Valinard's Tower

One problem with the ‘roll to improve your attributes each level’ mechanic we inherited from the Black Hack is that it makes the expected attributes of higher level characters murky.

Since starting attributes are random the DM is free to create established characters with whatever attributes are desired, and rolling up the advances level by level is simply enough, but time-consuming.

Elric by John Picacio

I’ve come up with a simple points-buy system:

Current Attribute	Cost to Raise
3-4	2
5-8	3
9-11	4
12	5
13	6
14	7
15	8
16	10
17	13

Your Prime and Secondary Requisites automatically get points invested in them equal to twice your level advancements (i.e. your level, minus one.)

To these, and to any other attribute, you can add points equal to 4 times your level advancements.

If for any reason you want to start a character off with average attributes instead of rolling 3d6 in order, you can use the following standard array: 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, 7.

Example

An average 7th level Fighter starting with 14 STR and 12 points in each of STR and, in this example, CON. Assuming these are the two highest starting attributes in the standard array, we have:

STR 14 (+12pts = 15 with 5pts remaining)
DEX 11
CON 12 (+12pts = 14 with 1pt remaining.)
CHA 10
WIS 9
INT 7

And 24pts to spend. We can immediately spend 5pts to raise STR to 16, and 6pts to raise CON, bringing us down to 13pts – enough to bring STR up to 17, with 3 left over to bring INT up to 8.

STR 17
DEX 11
CON 15
INT 8
WIS 9
CHA 10