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

[Maxperson]

That's not that different than the last method I was using (circa mid 1990's) before I gave up on dice rolling and switched to point buy, only I did 4d6 take 3, in order, but 5d6 take 3 in the ability of your choice. In retrospect, I probably would allow the one swap as well, but I adopted this as a replacement for a one swap, and it didn't occur to me to combine them.

A DM i played with did what I do and added the following so that the PCs were great heroes with regard to stats. He also established a 78 point minimum. So 13 in each stat would be 78 points. It's fairly hard to roll much better than that, and in my experience, it takes an average 2-3 attempts to reach it. I occasionally use it when the campaign concept involves great things. In my experience, high stats really doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot other than being fun for the players. An extra monster or two, or a more powerful encounter will balance it out.

 

[Celebrim]

As for Combat As War: this thread (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...s-War-a-Key-Difference-in-D-amp-D-Play-Styles) originated the terms, and I'd say that if you read posts #1 and #5 you'll pretty much know how I'm using them

Well, that at least tells me how you are using the term, though I still find it non-descriptive.

As best as I can tell, by "Combat as Sport" he means, "Combat is played out and won at the tactical level." And by "Combat as War" he means, "Combat is played out and won at the operational/strategic level."

And I can't really see how either concept is useful to describing an RPG or describing war. War is fought at both the operational and tactical levels. It's true that amateurs tend to talk more about tactics than logistics, but its not like professional soldiers aren't taught tactics.

If anything, I think he gets the terms backwards. What he calls, "Combat as war", I would call combat as sport. What he calls, "Combat as sport", I would call combat as war. The basic problem with what he calls, "Combat as war", is that it sounds pretty darn zany and breezy. It seems to involve overly elaborate plans that are implemented and adjudicated with little more than a handwave, or which at least the party expects to be implemented with just a handwave. A big clue is that essay declares that the "Combat as War" crowd expects combat to be shorter than the "Combat as Sport" people. But elaborate plans like he discusses would take longer to implement than the combat itself, and then take probably take longer to play out than pitched combat itself. He declares the intention of "Combat as War" is to bring overwhelming force to a battle, so that it can be turned into a walkover. But then he describes a plan which at no point looks like something that is going to be over in a single round, but actually play out over the course of maybe 10 minutes (100 rounds!).

It's not that I'm opposed to oblique planning, using the terrain, and asymmetrical combat. It's that in any realistically drawn world, such plans aren't easy to implement and not readily available in all cases. And to the extent that they are, they often can be things you pivot to right in the middle of combat. "Instead of fighting these zombies, lets lure them to the edge and push them off the cliff." or "Forget this, lets just set the house on fire and run." or "Why don't we just turn the pillar to mud and let the whole thing collapse", can show up in the middle of what he calls "Combat as Sport". Indeed, even the "tl;dr" version of the essay shows that what he calls "Combat as War" is actually the one more like "Combat as Sport". All those zany plans only make sense in the context of something played out as a sport, because in the context of war there wouldn't be any of the predicates necessary for those sort of plans to work - you don't know when or where fights will start, there is no referee, and so forth. In other words, those plans only make sense if there are rules to break in the first place - which war does not have. But having tactical roles - the medic, the heavy, the scout, etc. - makes sense in describing any contest, including war.

Consider the thing with the bees. Right now my PC's are 48 days from their last port of call - 38 days by boat, and 10 days of hiking through monster infested jungle. And they are racing a BBEG to find an ancient artifact. So if they come upon giant bees, it's utterly ludicrous to come up with a plan where they go back to town and buy a bunch of barrels of oil, trek back through the jungle with these barrels of oil (presumably buying mules and porters to carry all this stuff) in order to soak bushes with oil. By the time they get back in 3 months, assuming that they get back alive given the rigors they've already endured, whose to say what would happen or how much time it would take to find this particular hive again? Would the bees even be there? And is keeping the mules and porters alive in the journey not an extra complication? Then once they get there, they've got to dig up several cubic feet of mud, haul it up into a tree in something that doesn't leak, keep it moist, and arrange to be able to dump the couple hundred pounds of goop on a charging animal that may or may not be chasing a monk at this point. That too will take a lot of time to implement, and let's hope that they got their shopping list for this right and didn't forget key tools for the plan. And then, how much AC and DR does wet mud actually generate? Presumably not much, and I'm not sure why the players would think that it would - otherwise running around in wet mud would be a thing to do in the dungeon. What it probably does add is encumbrance, and hence an armor check penalty, making the owl bear perhaps ever so slightly clumsier if that should ever come up. And remember, this whole plan is being implemented right next to the very bee hive that the PC's fled in terror from a few months before, and somehow the PC's have to implement it without disturbing the bees. And somehow the Owl Bear is supposed to chase the monk for miles without tiring of the chase, and this chase is apparently occurring in the minds of the player, not in a jungle or a forest with roots and briars and tickets and brambles and poison ivy and other beasts, but on a empty field. And for some reason the bees are supposed to be instantly agitated by the owlbear in a way that they weren't by this entire encampment of people. It's all a bunch of stuff that only makes sense if the whole thing is some elaborate game, whereas my PC's - who are engaged in a war - would eschew such pranks as more fitting a feud between rival children. They are engaged in a deadly serious business with the future of the world on the line.

The actual division in my mind is between direct attacks, which most RPGs will cover in the rules, and "stunts" which are creative attacks that usually fall into areas lying outside the rules. And combat as it plays out is usually a mixture of these two things, mostly attacks, interspersed with stunts when opportunity allows or necessity demands. There may be styles that affirm "stunts" to different degrees, but this isn't really a nice neat way to divide and discuss gaming styles.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Well, that at least tells me how you are using the term, though I still find it non-descriptive.

As best as I can tell, by "Combat as Sport" he means, "Combat is played out and won at the tactical level." And by "Combat as War" he means, "Combat is played out and won at the operational/strategic level."

And I can't really see how either concept is useful to describing an RPG or describing war. War is fought at both the operational and tactical levels. It's true that amateurs tend to talk more about tactics than logistics, but its not like professional soldiers aren't taught tactics.

If anything, I think he gets the terms backwards. What he calls, "Combat as war", I would call combat as sport. What he calls, "Combat as sport", I would call combat as war. The basic problem with what he calls, "Combat as war", is that it sounds pretty darn zany and breezy. It seems to involve overly elaborate plans that are implemented and adjudicated with little more than a handwave, or which at least the party expects to be implemented with just a handwave. A big clue is that essay declares that the "Combat as War" crowd expects combat to be shorter than the "Combat as Sport" people. But elaborate plans like he discusses would take longer to implement than the combat itself, and then take probably take longer to play out than pitched combat itself. He declares the intention of "Combat as War" is to bring overwhelming force to a battle, so that it can be turned into a walkover. But then he describes a plan which at no point looks like something that is going to be over in a single round, but actually play out over the course of maybe 10 minutes (100 rounds!).

It's not that I'm opposed to oblique planning, using the terrain, and asymmetrical combat. It's that in any realistically drawn world, such plans aren't easy to implement and not readily available in all cases. And to the extent that they are, they often can be things you pivot to right in the middle of combat. "Instead of fighting these zombies, lets lure them to the edge and push them off the cliff." or "Forget this, lets just set the house on fire and run." or "Why don't we just turn the pillar to mud and let the whole thing collapse", can show up in the middle of what he calls "Combat as Sport". Indeed, even the "tl;dr" version of the essay shows that what he calls "Combat as War" is actually the one more like "Combat as Sport". All those zany plans only make sense in the context of something played out as a sport, because in the context of war there wouldn't be any of the predicates necessary for those sort of plans to work - you don't know when or where fights will start, there is no referee, and so forth. In other words, those plans only make sense if there are rules to break in the first place - which war does not have. But having tactical roles - the medic, the heavy, the scout, etc. - makes sense in describing any contest, including war.

Consider the thing with the bees. Right now my PC's are 48 days from their last port of call - 38 days by boat, and 10 days of hiking through monster infested jungle. And they are racing a BBEG to find an ancient artifact. So if they come upon giant bees, it's utterly ludicrous to come up with a plan where they go back to town and buy a bunch of barrels of oil, trek back through the jungle with these barrels of oil (presumably buying mules and porters to carry all this stuff) in order to soak bushes with oil. By the time they get back in 3 months, assuming that they get back alive given the rigors they've already endured, whose to say what would happen or how much time it would take to find this particular hive again? Would the bees even be there? And is keeping the mules and porters alive in the journey not an extra complication? Then once they get there, they've got to dig up several cubic feet of mud, haul it up into a tree in something that doesn't leak, keep it moist, and arrange to be able to dump the couple hundred pounds of goop on a charging animal that may or may not be chasing a monk at this point. That too will take a lot of time to implement, and let's hope that they got their shopping list for this right and didn't forget key tools for the plan. And then, how much AC and DR does wet mud actually generate? Presumably not much, and I'm not sure why the players would think that it would - otherwise running around in wet mud would be a thing to do in the dungeon. What it probably does add is encumbrance, and hence an armor check penalty, making the owl bear perhaps ever so slightly clumsier if that should ever come up. And remember, this whole plan is being implemented right next to the very bee hive that the PC's fled in terror from a few months before, and somehow the PC's have to implement it without disturbing the bees. And somehow the Owl Bear is supposed to chase the monk for miles without tiring of the chase, and this chase is apparently occurring in the minds of the player, not in a jungle or a forest with roots and briars and tickets and brambles and poison ivy and other beasts, but on a empty field. And for some reason the bees are supposed to be instantly agitated by the owlbear in a way that they weren't by this entire encampment of people. It's all a bunch of stuff that only makes sense if the whole thing is some elaborate game, whereas my PC's - who are engaged in a war - would eschew such pranks as more fitting a feud between rival children. They are engaged in a deadly serious business with the future of the world on the line.

The actual division in my mind is between direct attacks, which most RPGs will cover in the rules, and "stunts" which are creative attacks that usually fall into areas lying outside the rules. And combat as it plays out is usually a mixture of these two things, mostly attacks, interspersed with stunts when opportunity allows or necessity demands. There may be styles that affirm "stunts" to different degrees, but this isn't really a nice neat way to divide and discuss gaming styles.

I think in context "Combat as War" vs "Combat as Sport" is more about the intentions of the DM/Players. In "Combat as War", combat is dangerous. People die, in particular, people die on both sides("Combat as War" tends to be more dangerous to PCs). People pursue convoluted strategies to avoid direct conflict to achieve goals while minimizing risk, or to achieve goals that can't be reasonably achieved by direct conflict. The point of "Combat as Sport" isn't so much to win or survive as it is to score points and enjoy the game. "Combat as Sport" tends to define direct conflict as fun and a goal in and of itself, something that shouldn't be discouraged or so dangerous it needs to be avoided.

 

[Celebrim]

I think in context "Combat as War" vs "Combat as Sport" is more about the intentions of the DM/Players. In "Combat as War", combat is dangerous. People die, in particular, people die on both sides("Combat as War" tends to be more dangerous to PCs). People pursue convoluted strategies to avoid direct conflict to achieve goals while minimizing risk, or to achieve goals that can't be reasonably achieved by direct conflict. The point of "Combat as Sport" isn't so much to win or survive as it is to score points and enjoy the game. "Combat as Sport" tends to define direct conflict as fun and a goal in and of itself, something that shouldn't be discouraged or so dangerous it needs to be avoided.

But the convoluted strategies he describes as fun involve more risk than a simple plan like, "Everyone uses missile attacks and ranged spells to destroy the bees before they can get close to us." Or even a plan like, "Lets follow the bees on their harvest runs and start depleting the hives workers. Then after a day of killing isolated worker bees, when the number of bees is reduced, we can attack the hive." Those are strategies that involve leveraging the fact that bees don't have ranged attacks and have only limited intelligence and planning ability. Those are military strategies. "Lets dump muds on their heads" is combat as loony tunes or combat as childish feud. It's viewing combat through the lens of something like "Home Alone", where your prep the battlefield and a largely mindless enemy falls into traps that never fail to work. It's combat as imagined by someone whose never endured it, and doesn't really know its speed and ferocity. It's combat as something other than war.

How dangerous combat would be is on a whole separate axis than how affirming a DM is of player plans and declarations that fall outside of the rules. A DM can be both affirming of player plans, and run a low challenge game with few player deaths. A DM can run a deadly game and not be affirming of player plans that fall outside of the rules or which have many moving parts.

Besides that, system matters here. And D&D's ablative hit points make combat predictable and avoiding death comparatively easy. Wound based systems on the other hand basically guarantee in the long run the PC will take an instantly mortal wound. In those systems, direct combat is to be avoided because it involves risk of random unavoidable death. But barring running up against save or die monsters, most of which can be mitigated by spell use, D&D doesn't play like that. D&D's system encourages combat by making it predictable. A player knows when his PC is running out of hit points and is facing lethal threat, and can adopt tactics at that point to avoid it - quaffing potions, fighting defensively, moving off the front line, etc.

UPDATE:
Honestly, I found the thread to be one of the biggest bits of nonsense I'd ever read at Enworld. It was basically defining a badwrongfun synonym that meant different things to different readers, but pretty much everyone knew which side they wanted to be counted on. It was occurring right in the middle of a bunch of edition warring, and seemed to mostly be an excuse to bash 4e (and I don't even like 4e and I was the original edition warrior, so you'd think I'd be sympathetic to that). It whole description was incoherent, and that's even before everyone started piping up with what they wanted the term to mean. And above all, it conflated a bunch of completely independent analog variables in play style, into one largely useless binary distinction. So instead of talking about lethality, granularity, agency, rules as physics versus rules as resolution aid, high magic versus low magic, character skill versus player skill, simulation versus game, linearity, and so forth leading to some useful discussion of a whole range play styles and their utility and how different ideas and approaches can be combined in different ways to create different experiences - even within the same campaign - it mostly stayed an ego stroking whine fest where people celebrated how they weren't like those other badwrongfun tables. No one seemed to notice how they were bundling unrelated things under a single heading, or how other people in the same thread had bundled a completely different set of things under the same heading.

UPDATE2: It's my lunch break, so I'm trying to read the thread, and its just so bad it makes my eyes bleed. Thankfully, the usually reliable Tony Vargas has stepped in to point out some of the obvious, but even from a popcorn eating perspective, I just can't take it anymore. I didn't think it was possible to have a less descriptive term than "old school"; I guess I was wrong.

 

[ccs]

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

What's your obsession with fudging & cheating?
Can't you just roll up a character?

 

[thecasualoblivion]

What's your obsession with fudging & cheating?
Can't you just roll up a character?

Point buy or array? Sure thing. 6 rolls that I have to live with for months of campaign time, not so much

 

[Celebrim]

Point buy or array? Sure thing. 6 rolls that I have to live with for months of campaign time, not so much

Just months? One of my players has been playing the same character for 6 years.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But the convoluted strategies he describes as fun involve more risk than a simple plan like, "Everyone uses missile attacks and ranged spells to destroy the bees before they can get close to us." Or even a plan like, "Lets follow the bees on their harvest runs and start depleting the hives workers. Then after a day of killing isolated worker bees, when the number of bees is reduced, we can attack the hive." Those are strategies that involve leveraging the fact that bees don't have ranged attacks and have only limited intelligence and planning ability. Those are military strategies. "Lets dump muds on their heads" is combat as loony tunes or combat as childish feud. It's viewing combat through the lens of something like "Home Alone", where your prep the battlefield and a largely mindless enemy falls into traps that never fail to work. It's combat as imagined by someone whose never endured it, and doesn't really know its speed and ferocity. It's combat as something other than war.

You're focusing on something other than what I meant to draw your attention to. I actually highlighted the different scopes of play as the most important difference. For purposes of this conversation, let's assume he really means it when he says "bees everywhere! With nasty poison!" I.e. take the number of bees that would be a fair fight by your standards, and multiply by twenty. That's when combat as war comes into play at my table.

In CAW, there is no obligation for the DM to give you a fair, winnable fight, or a challenging fight.

If the Sorceress at your table were to use her social skills and wealth to scare up an extra two dozen mercenaries to bring along on an adventure, would the DM consider that foul play? In 5E, even basic mooks are a huge force multiplier for an 8th level party, but because I run CAW I don't mind at all if players do this because there's no "encounter balance" in the first place to throw off. Players are doing what makes sense to survive, and that's fine. (Though in practice they are actually more likely to try zany stuff or stealth than hiring mercs. And I play the zany stuff completely straight, which means that yeah, maybe the mud doesn't help AT ALL against the bees and they really would have been better off with missile weapons.)

So when you say, "it's combat as something other than war," maybe it's just "combat by PCs who are sixty seconds away from finding out what war really is." Hence the DM's "ghoulish grin" and "what could possibly go wrong?"

Do you understand now why your example demonstrating the value of Con 18 doesn't resonate with me? It might keep you alive when plans turn into a disaster, but most disasters go wrong so spectacularly that 50 HP don't matter either way. Player decisions matter more than PC stats in the vast majority of cases, even though stats inform options for player decisions. The player who keeps dying dies a lot not because of stats but because in a situation where someone else would Dodge or Hide, he goes nova with smites or throws a Molotov cocktail. I have rarely seen a situation where higher stats would have made a difference. That's not a "never", because there have been a handful of high-stakes gambles where everything came down to one initiative roll--but I don't remember which if any of those moments were decided by only one point on the roll so that stats made the difference. Those were all disasters BTW after plans went horribly wrong due partly to faulty recon. Good, successful plans don't hinge on one roll.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It's not wrong- I was comparing it to the standard array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). Average is 12 (<12.5, which doesn't exist). Theoretically, you're losing (6*.5 =) 3 points across all abilities, but it doesn't quite work out that way.

If you actually simulate dice rolls, the average rolled array is 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9. Which results in a net "gain" of two points (not three) - the 15 to a 16 and the 8 to a 9. In short, the standard array is very similar to an "average" rolled array, but slightly less. Of course, if you factor in things like "The DM will let me re-roll really bad scores" which would allow you to leverage the upside variance, and minimize the downside variance, then it's even better.

Ahh....right. The difference is that variation from average rolls (that is, taking 14's and 15's) costs extra points. But if you roll 14+ with the dice you don't have to "pay" for it in the other scores.

Which suggests to me that Point Buy should be 29 points, not 27.

That said, how do you figure what an "average rolled array" is? You can predict that the average value is ~12.5, but how do you have "average" specific rolls?

 

[Guest 6801328]

By the way, one of the house rules I like for rolling new characters is "Use your rolls, or you can use those of anybody else at the table."

That totally solves the problem of character imbalance within the party. (If you think it's a problem. YMMV.)