overhauling it, but spending more time to make the game easier is a weird concept at best.
Second, that the roll system has been around long before the point buy system became common doesn't automatically mean it's a good system. Heck, if it was a perfect system, we would never have seen the point buy system in the first place.
But regardless of that, BG/BG2/IWD don't use that roll system, but use a crude mixture of the roll system and the point buy system, which ends up being neither.
Considering from your reply, you're referring to tabletop games and not computer games, which is not what this discussion is about at all. Rolling has it's issues in tabletop games as well (the 18/17/17/15/14/12 character and the 14/13/12/10/8/7 character being part of the same party for instance), but that's an entirely different discussion. And IIRC, did 2nd edition's skills and powers not introduce some kind of point buy system?
As far as when point buys were introduced, I believe it was either 1E or 2E. But what has changed is, it used to be like number six of six generation systems listed. Starting with 3E, point buy was listed as the first through third methods. This means little in PNP, except maybe making new DMs more likely to favor the point buy. But in CRPGs it means more games are likely to rely wholly on such systems, and the random roll method has largely disappeared.
But the random method did clearly come first, with the old White Box and later Basic sets. And that does matter, it does still prove something. It proves hundreds of thousands of gamers started and got hooked on the game with random score generation. That proves the method is no obstacle to introducing new players to the game.
And that continues directly over to CRPGs too. All the early fantasy games, from Ultima to Phantasie to Wizardry to Gold Box introduced many thousands of players to CRPGs with random score generation.
And I have never claimed that random is a perfect system, or that it's implementation in BG is perfect or ideal. But I do claim that I strongly prefer it, and I consider any game to be far less for excluding it.
As for Keepering IWD2, DaleKeeper II has been available for a long time. I used it to start a fresh Heart of Fury run with appropriately experienced and equipped characters. I also tried changing one of my character's sprites to Kresselack's, but unlike the BG2 version used for cambions, its collision box is huge, preventing the character from fitting through tight spaces like a normal PC.
The thing that makes the poor or average character fun, is that I've also played the strong character and know the difference.
Hopefully, @Silverstar's post was informative. Personally, I ran one IWD2 party with a drow Paladin who went something like this:
Str 14
Dex 12
Con 10
Int 12
Wis 14
Cha 14
By no means was she the toughest tank, but she had great AC in full plate, could serve as a competent face when an NPC auto-dialogues as soon as they see you, no slouch when it came to whacking stuff with her longsword, and was about as competent a spellcaster as a Paladin need be. Also, take a look at my number-crunching below for further insights. My example isn't the smartest guy in the world, but an 8 Intelligence isn't a total moron, just somebody who doesn't retain facts too well and probably isn't an avid reader. I'll have to disagree on point-buy leading to a scale of poor to slightly-above average. 3E doesn't require the kind of insanely high numbers to start seeing benefits that 2E does, so in many cases the point-buy IWD2 character is going to be better all-around than the IWD equivalent.
IWD2 starts your stats at 10 before racial modifiers and gives you 16 points to distribute. Let's assume we're a human and a Fighter. The IWD2 character with 16 Strength is actually more adept at melee combat than a IWDEE Fighter with 18/73 Strength (+3/+3 vs. +2/+3). That same character could easily have a 14 Dexterity, which is equivalent to a 2E character with 16 Dexterity as far as AC goes, but makes you +1 better at ranged attack rolls. So far, we've spent 10 points. That gives us six more to play with. Let's say we also want this guy on the front lines, tanking. He's going to need some Constitution. Let's go nuts and toss those six points into Con and give him a 16 for +3 HP, equivalent to the 17 he'd need in IWD. But, wait, 3E makes the other stats at least somewhat useful for Fighters, so we might want to adjust those. Well, maybe this guy's not too interested in book-learnin' or skill points, so let's drop his Intelligence to 8. Then, since Fighter's aren't too great at Will saving throws, we'll bump his Wisdom to 12 so he's less likely to get charmed and such.
So, the IWD2 Fighter looks like this:
16
14
16
8
12
10
And let's match him up against a roughly equivalent IWD character:
18/00
16
17
8
15 (granted, the saving throw bonus for Wisdom doesn't actually work in the Infinity Engine games, but if it did...)
10
The IWD2 Fighter doesn't look as beefy, certainly, but that's merely an illusion because he has smaller numbers. The IWD Fighter needed to make a total roll of 84 and get incredibly lucky on his Strength percentile to have the same to-hit bonus, and that's no mean feat. On average, you'd probably have to re-roll a good six times to see a stat block like that. The only advantage the IWD Fighter has going for him is greater damage, but again that required quite a bit of luck.
Supposedly they are both supposed to be equally competent at melee (or at least close). The fighter gets more feats (incredibly useful) while the paladin gets abilities and spells to make up for his lack of feats. The difference is that the paladin needs to lose some strength, constitution or dexterity to even be able to use his "special abilities". So the thing that supposedly puts them on equal footing actually doesn't, since you will need to put a bare minimum of 8 points into Charisma and Wisdom to get your paladin to that point. That means that *half* of the 16 points given to you are used to put you on "equal grounds" to a fighter. This hurts the balance of the game in my opinion, and makes using paladins quite underwhelming when compared to barbarians or fighters.
I'm not even going to go into rangers.
It would be a little better if you were given more points based on your class or whatever, but that's still not as flexible as you can be in Baldur's Gate. Sometimes I like to roll random, other times I ctrl-8 and work my way down. More freedom is just fine with me.
Well, of course you've never had a problem rolling better than an 84. You can roll infinitely. My point is that a point-buy character comes pre-packaged with an 84, without needing to ever click a re-roll button, and doesn't need to worry about his strength percentile. An IWD2 character could even put in two more points or be a half-orc in order to bump that 16 up to an 18, and have a better to-hit than any 18/x% character in IWD.
Also, to address your earlier point about IWD2's lack of tomes, you gain an extra stat point at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20.
The Paladin does have to split up his points a bit, an unfortunate side-affect of 3E making Wisdom the casting stat for Paladins instead of Pathfinder's much wiser use of Charisma for Paladin spellcasting. However, you are SORELY underestimating the Paladin's abilities and spells. Paladins are immune to disease. At level 2, they're not only immune to fear, but buff the saving throws of the rest of the party against fear by +4. At 3rd level, the Paladin can cure disease. None of these abilities rely on any stats whatsoever. The Paladin also turns one of the least useful stats, Charisma, into one of the best. Lay on Hands and Smite Evil are both based on Charisma. At second level, the Paladin adds her Charisma modifier to all saving throws, and that continues to improve if you find Charisma-boosting items or invest points into Charisma. The Charisma-based skills like Bluff, Intimidate, and Diplomacy are also quite useful in IWD2 dialogue, so that's some icing on the cake that the Paladin has her Charisma high to bolster those stats. Then, there's spellcasting. Once the Paladin gets 2nd-level spells, at level 7 or 8, she's got the awesome that is Bull's Strength. 1d4+1 Strength for 1 hour per level. This basically catches a lower-Strength Paladin up with the Fighter, and on a good roll can even catch up to a Raging Barbarian on an 18-Strength Paladin, for a long enough duration that it might as well be permanent.
In a tabletop game, there is no Reroll option until you got the stats you love most. They could remove that option from computer games, but it would simply mean you'd restart the game over and over again until you get some nice scores. The Reroll button only simplifies that process. You can't just Reroll over and over again in a tabletop game.
In a tabletop game, you have a lot more options than in a computer game. In a tabletop game, your own imagination is the limit, while in a computer game, you're restricted to the options provided by the game. If combat is inevitable, then in a computer game, you're down to the combat rules as specified in the game. In a tabletop game, you could get creative by thinking up your own traps, place ambushes, scout for locations where you'd have an advantageous terrain, etc...
Computer games more often than not are played solo, where your actions don't matter to anyone else, since there is nobody else in the game. In a tabletop game, you're rarely the only player, and being there with others is the norm. Fairness suddenly becomes a much more important factor, since your game and actions affect others.
And of course, in a tabletop game, the DM can adapt the difficulty of the opposition to the strength of the players. If the players have weak scores, the DM should send weaker opposition than when the players have godlike scores.
There are plenty of other differences. Tabletop games and computer games are two entirely different beasts. They might use the same combat rules, but the way the game is played is completely and utterly different. Saying "Method X" works good for tabletop games, so we should apply "Method X" to computer games is like saying, I like sugar in my tea, so I'm going to put sugar in my soup. The rules for ability scores in the 3.5 PHB (the 3.0 PHB was similar):
Roll 4d6, discard the lowest die. Write the score down. Repeat five times.
If the highest score is 13 or lower, or if the total modifiers are 0 or lower, you may discard the results and reroll.
Assign each score to an ability score of your choice.
There is no point buy whatsoever in the 3.x PHBs. It's added as a variant rule somewhere in the DMG. I never said that rolling for your stats can't work at all. Sure it can work. That doesn't automatically mean it's the best way. Again, just because it has been used doesn't mean it has to be the best method out there. And as I described above, tabletop games and computer games are two entirely different beasts. Honestly, the only reasons you have given in favor of rolling for your dice are:
- It has been used in the past, so it works.
- It feels good to me.
Your whole approach to this is more a feeling of nostalgia than actually giving any good arguments why rolling should be used over point buy.
And the funny thing is, BG/BG2/IWD are more akin of the point buy system (and a bad one at that), than of the roll system, as it basically comes down to pressing reroll until you have a total score you're happy with, and then dividing the scores as you please.
The only reason I can give to keep the BG/BG2/IWD ability scores the way they are, is because Beamdog is only meant to enhance them, and any system that would replace the current system (being a more natural roll system or a more balanced point buy system) would change the game from what it used to be rather than simply enhance it.
How is the game supposed to be balanced around this? Those players that have very poor stats should still have a chance to complete the game, so the game should be balanced around their stats. That means that the players that have very strong stats are simply wading through the game without so much as a sweat, and aren't receiving the gameplay as it was intended.
Your last suggestion about all 3d6 and no re-rolls would merely be another really lousy character generation system.
The result is random, but generally appealing. And even the weakest characters usually end up being good at something. But it's not predictable or assigned what the good might be.
BG is reasonably close to this. Although it does allow choosing class before you roll which obviously skews probabilities even further. But it's still better than assigned.
Either way, the computer game has no DM saying "It's fair to reroll that one, but not fair to reroll that one.", so it can't say, Adam and Betty rolled good, Carl and Daphne rolled a lot lower, so Carl and Daphne, you're allowed to reroll. There's a general layer of trust between the players and the DM that's missing in a computer game.
And I still dare say that BG/BG2/IWD is in no way close to that. Perhaps if it didn't allow stat reallocation, then yes. Then you'd actually had a diverse set of rolls. Say you play a warrior type. Getting that str 18/51+ is certainly possible if you keep rolling for a bit, but chances are your dex and con will be quite low for that roll. Perhaps that str 17 roll where your dex and con also provide some bonuses becomes a lot more interesting.
BG/BG2/IWD are much closer to a cheap point buy system with a lot of points than to a roll system.
I'd also point out another system I've seen some DMs use of rolling six scores, and then choosing where they all go. This is another system I really dislike, as it encourages overly optimized characters.
I guess I just really like eccentricity.
Since what I normally do, is match my CRPG characters to some character I've played before in PNP, it gave me complete freedom from worries over if I had enough points available. I don't even have to pay attention to "this character needs at least 85 points to recreate". I just click up or down, and make the character I want.
And it seems like a funny thing for me to be concerned about. I'm currently playing a cleric/mage with a 14 Intelligence and a 13 wisdom. And a 17 constitution, go figure.
So "high" point totals are not normally my primary concern. But I dislike being pushed into a system where I don't have the possibility of going above or below a defined norm.