D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats

[Caliban]

Ahhh! Xena: Warrior Princess! Hercules! Great shows! Typical D&D fodder!

Who were the 'player characters' here? Hercules, Iolus, Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer, a few others.

Would anyone like to try to convince me that Hercules and Xena were made to the same point-buy total as Joxer? Or even Gabrielle?

Since they aren't characters in a D&D game, no. And at least one of those is an actual demigod.

...You do know the difference between characters in a story and a character in a D&D game right, right?

Or between a TV series focused on a main character whose abilities overshadow everyone else's (both Hercules and Xena) and a game with a group of characters who are all "main characters"?

But if you want to pretend the TV show characters were all rolled up, sure. It only highlights the problem with rolling stats.

"Oh, you get to play the bumbling comic relief...and Dave is playing Hercules. Sucks to be you."

If you are fine with that, more power to you. Enjoy gambling on whether you get to play Joxer or Xena.

 

[Tony Vargas]

No you're not. Real life is one extreme and pure chaos in another dimension with no realism whatsoever is at the other end.

'Pure chaos' would be modeled pretty well by making everything random.... but point taken.

Everything in-between is a grade of realism. People talk about things being more realistic than other things all the time without saying it mirrors real life. Attempting to force realism to only mean real life is to engage in a False Dichotomy.

The standard of realism, though, is RL, it's reality. The degree of realism is how close it gets. RPGs don't generally get very close, to begin with, edging them a little closer at the cost of imbalance, bad play experiences, and general suck often doesn't seem worth it, but for those of us willing to pay the costs, it can be. It's all a matter of general preference.
The default random-or-array-and-arrange chargen method isn't that realistic, people don't get to re-arrange their stats nor choose to conform to a minimum standard as an alternative to accepting inborn potential. Random-in-order is more realistic, random-in-order using a system representative of the whole population rather than just the population of adventurers would be more realistic, randomly determining other aspects of the character beyond its control - race, assigned sex, circumstances of birth, etc - would be that much more so, as well. A 'build' method, where the player chooses /everything/ his character from the campaign's parameters, is really only a little less realistic than the methods offered by D&D. The point-buy variant in 5e doesn't even go quite that far.
It's just a matter of where to draw the line, for yourself, personally, or for your campaign, as DM.

Having typed all that out, I'm thinking 'realism' isn't really a credible advantage of the 5e default array-or-roll-and-arrange method. It's too easy for the player to step in and thwart what passes for realism. Yes, in theory it's /slightly/ less unrealistic than the point-buy variant, but both of them are decidedly less realistic than roll-in-order with randomly-assigned backgrounds &c.

 

[Arial Black]

Although this seems to be a popular misconception, it is nevertheless wrong, IMO. Read D&D, Vol. I, Men & Magic, p. 10, where 3d6 in order is first given as a method for generating the scores of player characters. Nowhere in that volume, or anywhere else in the annals of D&D, can I find it stated that the same method applies to non-classed NPCs. You seem to be extrapolating from the PC creation rules based on the assumption that they model the distribution of scores found in the larger population. I don't believe there's any evidence for your position.

In The Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 11, Gygax finally gives us a method to determine the scores of "general characters", those NPCs without a character class. It is as I described in my post up-thread: three 'averaging' dice are rolled producing a score in the range of 6-15. 3d6 is reserved for the non-primary abilities of "special characters", NPCs with a character class.

So as much as you might like for D&D to have one monolithic ability score generation method that describes the distribution of scores in the general population, the closest you'll get is the averaging method to describe the masses of humanity. 3d6, the highest 3 of 4d6, and other methods exist only to describe subsets of the population that are exceptional for their abilities that lie outside, both above and below, the norm as defined by the averaging method.

In the infancy of the hobby that Gygax created (with help from some friends) the game evolved at a rapid pace. When he finally got round to publishing a pamphlet, the game was at the stage where there really was no consistent approach to building coherent worlds. The 'world' was a series of dungeons that may as well have been in their own demi-planes, and the only creatues in the world were 'adventurers' and 'monsters', and no effort was made or needed to model anything else.

The game continued to evolve in his mind, and when he finally got round to publishing AD&D (1E) Gygax had put considerable thought into world building. Conceptually, by this stage every adventurer was from a community of 'normal' people of their race; the people that the average adventure was 'better than'.

So as pointed out, 3d6 in order became how 'normal' people were generated, and the other methods were simply shortcuts to getting ability scores that were 'better than' normal on average.

Yes, we can model characteristics of populations, and they conform to a bell curve. Yes, real world populations have bell curves which are flatter than that generated by 3d6. To this end, Gygax introduced the 'average' die (where 1=3 and 6=4, to get six results on a d6 of 2,3,3,4,4,5) in order to get a more flattened bell curve if the 3d6 bell curve (and its greater proportion of extremes) bothered you.

Living in the UK, I didn't even get to hear about the game until 1979. Finding a shop that actually sold it was as rare as hen's teeth. For me, AD&D 1E was the 'original' game. For Gygax, it was when the game was finally complete; earlier versions were best forgotten early draughts of his magnum opus.

It should be noted, as it was noted earlier in this thread, that the authors of the early modules also used 3d6 for NPC ability scores. Some even outright stated that you rolled 3d6 in order if you needed to generate an NPC. The City State of the Invincible Overlord had every single inhabitant with stats rolled on 3d6, not '3d-average', and their scores did indeed range from 3 to 18.

In the editions since then, there has been no refutation of the 'truth' of 3d6 in order for the general population. Every single piece of evidence in every edition remained and remains consistent with that, from the 'commoner' stats to the tables of ability scores which state that 10 or 10-11 was 'average. Even in 5E it states that scores are between 3 and 18.

So, we can take all the evidence and weigh it, and determine if it better supports the assertion that 'the general population is generated by 3d6 in order' or if it better supports a different method.

Remember, there are TWO kinds of people in the world:-

1.) Those who can extrapolate from incomplete information

 

[Arial Black]

@Arial Black: your handle is a font.
Why did it take me so long to realize that?
I kept reading it as 'Ariel' ....

When 4E came out I thought that I wouldn't like it much, compared to 3E. But I like to find things out for myself, so I joined a club that played 4E.

Around the same time I listened to a radio show that had a segment on 'the funniest radio clip of the week'. This week's clip was of a presenter reading out a letter from a listener. "What a great letter from....who sent it?" *rustle* *rustle* "Ah, here it is! It's from a lady called 'Helvetica Bold'. What a great name! It sounds like a viking warrior princess! Thanks for the letter, Helvetica!"

Well, he obviously didn't realise that 'Helvetica Bold' was not the name of the listener but the type of font, but you can bet your bottom dollar that his listeners realised! The next day he was bombarded by letters from people called 'Times New Roman' and suchlike.

I was searching for a name for my new 4E PC when I heard this. When I got to work (I didn't own a computer at the time) I scrolled down the list of fonts to see if any of them would work as a name for my female human swashbuckler-y rogue, and 'Arial Black' jumped out at me.

The group I joined had a website, and the creator of the site had us sign in using the name of our PC. Later the group abandoned the website and started a Facebook group. Which meant I had to join Facebook. : (

Which is why my Facebook name and my handle on various forums is Arial Black. I was also 'Malachi Silverclaw' on the Pathfinder forum because that was the name of my first Pathfinder organised play PC.

 

[dco]

We roll all at the same time, no "lucky" rolls from home, and it's fun.
Monsters will be easier as levels go up using any way of determining stats, it is how it is.
Customizing ability scores also introduces a variation of score points between players and you can have the same players not doing this or that because the other player has better stat. You need to change the score point cost to 1 or use the pregenerated scores if you want to avoid that.

 

[Oofta]

What are the odds of a 3 or 18 with 3d6?

OK, a bit of a tangent because I was trying to do math in my head last night. I know the odds of rolling a 3 or 18 on 3d6 is 1/216 because the odds of rolling any particular number is 1/6. Since we don't care about sequence these are independent events or 1/6 X 1/6 X 1/6 = 1/216.

Basic math, right? But what if I was curious about the extremes? Odds of a 3 or an 18? Once again, seems simple: (1/6 X 1/6 X 1/6) + (1/6 X 1/6 X 1/6) = 2/216 or 1/108.

So even in a village with 108 adults you're going to have 1 person that is at the normal maximum human potential for a particular stat and one at the absolute minimum.

But why stop there? There are 6 ability scores, so the odds of getting a 3 or 18 in one of those ability scores should be 6/108 or 1/18. Which means that in any random group of 18 people you will have (ignoring people that have multiple 18s or 3s) 1 person that as the min and max for every ability score.

What's wrong with my math? Or is rolling 3d6 for ability scores even more unrealistic than I thought?

 

[Arial Black]

Since they aren't characters in a D&D game, no. And at least one of those is an actual demigod.

...You do know the difference between characters in a story and a character in a D&D game right, right?

Or between a TV series focused on a main character whose abilities overshadow everyone else's (both Hercules and Xena) and a game with a group of characters who are all "main characters"?

But if you want to pretend the TV show characters were all rolled up, sure. It only highlights the problem with rolling stats.

"Oh, you get to play the bumbling comic relief...and Dave is playing Hercules. Sucks to be you."

If you are fine with that, more power to you. Enjoy gambling on whether you get to play Joxer or Xena.

I actually used to own the 'Hercules and Xena' RPG, where all the regular heroes in the show were playable PCs. Hercules actually had a +10 Strength score. No game mechanics allowed that at character creation, but since they were statting up Hercules...!

The game did have a mechanic I liked: when you rolled to hit, when you hit then you did a set amount of damage based on your weapon (so, a longsword did 8 flat damage), but did one point of extra damage for each point past the required number to hit. For example, if you needed a 12 to hit with your longsword and rolled a 12 then you did 8 damage, but if you rolled a 17 then you did 8 (longsword) + 5 (your attack roll of 17 is 5 more than the 12 required) = 13. It meant that more skillful people tended to do more damage on a hit than less skillful people, which addresses one of the historical drawbacks of D&D combat as far as I was concerned. It always bothered me that in D&D a 20th level fighter with 16 Str does exactly the same damage on a hit as a 1st level fighter with 16 Str, or even a commoner who rolled 16 on 3d6 for his Str score.

So, yeah, someone played Xena, someone played Joxer. Which reflects D&D from its inception, where some players rolled better than others.

The fact that this variation realistically represents variations in real groups of people, or (perhaps more pertinently) variations in the groups of heroes in our fantasy books/films/TV shows, is a feature not a bug.

 

[Arial Black]

'Pure chaos' would be modeled pretty well by making everything random.... but point taken. The standard of realism, though, is RL, it's reality. The degree of realism is how close it gets. RPGs don't generally get very close, to begin with, edging them a little closer at the cost of imbalance, bad play experiences, and general suck often doesn't seem worth it, but for those of us willing to pay the costs, it can be. It's all a matter of general preference.
The default random-or-array-and-arrange chargen method isn't that realistic, people don't get to re-arrange their stats nor choose to conform to a minimum standard as an alternative to accepting inborn potential. Random-in-order is more realistic, random-in-order using a system representative of the whole population rather than just the population of adventurers would be more realistic, randomly determining other aspects of the character beyond its control - race, assigned sex, circumstances of birth, etc - would be that much more so, as well. A 'build' method, where the player chooses /everything/ his character from the campaign's parameters, is really only a little less realistic than the methods offered by D&D. The point-buy variant in 5e doesn't even go quite that far.
It's just a matter of where to draw the line, for yourself, personally, or for your campaign, as DM.

Having typed all that out, I'm thinking 'realism' isn't really a credible advantage of the 5e default array-or-roll-and-arrange method. It's too easy for the player to step in and thwart what passes for realism. Yes, in theory it's /slightly/ less unrealistic than the point-buy variant, but both of them are decidedly less realistic than roll-in-order with randomly-assigned backgrounds &c.

All the rearranging of stats, choosing your race/background/class, etc. are not meant to represent that the PCs we play actually had control over those things.

What they represent is that we, as players, could hypothetically scour the character sheets of the playable population of the world and choose what we want to play. Since there aren't an infinite number of people then we cannot choose any combination of numbers (six 18s) but we choose from the ones that the world itself has produced.

Since no-one is going to roll up every single person in the world in PC-level detail, we approximate this by choosing things like race, where to assign each stat roll, and so on. Conceptually, the PC we end up with was produced by the game world on 3d6 in order.

 

[Caliban]

I actually used to own the 'Hercules and Xena' RPG, where all the regular heroes in the show were playable PCs. Hercules actually had a +10 Strength score. No game mechanics allowed that at character creation, but since they were statting up Hercules...!

The game did have a mechanic I liked: when you rolled to hit, when you hit then you did a set amount of damage based on your weapon (so, a longsword did 8 flat damage), but did one point of extra damage for each point past the required number to hit. For example, if you needed a 12 to hit with your longsword and rolled a 12 then you did 8 damage, but if you rolled a 17 then you did 8 (longsword) + 5 (your attack roll of 17 is 5 more than the 12 required) = 13. It meant that more skillful people tended to do more damage on a hit than less skillful people, which addresses one of the historical drawbacks of D&D combat as far as I was concerned. It always bothered me that in D&D a 20th level fighter with 16 Str does exactly the same damage on a hit as a 1st level fighter with 16 Str, or even a commoner who rolled 16 on 3d6 for his Str score.

So, yeah, someone played Xena, someone played Joxer. Which reflects D&D from its inception, where some players rolled better than others.

The fact that this variation realistically represents variations in real groups of people, or (perhaps more pertinently) variations in the groups of heroes in our fantasy books/films/TV shows, is a feature not a bug.

Yeah, D&D combat has never been particularly realistic (there's that word again!). That's why I find the attempts at justifying rolled stats as an attempt at "realism" laughable. The D&D rules have never really cared about "realism". The "economy" is ludicrous, the PC's are vastly superior to 99% of the population, except for the bad guys who are are all slightly stronger if they are alone or slightly weaker if they outnumber the PC's. And so on. The amount of "realism" in a game is completely in the DM's hands.

What D&D can be is fun and interesting - in all it's variations.

Rolling stats can definitely make for some fun and interesting characters - but it has its drawbacks.
Point buy can also make for some fun and interesting characters - but it has its own, different, drawbacks.

People prefer one method over the other based on their own preferences and skills. I'm good at "building" characters and have a paranoid belief that random chance is biased against me. I'm going to choose point buy every time it's an option.

Other people like to see what the dice give them and create a character based on that. I can understand the appeal, I just don't share it.

 

[Caliban]

So, yeah, someone played Xena, someone played Joxer. Which reflects D&D from its inception, where some players rolled better than others.

The fact that this variation realistically represents variations in real groups of people, or (perhaps more pertinently) variations in the groups of heroes in our fantasy books/films/TV shows, is a feature not a bug.

Are you honestly trying to use Xena as support for your "realism" argument? You are bonkers.

Also - D&D isn't a book/film/TV show. It's a game with a group of players. It's more like an ensemble cast than a show with a main character.

If you need a TV show to compare it to, D&D is more like the Almighty Johnsons - everyone is superior to the normal populace, and everyone has their own special thing they can do.