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I think there's an interesting (to me) difference here in how we're each looking at ability score generation. It seems to me like your assumption is that there's a fixed set of scores that a player is somehow predetermined to roll, and that their choice of race is weighed in relation to this assumption, that there's just this one set of numbers. So the racial modifiers are always compared directly to one another because the assumption is that they'll be added to the same number. This seems entirely rational, and I tend to think of things this way myself, but I'm not sure if it's the only or even right way to look at it. The alternative view is that when you choose a race (and class) first, before rolling, you're choosing a character whose scores are each a field of possibilities. Your highest score can reasonably be expected to be anything from 10 to 18, so for an orc wizard that's an Intelligence of 8 to 16, while for a gnome wizard, an Intelligence of 12 to 20. The two characters overlap in the 12 to 16 range, which the orc has a roughly 93% chance of coming away with, while the gnome's chance of having a score that low is a still sizable 20%. So around 19% of the time, the two characters are roughly equal in the Intelligence department, assuming they both put their high score there. Now, obviously the gnome has better odds of having a high Intelligence, but I think it's a long way from being an "always better" choice. It's just better most of the time, and the thing is you never know when the dice are going to give your orc a high (enough) Intelligence or your gnome an Intelligence that's less so.
No, listen. The gnome is always the better choice if having the highest Intelligence possible is the goal. When you have a choice between a random number between 8 and 16 in the ability score you want or a random number between 12 to 20 in the ability score you want, the latter is always the better option to choose. Yes, it is possible that someone who chooses the former could end up with a higher score than someone who chose the latter, but the person who chose the latter still made the better choice with the information available to them because the latter has a lower minimum, a higher maximum, and a higher average. That the former got better luck on the random roll has nothing to do with the choice they made to take the worse option. You’re basically trying to argue that rolling a d8 for damage isn’t better than rolling a d6 for damage because you could hypothetically roll a 1 on the d8 and a 6 on the d6. That’s not how math works.
You're conflating success with contribution. They are not the same!
Contribution is in the attempt to do something. Does a Fighter who stands into melee and manages to miss on every single swing she takes still contribute? Hell yes. Or a Rogue who can't get in to a combat due to lack of space but who instead keeps watch behind is still contributing, even if there's nothing back there to see.
Not contributing is to attempt nothing. The Rogue who, instead of keeping watch, just tunes out until the battle's over contributes nothing because he isn't even trying.
What is the difference to the Rogue player if they are tuning out or if they just keep saying "I watch the rear for anything that is sneaking up on us" for the next 35 minutes?
The end result is the same, nothing happens.
The fighter who keeps missing does not feel like they are contributing, unless they count being a punching bag as contributing to the fight, because they would be doing the same thing if they just skipped their turn compared to rolling and missing for the 5th time.
I've been both of those characters. I played a con game where most of the climatic final battle my character just kept running into the next room, trying to get a chance to get involved before the other players cleared the room (not a DnD game).
Yes, choosing to keep rolling even after you keep failing instead of just walking away from the table is important, but if your entire turn could have been skipped with no change to the game state of the fight, then you are not going to feel like you contributed
What is the difference to the Rogue player if they are tuning out or if they just keep saying "I watch the rear for anything that is sneaking up on us" for the next 35 minutes?
That, and (unlike many these days, it seems) I'm more than willing to accept that there's going to be times in the game where certain characters simply have nothing really useful they can do. Maybe it's a combat where only two out of five characters can get at or even see the opponent due to confined space e.g. fighting through a small window or a nearly-closed door. Maybe it's a stealth-and-scout sortie where the tanks and casters just have to wait with the horses. Maybe it's a null-magic zone that shuts down the casters.
As long as those times more or less even out in the long run, I'm fine with it.
The fighter who keeps missing does not feel like they are contributing, unless they count being a punching bag as contributing to the fight, because they would be doing the same thing if they just skipped their turn compared to rolling and missing for the 5th time.
That only appears in hindsight, by which time it doesn't matter any more.
The other night my wife's Fighter, who needed something like a natural 5 to hit her opponent, ran off a 3 and four 1s in five consecutive rolls while the rest of the party took the foe down. It's luck, and it happens.
The only bright side was that none of those 1s confirmed into a fumble.
I've been both of those characters. I played a con game where most of the climatic final battle my character just kept running into the next room, trying to get a chance to get involved before the other players cleared the room (not a DnD game).
I remember a con game I played where the only reason I survived (which only I and one other did, of a party of eight-ish) was that I didn't (or couldn't) get into a room fast enough; everyone in the room was annihilated when a module element* interacted in very unforeseen ways with something we did. (details in spoiler) So sometimes there's benefits to 'not contributing'.
The module had it that anything contacting or touching any wall in this particular room would summon a pissed-off Giant out of that wall. Cool idea, right?
Problem was, the module writer didn't quite think through the what-ifs; and sure enough someone in there threw a Scatterspray-like spell that resulted in something like 300 near-simultaneous contacts with the walls...which meant 300-ish Giants all tried to appear at once in a 40x40' room.
What a mess.....
My guy and one other character, still up the stairs a bit, saw this floor-to-ceiling wall of gore, blood, broken furniture, and armour bits come pouring out of the room; on which we turned around, went back up the stairs, and kinda called it a day at that point...
It was quite some time before we all stopped laughing at the sheer absurdity of it!
Yes, choosing to keep rolling even after you keep failing instead of just walking away from the table is important, but if your entire turn could have been skipped with no change to the game state of the fight, then you are not going to feel like you contributed
Again, that's hindsight. If you're in melee you always have the potential to contribute even though the dice might not let that potential become real. If you're stuck out of the combat it's on you to find other ways to (try to) contribute, again with no guarantee that what you try will amount to anything.
Player: "Okay DM, since I can't get into the room, I'll just watch our rear"
DM: "Okay" Seven minutes passes
DM: Your turn
Player: Nothing coming?
DM: Nope
Player: Okay, I'll keep watching seven minutes passes
DM: Your Turn
Player: Still watching Seven minutes later
DM: Your Turn
Player: We still aren't done with combat? Can I... nope, can't get in, guess I'm staring at an empty hall way Seven minutes passes
Nearly a half an hour of the player... doing nothing. They could have just as easily said "Okay guys, I'm going to watch the rear until the situation changes, let me know if I can do anything, going to take a bio-break" and then walked out of the room.
That only appears in hindsight, by which time it doesn't matter any more.
The other night my wife's Fighter, who needed something like a natural 5 to hit her opponent, ran off a 3 and four 1s in five consecutive rolls while the rest of the party took the foe down. It's luck, and it happens.
The only bright side was that none of those 1s confirmed into a fumble.
Yeah it does happen. And it tends to suck. I'm willing to make a bet that there was at least one joke about her "uselessly flailing" or something similiar, because that is what tends to happen in the games I've seen.
But, by the third turn of missing, most people don't find it funny anymore.
And yeah, hindsight is when it shows up, but hindsight isn't "after the battle" it is after the turn. And after failing multiple turns in a row, not only hindsight, but foresight looks like it is just going to be a series of failures.
I remember a con game I played where the only reason I survived (which only I and one other did, of a party of eight-ish) was that I didn't (or couldn't) get into a room fast enough; everyone in the room was annihilated when a module element* interacted in very unforeseen ways with something we did. (details in spoiler) So sometimes there's benefits to 'not contributing'.
The module had it that anything contacting or touching any wall in this particular room would summon a pissed-off Giant out of that wall. Cool idea, right?
Problem was, the module writer didn't quite think through the what-ifs; and sure enough someone in there threw a Scatterspray-like spell that resulted in something like 300 near-simultaneous contacts with the walls...which meant 300-ish Giants all tried to appear at once in a 40x40' room.
What a mess.....
My guy and one other character, still up the stairs a bit, saw this floor-to-ceiling wall of gore, blood, broken furniture, and armour bits come pouring out of the room; on which we turned around, went back up the stairs, and kinda called it a day at that point...
It was quite some time before we all stopped laughing at the sheer absurdity of it!
I also reject your conclusion. Because it has nothing to do with your character not contributing, because if your character had made it into the room and that interaction had not happened... you would have contributed, right?
And I bet you contributed earlier in the module too right?
I didn't.
In that entire four hour session, my character did two things.
1) The GM of the session forced me into the bilge, where my character spent a good fifteen minutes swimming through sewage and being forced to throw pieces of naughty word at large pieces of naughty word by a crazed crewmate.
2) The literal final scene of the session.
As you can imagine, by the end of 4 hours of doing nothing except swimming in sewage (because I was forced to do that, I missed the second fight scene of the night, because I was too far away) I was pretty well done. I had made a one-shot character who was a duelist, lady's man and refined gentleman and got to do nothing with it. I had even, due to the system, thought through many of my flaws. Including a desire to not allow children to die.
So, in the very last scene, when a guy I didn't care about was threatening a kid and literally every person at the table, GM included, was telling me that my character should retreat and not do anything, because the tower was about to explode, I made a sacrifice play.
The only bright spot in that torturous four hours of being mocked for things this GM forced me to do, was seeing his face when I straight told him I could care less if this character lived or died, but that I was actually playing the character I had made, and that meant trying to save the kid.
And I still have zero desire to ever play that system, or another "ongoing story" game at a convention ever again. Because I never contributed anything, except disbelief when I actually played a character instead of following their "advice".
Again, that's hindsight. If you're in melee you always have the potential to contribute even though the dice might not let that potential become real. If you're stuck out of the combat it's on you to find other ways to (try to) contribute, again with no guarantee that what you try will amount to anything.
But that changes nothing of the perception after you have failed repeatedly. That is the point.
If I fail, I try again.
If I fail, I try again.
If I fail, I try again, but by this point I'm kind of getting sick and tired of failing.
If I fail, well, I guess I try again, nothing else to do except just skip my turn
If I fail, well, it is pointless to keep trying, but I might as well roll the dice and have a small spark of hope of succeeding.
Oh, the scene is over? Thank the gods, that was horrible, hopefully that never happens again.
Player: "Okay DM, since I can't get into the room, I'll just watch our rear"
DM: "Okay" Seven minutes passes
DM: Your turn
Player: Nothing coming?
DM: Nope
Player: Okay, I'll keep watching seven minutes passes
DM: Your Turn
Player: Still watching Seven minutes later
DM: Your Turn
Player: We still aren't done with combat? Can I... nope, can't get in, guess I'm staring at an empty hall way Seven minutes passes
Nearly a half an hour of the player... doing nothing. They could have just as easily said "Okay guys, I'm going to watch the rear until the situation changes, let me know if I can do anything, going to take a bio-break" and then walked out of the room.
Or that player could stay put, have his character watch the rear, and enjoy watching (and maybe laughing at!) what the others get up to in the meantime. Depends on the table and people, of course.
Yeah it does happen. And it tends to suck. I'm willing to make a bet that there was at least one joke about her "uselessly flailing" or something similiar, because that is what tends to happen in the games I've seen.
But, by the third turn of missing, most people don't find it funny anymore.
I also reject your conclusion. Because it has nothing to do with your character not contributing, because if your character had made it into the room and that interaction had not happened... you would have contributed, right?
And I bet you contributed earlier in the module too right?
Truth be told, I don't remember - I was probably running on three hours sleep in three days (a typical con state for me ). But that one room really did stand out.
In that entire four hour session, my character did two things.
1) The GM of the session forced me into the bilge, where my character spent a good fifteen minutes swimming through sewage and being forced to throw pieces of naughty word at large pieces of naughty word by a crazed crewmate.
As you can imagine, by the end of 4 hours of doing nothing except swimming in sewage (because I was forced to do that, I missed the second fight scene of the night, because I was too far away) I was pretty well done. I had made a one-shot character who was a duelist, lady's man and refined gentleman and got to do nothing with it. I had even, due to the system, thought through many of my flaws. Including a desire to not allow children to die.
So, in the very last scene, when a guy I didn't care about was threatening a kid and literally every person at the table, GM included, was telling me that my character should retreat and not do anything, because the tower was about to explode, I made a sacrifice play.
The only bright spot in that torturous four hours of being mocked for things this GM forced me to do, was seeing his face when I straight told him I could care less if this character lived or died, but that I was actually playing the character I had made, and that meant trying to save the kid.
And I still have zero desire to ever play that system, or another "ongoing story" game at a convention ever again. Because I never contributed anything, except disbelief when I actually played a character instead of following their "advice".
But that changes nothing of the perception after you have failed repeatedly. That is the point.
If I fail, I try again.
If I fail, I try again.
If I fail, I try again, but by this point I'm kind of getting sick and tired of failing.
If I fail, well, I guess I try again, nothing else to do except just skip my turn
If I fail, well, it is pointless to keep trying, but I might as well roll the dice and have a small spark of hope of succeeding.
Oh, the scene is over? Thank the gods, that was horrible, hopefully that never happens again.
Where I see this as simply part of the game sometimes.
Sometimes my repeated failures are just bad luck - it happens, and gets cancelled out by other times when I just can't miss. Just like a team on a losing streak, keep on bangin' and it'll come around eventually.
Sometimes my repeated failures are a hint I should be trying something different, or that what I'm trying for some reason isn't as easy as I think it is.
Also, I don't see a 'skipped turn' as nearly the horror that some seem to; and in no way do I equate it with your tale of spending most of a session in a pungent bilge.
Or that player could stay put, have his character watch the rear, and enjoy watching (and maybe laughing at!) what the others get up to in the meantime. Depends on the table and people, of course.
Yeah, and personally, I've never been able to easily watch other people doing something while I have nothing to do. And if all you consider engagement is being a spectator, then I'm sure you've done quite well in Major League Sports.
I was forced there by the captain. If I refused, I was not allowed on the boat, and would have not been able to particiapte in the rest of the adventure.
So I resigned to just ignore it, until it became a focus point.
The Crazy guy was a plot relevant NPC (betraying the party by automatically slitting the watchman's throat and escaping while we were attacked. Why was he up there while I was in the bilge? No idea), so even if I had decided to murder him instead of just trying to get the DM to move it along, I doubt it would have accomplished anything accept getting my character thrown overboard and me missing the rest of the adventure.
Thank you. I am proud of that one moment, because it seemed no one at that table had ever heard of someone not caring if their character lived or died in order to save a random NPC.
Where I see this as simply part of the game sometimes.
Sometimes my repeated failures are just bad luck - it happens, and gets cancelled out by other times when I just can't miss. Just like a team on a losing streak, keep on bangin' and it'll come around eventually.
Sometimes my repeated failures are a hint I should be trying something different, or that what I'm trying for some reason isn't as easy as I think it is.
Also, I don't see a 'skipped turn' as nearly the horror that some seem to; and in no way do I equate it with your tale of spending most of a session in a pungent bilge.
But where I'm pushing back here is this idea that repeated failures don't suck for the person involved.
Sometimes losing streaks just gnaw away at you, it makes you feel like the success you did get were flukes. And this is why some of us push for that mechanical parity. If we know that at least we are on as good a footing as possible, 16 in our main stat, proficiency, then at the very least we know we've gotten as good of a chance as possible. And I know that it doesn't prevent cold dice. Everyone knows that.
But if I can be nervous about my changes to succeed when I have a +6 to the roll, then it feels like a farce to even roll with a -1.
No, listen. The gnome is always the better choice if having the highest Intelligence possible is the goal. When you have a choice between a random number between 8 and 16 in the ability score you want or a random number between 12 to 20 in the ability score you want, the latter is always the better option to choose. Yes, it is possible that someone who chooses the former could end up with a higher score than someone who chose the latter, but the person who chose the latter still made the better choice with the information available to them because the latter has a lower minimum, a higher maximum, and a higher average. That the former got better luck on the random roll has nothing to do with the choice they made to take the worse option.
Sure it does. It makes the worse choice not as worse.
If the goal in making the choice is to have a higher Intelligence, then the value of making one choice over the other has to be judged on the achieved result. If you choose Gnome as a means of attaining high Intelligence but end up with a lower Intelligence than someone who chose Orc, then maybe it's not as good or important a choice as you thought it was. After all, the fact that the score is going to be determined randomly is part of the available information too.
I think "always a better choice regardless of the actual outcome" is an odd statement. I'm more inclined towards "usually a better choice". One time out of five the choice doesn't really matter. You'll never know what you would have rolled if you had picked a different race.
Sure it does. It makes the worse choice not as worse.
If the goal in making the choice is to have a higher Intelligence, then the value of making one choice over the other has to be judged on the achieved result. If you choose Gnome as a means of attaining high Intelligence but end up with a lower Intelligence than someone who chose Orc, then maybe it's not as good or important a choice as you thought it was. After all, the fact that the score is going to be determined randomly is part of the available information too.
I think "always a better choice regardless of the actual outcome" is an odd statement. I'm more inclined towards "usually a better choice". One time out of five the choice doesn't really matter. You'll never know what you would have rolled if you had picked a different race.
Do your dice roll different for different races? Do you tend to roll higher numbers when your character sheet says "Orc" instead of "Elf" or "Gnome"
See, this is one of those times when we need to pay attention to the fact that some factors don't effect others. Whether or not I pick Orc, Elf, or Gnome, that does not change my statistical chances of rolling anything.
Do your dice roll different for different races? Do you tend to roll higher numbers when your character sheet says "Orc" instead of "Elf" or "Gnome"
See, this is one of those times when we need to pay attention to the fact that some factors don't effect others. Whether or not I pick Orc, Elf, or Gnome, that does not change my statistical chances of rolling anything.
I'm not saying it does. The chances are the same no matter what you pick. The chance that you'll roll the same thing when you pick orc and when you pick elf, however, is very low.
Sure it does. It makes the worse choice not as worse.
If the goal in making the choice is to have a higher Intelligence, then the value of making one choice over the other has to be judged on the achieved result. If you choose Gnome as a means of attaining high Intelligence but end up with a lower Intelligence than someone who chose Orc, then maybe it's not as good or important a choice as you thought it was. After all, the fact that the score is going to be determined randomly is part of the available information too.
I think "always a better choice regardless of the actual outcome" is an odd statement. I'm more inclined towards "usually a better choice". One time out of five the choice doesn't really matter. You'll never know what you would have rolled if you had picked a different race.
But choosing gnome maximizes your chances of having a higher total intelligence. Again, it is possible to end up with a low roll in spite of this, or to end up with a high roll when choosing orc, but that doesn’t change the fact that the gnome is the better option to choose due to having better odds. Just like it’s better to use a Greatsword than a longsword in two hands, because it has a higher minimum, a higher maximum, and a higher average. No, you won’t get a better result on every individual trial, but over repeated trials, the option with the higher average will yield better results. If you want the best results when randomness is a factor, you choose the option with the better odds. This is not complicated and I am baffled that you don’t seem to understand this.
