DnD 5e: Point Buy Guide (How It Works & What’s The Difference)

Creating a character is one of the most fundamental and fun parts of playing, and that character's ability points canbe gambled for or bought through the Point Buy system. There are three ways to determine your Ability Scores described in the official, and it might be confusing if you are unsure which one to use. They also each have pros and cons, which will be discussed below.

is the latest in a long-running RPG, in which you take on the role of fantasy characters to go on adventures, dive into dungeons, and fight any monsters you find along the way. There are now a vast number of races and classes to choose from, and customization is nearly endless in terms of subclasses and backgrounds. With all that work, you may want to guarantee your character gets the stats you want in the places you want them.

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One of the ways you can do this is through the Point Buy system to get ability points. This system is usually more balanced than a dice roll will get you, but you still get to pick what stats you want to be higher. You also cannot get the low or high extremes that you can end up with by chance, so there is an advantage to not having any extreme negative modifiers, as you cannot get lower than an 8 in any score. The disadvantage is that you cannot get higher than a 15 on the upper end.

The idea is that you have27 points by which to buy individual Ability Scores. That is not the total number of points you have but rather your currency by which to buy individual scores. This isbased on a cost that is determined in the and is listed in the table below:

Ability Score

Points To Buy

8

0

9

1

10

2

11

3

12

4

13

5

14

7

15

9

With this system, you would use your points to buy each score. You can eitheraverage them out to have no negative modifiers or push them to extremes to have three very high and three very low. To have