D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats

[Maxperson]

Huh, point buy is now hovering at just over 40%, significantly more than any other option, the only one coming close is the "other" category. Even the mixed categories aren't even really that close.

Yup, that's spin apparently.

Sure is. In the context you set forth with the "rolling seems to be dying" post, it's all votes that involve any die rolling vs. all votes that don't include any die rolling at all. There are very, very few methods of "other" that don't involve rolling and many, many ways other than 4d6-L to roll, so nearly all of the other votes involve die rolling. The first page involves 4 "others" and 3 of those are alternatives to rolling. That makes the die rolling not dying vs. die rolling dying dynamic virtually a dead heat. And that's even with the suspicious super spike in array votes. Go extra accounts, go!

If you want to discuss other comparisons, I'd be more than happy to. Would you concede that rolling is nowhere near dying?

 

[Hriston]

Commoners can certainly become quasi-adventurers quickly enough:

- anyone else remember the days of hirelings and porters and other support crew that a party would bring into the field?
- anyone else use the old trope of having a merchant caravan (presumably staffed mostly by commoners) or a farm being attacked by monsters as a campaign or adventure hook?
- anyone else ever have their PC parties rescue a group of commoners from whatever peril and then have said commoners help out en route to safety?

And so on....

Lan-"should adventurers thus be called uncommoners?"-efan

Yes they can. In one of my current campaigns, a merchant's wife rescued from a hobgoblin prison turned out to be handy with a dagger she had hidden in her boot. To take her revenge on the hobgoblins for their mistreatment of her, she offered her services and a reward to the party rogue if he would take her on as an apprentice and allow her to join the party in another raid on the hobgoblins who had imprisoned her. She took quite a beating in the subsequent battle, and may eventually reconsider her choice and go back to being a merchant's wife, but for that brief moment she lived the life of an adventurer. If she decides to stay on, however, she'll need a hefty ASI before she gets to 1st level.

 

[Hussar]

Sure is. In the context you set forth with the "rolling seems to be dying" post, it's all votes that involve any die rolling vs. all votes that don't include any die rolling at all. There are very, very few methods of "other" that don't involve rolling and many, many ways other than 4d6-L to roll, so nearly all of the other votes involve die rolling. The first page involves 4 "others" and 3 of those are alternatives to rolling. That makes the die rolling not dying vs. die rolling dying dynamic virtually a dead heat. And that's even with the suspicious super spike in array votes. Go extra accounts, go!

Translation - the results don't fit with my internal narrative, so, people must by lying. Nice.

If you want to discuss other comparisons, I'd be more than happy to. Would you concede that rolling is nowhere near dying?

Hrm, in both polls, Point Buy is the clear winner over every other option. Even combined, die rolling just manages to tie, if you take every die rolling option together. Compared to how that poll would have gone ten years ago, yeah, I'll stick with the idea that die rolling seems to be going out of style.

/edit

I'm sorry, I'm wrong. The poll results of today pretty closely match polling results from 2005:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/poll.php?pollid=2870&do=showresults

Huh. Die rolling hasn't been the popular option, at least, not for a long, long time.

 

[Maxperson]

Translation - the results don't fit with my internal narrative, so, people must by lying. Nice.

Bzzt! No. I said that the results of the polls don't match your narrative even if they are lying. Translation: "If the results can't beat rolling even if people are lying, your narrative doesn't work."

Hrm, in both polls, Point Buy is the clear winner over every other option. Even combined, die rolling just manages to tie, if you take every die rolling option together. Compared to how that poll would have gone ten years ago, yeah, I'll stick with the idea that die rolling seems to be going out of style.

A tie is nowhere near "dying".

Huh. Die rolling hasn't been the popular option, at least, not for a long, long time.

So things haven't changed an iota in at least 12 years and it's "dying"?!?!? There's that spin again.

 

[Hussar]

Yup, you're right. It's not dying. It's just not terribly popular. I would have thought it was much more popular in the past, but, that's just my own confirmation bias.

 

[Maxperson]

Yup, you're right. It's not dying. It's just not terribly popular. I would have thought it was much more popular in the past, but, that's just my own confirmation bias.

It's as popular as all the rest. Rolling, according to the polls for the last 12 or more years, is just as popular as point/buy and array.

 

[Hussar]

What poll are you reading [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]? That last one I posted from 2005 pegged point by at 52% and die rolled at 37%. You do realize that means that point buy is more popular than any other option and more popular than all other options combined right? Because "other" doesn't necessarily mean die rolled. It could mean anything.

Same with the http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?598151-A-Proper-Ability-Score-Generation-Preference-Poll latest poll which has point buy over every other single option by about 2 or 3 to 1. The only options that come even close INCLUDE point buy. There are only two options that can be pure die rolling (and the Other option includes non-die rolling options, but, we'll ignore that) and it's still getting beaten out 42:24, darn near 2:1.

I'm sorry, but, I'm just not getting where you are getting your numbers from.

 

[Maxperson]

What poll are you reading [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]? That last one I posted from 2005 pegged point by at 52% and die rolled at 37%. You do realize that means that point buy is more popular than any other option and more popular than all other options combined right? Because "other" doesn't necessarily mean die rolled. It could mean anything.

Same with the http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?598151-A-Proper-Ability-Score-Generation-Preference-Poll latest poll which has point buy over every other single option by about 2 or 3 to 1. The only options that come even close INCLUDE point buy. There are only two options that can be pure die rolling (and the Other option includes non-die rolling options, but, we'll ignore that) and it's still getting beaten out 42:24, darn near 2:1.

I'm sorry, but, I'm just not getting where you are getting your numbers from.

I was just having a bit of fun. What those polls don't show, is popularity. There's no way to tell how many people are forced to use point buy and array because DM, or how many will opt for rolling, point buy or arrays in those poll questions that have multiple options. All we can tell is that rolling is offered in roughly the same number of games as it isn't offered. It's nowhere close to dying.

I also think your a bit off base with trying to compare it to anything prior to 2005. Prior to that, point buy and arrays were not really used/offered. They didn't really come into prominence 3e, so it's not really surprising that it took a few years to hit a balance point.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Bzzt! No. I said that the results of the polls don't match your narrative even if they are lying. Translation: "If the results can't beat rolling even if people are lying, your narrative doesn't work."

The bottom line is that even if a poll is perfectly conducted, representative, and shows a clear difference in popularity between two methodologies, it's not proof that the more popular methodology is superior - there can be a lot of confounding reasons for popularity - it's just the famed ad populum fallacy.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, for sure. I wasn't pointing out popularity as a proof of superiority. Not at all. Just something I was actually a bit surprised about. If you had asked me which would poll higher, I just assumed that die rolling was more popular. To me, it's pretty much the default way of playing.

But, apparently, that's shifted over the years. Considerably.