Level Up (A5E) Do Player Characters Have Average Population Stat Distributions?

[EscherEnigma]

That's not accurate [in 5e].

Fixed that for you.

You can literally sit at the table, give everyone the same index card with the commoner stats from the MM, and say "choose your race and name" and go from there with no change to the sheet, and have people roleplay different races.

You do not need mechanical differentiation of races for people to be interested in playing other races and for that to mean something in the story.

But beyond that, if the race stats don’t represent the race...throw them out, they are worse than useless.

They haven't represented an average member of the race since 4e. They represent an average PC of that race.

Fluff matters tremendously, including stat fluff.

I have faith that you can roleplay an elf without having "+2 dex (racial bonus)" written in your character creation notes.

It's okay to say you like having racial bonuses. But this "there's no point to being an elf if I can't have +2 dex" is a bit over the top.

 

[Giauz]

Oh, no worries I just generally don’t like game mechanics trying to function like the physics of the fictional world, which sounded like what you were suggesting. But, I didn’t feel like I had much to contribute beyond “I don’t like that idea,” so I just used the sad reaction.

Understood. What if we just had randomized bonuses like roll 2d4 and 2d6 of two different colors to determine which of the 6 Ability Scores gets a bonus from 1-4 (double fours and double the results on the d6's means 1 bonus point for all Ability Scores)? That could be fun.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I think as soon as you think about Greek legends, it works.

That's where the "I'm not going to believe it without something else being involved" comes into play. If the setting is Greek legends then creatures with absurd strength is par for the course and it becomes very believable. But that's not every setting. When looking at a forgotten realms type setting, you wouldn't expect that without some type of magic or supernatural factor in play.

But as I said in my earlier post I wouldn't tie any of those differences to ability scores. Tie those differences to size and leave the ability scores out of it.

 

[Horwath]

I would like to see racial difference in ability scores on average, but I would not add ability bonuses/penalties as it messes up costs with point buy and even rolls as you need to spent much more valuable point/rolls to have the same ability as someone without penalty.

So I would remove all bonuses/penalties for humanoid races that can be player characters,

Make point buy from 8 to 16;
score 8; cost 0,
score 9; cost 1,
score 10; cost 2,
score 11; cost 3,
score 12; cost 4,
score 13; cost 5,
score 14; cost 6,
score 15; cost 8,
score 16; cost 10,

32pts available.

Then add racial minimum/maximum for certain abilites at 1st level.

I.E.

humans; no minimums or maximums.

elves: min dex 12, max con 14
wood elves: min wis 10
high elves: min int 10
drow: min cha 10

half elves: min dex 10

orcs: min str 14, min con 12, max int 14, max cha 14

half orcs: min str 12, min con 10

dwarves: min str 10, min con 12, max dex 14, max cha 14

halflings: min dex 12, max str 14

gnomes: min int 12, max str 14

aasimar: min wis 12, min cha 12

tiefling; min dex 12, min cha 12


this way there is no bonuses or penalties to your rolls/points for aiming at a certain score and keeps average ability score tilted to racial affinity.
starting and maximum dexterity can be the same for humans and elves, but on average elves are more dexterous people.

 

[Minigiant]

5 7 9 10 12 base & add a +1 base or magic item

Those numbers feel too low for a PC. One doesn't die on the first quest anyway.

 

[Derren]

PCs should be affected by the same biological differences than NPCs of the same race. Meaning when Orcs get +2 strength it applies to both PCs and NPCs. Sure the PC can then modify their stats further, but someone with strength 12 would just be considered average among orcs or at best "strong for a puny halfling" while a strength 10 orc wizard would be weak the same way as a strength 8 human wizard.
Imo it would be best if the racial ability adjustment would also affect the maximum of the abilities, meaning no human can beat an orc in strength if the orc is really pumping it.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

"On average, orcs are stronger than gnomes and gnomes are more intelligent than orcs". This sentence doesn't prevent a single gnome to be stronger than your average orc (though it would be notable) and a smart orc to be able to learn more quickly than your average gnome. If the bonus are just reflected at character creation, with your point buy starting from the "average from your race", there is nothing to prevent your gnome to have STR 16 and be stronger than most orcs and equal to a PC Orc with an emphasis in STR (the latter would have spent less points to reach his starting STR 16 than the former, but both can start at the same level. One just needs to add the racial bonus BEFORE allocating points in point buy, instead of after (which makes a starting orc automatically stronger than the gnome, since they can all reach the same score before racial modifiers]. So instead of saying you start at 8 and you need to spend X point to reach stat Y, it's "you start at your racial average and you can spend 1 point to increase by 1, 2 points by 2, 4 points by 3... (increasing scale) while only getting one buy point when lowering a stat by 1 point (so you don't have that many minmaxed characters starting with their dump stat at 2).

Can you play "against the stereotype"? Of course, since you'll be mechanically able to have a smart orc or an athlete gnome. Will you have the same points to spend once you have reached your STR 16 score at character creation? No. If it was, you wouldn't play "against stereotype" since the stereotype wouldn't be there. You'd just play a barbarian, who happened to be gnome, and no one would notice since there is nothing making it special or extraordinary, as all would-be heroes could do that. Spending points in point buy reflects the "training part", and yes, a gnome would need to train more to be as athletic as an orc. It wouldn't be impossible.


[the comparison between Captain America and Captain Orcishland is at the "hero end" of the spectrum, at a point where racial differences are moot compared to the type of power the PCs have at high level]

 

[glass]

You do not need mechanical differentiation of races for people to be interested in playing other races and for that to mean something in the story.

"Need" is a srong term when talking about RPGs, but I do not play games with 1000 pages of rules to handwave something as fundamental as species differences. I want mechanical differentiation.

_
glass.

 

[rules.mechanic]

So long as ancestry ability traits are popular enough that many PCs choose them, PCs could reflect (if not exactly match) NPCs. On another thread, someone suggested ancestry ASIs as an optional baseline Feat. If this was a +1 to one fixed stat and a +1 to a floating stat, with the small incentive of also raising the maximum to 21, I wonder if that might be acceptable to all? Noting of course that 21 gives the same modifiers as 20 but still feels different...

 

[CapnZapp]

What do you think? Agree or disagree (poll) to the following proposition:

Character creation rules create exceptional hero protagonists, not statistically average populations. Therefore the character creation rules should not extrapolate to the population as a whole.

Can Zidi Wheatling, the Halfing Titan (apologies to @RangerWickett) spank the local orc weightlifting champion in a contest? Or is that that simply not allowed?

No wrong answers.

I could not reply since I agree to both

• I agree with the proposition: PCs do not have to follow average population stats of NPCs
• I disagree: if the average NPC orc is stronger, PC orcs also have to be stronger on average

That is, PCs should not have to follow the same rules as NPCs. They are also far from average - they start out significantly stronger than average, which for a human is 10 in all six stats.

As for the second statement, just like the average strength of females in most settings is not reflected in the average strength of female heroes (NPC women much more frequently depicted in peaceful than wartime occupations - mirroring history where the overwhelming majority of warriors were men; while few ttrpgs hand out a realistic-ish -4 penalty to Strength to female heroes) I don't necessarily need every "racial trait" to be given wholesale to hero characters. Again NPCs need to follow different rules than PCs.

This is most relevant for "stronger races/ancestries". We should not be compelled to give PCs wings (already at level 1) just because most members of that race/species are depicted as having wings. A PC Vampire would only get a sprinkling of the Vampire's true power at first. Balance comes before verisimilitude.

That doesn't mean I want race/ancestry to become a mechanically meaningless build choice. I oppose the notion where every gnome or elf or hobgoblin can do everything equally well. That just makes race a "skin" - meaning that you're playing a blue hero, a small hero, a scaly hero - but with no mechanical differentiators.

Every step towards generic races, generic classes and so on is a step towards the Strong, Fast, Smart heroes of D&D Modern. But that's the death of D&D - for good or bad, the feeling of playing D&D includes having to choose between lots of idiosyncratic choices! I know lots of players are annoyed by D&Ds crufty choices, but please resist any and all desire to "straighten out" the choices, make them more comparable, or turning them into a buffet. The whole point is to package things to force players to take some good with some bad, since that makes up the "texture" that IS the feeling of playing D&D as opposed to some generic fantasy game.

That route leads to a game I no longer can recognize. I don't mean to say it's wrong. I really mean that it changes the game. Meaning that it is probably should remain off limits to a project specifically intended to remain compatible to 5th edition.

There are a lot of ideas in this subforum, but most of them are much better suited to a brand new game than to Level Up. After all, each feature added to the project must be evaluated on one very important criteria: the impression of compatibility it gives off. Anything that gives off the impression Level Up is "its own thing" likely lowers the rate of adoption among gamers just wishing to get a compatible extension to their existing 5E games. By being different, the risk is that Level Up is seen as a particular taste, rather than a generally welcomed upgrade.

I understand racial modifiers can be viewed as just as modern as phrenology, which is to say "entirely obsolete". On the other hand, we could just realize we're playing a game of pretend elfs, and not let any real-world connotations seep into our fantasy experience.

Is it really the job of Level Up to "fix" 5th edition in these regards? That's not a rhetorical question by the way - I have a hunch you are about to say "yes", Morrus. Personally though, I would leave those battles for WotC and 6th edition to fight, and focus on making Level Up look and feel as close to 5E as your lawyers let you!

PS. As for that last question, I would answer "it's all about levels". The difference between a Halfling hero and a Orc hero should only be relevant between two heroes of the same level. As soon as the Halfling has a couple of levels on the Orc, she should be able to whoop his ass, including wrestling him down. As for exactly how many (or how few) levels, that touches upon the greater question of whether to use "bounded accuracy" or "adding level to proficiency", to use the terminology (and approach) of 5e and PF2 respectively.