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To start off, I’ll admit. I’m a point buy advocate. But I wonder what the “default” character creation method be in 4th edition? Will the game designers finally give up the proud nail from 1E of randomly generated stats? Will the DMG’s section on controlling player power level talk of how many points to give for different settings (and will published adventures say “for 6th level characters, high power campaign,” for that matter.) Perhaps having adventures that “high-powered” characters blaze through and not even find interesting, while low-powered characters might not even make it through.

Or will the game designers choose to keep that classic 1-E feel of a barely playable character teamed up with superman, because one got uber lucky and you rolled minimum.

Ditto, on the point buy. Pick an "official" power level, that the game can be adjusted to, and have a point buy... Even if it is a 25 pt. buy.

I personally favor a set starting array for all (modified by racial choice, of course). That keeps the playing field level for all so you don't get the wimp plus the superman problem. Whether someone stands out or fails then becomes a matter of the choices they make, rather than everything hinging on the luck of a few dice roles made before play actually even starts. The problem with point buy is an experienced player could min/max while a novice might choose less wisely thus creating a wimp with no playing experience and a veteran superman -- the problem is exacerbated...

TokenResurrected wrote:

Not really, even if you have a munchkin and a newbie making the decisions, you're still based on the same number of points with point buy. The newbie could still just as easily gimp his wizard by putting his lowest stat into intelligence and highest into strength. You haven't (and really can't) fix the power levels if players make poor character creation choices, regardless of what their intent was. A standard array merely keeps anyone from having too high or too low of stats.

true, as does the point buy method -- I was allowing my own personal preferences to cloud my judgement there. Still, either method is better than rolling for just that reason. It seems every time I have sat down with even two players rolling up characters one will get s**t scores and the other well above what should be statistical averages, and this has been pretty much my experience since I started gaming back in 1980.
Back then it was an expected part of the game that you would have one dominate PC who was the toughest and acted as the "caller", basically dictating what the rest of the group was supposed to do! That seemed broken even back then...no group I played in ever did it that way. In a system where all the PCs are expected to contribute roughly equally, rolling no longer makes sense, as the base stats affect pretty much every single crunch aspect of the characters. Small differences in them make far greater difference than in previous editions, and I presume this will continue to be the case in 4e.