D&D 5E Rolled character stats higher than point buy?

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yes, it does. Perhaps I haven't made clear why it follows, but it follows.

You've agreed that the characters that are played are the ones that tend to be above average.

The question becomes what defines 'average'. I'm arguing that average is defined by the table expectation of what a 'good character' looks like, which is going to be circularly defined by being 'above average', thus creating a feedback loop.

Suppose you are playing 3d6 straight up, then average is above an average score of 10.5. A character then with mostly 12's and 13's is an above average character, and players at that table will then have the expectation that a player ought to play that character rather than throwing it away or rerolling it. Suppose that group however tires of the randomness in 3d6 straight up, and decides to play 4d6 drop the lowest. This initially works better. There are fewer players with unplayable characters, fewer requests for do overs, and so forth. But you'll still have the problem that one guy in the group got the character with the equivalent of like 46 point buy, and you are playing a character with the equivalent of 15 point buy - perfectly normal results for something as random as 4d6 drop the lowest. As more and more players begin to find playing with higher stat characters normal, the ones that are left out of the goodness feel worse and worse about their substandard characters - even if a year or two before they would have been mostly content. That's because a year or two before, a character with no 16's was normal. But now, most players have the expectation of a higher stat array.

So what tends to happen is when a player rolls up a new character, if his scores are now mostly 13s or less, the rest of the group (and the DM in particular) takes pity on him and says, "Dude, that's just bad luck. Have a do over." And the more emergency do over's you have to call for, the more the group starts thinking, "Gee, this 4d6 drop the lowest method isn't working out." Because whenever you allow do over's in your preferred gambling method, it tends to create cognitive dissonance. The method no longer feels as fair, and in particular I would argue that do overs are attacking the illusionism that makes dice rolling fun for everyone. So they come up with a new rule that they agree is fair and everyone should live by, like say "4d6, drop the lowest, but reroll the ones." And then, the process repeats itself, because the new method generates higher averages and with it higher expectations about what a good character actually is.

Looking back, I see that process either playing out or had already played out and reached some sort of extreme that produced such high results that, along with a bit of judicious cheating, no rerolls were ever asked for in just about every group I was involved with that used dice rolling.

Let's break this argument down to its abstract logical form.

As I perceive your most recent argument, you're arguing that A => B. (Player jealousy leads to played characters being above average.) A & B => C. (Escalating spirals.)

I acknowledge that B. Not because A, but because Darwin.

!A & B !=> C.

In the post that I took exception with, you simply stated that B => C. That doesn't hold without your hidden assumption, A, which I don't share.

I've been away from (A)D&D for a good couple of decades until recently, so I'm not contradicting your observation that A (player jealousy drives escalating stats) at your table. I haven't seen any sign of A so far though, nor is it plausible to me that you can't hold very firmly to a baseline by grounding the game in the reality of what the stats actually mean. In short, I don't believe that it is in any way impossible to impress upon players that a 13 Str is rather high compared to most people, e.g. by requiring them to generate five NPCs on 3d6-in-order (donated to the DM for future usage) for every new PC generated on 4d6-drop-lowest. You're asserting an impossibility which looks prima facie non-impossible to me, and which does not seem to be impossible in practice.

A year in to 5E, and my players are still rolling 4d6 drop lowest exactly per PHB (sometimes in front of me, sometimes between sessions--I don't care), and some of them are using point buy, and the stat distributions look mathematically plausible with no evidence of cheating (I wouldn't tolerate cheaters anyway), and about half the rolled 18s that I know about were rolled in front of me. I see no evidence of creeping "ever-more-elaborate dice rituals" that drive averages continually upwards, as you've hypothesized. But I have observed that characters which are played for months at a time usually appear to be in the top 50% of what you'd expect from 4d6 drop lowest, and that neither surprises nor disturbs me.

If I roll six times on BrockJones.com and get:

9 15 9 17 8 12
17 10 9 10 14 11
13 15 14 16 7 13
9 13 13 14 15 10
15 12 9 9 16 14
10 13 10 12 7 11

and then I realize that row #6 doesn't look like most PCs that have been played at my table (he does look like two PCs, one of whom didn't get much screen time), that doesn't bother me.

 

[Celebrim]

I've been away from (A)D&D for a good couple of decades until recently, so I'm not contradicting your observation that A (player jealousy drives escalating stats) at your table. I haven't seen any sign of A so far though, nor is it plausible to me that you can't hold very firmly to a baseline by grounding the game in the reality of what the stats actually mean. In short, I don't believe that it is in any way impossible to impress upon players that a 13 Str is rather high compared to most people...

First, players in the long run won't compare themselves to 'most people'. They will compare themselves to other PC's.

Secondly, in practice it's a rare DM that manages to make most NPC's that the players actually interact with have stat arrays that reflect most people. In theory, there are lots of NPC's in the world were their every ability score is 10 or less. But most of those NPC's' are drinking buddies of Sir Not Appearing in this Story. The vast majority of NPC's that PCs will actually meet, will have above average stats because for the most part NPCs with uniformly bad stats serve no good role at the table - they aren't good foils, they aren't good villains, they aren't good allies, they aren't good mentors, and after 1st level or so they aren't even good mooks. They aren't even good dependents, though I've rarely seen dependents used as a concept in D&D. So theoretical demographics are irrelevant to play experience or a player's perception of the NPC.

A funny example of this is a group I was in (not as the DM) had adopted the dice rolling method from UA meant to generate high level NPC's as a PC generation method - you know, the one that had as much as 9d6 take 3 on the table. And with a small amount of cheating (or so I assume), this generated stats for most PC's that were 16+, with 3-5 18's per player, depending on their tolerance for being below average or resistance to cheating. And the DM simply responded by making all important NPC's have 18's in all important abilities at well, in order to keep up the challenge against such demigods. Average had come to mean '18'.

A year in to 5E...

And right off the bat, I'm telling you this is too short of an experimental period. You've not had time for the situation to evolve. You probably have only had a handful of PC deaths during that period. There have been comparatively few replacement characters. There has been very little time for players to start comparing their characters to other characters. So of course I wouldn't expect to see much evolution yet. The cycle I'm discussing took like 10 years to fully develop, with about 3 year intervals in between chargen methods. Talk to me in 3-5 years.

But I have observed that characters which are played for months at a time usually appear to be in the top 50% of what you'd expect from 4d6 drop lowest, and that neither surprises nor disturbs me.

So you are in the first stage, as PC's that are below average are slowly winnowed out of play, leading to higher and higher expectations over time. Dissatisfaction sets in as players replace characters and feel that their luck is still bad, leading you to either allowing more and more rerolls (or retired characters) or else developing dice rituals intended to prevent the need for rerolls. But either is functionally the same thing, since 'ad hoc rerolls' may be mentally rewritten off, but are in practice typically a big part of the actual chargen method.

Out of curiousity, how often to players create replacement characters or retire characters? Your comment about characters not getting much screen time is suggestive.

If I roll six times on BrockJones.com and get:

9 15 9 17 8 12
17 10 9 10 14 11
13 15 14 16 7 13
9 13 13 14 15 10
15 12 9 9 16 14
10 13 10 12 7 11

and then I realize that row #6 doesn't look like most PCs that have been played at my table (he does look like two PCs, one of whom didn't get much screen time), that doesn't bother me.

No, of course not. Because, first you don't have to play that character, and be this isn't the second or third time you've been saddled with a character like that while 'Bob' is playing that shiny character with two 18's the whole time. And if not you, maybe you are exceptionally lacking in jealousy and pride, then some other player.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Well, yes. But you know that they're lying. No one has ever enjoyed playing a gnome. No one.
First Rule of the Internet- You're not going to change anyone's mind.
Second Rule of the Internet- Never surrender, never retreat.
Third Rule of the Internet- There are only two types of people commenting, those that are right and agree with you, and gnomes.

Ever stabbed yourself with a d4? That's the Pointy Hat cantrip. It's a special PHB gnome feature that's only visible via darkvision. Be careful what you say. Gnomes are everywhere, and they're watching you.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And right off the bat, I'm telling you this is too short of an experimental period. You've not had time for the situation to evolve. You probably have only had a handful of PC deaths during that period. There have been comparatively few replacement characters. There has been very little time for players to start comparing their characters to other characters. So of course I wouldn't expect to see much evolution yet. The cycle I'm discussing took like 10 years to fully develop, with about 3 year intervals in between chargen methods. Talk to me in 3-5 years.

Okay, but then I'll point out that you haven't been playing 5E for 3-5 years yet either. Color me skeptical, especially given 5E's bounded accuracy and the continuing relevance of mooks at higher levels. I've had 2nd and 3rd level PCs and NPCs alongside 14th level PCs and NPCs and yet had no issues (from a gameplay standpoint--obviously there were tactical issues to be solved, but the low-level (N)PCs had an impact). If a 10-level disparity doesn't pressure me into bumping all the NPCs up a few levels, why should I believe that a 4-point stat disparity would pressure me into cheating up the NPC stats to all 18s? Why would I cease to believe that a 16 Int NPC wizard is actually pretty impressively smart?

In short, I don't buy your assertion that PCs in 5E don't interact with NPCs who have normal-ish stats. If it were true, there would have been some evidence before now. I think you're conflating 5E with other games with different dynamics.

Out of curiousity, how often to players create replacement characters or retire characters? Your comment about characters not getting much screen time is suggestive.

I use character trees (old 2nd edition Darksun-style rules). The PC I alluded to previously with mediocre stats was a converted NPC hobgoblin who had bog-standard hobgoblin stats straight out of the MM, but because of events had accumulated several levels of dragons sorcerer. He didn't get that much play time, in part because I frankly told the player that playing a sorcerer with a Charisma of 9(!) was definitely playing D&D on "hard mode", and he wound up being unsatisfied with how well his spells worked in practice (wound up relying a lot on Magic Missile because it's not Charisma-dependent). Most of his play time went toward his point-buy death cleric instead, who had stats distributed as evenly as he could make them: 13 12 13 12 13 12 or something close to that, plus whatever he gained from ASIs (8th level or so by the time he died for the last time).

That particular player has had more deaths and therefore more characters per campaign than anyone else in the past year (year and a half, I guess) of play. In the new campaign started several weeks ago he's already abandoned one PC (Winged Tiefling with awesome stats, BTW, at least one 18, which became a Dex 20 due to racial bonus) in favor of another with pretty nice stats (hill dwarf cleric with a natural 17, rolled in front of me BTW--I'm not sure where he allocated that but presumably to Wisdom for Wis 18) who promptedly threw a Molotov cocktail at an orc when everyone else was being sneaky, and therefore got dismembered by the enraged orc and his buddy. He showed up to last night's session without having created a replacement PC so I slotted him in as an NPC. He and another player are simultaneously playing in a one-shot that lasted two sessions, and his 5th level white dragonborn paladin (decent rolls, natural 16 leading to 20 Str after dragonborn +2 Str and a +2 Str ASI) bit the dust thanks to HP depletion and some giant rats, following which the other PC went full-on stealth and managed to escape the dungeon without fighting anything else.

In short, there's one player who's probably had ten PCs so far, but with no sign of power creep (or he would have kept his high-stats Winged Tiefling), and four other players (two regular, two occasional) who probably average two or three PCs per campaign each.

No, of course not. Because, first you don't have to play that character, and be this isn't the second or third time you've been saddled with a character like that while 'Bob' is playing that shiny character with two 18's the whole time. And if not you, maybe you are exceptionally lacking in jealousy and pride, then some other player.

Hypothesis: maybe this is the difference between our experiences--our respective attitudes may affect player behavior. If you as a DM are hyper-aware of what PC stats are, and you make a big deal of it in play, perhaps the players are more driven to optimize with stats? At my table it's more likely to be a big deal that someone just rolled a 34(!) on a Stealth check despite having only a 5 Dex, and therefore made it all the way across the rice paddy while stepping entirely in another PC's tracks and not disturbing a single particle of mud. This was achieved through a combination of luck (open-ended d20 roll: 20 on the first roll, then a reroll at +10 yielding 27, plus +10 for Pass Without Trace but -3 for having only Dex 5, total = 34). It was also a big deal when someone miffed his Intimidation check with an 8 (total) and yet still managed to intimidate both enemy bodyguards because they rolled a 5 and a 6 respectively on their Wisdom checks--turns out both guards were phobic of helmets. The players looooove that kind of thing, but it has very little to do with stats.

I'm honestly not sure if my players even know what each others' stats even are. I sure don't keep close track of them--if not for the fact that I have a good memory, I wouldn't even have been able to supply the data on stats that I've supplied. Maybe they are secretly raging with envy inside over the fact that someone has a higher stat than they do, but the closest I've seen to player jealousy/infighting was when the aforementioned Int 8 paladin (white dragonborn) and the Int (?) sorlock were fighting over who got to keep the Book of Six Seals (Tome of Intellect Enhancement) that the dragonborn paladin had found. He wanted to no longer be stupid, and the sorlock wanted it because... I'm not sure, maybe he just wanted to be smarter. Later on they found a Mace +1 and agreed that the sorlock got the book and the paladin got the mace. Then the paladin died so the sorlock got them both.

In short, no seething stat jealousy that I've seen anywhere.

Edit: And stats just don't seem to matter much at my table anyway, compared to other factors like tactics. There are relatively few situations I've seen as a DM where higher stats would have made a big difference to the outcome of play.

 

[Celebrim]

Okay, but then I'll point out that you haven't been playing 5E for 3-5 years yet either...In short, I don't buy your assertion that PCs in 5E don't interact with NPCs who have normal-ish stats. If it were true, there would have been some evidence before now. I think you're conflating 5E with other games with different dynamics.

Ok, I'll concede that point. I haven't run this social experiment with 5e before. I said this sort of tolerated cheating and dice rituals were a response to bad rules, and it is possible that 5e has fixed the rules sufficiently that these sorts of responses are no longer required. I'll be interested in hearing how things are going 3-5 years from now.

Edit: And stats just don't seem to matter much at my table anyway, compared to other factors like tactics. There are relatively few situations I've seen as a DM where higher stats would have made a big difference to the outcome of play.

I'm not sure how to evaluate that claim. To me stats make a very obvious huge difference. I don't have to call that out, and I'm not sure what I could do to suppress that fact consistently. I certainly don't go around trying to impress on people that their stats are inferior to NPCs or anything, but outcomes are very hard to avoid. The PC with 18 CON has A LOT more hit points than every other character in the group, and it's just obvious from the fact that he survives stuff that would have instantly killed many other party members. It's even more obvious when he survives 50 point hits that would leave most everyone else dead or struggling for life, and the cleric is like, "Hold on, I'm coming!", and he's like, "No, get someone else this round; I could actually survive another one of those." Now, I use point buy so there is no basis for jealousy in that, but if this was 3d6 straight up and everyone else lacked that 18, I figure that could be a problem. If you have some guy who honestly rolled up a normal mediocre guy, and you have someone that some how (honest or otherwise) came up with multiple 16+'s, it takes a very particular player to not start feeling he's irrelevant. As long as everyone is getting spot light and a chance to save the day, minor differences in character ability can be generally overlooked. But if they get too great, players often start feeling that they are just there to witness how great Mr. Awesome is.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Ok, I'll concede that point. I haven't run this social experiment with 5e before. I said this sort of tolerated cheating and dice rituals were a response to bad rules, and it is possible that 5e has fixed the rules sufficiently that these sorts of responses are no longer required. I'll be interested in hearing how things are going 3-5 years from now.



I'm not sure how to evaluate that claim. To me stats make a very obvious huge difference. I don't have to call that out, and I'm not sure what I could do to suppress that fact consistently. I certainly don't go around trying to impress on people that their stats are inferior to NPCs or anything, but outcomes are very hard to avoid. The PC with 18 CON has A LOT more hit points than every other character in the group, and it's just obvious from the fact that he survives stuff that would have instantly killed many other party members. It's even more obvious when he survives 50 point hits that would leave most everyone else dead or struggling for life, and the cleric is like, "Hold on, I'm coming!", and he's like, "No, get someone else this round; I could actually survive another one of those." Now, I use point buy so there is no basis for jealousy in that, but if this was 3d6 straight up and everyone else lacked that 18, I figure that could be a problem. If you have some guy who honestly rolled up a normal mediocre guy, and you have someone that some how (honest or otherwise) came up with multiple 16+'s, it takes a very particular player to not start feeling he's irrelevant. As long as everyone is getting spot light and a chance to save the day, minor differences in character ability can be generally overlooked. But if they get too great, players often start feeling that they are just there to witness how great Mr. Awesome is.

I haven't played much 5E yet, and all of the 5E I have played has been point buy, but given all I have read into the system in pursuit of 5E system mastery, for what it's worth I can honestly say that I would flat out refuse to play 5E with randomly generated stats unless there was an understanding that fudging/cheating would be tolerated.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm not sure how to evaluate that claim. To me stats make a very obvious huge difference. I don't have to call that out, and I'm not sure what I could do to suppress that fact consistently. I certainly don't go around trying to impress on people that their stats are inferior to NPCs or anything, but outcomes are very hard to avoid. The PC with 18 CON has A LOT more hit points than every other character in the group, and it's just obvious from the fact that he survives stuff that would have instantly killed many other party members. It's even more obvious when he survives 50 point hits that would leave most everyone else dead or struggling for life, and the cleric is like, "Hold on, I'm coming!", and he's like, "No, get someone else this round; I could actually survive another one of those." Now, I use point buy so there is no basis for jealousy in that, but if this was 3d6 straight up and everyone else lacked that 18, I figure that could be a problem. If you have some guy who honestly rolled up a normal mediocre guy, and you have someone that some how (honest or otherwise) came up with multiple 16+'s, it takes a very particular player to not start feeling he's irrelevant. As long as everyone is getting spot light and a chance to save the day, minor differences in character ability can be generally overlooked. But if they get too great, players often start feeling that they are just there to witness how great Mr. Awesome is.

My games are simultaneously combat-light and combat-as-war. I can honestly say I've never seen a fight play out with the football-like mentality I see in your example above. In point of fact, I think there have only been about 120 points of healing spells/abilities (i.e. not HD or long rest healing) in the past year and a half with these players, and 60 HP of that was the aforementioned dragonborn Paladin on a suicide mission who got eaten by giant rats yesterday.

Important factors in conflicts at my table tend to involve questions of who makes better decisions, rather than who has an extra 48 HP. Awareness of distance and range has been particularly important, and likewise the ability to accurately assess threats and when it's safe to engage vs. withdraw/flee.

Could it be that your observations on stat jealousy apply more to Combat As Sport games? Maybe only a subset of those.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

BTW, one of the cleverest things the 5E designers did was lowball point-buy. Now, even someone who just rolls a single 16 has something to be happy about, since he's "better" than even the theoretically-optimal point buy character. I wonder if the lowballed point buy could be partly responsible for the lack of concern I've witnessed or felt over 4d6d1 results. Just speculation though. Could be something else entirely like player psychology.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

BTW, one of the cleverest things the 5E designers did was lowball point-buy. Now, even someone who just rolls a single 16 has something to be happy about, since he's "better" than even the theoretically-optimal point buy character. I wonder if the lowballed point buy could be partly responsible for the lack of concern I've witnessed or felt over 4d6d1 results. Just speculation though. Could be something else entirely like player psychology.

4d6 strictly enforced, or 4d6 with fudging or cheating?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

4d6 strictly enforced, or 4d6 with fudging or cheating?

Strict, but with character trees per 2nd Edition rules. Most players have two or three PCs total. No fudging or cheating.

It helps that 5E has so many non-stat-dependent ways to shine.