D&D 5E Why I Am Starting to Prefer 4d6 Drop the Lowest Over the Default Array.

Bradley Hindman said:

If you want to compare my hits with my superior friends hits, it will depend on AC. But, if I have even chances to hit with each attack, I hit 5 times for every six that my superior friend hits. Maybe I am just an optimist, but that just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

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It's not. It primarily affects players who like to look at each other's character sheets and talk about how big their bonuses are. It's not something that has a large impact on play; the impact of stat variance on play is utterly dwarfed by the effects of player skill.

An Int 11 wizard leveraging Wall of Force and True Polymorph is orders of magnitude more useful than an Int 22(?) wizard casting Chromatic Orb IX. (Yes, I really saw that happen, over and over again. The pain of having to watch a putatively Int 20+(ish?) wizard behave like an Int 6 munchkin is one of the major factors that led me to quit that group.)

Hemlock said:

If anyone is curious, here is an implementation of OOFTA's algorithm as described above: https://repl.it/I9Sd/1 Just hit the Run button.

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Okay, did a little number crunching. Converting the actual probabilities to point values, you get something like

| 3 -> -3
| 4 -> -2
| 5 -> -1
| 6 -> 0
| 7 -> 1
| 8 -> 3
| 9 -> 5
| 10 -> 8
| 11 -> 12
| 12 -> 16
| 13 -> 20
| 14 -> 25
| 15 -> 28
| 16 -> 30
| 17 -> 32
| 18 -> 33

Standard array totals to an even 100 with these values, which is neat. Average works out to about 103.8 -- still off, but by a lot less (still trying to track down where the error comes from, but I'd guess it's just the rounding*). I zeroed it at 6, which I happen to like as a starting point better than 8, but obviously that's just personal preference; you can zero it anywhere. If I used this for actual point buy, I would not allow people to buy beyond 15 or 16, because 18s are surprisingly "cheap".

*EDIT: It's not the rounding. I just threw the raw probabilities into my script to see what would happen and it's still off (316.95 vs 328.85). The standard array just doesn't quite line up with the probabilities, I guess.

Hemlock said:

It's not. It primarily affects players who like to look at each other's character sheets and talk about how big their bonuses are. It's not something that has a large impact on play; the impact of stat variance on play is utterly dwarfed by the effects of player skill.

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All the same, if you can eliminate one source of potential discomfort, why not do it? Especially when it gives you an excuse to do lovely, lovely math!

Bradley Hindman said:

While I fully recognize that this is a common viewpoint that it often goes along with the race to the ability cap (spend every ASI on the primary stat until 20 is reached), I have never understood the thinking. If my fighter has a 16 STR and yours has a 20 STR, there is a "measly" +2 difference between our attack bonus. Why do I say measly? A +2 difference means means that I miss 1 out every 10 melee attacks because of my 'inferiority'. In a typical gaming session, (5 rounds per combat, 4 combats per session) I might make 20 attacks total. My inferiority means I missed twice due to my low Strength. That's once every other combat. (Of course higher level fighters attack more often . . . ).

If you want to compare my hits with my superior friends hits, it will depend on AC. But, if I have even chances to hit with each attack, I hit 5 times for every six that my superior friend hits. Maybe I am just an optimist, but that just doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

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It could also be 16+ 2 feats vs 20 strength thats fine. In the case I saw it was a potato with 12 strength in heavy armor being 5 foot slower dealing 1d6+1 damage (4.5 average) combined with another player also being a potato that resulted in 3/5 deaths in a medium encounter.

TheCosmicKid said:

All the same, if you can eliminate one source of potential discomfort, why not do it? Especially when it gives you an excuse to do lovely, lovely math!

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"Why not?" => "because it costs too much." Point buy introduces more problems than it solves in my opinion. It exacerbates bothersome anticorrelations between attributes (smart guys are rarely strong, and strong guys are rarely smart, instead of them being independent of each other as they should be) and confines play to a very narrow section of attribute space. The vast majority of interesting characters cannot be created under point buy. You can NEVER have an Int 18 Raistlin, for example; and you can never have an Int 7 Giuseppe Zengara.

It's like playing a campaign where all PCs are required to be exactly 5'6" and have exactly one sibling, always of the opposite sex and either two years older or two years younger than the PC.

With point buy, you lose too much fun and variety for too little gain. That's why not.

YMMV, etc.

Hemlock said:

It's not. It primarily affects players who like to look at each other's character sheets and talk about how big their bonuses are. It's not something that has a large impact on play; the impact of stat variance on play is utterly dwarfed by the effects of player skill.

An Int 11 wizard leveraging Wall of Force and True Polymorph is orders of magnitude more useful than an Int 22(?) wizard casting Chromatic Orb IX. (Yes, I really saw that happen, over and over again. The pain of having to watch a putatively Int 20+(ish?) wizard behave like an Int 6 munchkin is one of the major factors that led me to quit that group.)

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I have seen wizards waste all there spells on misty step, shield, fly etc while spamming firebolts.

Personally, I've come to hate rolling for stats due to two issues that always seem to occur: a) disparity between characters, and b) an incredible amount of recurring "luck" :ahem: on the part of some people's stats. However, I do like the way that randomly generated stats can prompt creativity and stretching people's ideas for a character.

So, the next time I run D&D I plan on using a method for stat generation that I first heard here (I wish I could remember who to give credit to). The theory goes like this. Lets start with straight 3d6, in order. You've got 18 slots for dice (3x6). Now if probability worked the way people think/wish it does, then everybody rolling 3d6 should roll 3 1's, 3 2's, 3 3's, etc. Everyone would have 63 points distributed randomly amongst their stats. Dice won't do that for you, but cards can. Take all the playing cards from Ace to 6 from three suits of a deck of cards, and shuffle and deal them out in groups of three and there you go.

Now, 4d6 drop the lowest has an average value of about 12.24. Multiply by 6 stats and you get about 73.44 points....so if we can squeeze out around ten more points, we should get the same kind of results. So, take that set of cards and replace the 1's with the 3, 4, and 5* of the remaining suit and that gets you pretty close. Again, shuffle and deal them out in groups of three. If you want to be generous, let the player swap one pair of cards after dealing. I've tried it a bunch of times, and with the swap you can almost always get at least one really good score.


* 3, 4, 5 gives you 9 additional points
4, 5, 6 gives you 12
3, 4, 6 gives you 10 spot on, but a higher chance of seeing a "rolled" 18
If you have more than one deck of cards, you can replace them with all 4's or 5's, but you can lose some variety in the scores that way.

Hemlock said:

Point buy introduces more problems than it solves in my opinion.

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What about rolling with normalization measures? [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] just described another one.

Point buy is a bit like Vanilla, yes. But lots of people like Vanilla, especially if they can only chose one flavour...

The reason most people have moved away from various more random methods e.g. 4d6 drop lowest, is pretty simple...

Most players these days, favour long-lasting PC's. As such, they tend to dislike too many things that appear 'un-balanced', as far as how their PC stacks up in the Team. So being the PC with much higher stats might be great for that person, but the other players can't help but get envious. Likewise, most people really feel aggrieved if they are forced to play a PC whose stats are 'inferior' to the rest, even if to others it might not look like a big deal.

So point buy at least ensures that everyone has exactly the same chance to have the stats and character that they want - it removes any random chance that could lead to resentment, and places the decisions firmly on the individual player. The DM can always change the exact point-buy rules, if people want to play classes that are hard to do well with regular point buy. It's impossible to use a dice-rolling method, even if you add rules like "throw them away if they are below various threshholds", and get the same result - by definition, if the method is random, some will "win" and some will "lose". How many players are going to enjoy playing with one arm already tied behind their back, especially if it's a long-running campaign? One-shots, deadly 'old school' campaigns, etc - IMO these are where most people are more comfortable with random generation of stats.

Hemlock said:

"Why not?" => "because it costs too much." Point buy introduces more problems than it solves in my opinion. It exacerbates bothersome anticorrelations between attributes (smart guys are rarely strong, and strong guys are rarely smart, instead of them being independent of each other as they should be) and confines play to a very narrow section of attribute space. The vast majority of interesting characters cannot be created under point buy. You can NEVER have an Int 18 Raistlin, for example; and you can never have an Int 7 Giuseppe Zengara.

It's like playing a campaign where all PCs are required to be exactly 5'6" and have exactly one sibling, always of the opposite sex and either two years older or two years younger than the PC.

With point buy, you lose too much fun and variety for too little gain. That's why not.

YMMV, etc.

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If it makes you feel better I tend to make my sorcerers both weak and dumb...

Question: Did @diaglo already pop in here and say "3d6 in order"?

Did he also add "Str Int Wis Dex Con Cha"?

If not, I do so on his behalf.

Seriously, though. If the game is balanced for lower stats, then why not try some lower stats?

WotC teased the "meat grinder" rules for their upcoming Chult game. Here's all you need for that:

Roll using the above method. Caveat: you must have at least a 9 (or 8?) in the 'prime stats' (the one that determines eligibility for multi-classing) of the class you wish to be.

If you hit 0 HP, you die.

If you die, re-roll using the above method. XD