Fixed Point Buy and Races (5e Variant Rule)

Fixed Point Buy and Races
The core rulebook does something very strange. On one hand, the book presents the method of ability generation as 4d6, drop the lowest for each score. On the other hand, it gives a point buy table directly beneath which lists the highest ability score as 15.

Furthermore, races can add up to another +2 to any one ability score, and usually add a total of +3. This entirely shoehorns certain races towards certain classes, since ability scores are so important--for example, while it might be what they want to play, a player will be prone not to play a half-orc wizard as it causes them to be hindered compared to other party members who made more optimized choices. In order to fix, we combine it with a point buy that allows characters to reach 18 in an ability score while removing the bonuses to ability score from race, and rather than leave them weaker, give them more iconic abilities to exemplify their traits rather than the boredom of simply increasing ability scores.

New Point Buy Table
Note that while this point buy table reaches 18, feel free to limit characters to 17 in an ability score, as that is the maximum that a character would be able to reach just through point buy and racial increases normally. This table goes to 18 because that is the maximum the default method of generating ability scores works. If you allow scores up to 18, the players should have 38 points to build their character with, or 33 if you only allow the ability scores to go up to 17.