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

[FrogReaver]

All it takes to make your sorcerer interesting is a +2 bonus to wisdom checks? That translates to what, 10% more success? That seems hardly noticeable. In fact it will rarely make a difference at the table.

I feel like you would have been better served by using point by and getting a free skill or racial feat.

That way you can have your high charisma sorcererer who takes the feat that grants expertise in Insight and allows for searching as a bonus action. That gives you your increased bonus to Insight (more than you would get by merely having a high wisdom) and throws in an extra benefit on top that is even more relevant to being able to read people.

All in all, anything you feel rolling will help with in terms of role play can probably be achieved better by using point buy and giving players a free racial or skill feat at level 1.

Also, notice how rolled PCs always seem to have multiple 18+ numbers. I guess players like to cheat. Or suicide their characters if they roll poorly until they get a good roll. That hardly seems like good role play...

WOW. So I'm going to ignore the silly part that accuses me of cheating or suiciding my character. I'm also going to ignore the things that can can be added to any stat generation method like free skills or free racial feats.

So that basically leaves your opinions about +2 to wisdom checks (of which I am only really interested in insight ones).

So let's start with your flawed assessment that +2 means 10% more successes. That's not true. It depends on the DC for how many more successes I will have. If I had a 5% chance of success without the +2 bonus then I would have a 15% chance of success with it. I tripled my chances of success on some of the hardest DC's! Likewise if we look more at an average like a normal 50% chance of success then that +2 means 60% total chance of success which is 20% more successes! It also means I will always pass more lower DC's without even needing to worry about my roll.

The second and more important consideration is that I cannot say my sorcerer is a master at reading people while only have a 12 wisdom and proficiency in insight. That drastically alters my character concept. And all for what you attempt to describe as a measly +2! It's the fact of him being a master at reading peoples motives that makes him interesting compared to other sorcerors!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

All it takes to make your sorcerer interesting is a +2 bonus to wisdom checks? That translates to what, 10% more success? That seems hardly noticeable. In fact it will rarely make a difference at the table.

He says "19 Wis" and all you can think of is "+2 bonus to Wisdom checks" instead of "wisest human being in history?" You should be thinking "magical Gandhi/Dalai Llama" or something similar.

If all you see of a character is his plusses and not his personality, then 5E has done a huge disservice to your imagination.

 

[Oofta]

Also, notice how rolled PCs always seem to have multiple 18+ numbers. I guess players like to cheat. Or suicide their characters if they roll poorly until they get a good roll. That hardly seems like good role play...

Yeah, what an amazing coincidence.

The biggest lie I see on this forum is that rolling will always give you "better" numbers. The math says otherwise. On average you should get about the same numbers with rolling as with point buy. Sometimes you will get better, sometimes you will get worse.

I don't care how you play - and if you and your group want to roll 20 characters and take the one with the highest points, more power to you. I think it would just be more honest and fair to fellow players to come up with an alternative point buy (using 3.5's version for example) that went up to 18 and down to 6.

But you don't need an 18 at 1st level in 5E to make an effective character. And rolling dice won't get you there very often.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah, what an amazing coincidence.

The biggest lie I see on this forum is that rolling will always give you "better" numbers. The math says otherwise. On average you should get about the same numbers with rolling as with point buy. Sometimes you will get better, sometimes you will get worse.

I don't care how you play - and if you and your group want to roll 20 characters and take the one with the highest points, more power to you. I think it would just be more honest and fair to fellow players to come up with an alternative point buy (using 3.5's version for example) that went up to 18 and down to 6.

But you don't need an 18 at 1st level in 5E to make an effective character. And rolling dice won't get you there very often.

Rolling gives you better stats. It's not about averages but about your chances for 1-2 high stats. The dump stats are called dump stats for a reason...

Also most DM's always allow rerolls when they feel you rolled to low. Go figure, another way that greatly increases your chances of rolling high stats.

Further your chances of rolling an 18 pre racial aren't generally very good. Your chances of rolling a 16 out of at least 1 of your rolls are exceptionally good with most rolling methods. Couple that with a +2 racial bonus and you have at least a single 18 at level 1 quite often. (That's without factoring in rerolls on DM determined bad stats).

 

[cbwjm]

I quite like the Matt Colville method for stat generation. It uses the 4d6, drop lowest method but he requires at least two 15s to be rolled. If you don't have two 15s then you get to roll again. He also has the players roll in order initially although I'm not sure if that is just for new players or new campaigns. A player also has the option to say they want to keep a set of stats even if they didn't roll two 15s. I'm planning on using something similar for my next campaign except players won't have to roll in order. I might suggest it if they aren't sure exactly what they want to play but I won't require it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yeah, what an amazing coincidence.

The biggest lie I see on this forum is that rolling will always give you "better" numbers. The math says otherwise. On average you should get about the same numbers with rolling as with point buy.

(1) Please quote someone claiming that rolling will "always" give you "better" numbers. That's so obviously untrue that it's hard to imagine anyone even writing that, let alone it being the "biggest [most common?] lie on this forum."

(2) The math says the opposite of what you say: on average you will get better numbers than with point buy. 56% of the time, rolled stats will get at least one number better than ANY PHB point buy PC has. This is a well-known and provable mathematical result (http://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/). Furthermore, when I took your very own point-buy valuations and did a Monte Carlo sim rolling up a million PCs (https://repl.it/I9Sd/1), I consistently get rolled PCs who, according to your own valuations, are worth 31 points on average. You lose 4 points by using point-buy.

Are you claiming that 27 point-buy and 31 point-buy are about the same "on average"? (Of course, the rolled stats are allocated less efficiently, which is part of the point of using rolled stats--less min-maxing occurs.)

That you can claim with a straight face that "the math says" rolled stats should be "about the same" as point buy characters, and that rolled stats which aren't comparable to point buy are signs of cheating, is remarkable. Both closed-form math and Monte Carlo approaches agree: the math says the exact opposite.

 

[FrogReaver]

The issue for me is that my characters are generally more interesting when I roll and it's typically because of the access to higher than normal off stats without drastically sacrificing my ability to fight. Though sometimes they are interesting for a different reason. Sometimes they are exceptionally low off stats that make him interesting!

I'm all for party parity when it comes to combat. But I'm also for interesting characters and for me and I suspect for most people we create more interesting characters when we roll.

 

[Ashkelon]

He says "19 Wis" and all you can think of is "+2 bonus to Wisdom checks" instead of "wisest human being in history?" You should be thinking "magical Gandhi/Dalai Llama" or something similar.

If all you see of a character is his plusses and not his personality, then 5E has done a huge disservice to your imagination.

In a contest of wisdom, a Pc with a 19 only wins against a Pc with 14 about 60% of the time. Sure he may be a very wise individual, but the games math doesn't make him remarkably more incredible than someone who is only above average.

So the question becomes do you play to the reality of the games math or some
Made up fiction based on what you believe attributes to represent. Being that a 19 wisdom player may be very wise but still fails at rather mundane DC 10 tasks a full 25% of the time means that even one of the wisest beings on the planet in no way has otherworldly levels of insight and perception. Sure they are more aware than the average person, and by quite a bit, but they are no dhali lama. The games reality simply does not support such a claim.

Instead, in my mind, to represent the level of awareness of one like the dhali lama, you require more than just a high attribute. Such an intuitive character would be one who has trained their awareness so rigorously that they have taken the feats that grant expertise in the chosen skills.

 

[cbwjm]

Does anyone remember the method in the Rules Cyclopedia? It was something like:

1: Roll 3d6 in order.
2: You can raise your prerequisite by 1 point for every 2 points you reduce another stat.
3: You cannot reduce Charisma. You cannot reduce a stat below 9 (I think).

The RC was my first introduction to DND which might be why I still kind of like this method (or the idea of it at least since I don't use it for my 5e games). Stat bonuses were less important for basic DND and only went up to +3 on an 18 (9-12 gave a modifier of 0, 13-15 was +1, 16-17 was +2) but the ability to say, I want to play a wizard and being able to reduce that 15 strength you rolled down to a 9, if desired, so that you can boost your 10 intelligence to 13 helped mitigate the randomness of rolls.

 

[Wulffolk]

I prefer rolling, but with slightly reduced randomness and a more limited range of results. My method is:

Roll 2d6+4, or 3d6 and replace one die with a 4.

This gives results between 6-16. I encourage keeping the the order of the rolls, but don't absolutely require it.

I don't like Ability Score Increases because this encourages generic character's that all end up with the same stats, especially when combined with the Point Buy or Standard Array systems. I am somewhere between Old School D&D that had no way to increase abilities, and New School which allows far too many increases. I am still trying to find the right balance.