D&D 4E How Badly Do Randomly Rolled Stats Affect 4E Math?

[ourchair]

Are the stat rolls being observed by the DM?

All and I mean ALL rolls are observed by me. I never ever let people roll without me.

I'm not saying it is the case here, but I've noticed that a lot of players used to quietly apply all sorts of 'common law house rules' or 'that roll didn't count' rationalizations when it came to stat rolling before point buy was widely accepted. If everyone has awesome stats and nobody has an average character or a stinker, then dice rolls might need to be policed (with the DM helping out someone sad that they rolled a stinker [not that terrible characters can't be the most fun characters]).

I don't let player argue over rolls, simply because I police rolling strongly. I empty my dice tin and then let people roll in there. No cocking, no slamming, no nuthin.

I do also force players to reroll if a significant majority of players are of equal power level. So in the case of my games, I calibrate a narrow power margin, such as in a game where players got a +9, a +10 and a +11, the fourth player must re-roll until she got one of those numbers.

In any case, I'm not trying to figure out how dice math works, or how much a + makes a difference from the base stats, or whether or not I should be throwing challenging encounters are, or what constitutes balance. I know well enough when I want to throw something crazy at them (I made a mixed party of level 2/3 fight a level 12 lamia.)

I'm trying to figure out if there's a mathematically reliable way of computing 'challenging' based on the +s rating as expressed in creature level and encounter level.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it really depends on a few factors, plus just how (un)lucky everyone is.

I think stats are somewhat more important than some people make them out to be, and a LOT more important in 4e than in AD&D on the whole. A character really aught to manage at least a 14 before racial adjustments in their prime req. (16 after), as below that you're definitely falling under the curve. What you have to remember though is a 16 attack stat is normally compensated for by a high secondary and also higher values in other stats. A character with one 16 after adjustments and a bunch of average numbers WILL be having issues with qualifying for feats etc. Likewise the one that ends up with a bunch of high scores will have some appreciable leeway.

Now, if your players are casual and none of them are optimizing their characters much at all then it probably rarely turns into an issue (only if someone rolls REALLY well or horribly). Even then its relative, the whole party could have poor scores and then its back to so what. If you get a player that is applying a decent amount of optimization to a character that's above average though once you get into the higher levels they may well enjoy some more significant advantages. Its just that progression was designed around trade offs that are mostly driven by ability scores, so if you have all high scores you can stack up some feats (especially in epic but somewhat in paragon) that weren't really ever intended to be possible for the same character to get at once.

Now, with a whole party of somewhat above average characters like the OP is talking about it shouldn't be a big issue. Even if the whole party is measurably stronger it just means they may need to face a level + 4 or level + 5 encounter to get the same challenge. Given that the game really pretty much just scales everything as you go that shouldn't even really be too noticeable to the players.

Personally I think it saves some grief to go with point build characters but whichever way its done the game will still work OK.

 

[Gradine]

My biggest problem with the point buy as is is that you only get to have one stat below 10 and none below 8. Low stats are a thing of the past, which means that all the fun of overcoming (or role-playing) bad stats is gone too. It's not a major thing but it's disappointing nonetheless.

Regardless, I don't foresee many problems with balance at all. With the point buy it's possible to have a 17 and a 16 before racial mods (no 18 and 16 pre-race though), which is rare enough with the 4d6 drop lowest method. Unless players are being quite judicious with their rolling, I doubt you'll see characters exceptionally stronger than the norm (though their tertiary stat will likely be higher, meaning your potential weak defense is a little bit stronger, but that's probably it). You might have characters generally worse off than the norm though, but that's rare too.

 

[sigfile]

My biggest problem with the point buy as is is that you only get to have one stat below 10 and none below 8. Low stats are a thing of the past, which means that all the fun of overcoming (or role-playing) bad stats is gone too. It's not a major thing but it's disappointing nonetheless.

So... play it down a bit. The hard number represents a composite. Someone with an INT of 8 may be a complete numbskull that just happens to know absolutely every in-and-out of the history and methodology of Waterdhavian pottery crafting. A character with a DEX of 8 might be a clumsy oaf, but he's not a butterfingers when it comes to holding on to his weapon during a fight.

Really, that minimum 8 is just there to prevent outrageous min-maxing. The fun side of low stats is still there for the having.

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

I'm trying to figure out if there's a mathematically reliable way of computing 'challenging' based on the +s rating as expressed in creature level and encounter level.

Chance To Hit (%) = ( ( ( 10.5 + to hit mods ) - defense ) * 5 ) + 50

PCs should hit 60–75% of the time to keep players happy.

Increasing monster accuracy and damage increases the challenge of staying alive.

I personally like to have monsters hit 60-75% of the time and do enough damage to take an average creature of their level to 0hp in 4-6 hits.

Meandering explanation that may or may not make things easier to understand follows:
To easily estimate a PC's chance to hit, just count how many points the expected result of their roll to hit is above or below the target defense. Each point above adds 5% to their chance to hit, while each point below substracts 5%. If the numbers are equal it is a coin flip.

Example: Melech, a 7th-level tiefling wizard, attempts to hit three enemies with fireball, an Intelligence vs. Reflex attack. Hit attack roll against each target gets a +10 bonus, which includes +3 for one-half his level, his +5 Intelligence modifier, the +1 feat bonus from Hellfire Blood, and the +1 enhancement bonus from his +1 wand of witchfire. He could add a +2 bonus from his Wand of Accuracy class feature against one of his targets and a +1 racial bonus against any bloodied targets from his Bloodhunt racial trait. [Editor's Note: This is from the PHB and worked--if I recall--before the recent tiefling rules updates. It is late here and I have quaffed a sufficient amount of quality wine tonight. I'll edit as I see corrections in the thread late tomorrow. ;-)]

So we expect Melech's roll to result in 20.5 (the expected value of rolling a d20 is 10.5), ignoring the conditional bonuses for the moment.

If Melech is trying to hit three Ogre Ironclads (Level 9 Soldier, MM3) he might be in trouble. They have Reflex 21, so trying to hit them is slightly worse than a coin flip (only 47.5% chance to hit). It's just slightly better if he uses his Wand of Accuracy (57.5%) or one of them is bloodied (52.5%). If he uses Wand of Accuracy against a bloodied target Melech's chance to hit is 62.5%.

IMHO, my player's are happiest if they miss no more than once every 4-6 turns, which is about a 60-75% chance to hit their target. If I'm playing fair, by my personal definition, my monsters will hit that often as well. Also IMHO, both sides should be doing damage to take an average creature of their level down in 4-6 rounds.

[Editor's note: I don't think I have ever used a monster stat block as printed, except for one time I picked up a published adventure cold to run for a pick-up session. Actually, even then I dropped monster HP and defenses and increased accuracy and damage. So... what was my point? Sorry.]

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

Just realized I didn't define "enough damage to take an average creature of their level to 0hp in 4-6 hits."

An exercise left to the reader. Ha! I'm off to bed.

 

[Garthanos]

My biggest problem with the point buy as is is that you only get to have one stat below 10 and none below 8. Low stats are a thing of the past, which means that all the fun of overcoming (or role-playing) bad stats is gone too.

Somebody mentioned an idea they were at some level suggesting a Jockster (like from Xena) character he was a fighter - skinned as entirely incompetent but lucky.

A cleave might be an over extreme wind up which hits somebody you weren't aiming at and making the intended attack only a few points of damage.
another time that cleave is an attack which hits sloppily with flat of the blade but manages to smash there weapon into harming an enemy adjacent to them or that cleave is sometimes an attack that resoundingly misses a first target and as you spin through your excessive over stroke you smash in to a hapless second guy... surprising you and him, knocking him in to a third guy next to him

I just like cleave.

Make him a hybrid warlord / fighter and you can get his infuriated enemies to chase him in to his allies blades ;p

How your powers work are not really described ... just an explanation of what they might look like.


The numbers even that 8 only tells what mechanical effect the attribute has ... a hero with an impairment
is classically compensated with luck... admitted in the above example I made the impairment a direct
incompetence of skill fully compensated by luck.. But if the impairment is in another arena entirely
they aren't nearly so compensated. An 8 strength trying athletics will fail often enough that
his lucky successes only require luck skinning much less frequently.

 

[Garthanos]

I don't think balance is evenly-matched fights.

Where exactly is this mythical text recommending all encounters match the level of
the party? Or have you a different exotic definition of that too. It certainly sounds like an edition
war straw man diatribe to me.

Level is a tool which lets the dm know how challenging or impossible an encounter is likely to be.
Balance allows character level to actually have meaning and be used for that purpose. (its not perfect
still possible for instance to have PCs with no ranged capability and make them effectively
lower level against some enemies).

If characters of the same level are likely to have very greatly diverging ability then balance is off
In part because one characters potency doesn't necessarily make the whole group will be able to cope
with the enemy that can challenge him and it is much much harder or maybe even impossible
for collectively to make reasonable choices about which encounter to engage. (no not
even if you tell them the levels explicitly... because they have been left with a p-poor measure
of there own capability) and if balance is off with the monsters say random hit points resulting
in some level 7 encounters being very easy and others to be 8 x as difficult then that just
compounded the problem.

Basically level loses its meaning and you might as well toss them and play some other game
.(levels with meaning are feature of D&D not a problem)

So balance is important for the very reason you want to let players have choices
because it gives them a tool to base those choices on.

(I don't think we are even addressing the OP issues his PCs were too consistently
too powerful) and expecting level +0 to be challenging so we are just diverging
the thread unnecessarily... his answer was proably made post 4 or 5 by
somebody saying adjust the levels of enemies up a notch or two and move along.

 

[LostSoul]

Where exactly is this mythical text recommending all encounters match the level of the party? Or have you a different exotic definition of that too. It certainly sounds like an edition
war straw man diatribe to me.

I am a big fan of 4E, but let me tell you:

ENCOUNTER LEVEL
A standard encounter should challenge a typical group of characters but not overwhelm them. The characters should prevail if they haven't depleted their daily resources or had a streak of bad luck. An encounter that's the same level as the party, or one level higher, falls in this standard range of difficulty.

DMG, page 56​

If characters of the same level are likely to have very greatly diverging ability then balance is off

My point is that rolling for stats won't make it so the optimal choice is always "Let the Rogue do it". When I talk about balance I am talking about the choices the players have to make. The Fighter may be a powerhouse but without arcane support he might as well stay home!

However, my method of rolling for stats is such: Roll 3d6 in order, bump all results lower than 8 to 8, and change one stat to a 16.

 

[babinro]

As far as I'm concerned, rolled stats can only hurt a character in 4e. You really want to roll at least one stat 16 or higher, the odds of this aren't the greatest in my experience. A character who rolls less will likely lose out on some of the fun due to added misses, especially if they don't optimize their hit rolls. If you ask me, rolling your stats is probably akin to 'hard mode'.

Sure, you have the chance of a player getting 2 or so 18's...but that player will hardly wreck the game. Their secondary effects will simply be a little more potent than intended (push 4 squares instead of the expected 3 or 2) and defenses be slightly better as well. From a metagaming standpoint, I would imagine light armored PC could get pretty huge defenses by having their armor stat match their attack stat. That is probably the worst you'd see though.

It will be a greater challenge for the DM as well, as monsters will challenge some characters far more than others seeing as they are built around expected stats. This isn't something that will ruin the game, it is more something that would probably lead to some PC's having to adjust their tactics accordingly. A defender with poor stats might only try to defend against one target at a time instead of trying to lock down multiples in order to stay alive.