Suggest a point based system or mechanic that address my issue with point buy

[valadil]

I shudder at the mere mention of it's name... DSA - Das Schwarze Auge.

From this you buy yourself a set of Attributes and your Social "Standing".
Depending on your choice of attributes you can buy one out of a set of classes. There are good ones like Knight or Soldier or such things but also classes like "medi-evil callboy", wench or Teacher.
Furthermore you can choose a "Race" and a Homeland. Depending on Race and Homeland you get Disadvantages/Advantages directly.
You can also get disadvantages and advantages for GP to a certain degree.

I might have heard of that. Not sure. It sounds neat, but involved. Probably not the sort of thing to casually browse.

Conceptually it doesn't sound that different than GURPS dungeon fantasy, which imposed races and classes on GURPS and was the most fun I ever had with that system.

Mutants and Masterminds institutes hard limits on how high most of your numbers can go, based on the campaign's level.

I keep hearing good things but have no exposure, even tangentially, to games of M&M. Adding to the mental list of games to try.

Does it do anything beyond cap the skills available?

I don't really buy either of your premises, that 1) point buy systems have one optimal build and thus no other build can be used or 2) D&D doesn't have optimal builds.

1. In point buy there very well may be abilities that are better than others at achieving a concept. There may be an optimal build for the concept. That in no way restricts you to using only one build. You can build a "magic thief" in many different ways.

2. D&D has optimal builds for concepts. There are discussion boards dedicated to the subject. Usually the optimal build involves "play a full caster because it's a full caster."

You can use several different builds to achieve a concept in either type of system, despite the fact that some builds will be better than others. So what's really the problem?

I didn't want to spend much text arguing the premises. The point I was hoping to make is that in a point based game there's usually one approach to a build. In D&D there are several. Any sort of thief character is going to have a sneaking skill if it's available. In PB it's always available. All the skills you could ever want are always available.

In D&D if you wanted to make the ultimate sneaky guy, there are many approaches. I have no idea what would be the best starting point. But I can play several of them and have a different experience.

If I used the term "build" in the initial post, I apologize. I think approach is what I meant.

To step back a bit, what this post is really about is my attempt to identify why I don't enjoy point based games as much. Logically I think they do a much better job of representing a character. But in terms of fun, I'll play a point based system once or twice and then return to D&D. Most of my friends do the same. This post is my current working theory.