D&D 5E Assumptions about character creation

[ART!]

Personally, I do point-buy. I use the only tool I've found that does the math and lets you drop a score below 8, Taters.

I find doing it this way makes me think through the implications of each raising or lowering of a score, and helps me think about my priorities and about the character several times before I've even moved on to the rest of the stages of character creation.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, on any given roll of a single 4d6 roll. When rolled in batches of sixes (4d6 for each ability score), the results will tend to deviate from the mean of a single roll.

Um, yeah. There's a distribution. The average stat, over a large number of those batches of six stats, will still be 12.24.

 

[MoonSong]

What system of rolling have you been using.? Characters where the low stat is 12 are exceedingly rare. Most characters have at least one stat under 10, sometimes lower than 8.

When I refer to 12 being considered low I mean: "Would you ever play a character with a 12 in the class primary attribute?"

Even with straight 18's, the character can be arrogant and overconfident.

Granted, it is a character flaw. However, this is one of the kind of characters I can't feel for.

Perhaps cowardly.

With high charisma?

Maybe have an uncontrollable need to have gems, to the point where he would steal them.

With high wisdom?

Did you know that almost everyone is a statistical outlier in at least one respect or another? Lt. Gilbert S. Daniels' seminal work, "The Average Man?", demonstrated that if you took just three metrics of measurement (out of over a hundred total), often less than 4% of the study population (over 4000 airmen) would meet all three metrics? Truly average humans basically don't exist--or are fantastically rare. "Average" is a terribly, terribly narrow range, and very few people actually fit into it. Most will be divergent in one way or another, and some will be highly divergent in at least one way. But we'll come back to that in a sec.

Yes, nobody is exactly average, but most people are normal (as in "exist within two standard deviations of average") A character with a single 16? They are already over the 97% percentile. Having a single 18 already puts you close to 99.5%

"Likeable" isn't a statistic in D&D; "charismatic" is. Someone can be highly charismatic and deeply un-likeable. A schoolyard bully who can keep their victims silent about it even when they're not around? That's a (darkly) charismatic figure, someone whose force of personality is significant even if their likeability is crap. (And, conversely, someone can be extremely genial and well-liked, but hardly make any real impression on anyone they ever meet--pleasant, but not compelling, as it were.)

Is playing a bully your power fantasy? Because certainly isn't mine.

Further, even with all these high scores, it's not like failure is not an option. A DC 15 check at level 1, even with an 18 in the relevant stat and proficiency, is still d20+6, meaning you fail on a roll of 8 or less. That's a 40% failure rate on a supposedly "medium" task. On a supposedly "easy" task without proficiency, you'd be looking at d20+4 vs 10, a 30% failure rate. I dunno about you, but I wouldn't call those odds all that impressive! Just about the only thing you can't fail at is a Very Easy (DC 5) check...which, well, being able to consistently do something the game explicitly describes as "very easy" doesn't exactly sound like proof of being "flawless." Even if you had something with double proficiency and the character in question has advanced all scores to 20 and you're at a +6 proficiency bonus, you're looking at d20+16. That's still a 15% chance to fail a merely Hard check (40% for Very Hard, 65% for Nearly Impossible).

So. Having good scores doesn't mean you never fail. In fact, the difference between a +2 score and a +4 score is literally only ten percentage points--and couldn't possibly more than double your chances of success (and almost certainly do far less than that). Further, "having good scores" and "being a flawed character" are entirely orthogonal--a character is not inherently more flawed simply for not having good scores, and a character need not have an absence of flaws simply for having good scores, you have to actually write/play the character as having flaws either way. And all this talk about non-averageness is rather specious when very few people are truly average, and most

Perhaps I didn't use the right words. I keep using flaw instinctively, maybe "weakness" is a more apt word. Anyway, I come from the other side, failing at hard thing sometimes is not what I'd call a flaw or a weakness. Struggling to do something easy is a flaw/weakness.

By the same token... you want to make your PC an actual bumbler by putting a 6 into their DEX? Guess what? You do that... thinking "I'm going to play a character that will walk into walls and fall down stairs!"... unless you actually roleplay that stuff (which is and always will be the best way to get across your character's flaws)... chances are you're going to avoid doing things that involve DEX checks, and even when you do... THAT will be the time that you roll a fricking '20'. So you discover then and there that relying on the game mechanics to play your flaws for you doesn't actually work.

Perhaps I won't refrain from trying? Do you think I go out of the way to get negatives just to avoid them mattering? "Just roleplay it" doesn't work for me when the results of gameplay contradict what you are roleplaying. "I'm playing a bumbler that falls from stairs, walks into walls, and can trip on perfectly even floor", yet my character is untouchable in combat, does amazing stunts during exploration and consistently makes dex saves. I cannot handle that level of cognitive dissonance.

 

[Maxperson]

Granted, it is a character flaw. However, this is one of the kind of characters I can't feel for.

Fair enough. I can, though. RP flaws/weaknesses are the ones I like best. They have a far greater impact on the character and game than a stat of 8.

With high charisma?

Absolutely. I'm sure a lot of charismatic leaders and movie stars would run from a fight or other danger.

With high wisdom?

Again, absolutely. Someone can have incredible insight and wise words for people, yet still have personal flaws like that. Personalities are complex things.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Perhaps I won't refrain from trying? Do you think I go out of the way to get negatives just to avoid them mattering? "Just roleplay it" doesn't work for me when the results of gameplay contradict what you are roleplaying. "I'm playing a bumbler that falls from stairs, walks into walls, and can trip on perfectly even floor", yet my character is untouchable in combat, does amazing stunts during exploration and consistently makes dex saves. I cannot handle that level of cognitive dissonance.

And yet the results of gameplay can always contradict what you are roleplaying, because it involves dice and a 20-point range. So no matter what you do... if you make a DEX check and have a negative modifier because that's the "character flaw" you've chosen for yourself, you are still going to roll 18s, 19s, and 20s on DEX checks. And thus contradict your character flaw. The only way to actually play your flaw is if you roleplay it by voluntarily failing on almost all DEX checks by just choosing not to roll and taking the fail. And you don't need game mechanics for that... you get there by roleplaying it and either intentionally not take actions that require you to be dexterous... or if you do take those actions, you intentionally fail more often than not so that you can keep your flaw.

So long as the range of ability modifiers is like 7 points (-2 to +4) and the range of the dice rolls are 20 points... there is no way to effectively play a "flaw" by the mechanics. The dice (having a much wider range) will always mess things up. The highest modded character will still occasionally fail the simplest of actions and even the lamest rock will still be able to succeed on things they never should if those "flaws" really mean that much to you. And this is why thinking that game mechanics are defining character traits are not actually doing what you think they are.

 

[MoonSong]

Fair enough. I can, though. RP flaws/weaknesses are the ones I like best. They have a far greater impact on the character and game than a stat of 8.

It is not an 8 I'm looking for, I'm looking for multiple 8's. And well, they being 8's is the compromise. I'd rather they were more like 5's and 4's.

 

[billd91]

It is not an 8 I'm looking for, I'm looking for multiple 8's. And well, they being 8's is the compromise. I'd rather they were more like 5's and 4's.

You know, if you really wanted it, I'm betting a DM would allow you to put a lower stat in than the one you rolled. I probably would. But you're not going to get transactionally compensated for it with points to spend to make another stat higher. That's one of the reasons I have my players roll their stats, so that each individually generated value is independent of the others.

 

[MoonSong]

And yet the results of gameplay can always contradict what you are roleplaying, because it involves dice and a 20-point range. So no matter what you do... if you make a DEX check and have a negative modifier because that's the "character flaw" you've chosen for yourself, you are still going to roll 18s, 19s, and 20s on DEX checks. And thus contradict your character flaw. The only way to actually play your flaw is if you roleplay it by voluntarily failing on almost all DEX checks by just choosing not to roll and taking the fail. And you don't need game mechanics for that... you get there by roleplaying it and either intentionally not take actions that require you to be dexterous... or if you do take those actions, you intentionally fail more often than not so that you can keep your flaw.

So long as the range of ability modifiers is like 7 points (-2 to +4) and the range of the dice rolls are 20 points... there is no way to effectively play a "flaw" by the mechanics. The dice (having a much wider range) will always mess things up. The highest modded character will still occasionally fail the simplest of actions and even the lamest rock will still be able to succeed on things they never should if those "flaws" really mean that much to you. And this is why thinking that game mechanics are defining character traits are not actually doing what you think they are.

Do you think there's only one Dex roll every season? Dex is about the most important scores in game. It affects everything, and well, I'm talking about a long term deal, and in the long term there is a difference, a struggle. Even in the short term, just the existence of rolls you cannot hope to make makes a difference. Like the paladin I once made that was built to be a healer. I gave her an 8 in Strength, and she suffered for it, she was slow in armor for starters. I didn't need to make up she being weaker, I actually played her as wanting to prove she was strong, but everybody could see that it was in fact the opposite. She died because she couldn't make a critical Athletics check. I couldn't have gotten that experience should she had the 20+ level appropriate strength that 4e practically demands of paladins.

 

[MoonSong]

You know, if you really wanted it, I'm betting a DM would allow you to put a lower stat in than the one you rolled. I probably would. But you're not going to get transactionally compensated for it with points to spend to make another stat higher. That's one of the reasons I have my players roll their stats, so that each individually generated value is independent of the others.

If..........?

I don't know why you guys get the impression I'm some kind of super munchkin optimizer for preferring point buy over rolling. I'm not opposed to rolling on principle, I just don't like the methods that produce essentially no weaknesses. I'm fine with 3d6.
No, really I've asked before to be allowed to roll 3d6 in games with rolling. And I'm not above just straight asking for a 13 for primary attribute, a 10 for Con and 4's and 5's for everything else. But I don't like to ask for special permissions too much more so as a long term strategy. A special permission works once or twice, living within the rules sets you for life.

 

[Maxperson]

It is not an 8 I'm looking for, I'm looking for multiple 8's. And well, they being 8's is the compromise. I'd rather they were more like 5's and 4's.

Then talk to your DM about that. Not many of us want to play PCs with mental faculties worse than Forest Gump or physical abilities so bad that you'd qualify for disability here in the U.S. If that's your thing, though, have at it.