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

[Phoebasss]

Suppression is intentionally keeping someone down. If I'm forcing you to avoid wizards, that's suppression. If you are opting not to play a wizard based on feelings that the game doesn't actually back up, that's on you. They made the math easy on PCs so that you can do well with much lower stats than in the past. If people refuse to see that and keep choosing to limit themselves, they don't get to claim suppression. WotC didn't force you to feel that way.



Right. DELIBERATE action to reduce voting. There is no such action going on by WotC. In fact, they went out of their way to reduce the need for higher stats. They've encouraged Orc Wizards, not suppressed them.


No. I've never said it was invalid. I have said, and it's true, that it's unnecessary to have a 16 in order to do well at the game. If you personally feel that the 16 is necessary, get it and reduce your options. That reduction is your doing, though, not the game's. The game has gone out of its way to make that reduction unnecessary and encourage people to play Orc Wizards.

Look, your argument can be that you don’t see it as a big hit. But you can’t argue orc wizards don’t take a hit compared to races with even a +1 to Int. The game is discouraging orc wizards less than previous editions, but don’t just lie and pretend its encouraging them.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

If I want to play a wizard orc, I see no reason why they wouldn’t be smarter than their peers. I see no reason why I can’t put a stat boost in Int instead of strength, for instance.

I’d rather see a limit on potential. Maybe let certain races break the 20 cap instead. So at high levels, an elf can have 22 Int.

I view it the other way around: I've no issue with an orc hero achieving the same level as a high elf - they will just find it harder and have to put in more work.

When they start out, the PC orc wizard won't be quite as intelligent as a starting PC high elf wizard, but will still be brighter than the majority of high elves. He also won't have an extra cantrip, but will be harder to drop.

Now to get to your actual point: If we call these things limitations isn’t that even stronger as a term than suppression? Lets not pretend 5e is doing a great job with providing constraints that inspire creativity in its players. Being a half-orc wizard doesn’t give you any more options than being a high-elf wizard. It gives you less options. As a high elf wizard I can either take an early feat or start taking feats four levels sooner with the standard array. I can take at most one feat throughout my first 12 levels as half-orc wizard, and I’m still just worse than my high elf counterpart.

My entire point is that I think making race limit class in this way or vice-versa is a lot closer to saying that if you’re red, you can either be a house or a firetruck. If you want to be a red sportscar the game puts a metaphorical boot on your tire. And in that situation I’m compelled to ask why the game feels the need to do that? Is it inspiring some additional creativity to limit half-orcs to 3 classes? I don’t think so.

If you feel that different racial capabilities limit you to the point that you cannot make a character that doesn't have completely synergistic bonuses, the best bet might be an option that lets you use the stats for a high elf but just look like an orc for example.

The game doesn't "limit half-orcs to 3 classes". Its you doing that.

 

[Phoebasss]

Of course you don't think so! I mean, you are you, right? Just like people that write in free verse have trouble understanding why anyone would choose to write a villanelle. After all, you can write anything you want in free verse, but there are formal constraints with other forms.

Where is the FUN in that?

But perhaps your fun isn't the fun of other people. There are other real people talking to you here. I'm one of them. If I tell you, "I, a real person, find my fun and creativity in limitations and constraints," then doesn't that mean something? If a person says, "I know I can write any type of book, but I want to work within this genre convention because I enjoy these formal limits and I find it exciting and refreshing to explore the bounds of creativity within a structured setting," then who are you, or me, to gainsay that?

To move back to the instant example- yes. I think that there are many, many people (some of them on this thread) that find additional "creativity" and "fun" in working within specified rules. For those people, the idea that race and class is just "whatever," isn't freeing- quite the contrary. It's anathema to creativity.

From my perspective, the whole point of playing a half-orc wizard would be that if I choose to do so, it would be precisely because I was playing against type. Because there were mechanical limitations that I was working within and around- to me, that is the creative process. But it's fine and good if that's not you.

Different strokes for different folks. You can write free verse- just don't demand that everyone else write their poetry the same way.

But there isn’t a creativity being employed to get around those limitations or mitigating them. DnD’s chargen process didn’t give you a mechanical limitation to overcome, it gave you 11 levels of work to become still slightly worse than a high elf. The only thing you do there is sink an extra 4 levels into ASIs.

And I do want races to feel distinct and not just “whatever” as you put it. I don’t think ASIs accomplish races feeling distinct at all. The only distinction an ASI brings is 5% lower odds of failure. Races should maintain features that show off what is unique to them in a way that actually conveys uniqueness. ASIs don’t do that in a way that emerges in gameplay. A half-orc wizard is just a high elf wizard with 5% lower odds to hit if ASIs are what we’re going off of.

 

[TwoSix]

Different strokes for different folks. You can write free verse- just don't demand that everyone else write their poetry the same way.

Sure, but here's the thing. Either half-orc wizards (and every other suboptimal combination) become no longer suboptimal, or they remain suboptimal. I don't think there's a real compromise position other than to offer more than one option in the book.

 

[TwoSix]

The game doesn't "limit half-orcs to 3 classes". Its you doing that.

Look, I mean you can argue that I (and others) shouldn't care about my stats, but I do care. That's simply a fundamental distinction you can't bridge. And I'm going to advocate for a game that caters to my preference.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Math based on feelings does not equate to suppression. Nobody is forcing them to feel that way. I'm not saying that there's no argument to be made to change how the stat bonuses work. I'm saying that an argument of suppression is wrong. There is no suppression.

Suppression isn't necessarily intentional nor coercive.

You seem to be saying that since people still can choose sub-optimal combinations, it's not suppression. If that's your point, you are wrong. The data shows you are wrong.

Please stop playing silly word games.

 

[Maxperson]

Look, your argument can be that you don’t see it as a big hit. But you can’t argue orc wizards don’t take a hit compared to races with even a +1 to Int. The game is discouraging orc wizards less than previous editions, but don’t just lie and pretend its encouraging them.

It's not a lie. People are still blinded by past editions where high stats were necessary. That they don't see the encouragement doesn't mean that it isn't there. People being people, ignore encouragement all the time.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Suppression is intentionally keeping someone down.

More complete and total wrongness.

Rainfall suppresses the spread of wildfires. Where's the intentionality?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sure, but here's the thing. Either half-orc wizards (and every other suboptimal combination) become no longer suboptimal, or they remain suboptimal. I don't think there's a real compromise position other than to offer more than one option in the book.

But that's the thing (from my perspective).

If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, right? We all are familiar with that saying.

If all you care about is pure optimization, then it necessarily follows that you will keep coming up with the same synergistic combinations to benefit your character from a DPR/ASI perspective. As such, you will always pick the same race/class combination (or within a limited amount) and the same backgrounds (or just choose the "custom" background), and the same feats, and so on.

Just do the +2, +1 of your own choice and be done with it. There, you can have your half-orc wizard with relentless endurance.

But that won't STOP the problem, will it? That doesn't end it. Instead, the true optimizer will then have to squeak out whatever they can from what is left. What racial abilities best synergize with the class? For that matter, what racial feats do?

On the other hand, if you aren't as concerned about optimization (and 5e is very forgiving) you can enjoy the fact that you are playing against type. But you can't play against type- you can't be formally creative if there is no type to play against.

Personally, I don't care if Phoebasss has a table with the same bonuses for all races, but that wouldn't be my table. In my opinion, it would be the worst of both worlds, both less fun for the optimizers trying to gain every little bonus, and less fun for people playing into (and against) formal type and constraint. But I also recognize that I am not Phoebasss, and something appeals to them, in the same way that the flavor of rosewater appeals to some people (but not me).

 

[Guest 6801328]

this is a very odd idea of what other people think.

It was satire. I'll include an ironic emoji next time, for clarity.