Look at the portrait above and what do you see?
A powerful warrior, strong magical armor (+4), a spear that can penetrate even the oldest of dragon hides (+3 keen), strong (18 strength), tough (17 constitution), fast (16 dexterity), intelligent (14 intelligence). Overall he’s very powerful. 10 orcs? Not a problem, 10 ogres? Not a problem. Pshaw, its just Vrock demon. Evil stands no chance versus him!
But I ask you, is there much enjoyment in playing this PC? Do you really have fun with this character? What defines him, his stats or his personality? How can you know if playing this character is really that fun until you attempt another possibility--playing a weak character.
I came to the realization that the most enjoyment I attained from playing a character is when he was not the strongest, nor the smartest, nor the fastest. I was so used to the type of character above, that I forgot what a real challenge was. I first experienced this when we started a new set of characters for a major campaign and was blessed with these statistics: 9, 9, 14, 7, 13,10. After 3 sets of 4d6, this was the best result. What could I possibly do with this? Who could I make? I was disappointed but I played these rolls and made a cleric/magic user (in 2E days mind you). I am sure many of you think, "why the hell would you want to play that PC?" I did because that's what I rolled in 3 sets. So be it. It turned out the character was the most enjoyable one I ever played.
Of course, this PC presented challenges to overcome. I had to rethink how I approached monsters, cast spells, and involved myself in situations where death loomed around every corner of my 9 constitution. When I gained a level it was an incredible accomplishment of survival and strategy because I was not tough. The game now was a real challenge and thus a lot more fun.
Playing a weaker PC also brings back balance to the game. Monsters of equal level have meaning. Usually battles are even and take time to resolve. One lucky blow or one failed save does not doom the PCs or monsters to a quick demise. When PCs are overpowered their opponents are equally overpowered and this creates what I call a 10/1 scenario where both character and villain are 10 on attack and 1 on defense. Any one luck event can completely turn the tables on the PCs or make quick work of the monster. It’s unbalancing.
Magic items can also do this in a campaign. Keeping a low magic item campaign makes the game stay balanced and keeps the PCs hungry for accomplishments. Seeing the 5th +3 sword at 6th level is a commodity to be sold and exchange for that +4 sword in the shop window. Seeing the 1st +1 sword at 6th level is a holy relic to be protected and only used in times of great need vs evil.
Now, I know there are many players that love power gaming and playing super characters. They love the slaughter and mayhem of claiming they killed a Balor at 8th level with their bare hands. But my suggestions to DMs and players is to give normalizing PCs a shot. Don't min max your PCs just for the sake of it. DMs, create campaigns that require skill sets to overcome obstacles not BAB. Keep the magic items and gold low. Players should find the campaign more challenging on an even 5/5 scale. DMs will enjoy themselves more because now they can throw a mental challenge to the PCs without committing incredible monsters that in one good roll can destroy the party. This situation creates players screaming foul and DMs claiming "I got lucky". Also DMs won't be sour after a 2 hour preparation time only to have their elaborate challenge destroyed in 2 rounds of a warrior sword. As a DM nothing says you did a good job as watching player's combined reactions of terror and relief after a good challenge is done.
Some specific suggestions:
For characters, roll 2 sets of 6x 4d6 and keep the best results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
OR
Roll 1 set of 7x 4d6 and keep the best 6 results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
Limit the magic item power level to +1 for every 5 levels the PCs attain.
Limit permanent magic items to the PCs as to the square root of their combined levels.
Non-permanent magic items to 1 or 2 per character. This includes potions and scrolls.
Place enough gold in the campaign to allow characters to buy most, but not all things they need. By this I mean armor, good weapons, food, clothes, tools, lodging. Not magic items.
Makes potions and scrolls expensive. They are magical so why would they be cheap.
Buying permanent magic items are out of the question. They are special.
Look at the portrait above and what do you see?
I see a guy dedicated to fighting vampires, which is why he's covered in stakes and holy symbols. I'm not sure how you necessarily get the godly stats or the magic items out of just that picture. Heck, none of his stuff is even glowing.
Of course, this PC presented challenges to overcome. I had to rethink how I approached monsters, cast spells, and involved myself in situations where death loomed around every corner of my 9 constitution. When I gained a level it was an incredible accomplishment of survival and strategy because I was not tough. The game now was a real challenge and thus a lot more fun.
Hmm... sounds like the real key here is that the GM or the other players don't really like that kind of survivalist style, so the only way you could get it out of the game was to have a character weaker than your peers so that they could get their easily-beatable challenges while you could experience a more difficult game.
When PCs are overpowered their opponents are equally overpowered and this creates what I call a 10/1 scenario where both character and villain are 10 on attack and 1 on defense.
This is a function of D&D's class design, which emphasizes everyone having his own niche and sucking ridiculously when he's not in that niche. Reduce stats or wealth and it's still there. Especially in the form of fighters failing Will saves a lot more often.
Magic items can also do this in a campaign. Keeping a low magic item campaign makes the game stay balanced and keeps the PCs hungry for accomplishments. Seeing the 5th +3 sword at 6th level is a commodity to be sold and exchange for that +4 sword in the shop window. Seeing the 1st +1 sword at 6th level is a holy relic to be protected and only used in times of great need vs evil.
Except, ability to hit magical opponents aside, that +1 sword really isn't that great. Mechanically, it doesn't really do anything for your character that the plain-jane lump of iron he started with at first level can't do. It's magical, sure, but why should you cherish this thing and defend it with your life if it doesn't really do anything? It's still to expect folks to drool over low-powered magic items in even the most low-magic-y of games, simply because, in most cases, low-powered items really aren't much better than no items at all.
For characters, roll 2 sets of 6x 4d6 and keep the best results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
OR
Roll 1 set of 7x 4d6 and keep the best 6 results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
These are both higher than the normal rolling method. And significantly better than default point-buy. Hardly low stats.
I like "low magic". I play "low magic". But I don't think you've written any justifications for the "low magic" playstyle in your article. Only justifications for "low stats," which is a completely different thing. And, even then, your actual suggested rolling method is not low-powered at all.
Your level of power has nothing to do with how fulfilling a character can be. A person doesn't have to have less depth because he's stronger. That person in the picture could be *anyone* with any sort of personality.
Further, stats and loot and such are all relative, and have absolutely NOTHING to do with how challenging things will be for the players. What matters for the sake of challenge is the gap between the players and their enemies.
Also, some of your alternatives to make *WEAKER* player characters are actually more powerful than normal! People typically roll 6 sets of 4d6 instead of 7. And what the HECK is with saying to make magic items more expensive? They already are extremely expensive by the perspective of D&Ds economy. A +2 sword costs HUNDREDS OF POUNDS worth of gold. Scrolls aren't cheap either. What you seem to be doing, also, is limiting characters on what they can do with their money. "You already have 2 potions! You can't buy another one because that breaks my arbitrary rule!"
Furthermore, the most powerful PCs don't rely on items so much. If you make magic items less readily available, you know who's going to suffer more? Fighters, barbarians, rogues, bards... but Clerics, Druids, and Wizards are going to be able to create all of those effects themselves. Therefore, you're mostly just widening the power gap rather than lowering the power level much in general.
If I had players with very low stats and few items, I could challenge them. If I had players with very high stats and tons of loot, I could challenge them *just as easily*. They just would be facing more heroic challenges.
Yes, I've played weaker characters...and yes, they were very enjoyable, among some of the best I've played. My fave was my Ranger-Feralan (this was 2nd Ed days) who was raised by wolves...his Int was 4. I played him as basically a wolf who walked on 2 legs and used a steel fang (dagger). He howled at the moon, scratched himself, never bathed. He was adopted by our party's rogue, who kept him out of trouble. He got a wish once (accidentally) and used it to get a pet turtle...that's what he wanted.
That said, I don't find it LESS enjoyable to play powerful characters. You asked who would enjoy playing the fighter in that pic? I would. I've played some like him. There's a time when you want to scrabble in the dirt for silver pieces and worry about 0th level bandits, and there's a time when you want to wrestle with fiends. Different strokes. Both can be very fun.
Finally, for rolling methods, if you want a feel for being Joe Average, do what we did in that campaign that spawned my wolf-boy ranger...3d6, straight up.
If the game is more RP focused and if the group is willing to have your character along, great, everyone is having fun. But, if it's a higher powered game then your character is either going to die frequently or eat up a lot of group resources. It's foolish to try to claim that a class is balanced by RP because then, by that logic, why be anything other than a commoner?
It's how you play a character that makes the biggest difference in combat- and being able to really take credit for your wins (instead of relying on a powerful item) is more enjoyable.
If the game is more RP focused and if the group is willing to have your character along, great, everyone is having fun. But, if it's a higher powered game then your character is either going to die frequently or eat up a lot of group resources. It's foolish to try to claim that a class is balanced by RP because then, by that logic, why be anything other than a commoner?
A high power game poses easier challenges by the nature that it is high power. How well or poorly a character does in combat is directly related to the ability and skill of the person controlling him- if a player is smart, he should be able to get by fine, regardless of the power of his companions. Why would someone play a commoner? I have no idea, but I don't think that is what the OP stated at all.
1. Familiarity blunts astonishment. As you said in your article, you were so used to just going head-to-head and plowing through challenges sword-first. Now that the power is gone, you are forced to take a new route and adapt. It's like a whole new game.
2. Longer, more fulfilling battles. Like you said, with uber-characters it often turns out the DM can only challenge them by putting them up against higher level monsters, making the battle a bit of glass cannon vs porcelain cannon. With longer battles that require more strategy, I find more fun also.
I suppose that was sort of a summary of what you said mixed into my thoughts. I apologize if I am redundant.
a_psh, I disagree with most of your points. You also seem to be going straight to the bad things of his article.
Another question asked by the thread starter is whether I'd find such a powerful character fun to play. This question has already been answered by others, but...well, yeah. I think this guy would be a lot of fun to play as. It wouldn't be too hard to come up with an interesting personality for him, and being able to bash things really well doesn't detract from his awesomeness at all. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure my party members would appreciate a front liner who was really good at what he did; that means less pressure on them so that they can do what they're really good at as well.
I don't agree that playing a weak character necessarily makes for better roleplaying than a strong one. Imagine this conversation: "My character's a Wizard with an Int of 18. Lucked out on that one. He likes to collect things; wands mostly, but really any device which does something that he hasn't seen before is going to make him want one right away, even if it isn't immediately useful. He's almost like a little kid that way. Even so, he makes good use of what he's got and he'll back up his friends every time. “What's your character like?" "Well, he's weak. I figure that'll lead to good roleplaying."
I'd argue that a strong character and a weak character take the same amount of effort to make interesting. Except that the strong character can, you know, do things. Maybe that's not quite fair; if the other players are okay with it, a weak character can be really interesting and might still be able to contribute to the party. But high stats and magic items do not preclude one from roleplaying well, or even make it more difficult. It was laziness that killed the character's personality, not his sword.
Playing a weaker PC also brings back balance to the game. Monsters of equal level have meaning.
I'm going to use this quote as my launch point. I think you're making the common mistake of confusing "weak" with "not overpowered." A weak PC is one that is below average. A below average PC means that monsters of "equal level" are more powerful than the PC. An above average PC means that monsters of "equal level" are less powerful than the PC. It is with an average PC that monsters of "equal level" are just that--equal to the PCs.
The PC you describe at the beginning of your article is in no way average. He is very very powerful. Or, since you didn't specify a level, he could be about right (such as if the character you describe is Epic level). Thus when comparing him to the 7,9,9,10,13,14 character, you're missing the middle ground. What about the 8,10,12,13,14,15 character (the elite array--what the game is balanced against these days)? It seems that you're suggesting that rather than play an over-powered character, one should play an underpowered character. I'd suggest that one should play a mid-powered character--a character balanced for whatever game you may be playing.
There is nothing inherently better in playing a over-powered or under-powered character. They are just different. As long as the game is balanced with itself, it doesn't matter how it balances with another game. So my 10th level fighter might have no score less than 16, but if the whole game is balanced against characters of that magnitude, it's still a challenging game. Numbers scale like that. If 10 is average, then 16 is high. If 16 is average, then 20 is high. And so on. Nice thing about the linear progression of stat modifiers. A character can only be considered "powerful" relative to the challenge of what it's fighting.
Your suggestions for stats, as has been mentioned, are actually MORE powerful than the "average" of the elite array. If you want an average character, use the point buy system (or rolling 4d6 six times if you dislike point buying). That's what the game is balanced against. Your suggestions are for a more powerful (but not as much more powerful) game, but it still is above average.
The same idea applies with your suggestion of gear. Now I tend to run low-wealth games, but D&D as written is balanced against a certain availability of wealth and magic. If you reduce that, you're making the game weaker. You are not balancing the game, you are shifting the balance against the players. Now you may try and even this out with higher ability scores, but rebalancing D&D is a totally different issue.
For a weaker character, combat is indeed more challenging and more thrilling. Unfortunately, if your characters keep getting killed off every level or so (especially if your low-magic campaign doesn't allow resurrection magic), there will be less of an incentive to become emotionally invested in them and flesh out long-term story arcs for them.
A stronger character, especially in a group of weaker characters, is less likely to be killed in combat, and therefore is indeed less challenged by it. On the upside, his increased survivability makes him a more long-term character. Both the player and the DM have more freedom to plan out a truly epic story arc.
It really just comes down to the style of game you want to run. You may prefer a campaign where death lurks around every corner, and survival is a constant struggle. I prefer a campaign where I know that I'll be playing the same character for years on end, with tons of character development, alignment shifts, betrayal, and magic-fueled feats of superhuman prowess. That's the beauty of D&D: There's no one way to play it.
As a player I would resent my trying to make my character weaker simply to challenge me. If I roll poorly I'll live with it, but I won't make a character who would be a liability for the party. The stats do to some extent determine how well your character performs in game, how much fun he is to play is up to the individual player, if you are a rouge with a Dex of 11 expect to have a hard time making reflex saves, or going into melee, or firing a ranged weapon. It can be fun to play the non-standard rouge who is smarter or more charismatic than dexterous, but if your higher stats are 14, you might have a tough time pulling that off too. That said I can see the point playing a lower stat'd character, but I enjoy both myself.
I will completely disagree on the low magic portion. Raising the cost of magic items will make the characters unable to fight monsters of an equal CR. A 7th level fighter without a magic weapon can't touch a ghost, and without anything to help the party's save they could all bite the dust once the wizard runs out of magic missiles, as he couldn't afford to buy any higher level spells. The monsters are designed to be fought by characters with their expected wealth, without that wealth the fight could swing from much harder to impossible.
Also, this disadvantage effects the non-spellcasters first, but if the spellcasters have to burn up all their spell slots for the party to live through one encounter expect game to slow to a crawl when they have to rest after two fights of their CR. If I were to play in a game that such restricted my character I think vow of poverty wouldn't be far behind. Sure I might be a cleric or fighter, but when you only have to give up 3,000gp it hardly seems like a choice at all.
Weak Player Character = Challenge!
This is the first bad sign, and a very common fallacy.
Look at the portrait above and what do you see?
A battle-hardened warrior-type (probably a paladin or martially-focused cleric) who has dedicated his life to slaying vampires. He doesn't seem to relish the kill, suggesting that his reason for slaying vampires is a personal one - perhaps they killed a family member, or enslaved his entire cell of the church of Heironeous and turned them into spawn. His full plate is engraved with runes that ward off death effects, and his spear (probably silver) is used as a stake to cleanse the world of their filth. Why do you ask?
A powerful warrior, strong magical armor (+4), a spear that can penetrate even the oldest of dragon hides (+3 keen), strong (18 strength), tough (17 constitution), fast (16 dexterity), intelligent (14 intelligence). Overall he’s very powerful. 10 orcs? Not a problem, 10 ogres? Not a problem. Pshaw, its just Vrock demon. Evil stands no chance versus him!
Keen would be useless, for undead are immune to critical hits. No, he would have an undead bane spear, probably only +1; this guy's saving to get holy on it. Of course, the spear may be only +1 with no special abilities; he's got a longsword in his right hand that was probably used in the fight. That will have been a +1 undead bane longsword. Big and burly, yes, but nothing about him hints at being fast or exceptionally intelligent. He seems the type to pound his enemies into the ground; his armor type is totally incompatible with having a high Dexterity. 10 orcs? Is a vampire leading them? 10 ogres? Are they charmed? A vrock? Get out of the way. I'm not after you, just your summoner.
But I ask you, is there much enjoyment in playing this PC? Do you really have fun with this character? What defines him, his stats or his personality?
His stats are a mirror of his personality. He's hell-bent on destroying undead, and everything about him is customized in pursuit of this goal. Stats follow from personality and life choices.
How can you know if playing this character is really that fun until you attempt another possibility--playing a weak character.
Are you having fun playing the strong character? Good, go ahead and play him. If not, why? If it's because you feel it limits roleplaying, then you're not really trying and you're using weakness as a crutch. If it's because you feel like the challenges are too easy, then your DM's not really trying.
I came to the realization that the most enjoyment I attained from playing a character is when he was not the strongest, nor the smartest, nor the fastest. I was so used to the type of character above, that I forgot what a real challenge was.
That type of character is fighting the most dangerous type of opponent in D&D. If he's not facing a real challenge, something is wrong.
Of course, this PC presented challenges to overcome. I had to rethink how I approached monsters, cast spells, and involved myself in situations where death loomed around every corner of my 9 constitution. When I gained a level it was an incredible accomplishment of survival and strategy because I was not tough. The game now was a real challenge and thus a lot more fun.
Your DM wasn't trying to challenge you before. You probably only survived because the other PCs were powerful enough to save your ass time and time again, right? Fun for you, maybe, but when you're the dead weight the rest of the party has to deal with, it's not fun for them.
Playing a weaker PC also brings back balance to the game. Monsters of equal level have meaning. Usually battles are even and take time to resolve. One lucky blow or one failed save does not doom the PCs or monsters to a quick demise.
Oh yes it does. The save DC for the medusa's save or die doesn't go down just because the person looking at it has a low Constitution. It just means that only one side has to avoid being unlucky.
When PCs are overpowered their opponents are equally overpowered and this creates what I call a 10/1 scenario where both character and villain are 10 on attack and 1 on defense. Any one luck event can completely turn the tables on the PCs or make quick work of the monster. It’s unbalancing.
The PCs fight every battle. Most monsters fight only one. As time goes on, the PCs are statistically more and more likely to fail a save or take a big hit and die. Having weak saves or low HP only compounds this problem.
Magic items can also do this in a campaign. Keeping a low magic item campaign makes the game stay balanced and keeps the PCs hungry for accomplishments. Seeing the 5th +3 sword at 6th level is a commodity to be sold and exchange for that +4 sword in the shop window. Seeing the 1st +1 sword at 6th level is a holy relic to be protected and only used in times of great need vs evil.
The +1 sword is meaningless in the face of the challenges the PCs now have to deal with. It helps overcome DR/magic and that's it, something a 1st-level spell can do. This merely serves to widen the gap between the classes whose magic items boost their capabilities exponentially (the non-casters or partial casters) and those who don't really need them, they're just nice to have (the casters). A problem that already exists is magnified several times over.
Now, I know there are many players that love power gaming and playing super characters. They love the slaughter and mayhem of claiming they killed a Balor at 8th level with their bare hands. But my suggestions to DMs and players is to give normalizing PCs a shot. Don't min max your PCs just for the sake of it.
So don't make them effective at their jobs?
DMs, create campaigns that require skill sets to overcome obstacles not BAB.
If a DM isn't making his mental challenges impossible to solve by hitting something, he's failing at his job, regardless of the power level.
Keep the magic items and gold low. Players should find the campaign more challenging on an even 5/5 scale.
This is very bad. If the PCs are going 50-50 in every battle, they will TPK in two battles. Losing one monster means nothing to the DM, who has an infinite supply of creatures. Losing a character means that a player has to start from scratch.
DMs will enjoy themselves more because now they can throw a mental challenge to the PCs without committing incredible monsters that in one good roll can destroy the party. This situation creates players screaming foul and DMs claiming "I got lucky". Also DMs won't be sour after a 2 hour preparation time only to have their elaborate challenge destroyed in 2 rounds of a warrior sword. As a DM nothing says you did a good job as watching player's combined reactions of terror and relief after a good challenge is done.
If a DM spent two hours preparing a single challenge, it had damn well better be more difficult to end than the wizard casting a spell. If it isn't, he didn't do any actual thinking when he set up the challenge. He has infinite resources; he should easily be able to prevent the PCs from ending a challenge in two rounds. The warrior is laughable; two rounds of his sword couldn't even slay a CR-appropriate monster past level 4.
Some specific suggestions:
For characters, roll 2 sets of 6x 4d6 and keep the best results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
OR
Roll 1 set of 7x 4d6 and keep the best 6 results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
Those are both stronger than the standard rolling method. Much stronger, as a matter of fact.
Limit the magic item power level to +1 for every 5 levels the PCs attain.
That means a fighter never gets anything more than a +4 sword. A 20th-level fighter cannot handle challenges of his level wielding a +4 sword. The wizard's fine, the fighter's crippled beyond repair.
Limit permanent magic items to the PCs as to the square root of their combined levels.
That's an irrational number whose closest equivalent comes out to a +4 sword.
Non-permanent magic items to 1 or 2 per character. This includes potions and scrolls.
A fighter can only have two potions, and if he attempts to buy a third, he fails even though they're right there on the shelf?
Place enough gold in the campaign to allow characters to buy most, but not all things they need. By this I mean armor, good weapons, food, clothes, tools, lodging. Not magic items.
You can't get all of the above except magic items? Why the hell would you go out and risk your life every day if you weren't going to get filthy rich from it? They might as well be commoners and go common rather than be adventurers and go adventure.
Makes potions and scrolls expensive. They are magical so why would they be cheap.
Because they cost incredibly small amounts of gp to create and are an extremely effective means of making money quickly if one focuses on selling them? Potions and scrolls are a convenience, and nothing more. Generally speaking, people in the business of crafting want to make twice the money they spent on crafting the item in the first place, resulting in a net gain equal to the cost of the item to create. This means that even if a wizard or cleric only sells half of his supply, he still comes out at a balance of 0, a situation favorable to them due to the fairly constant demand for such items.
Buying permanent magic items are out of the question. They are special.
So this is like Final Fantasy, except you can never upgrade your weapons or armor and you can only have 2 potions per party member. This is suicide; it turns adventuring from a job for the bold into a job for the total nutcases. Anyone in their right minds will go common for a living, because it's every bit as worth it as adventuring and you won't die on your second fight as long as you avoid incurring the wrath of housecats.
Look at the portrait above and what do you see?
An undead hunter packed with a lot of metal?
playing a weak character. ... most enjoyment ..... most enjoyable one I ever played. ... challenges to overcome. .... incredible accomplishment of survival and strategy ...a lot more fun.
Possibly. I think it's different for everyone though. The DM should always balance the encounters. When players have rolled uber stats and have found uber gear, I as a DM will keep this in mind when designing encounters, and when I'm giving experience for these encounters. Likewise, when players have rolled very low stats and have lousy gear, I will keep these things in mind when designing encounters and when handing out experience.
Balance should be present in both sorts of games. Fun is entirely dependent on the play style that the players like.
Magic items
This is also a matter of personal flavour. I can definitely see the fun in having magic items be more special/rare/unique than the general rules make them to be. But someone else might not. It differs from person to person. All in all, it can be interesting because it's a change of pace, but I don't believe either type of game is inherently better.
Some specific suggestions:
For characters, roll 2 sets of 6x 4d6 and keep the best results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
OR
Roll 1 set of 7x 4d6 and keep the best 6 results. Players can't lower certain scores to make others higher.
You totally lost me here. We used that last method to roll up our characters. Such rolls create high powered characters. I rolled 11 13 17 12 10 8 with that method, and these rolls were only mildly average. I rolled the lowest in my group. Three others have rolled a few points more than me. And two others rolled 11 18 16 12 16 13 and something else in that range.
If you rolled up your stats with 3 sets of "6X4D6 drop lowest" you just got an awful lot of bad luck.
To conclude, like I said, playing with low powered characters might be interesting in some games. It might be interesting in my group because it's different with what we've done so far, but it's not inherently better. And with rolling dice you're not going to get there. Only with a very low point buy you can. With dice there's too wide a range of possible scores. One person can roll no higher than 12, and the next can roll up total stat modifiers of +12.
The ONLY measure of character power in D&D is relative to what the DM puts the character up against. Stats, magic, feats, all of it is only as good as the DM wants it to be. Even in a game where all the characters had your stats, the party could still roll over everything placed in front of them, if the DM put the right encounters in the way.
You see some all-powerful warrior in that picture. I see a guy obviously decked out for fighting vampires. He probably has some great anti-undead PrC. He also has spent significant amounts of money on items that are focused on killing undead. A dragon would find him quite yummy with some ketchup. You also assume he has all the items you said, with all the great stats. He could be Joe Average at 20th for all we know. Heck he could have those "low" stats you provided, and just be played well at the appropriate CRs.
It has been said, but I'll agree with the other posters that your character generating method is more powerful than the standard point-buy or rolling methods.
So magic is something special? Out of the core classes, Wizards, Bards, Rangers, Paladins, Clerics, Druids, and Sorcerers all cast spells. 2 of those are completely dependant on magic to be effective, and 3 more rely on it for roughly half their power. If you want to play a low-magic campaign, by all means do so. However, the limitations you suggest will lead to cookie-cutter characters. It will also create in-game story problems. Why are magic items so rare, when a 3rd level Wizard can create potions? Do you just arbitrarily dictate how many magic items they get in treasure to achieve these limits?
The "10/1" theory you speak of is worse at low power levels, not better. You said yourself that every level you gained was a testament to your strategy and cunning. That is because you lacked the HP, Saves, and other abilities to survive the attacks of the monsters. At higher levels, this problem worsens because "Save or die" is increasingly common. If you fail those saves more often than not, you will lose lots of exp. In 2E, you will keep losing Con, and become less likely to survive.
A single character who is much more powerful than the party can derail a campaign. The DM's prepared encounters get steamrolled and the rest of the party becomes cheerleaders. A single character who is significantly less powerful can also ruin the game. The DM's encounters, which are perfectly balanced for the party as a whole, steamroll the weak character. My group now uses character generation methods that seek to minimize this problem.
It sounds like you have gotten burned as a DM, a player, or both on some occasion with power-gaming run amok. A DM can ruin the game for everyone by letting that kind of behavior stand. A player can also ruin the game by insisting on building "on concept" and making himself a burden to the party.
You state you rolled multiple times and kept getting "bad" stats. I get the impression your "weak" character was weak compared to the other characters. If the game was as "challenging" as you state, then I have to wonder at how much fun your fellow players had. Did the DM have to flub rolls to keep your character alive? Was he just a jerk who didn't take into account party capabilities when he built his adventures? Since he has ultimate control over the playing field, what did he do, or not do, to make this challenge?
As a player, I won't tolerate my experience being ruined by someone who insists on weakening his character, or just willfully ignoring opportunities to advance it, in the name of "challenge," "roleplaying," or anything else. As a DM, I would resent the added burden of having to find ways to coddle a player who wanted a character who will get smacked by challenges that are an average day for the rest of the party. As a player, my solution would be to talk to you OC about it. If you wouldn't agree to work with the party to get to the level, I would IC ask your character to leave, because I was tired of pulling your weight. As a DM, I would discuss it with you. If you insisted on playing the character and hurting the enjoyment of my game for my players and I, I wouldn't hold back, and you would die. I would continue to let you die until you either learned to keep up generally with your party, or stopped playing.
I don't say any of this to be a jerk. You seem well-intentioned. However, in many places your arguments are self-contradictory. If you really like the idea of playing a more gritty game, then take the criticism I and the other posters have given you to heart, and revise your rules. Try them out in a game you run, and see how much fun people have. Also don't mistake "high-magic" or "high-powered" for "over-powered." While I don't have the link, if you have the time, track down the Stormwind Fallacy. Regardless of what you do, just have fun gaming. That's the real point, right?
Take Rolland from the Gunslinger series. He is like an epic fast hero. you can't stop him in a fight, he will always get the drop on you and no matter what traps you send against him he gets out of it. He is constantly challenged by the side characters and their weaknesses.
Also players can be challenged by puzzles, tailored encounters, even much more powerful monsters. You can also give them something that drifts from their norm like a murder, or a delve into horror or the thick of a battle. They way you look at it you almost say "Epic characters can't be challenged". Well, they can be challenged. Failure doesn’t have to hinge on life or death of the PCs. It can hinge on a lot more than that.