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

[Solvarn]

So having an 8 minimum Attribute shouldn't effect your roleplay. It just minimizes the mechanical penalty.

This is definitely true, particularly with feats like Melee Weapon Training.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yep, and some people who randomly roll really want an 18, so somehow they roll randomly until they roll an 18, and _then_ start rolling the rest of the array. And some people do 4d6 drop the lowest... roll until happy. Or...

All I'm saying is that in this case reality differs from math, and it's not cause gamers are 'lucky'.

Yeah, I have to agree. I ran a LOT of oD&D/1e/2e games and no matter how you slice and dice rolling up PCs people are always sucked into rationalizing a bit of fudging here and there. Players sit and 'play with the dice' and then decide the first good roll they get is the first roll, if they throw some bad dice and one is cocked they reroll them all and if the others are high they only reroll that one die, etc etc etc. I've seen every variation a hundred times.

Honestly though when you look at it the point of all that is that players want some control over what they're going to play. Its not a matter of (for the vast majority of players) cheating, its a matter of the flat out realization that a rotten stat array isn't that much fun. Its not that much fun to have all super high stats either, but being able to get that one number you really want so you can play the character you want to play is fun.

Which is ultimately why point buy just plain wins. Honestly all the 'alternate methods' in former editions were just codifications of a long term trend to make the game more fun and appealing by giving the players more control of the character. Luck is fun and all and we've all probably enjoyed playing some silly stat array that we rolled up (good and/or bad) but when you've played 100's of characters of all random sorts over the years generally what you probably want is to be able to create something you WANT to play vs Dwarf Fighter #42.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In older editions rolling was usually not so bad, because different characters needed different amount of good rolls.

sometimes your choices were playing a very powerfull fighter or a standard paladin. Point buy would have been very unfair back then, actually...

4e characters can be verypowerful without multiple very high stats... only a few classes can make really good use of extra stats... usually it is just upping damage a bit (not necessarily accuracy) and better all around defenses maybe...

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I did a hybrid method - roll 4d6 drop the lowest, and if you don't like your array, you can do point buy instead. Worked fine, and helped take away some of the MAD of the characters, who are all PH1 classes. As it turned out, the taclord, challadin and laser cleric all likes their rolls (none had an 18, though they all had a 17 as their high stat and the challadin had 2 of them). The wizard rolled fine, but liked his point buy stats better (gave him the group's only pre-racial 18), and the TW ranger rolled like pants, and likewise went point buy.

So, I agree with the above posters who said that point buy may be more beneficial, at least sometimes. I know that (as I stated before) that when I got a second chance to remake my 3.5 drow sorceror into an actual sorceror rather than a warlock (which is how I did her up back when we started prior to PH2), I ditched my rolled stats for point buy, despite the rolled stats giving me "more" bonuses, as point buy let me put those bonuses where they were more useful.

That said, my campaign was the first time my gaming group had made 4e characters from scratch (as opposed to "converting" from 3.5 and taking our rolled 3.5 stat arrays, which was the group's first 4e campaign and the one with the above mentioned drow sorceress), so we took rolling to be the norm. Now that I know otherwise, if I were to do it again I think I would use simply point buy and forget about rolling - especially given the better attribute management of the PH2 and PH3 classes.

 

[ourchair]

Wait, you punish players for rolling after other players? If I rolled great stats, say +11 total, but Steve also happened to roll +11 total two minutes ago, I'd have to reroll? (And most likely get much lower stats.)

That seems really...well, I'll wait for your reply and hope that I'm misunderstanding you.

No, no, no.

I meant that if a majority of the players have rolled up high stats, I automatically say that the next player CAN'T fall behind the power curve by saying he can reroll as many time as possible so that those with +10 awesomeness don't leave him or her in the dust.

In effect, if John rolls a +11 and Steve rolls a +11 and Michael rolls a +10, then you will be allowed to reroll until you get a +10 or +11 so that you're not left behind by their titanic attributes.

 

[Shin Okada]

Well, aside from ability score, various factors, including PC synergy, player rule knowledge, player skills, DM's skill, etec. affect on the strength of the party strength and if an encounter is challenging or not.

So I say, if you know well about the party and play member, with a slight compensation, you can always modify each encounters challenging to the party. And you would better do that anyway, even when using point-buy.

But the biggest problem is the power-level difference between PCs, and fairness.

Because of the bad rolls of stats, some player cannot play a certain build (say, needs several more than descent ability scores to meet the prerequisite for a feat), while others can. Because of the bad rolls of the stats, some player must continue using weaker character.

I have never used stats-rolling since the release of 3.0e (not 4e). Also, I have never used HP rolling in 3.Xe games, both as a player and a DM.

Many of my friends will quit the game if we try to adopt luck-dependent randomness on character creation and development. Playing a inferior character for months or even years, just because I rolled bad when making a character, is so painful and frustrating.

Of course, non of the members of your play group has problem on this, it will be fine.

 

[ourchair]

But the biggest problem is the power-level difference between PCs, and fairness.

Because of the bad rolls of stats, some player cannot play a certain build (say, needs several more than descent ability scores to meet the prerequisite for a feat), while others can. Because of the bad rolls of the stats, some player must continue using weaker character.

I have never used stats-rolling since the release of 3.0e (not 4e). Also, I have never used HP rolling in 3.Xe games, both as a player and a DM.

Many of my friends will quit the game if we try to adopt luck-dependent randomness on character creation and development. Playing a inferior character for months or even years, just because I rolled bad when making a character, is so painful and frustrating.

Of course, non of the members of your play group has problem on this, it will be fine.

[/QUOTE]I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say this in this thread, but that is not an issue because I deliberately prevent players from having disparate power levels when they generate characters so power difference between PCs is not an issue. I don't know why people keep bringing that up as if it's part of my question.

Well, aside from ability score, various factors, including PC synergy, player rule knowledge, player skills, DM's skill, etec. affect on the strength of the party strength and if an encounter is challenging or not.

So I say, if you know well about the party and play member, with a slight compensation, you can always modify each encounters challenging to the party. And you would better do that anyway, even when using point-buy.

Naturally.

I know HOW to make encounters more challenging or less challenging. I just want to know if there's a mathematical way to determine the sweet spot when a) stats are higher than normal and b) I don't want to play high and low on each encounter as a means of finding that out.

The PHB has very good (read: mathematically precise) guidelines for this for normal circumstances, but not higher than normal ones.

 

[Shin Okada]

I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say this in this thread, but that is not an issue because I deliberately prevent players from having disparate power levels when they generate characters so power difference between PCs is not an issue. I don't know why people keep bringing that up as if it's part of my question.

Well, mainly because even if you deliberately prevent prayers from having disparate power levels, there should be difference of power levels BETWEEN PLAYER CHARACTERS. The weakest PC in your party may be stronger than average PC created by point-buy, but that does not mean that the PC is not significantly weaker (or less flexible) comparing to the other PCs. That is a innate problem of introducing randomness into character creation and development.

What I am trying to say is, a party, in average, being weaker or stronger than assumed strength of certain level is not a big issue.

The power difference between PCs IS the problem of using random roll. In my experience, even when most of the members seem to be not protesting against it, that tend to cause, at least minor, mental frustration in a long term.

But again, if your players do notice it and yet OK with that, then go.

 

[renau1g]

In my opinion, 4e stats are a bad way to benchmark your roleplaying no matter what system you use in getting them. A 20 Str does not mean the same thing it did in other editions. It really just means you fight well. You have to suspend belief when you start talking about your main attributes being in the 20s by paragon tier. So having an 8 minimum Attribute shouldn't effect your roleplay. It just minimizes the mechanical penalty.

So playing a character with a 20 Int or one with 8 Int shouldn't affect you? Really? So someone below average intelligence or one of the smartest people in the land should speak the same, both use the same vocabulary, etc, etc...

Really?

 

[eamon]

No, no, no.

I meant that if a majority of the players have rolled up high stats, I automatically say that the next player CAN'T fall behind the power curve by saying he can reroll as many time as possible so that those with +10 awesomeness don't leave him or her in the dust.

In effect, if John rolls a +11 and Steve rolls a +11 and Michael rolls a +10, then you will be allowed to reroll until you get a +10 or +11 so that you're not left behind by their titanic attributes.

That's an exemplary attention to detail - I don't think it's necessary, but it certainly ensures that regardless of a bit of balance swing in character creation, you'll have a fair baseline.

However, you shouldn't balance by adding up total modifiers. There's a reason that going from 16 to 18 is more expensive than going from 10 to 12; they may both be a +1, but one is worth much more than the other.

I wrote a little program that randomly rolls up chars and computes their point-buy equivalent and a few other quality metrics (such as the highest bonus). Using the common rules (you need to end up with positive modifiers on average, at least a 14, etc) and a hack to account for stats lower than 8 or multiple 8's, the resultant picture is that rolled stats aren't very attractive, and those that are higher than 22 point buy are almost always so due to high off-stats which are not a balance issue either way (16/14/14/14/14/14 is hardly any better than 16/14/14/13/10/8).

Point buy tends to end up with more lop-sided stats as people buy a high primary and secondary and ignore the rest; rolled stats occasionally have extreme lows, lots of decent stats and more rarely very high stats.

And none of it really has much impact on balance; the game's very robust like that. General level of optimization is much, much more relevant.