D&D 5E Ability Score Increases (I've changed my mind.)

[Chaosmancer]

Yep. Just very, very, very unlikely. If those numbers were rolled, there's no problem. I can't remember that ever happening, either, though. It's almost as the more realistic method almost never results in the much more unrealistic arrays for everyone at the table.

And again, it isn't unrealistic, it is an abstraction. Heck, you are fine with it if it does happen just because it was random chance, so you recognize that random chance could give rise to people with nearly identical qualities. Therefore, it can't be unrealistic.

I play to have fun. Arrays are not fun for me. Result, either be one of the people that likes rolling or don't play at my table. You should have fun, but not at my expense and vise versa. It's simple courtesy, not dictatorship like your making it out to be.

If knowing that rolling is a problem for you, you agree to play in the game I run and then try to change it, YOU are the one being the problem person, not me.

Right, you will only play with people who have fun the way you think is fun. And don't go turning this into some extreme hyperbole of mecha or something like this, we are literally talking about just taking a set array of stats instead of rolling for them. This isn't something most people even notice, let alone make a unflinching rule about.

Ahh, the False Equivalence defense. One person did it, so everyone who uses rolling as the only stat generation method are like him.

No, the "anecdotal evidence to point to a larger pattern" defense. Do you not see how someone who absolutely refuses to yield on something as simple as taking the standard array instead of rolling, which is statistically the weaker option between the two, simply because he finds the array "unrealisitic" can be easily seen as someone who won't budge on anything? You are dictating how my character must be, from session zero.

I know you always say how wonderful and kind you are as a DM, and how you are always willing to work with people, but any time it comes for you to actually work with people on something that you dislike, you immediately start posting in the most unyeilding positions. Either the players fall in line, or they leave, because you won't compromise your fun for their sake, no matter what. You refuse to compromise... and then when we point this out, you wave your hands and say "nononono, I compromise all the time, just not on THAT." For whichever "that" we happen to be discussing.

You think I shouldn't enjoy the game I run.

Well, guess what else I do? Big bad tyrant me will never run Eberron. I dislike it as a setting. I won't ever run any of the magic settings, either. I'm such a dictator to refuse something that I dislike aesthetically. I'm purposefully taking away the players right to make Eberron and MtG characters, and as you've argued, I shouldn't ever be able to prevent them from making whatever PC they want! I'm so horrible.

See, right here. This immediately turns into your fun. Dude, it is six numbers on a sheet you never have to look at, arranged in one of 720 different ways. Why is your fun impacted by this? Is your fun impacted if people name their elf "Dave"? Do we have to approve hairstyles for our characters or risk ruining your fun?

Whether they roll or take the standard array should not matter to your fun, I can't even comprehend how this became a big enough thing to become a standard rule for you. After session 0, I largely forget what my players stat arrays are. I'll take done some vital numbers, but largely it doesn't change anything for how I run. And I don't think it should.

I hate rogues cant and have never as a DM used it. No player that I've played with since 1e or maaaaaaybe 2e has ever tried to use it to identify other rogues. That and druidic are so lame that nobody uses them. I haven't had to ban them, because players in multiple groups self-banned them.

So? I guess if a player came to you and wanted to use it, you would say they can't? Because you dislike it and how dare this player try and ruin your fun by doing something you don't like.

You've not demonstrated that at all. You've certainly made the claim, though.

Listed three different averages, across three different professions, the fact you refuse evidence that isn't me showing real life populations measured by DnD statistics isn't my problem.

The game doesn't care if your fighter has a 14 strength at 1st level or a 20. Beyond the math assumption of 14 or higher anyway. The game assumes rolling and so it can't assume higher than that.

The game does not assume rolling, and even if it did, the chance of rolling at least a 15 on 4d6d1 at least once in six rolls is 79.40% as previously shown. With basically an 80% accuracy, the game can certainly make the assumption that you have at least a 15 before choosing your race.

Not once, no. Have never forgotten that, ever.

So you accuse me of forgetting that D&D isn't real life, then prove yourself wrong with the next sentence. Nice!

I guess you are forgetting where I showed that to accurately portray an elephants IRL strength, they would need a strength of around 116? And of course we know Rocs pick up elephants and carry them off, so they have to be stronger, and the Tarrassque is likely even stronger. 200 was a low ball. Additionally, DnD is very bad at accounting for scale instead of a linear curve, so most insects that would only be able to move a few ounces of material would be incredibly low strength, certainly far below 1 which allows them to drag 30 lbs. Or, you were commenting on half of my post without reading the rest of the multiple paragraphs.

The differences between 14 and 20(starting assumed range of prime stat due to rolling being default) aren't little nuances.

And this just proves you aren't following what I'm saying. Sure, the difference between 14 and 20 is a difference of 6 points, or 180 lbs. That is fairly significant. But IRL humans can have their strength limits measured in a single pound of difference, or for DnD terms a 1/30th of a point (0.033). So, the nuances of real world strength (like a difference between someone who has a 14 strength and a 14.033 strength) are lost when the smallest unit is a single point representing 30 lbs of force.

Um, yes, yes they do have the same strength. The game says so. They get identical abilities. If your argument was correct, a +2 to strength would result in just another gradation of 16, rather than an actual increase to the number.

You're literally arguing that if two people go through the same training, they are both, regardless of build or individual effort during that training, going to come out with an identical strength score due to "realism"(in quotes because it's not realism), but somehow gaining 4 levels with identical, but far less training and activity is going to allow one to get a full +2 to strength and the other to gain +2 wisdom.

No, I'm arguing that a real life person might go through training and get a strength of 14.066 and another might go through it and end up with a strength of 14.264. One of these people is actually signigicantly stronger than the other one (a difference of 8 lbs of force) but DnD lists them both as 14. Because until you can lift 30 more pounds of force, it doesn't count. The game says these values are identical, because measuring real-world minor variations in strength doesn't matter.

How dare you dictate to me the player that my farmboy has to get training or experience before first level. You can't control me. I'm the player and only I get to say anything about my character. He picked up his sword and walked out the door a 1st level fighter!

And no, I can play a wizard savant who learned his magic by observing a wizard cast a few spells and practicing a little bit, like some real life savants are able to play the piano perfectly after just hearing it played and practicing a little bit..

If you are adamant about it we can try and make it work, depends on what race you have, what kind of backstory you are okay with, and where your archetype is going. But in general? No, in general all fighters need to have gone through some training.

Never argued that those were not culturally learned SKILLS. They are and I have said so. This discussion is about racial ASIs.

No, you said Racial Traits, of which ASIs are only one part. So, there is nothing that prevents racial ASIs from being learned through training, just like every other ability score bonus, and the "real" values you developed from birth til first level.

After all, we both agree you weren't born with a 16 strength and 14 Intelligence, so you had to be gaining those numbers later, which would include the Racial ASI

 

[LadyElect]

I play to have fun. Arrays are not fun for me. Result, either be one of the people that likes rolling or don't play at my table. You should have fun, but not at my expense and vise versa. It's simple courtesy, not dictatorship like your making it out to be.

I’ve been stuck theorizing (again) about the divergence discussed earlier regarding even number array options and potential setups using only ability score modifiers. Obviously I know this doesn’t fit your style preference, but I was trying to imagine how a system like that might keep rolling as a character generation option and this is as close as I’ve come to a perhaps acceptable substitution:

AnyDice

AnyDice is an advanced dice probability calculator, available online. It is created with roleplaying games in mind.

anydice.com

How would you view something like that if you just happened to playing it?

 

[Maxperson]

And again, it isn't unrealistic, it is an abstraction. Heck, you are fine with it if it does happen just because it was random chance, so you recognize that random chance could give rise to people with nearly identical qualities. Therefore, it can't be unrealistic.

Hit points are an abstraction. They can be a bunch of different things. Stats and arrays are not an abstraction. They are what the game defines them as.

Right, you will only play with people who have fun the way you think is fun. And don't go turning this into some extreme hyperbole of mecha or something like this, we are literally talking about just taking a set array of stats instead of rolling for them. This isn't something most people even notice, let alone make a unflinching rule about.

Lots of people only roll for stats. And lots only use arrays. What I do isn't the rarity you'd like it to be.

You are dictating how my character must be, from session zero.

Nope. No more than the game is by limiting you to one class. This is not about your character no matter how much you try to make it be.

I know you always say how wonderful and kind you are as a DM, and how you are always willing to work with people, but any time it comes for you to actually work with people on something that you dislike, you immediately start posting in the most unyeilding positions. Either the players fall in line, or they leave, because you won't compromise your fun for their sake, no matter what. You refuse to compromise... and then when we point this out, you wave your hands and say "nononono, I compromise all the time, just not on THAT." For whichever "that" we happen to be discussing.

Two things. Rolling stats and no dragonborn. Big bad me. So horrible.

See, right here. This immediately turns into your fun. Dude, it is six numbers on a sheet you never have to look at, arranged in one of 720 different ways. Why is your fun impacted by this? Is your fun impacted if people name their elf "Dave"? Do we have to approve hairstyles for our characters or risk ruining your fun?

Not my fun. OUR fun. If you don't have fun rolling stats, don't play in a game that rolls stats. For me, I'm not going to play in a game with arrays. Easy peasy. Both of us get our fun. Neither one of us should play in a game where our fun is ruined. Easy peasy. Both of us get our fun.

Whether they roll or take the standard array should not matter to your fun

You don't get to dictate to me what should or should not matter to my fun, just as I do not get to dictate what you should find fun or not. Don't do it.

So? I guess if a player came to you and wanted to use it, you would say they can't? Because you dislike it and how dare this player try and ruin your fun by doing something you don't like.

Nope. I wouldn't say or think, "how dare this player try to ruin my fun." It would just be a no. Especially since the player agreed to roll or he wouldn't be in my game in the first place.

The game does not assume rolling, and even if it did, the chance of rolling at least a 15 on 4d6d1 at least once in six rolls is 79.40% as previously shown. With basically an 80% accuracy, the game can certainly make the assumption that you have at least a 15 before choosing your race.

It absolutely 100% does assume rolling. That's what default is. An assumption made by the game. It assumes rolling and arrays both.

And yep, the game assumes that a full 1 in 5 people will not roll a 15 when they roll. That's a very significant number, so it can't assume that PCs will have a 15 before bonuses.

I guess you are forgetting where I showed that to accurately portray an elephants IRL strength, they would need a strength of around 116? And of course we know Rocs pick up elephants and carry them off, so they have to be stronger, and the Tarrassque is likely even stronger. 200 was a low ball. Additionally, DnD is very bad at accounting for scale instead of a linear curve, so most insects that would only be able to move a few ounces of material would be incredibly low strength, certainly far below 1 which allows them to drag 30 lbs. Or, you were commenting on half of my post without reading the rest of the multiple paragraphs.

Yes. Your ridiculous real life stuff. It has no place in the game. The game definitions of these stats are what should be looked at.

And this just proves you aren't following what I'm saying. Sure, the difference between 14 and 20 is a difference of 6 points, or 180 lbs. That is fairly significant. But IRL humans can have their strength limits measured in a single pound of difference, or for DnD terms a 1/30th of a point (0.033). So, the nuances of real world strength (like a difference between someone who has a 14 strength and a 14.033 strength) are lost when the smallest unit is a single point representing 30 lbs of force.

I'm following what you are saying, but it's not relevant to this discussion. Nobody is saying we should mirror real life.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well, depends on how many dwarven cleric of the forge there are in the base core rule.
Guess what? None.
Still, even if Dwarven cleric of the forge were in the core rule does not mean that they are a common sight.

So, you deny Moradin Forge Clerics just because the PHB didn't print them? Fine. Light Clerics then. Same thing, and those ARE in the core rulebook.

And if Dwarven clerics aren't a common sight, then why are they an archetype the game made sure to reinforce?

Good? Good?
No, acceptable. Not optimal as you yourself says as they do not have "16" in intelligence.
But the whole point of not having a 16 is that to be as good as the races that have access to that 16, you have to work harder.
Not having a bonus in a stat does not prevent you from doing it.

So... again, which is it? Do they exist and therefore the monsters aren't surprised by them? Or do they not exist because of the limits of ASIs and the ignoring of rolled stats? You can't have both.

No. Again you are wrong just by ignoring previous posts and focussing only on what catches your fancy in possibly proving me wrong.
When something does not come as easy as something else and that your heroes are not these kind of heroes. You go for what your "race" and "culture" is good at. Here in Quebec, we have almost no basketball players. But tons of Hockey players. Does not mean we can't be good at it and that some do not try it. It is just that we are simply not interested in basketball. And since we do not flock to it, if someone wants to be as good as someone in the states (going professional); that person will have to work a lot harder and will even have to move to USA. The same parallel goes for the classes you mentioned. When your "race" and "culture" do not encourage you to do something, you do something else. It is this fight to strive for both recognition and fame that fixed ASI encourages. It brings a lot more RP than floating ASI. If everyone can do everything, then no points in having different races or cultures.

So, are you trying to say my human wizard didn't struggle and work hard because he has a +1 INT and could get that 16? Are you saying that the struggle and striving for recognition can't mean that the character achieved a 16 INT before level 1?

Would you be stunned and shocked if I could find a professional basketball player from Quebec? I'd guess not because you literally said "they'd have to move to the US" so you clearly expect there to be some of them. So, again, why is a dwarven wizard so shocking? They should exist, they do exist, and there is no reason for them not to exist. The only issue is that mechanically we are punished for trying to do it. Partially because people can't accept dwarves being sages and using intelligence, partially because long-dead traditions want to force them into easier and smaller boxes, and partially because people start going on about how they want the joy of struggling to prove themselves by mechanically having a smaller number, that doesn't actually matter anyways and can't really impact your game play.

You guys twist yourselves into knots over this, to the point that it gets hard to even follow what you are arguing for anymore, just that you are against change.

Nooooope. Core books are the only thing you are sure that everyone here will have. Additional splat books are just that. You do not need them to play the game they are optional! I repeat: Optional. I do wish to discuss optional things in the game that are not part of the core books.

Too bad. This discussion has ranged far beyond the core rulebooks and I'm not going to stuff the genie back in the bottle just because you don't wish to discuss things that challenge your view of the game.

But humans and dwarves do not have the same reputation that elves do. Or thiefling. Dwarves have the exact opposite reputation. So I am right in that regard. My views do not have to change as they are already in sync with what most people (whether they play D&D or not) believe. And even among those who play D&D my beliefs are quite spread accross all the editions. You are the one who wants to change things.

I don't "want" to change things. Things have changed.

If you are looking at adventurers there are only 13 out of 114 subclasses that are not explicitly magical. That is 11%, meaning that 89% of all adventures would have magic of some sort. And you can shrink that by remembering to add in feats, because there are close to a dozen feats that give you magical abilities. Looking at DnD 5e and saying that most adventurers don't use some form of magic is ignoring the reality of the game. Humans have a huge reputation for magic, they are likely the second most common magic users after elves. Tieflings in 5e are mostly a subrace of humans, with only occasional forays into other races. Same with Aasimar and Genasi. Heck, magical potions are on the common shopping list of the game, right in the PHB.

You want change in your games? Fine, go for it man. I encourage you to do it. But do not force your views uppon others. What I tell you is that with current setting in rules and lore, Dwarven wizards (and anything related to either Dex, Int or Cha) is not fully encouraged. It is not discuraged as you can always do it. But you have to know that your character will have to work harder to achieve the same thing than characters with a head start will. But you will eventually catch up and might even surpass them. That is what leveling is for. What a dwarf loses in spell saves, he wins with better armor and better hp. There is a trade off. With floating ASI there is no trade off. No risks, no struggle. What a bland, tasteless way to create a character that is supposed to be uniquely special.

Nah, keep your floating ASI. I'll keep my fixed ones.

I can't stop you from keeping them, or stop you from having this bizarre monster metagaming where hyper-intelligent creatures aren't aware of how magical the world is. But I am perfectly fine trading perception and a cantrip for poison resistance and +1 hp. That is a trade-off.

I don't need every character of mine to struggle against the outdated views of society, risking it all to prove that, yes, cats can dance and dwarves can do magic. I'd rather just play a dwarven wizard and focus on how that is a unique magical viewpoint and tradition, instead of making it some grand quest to prove myself equal to my peers.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ve been stuck theorizing (again) about the divergence discussed earlier regarding even number array options and potential setups using only ability score modifiers. Obviously I know this doesn’t fit your style preference, but I was trying to imagine how a system like that might keep rolling as a character generation option and this is as close as I’ve come to a perhaps acceptable substitution:

AnyDice

AnyDice is an advanced dice probability calculator, available online. It is created with roleplaying games in mind.

anydice.com

How would you view something like that if you just happened to playing it?

It depends on the game. I wouldn't want to use it for D&D, but if I was playing another system that had that, I'd probably go with it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Be true to your ideas, and if you must compromise, make sure that the others understand that you are compromising and that they participate in the compromise as well, that's all. But before that, make sure that you understand that you yourself are compromising, and why.

Right, I can't be telling you the truth. I must be lying. I must just have started lying to myself after a single bad game, and never let myself truly play the way I "really" want to play.

Intent doesn't matter. Only my actions. Until I say that, and then of course the intent matters, I just must have the wrong intent. Because how else could I end up both wanting to play at the powerline curve, and caring about story?!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Oh yes, sure, because asking whether a fireball turner to cold and still causing books to burn or the or the price of an artificer's gauntlet are obviously about needing to know the version of reality the players are dealing with. Sure...


Come on guys, who are you trying to fool here ? These are purely technical questions from optimisers wanting to decide upon their build.

Isn't that exactly what we are saying? Shouldn't the player know if their spell catches things on fire? Shouldn't a player know if they can cast a spell on their equipment?

Oh, right, we are all liars trying to secretly powergame and go behind your back. Why else could we possibly want to know if casting a spell that deal cold damage catches things on fire or not when in a room full of books. Only powergamers who don't care about the story care about collateral damage.

Where I agree with you is that there many flavors of fantasy, and it's critical that these are shared at the start of the campaign. Just take note that, by default, and as the DMG puts it "Heroic fantasy is the baseline assumed by the D&D rules.", so adventurers are heroes and do heroic things. So yes, if it's dark fantasy, sword and sorcery with less heroics and less magic, epic fantasy, the players indeed need to know.

Heroic things like what? Are we talking Sin City "get run over by a car and keep going"? Are we talking "leap out of a building using a hose to swing on" like in Die Hard? What kind of "heroic things"?

Also, why are you discounting Dark fantasy? I've seen characters in dark fantasy keep fighting with multiple broken ribs and a broken leg, running towards the enemy through the pain. That seems rather "heroic" in terms of things you can do.

Just declaring a genre might not be enough to answer the question, hence why people might, you know, try and confirm that their view of Dark Fantasy lines up with yours... or they are lying powergamers seeking to fool you.

But the technical details above used to choose a minor power in the help of (ab)using other powers ? Again, come on...

Right, can't take us liars at our words. Constant Vigilance. These powergamers can't fool you into letting them know what their characters are capable of. That might lead to ideas that are different than normal, AND CLEARLY MORE POWERFUL!!

 

[Maxperson]

Isn't that exactly what we are saying? Shouldn't the player know if their spell catches things on fire? Shouldn't a player know if they can cast a spell on their equipment?

Oh, right, we are all liars trying to secretly powergame and go behind your back. Why else could we possibly want to know if casting a spell that deal cold damage catches things on fire or not when in a room full of books. Only powergamers who don't care about the story care about collateral damage.

Yep. Because HE can tell what we're doing and why better than we can.

I'm still trying to decide if he's trolling us or not.

 

[abirdcall]

This doesn't seem consistent with my experience: I saw many threads here and in other forums about what the rules actually meant, and people pestering Crawford on twitter for trying to discern the intent through the natural language... If it was clean and easy to use natural language, these threads would be very few. Same with people argueing about dictionary definitions. I don't think the problem disappeared, I just think it moved from "threads about technical definition and rule lawyering" to "threads about dictionnary and designer's intent".

(with regarding to the GM having to provide advance notice on rulings pertaining to characters abilities)


Why being so defensive?



Knowing what happens when he casts fireball is akin to knowing what happens when a guy in real life walks down a flight of stairs or when a car mechanics repairs a car: it's using a common ability. Of course, one could die when walking on stairs (thousands, maybe millions, of people die this way each year [12,000 in the US alone]) and by the rule, the GM is totally empowered not to have said beforehand that he'll be asking for Acrobatics check to use stairs. You're right that the no rules written in the book forces the GM to provide advance notification on his rulings about characters abilities. I relied on a "natural language" use of the word "must".


However, I amend it by saying that "not providing advance notifications on rulings pertaining to characters' well known abilities to interact with the world, such as walking down stairs or the effect of a known spell they routinely cast or, for martial, rulings on how to deal with underwater fights in an underwater campaign, being precised that the three examples here are just example and the reasoning should be examined without leaning on disproving any of these three particular illustrations, will lead to the player thinking his GM is bad because, since the only thing he controls is his character, he'll need to know what the character knows about his abilities in order to engage the world".



The idea that you describe your actions (storytelling) makes it necessary that you know your abilities to avoid making silly decisions, and that can't be known beforehand without the GM being explicit on this in session 0. For a character in the game world, jumping from the 3rd floor on the saddle of a horse and fleeing has an expected result. There is a part of randomness and risk, but they vary around a median point. In swashbuckling stories, it's a standard move, that might fail, of course, but will more often than not end up in the daring escape of the heroes. In the real world, or in a gritty campaign, the expected result might be a severely injured horse. Which will be applicable to your character? Of course, you should ask your GM. But in order for genre emulation to be possible, and for the player to decide on a course of action, the player needs to know what his character abilities are. If I want to play a character modeled after a Muskeeter or Zorro, I'd jump and expect to have to make a reasonable DC acrobatic check, the specific number left to determine to the GM . If the GM answers: "let's calculate your fallling damage, then the falling object damage sustained by the horse, oh, he's dead, so there is no point, really, in rolling Acrobatics to know if you can ride him without a penalty on the next round", it would be fine by the rules of the game, but then I wouldn't have jumped in the first place if I knew it was totally outside the character's (and horse's) possibility. And without advance notice, there is no way for the player to decide on his course of action. A character won't know if he will succeed, but he'll generally know if something is possible in-universe and generally if it's "hard" or "manageable", much like we know we can cross a small road on foot and be generally safe but we wouldn't do that on a highway. If I was expecting to play a swashbuckling hero, that the concept wasn't vetoed, and yet all the rulings during this campaign were unsupportive of this playstyle, I'd feel "betrayed" -- this is too strong a word but I am just echoing what was said before, personnaly I'd just be slightly displeased -- by the GM: if he had been explicit about his rulings, I'd have seen the campaign was much more realistic and probably envisioned another character, more fitting to the shared story. If a player think Acrobatics is used to climb up falling stones like Legolas in the Hobbit, he'll envision a nimble character very differently than if he's told beforehand that Acrobatics is to the splits. This has very little to do with "technical character building" but everything with "storytelling", which mean having a character able to take part in the story.

Letting player know in advance what their character knows about the world they live in (ie, giving advance notice on ruling on character's powers and abilities) is the way to do that. Of course, there is a middle ground, where the GM will offer the possibility to retract his action "are you sure you're casting a frost ball in the middle of the library? The books will all burn as they are flammable and your character knows that his frost ball put things on fire?" but it's often too late for the player to retroactively choose another spell to learn at level 3, not because he wanted more power (both will do 8d6 damage), but because he wanted to play a "nice" character who avoided collateral damage and wouldn't have taken fireball in the first place if he had known substituting damage type wouldn't solve that spell's problem in urban environment. It has nothing to do with powerbuiding but simply to allow decision making by the player and imagining characters that fit in the story, "sword and sorcery" isn't enough of a qualifier to ensure that GM and all the players have the same fantasy world in their mind.

People are always going to argue about things.

There are, what, 50 million+ players?

Mearls has said that people on forums do not represent the bulk of D&D players and this was back in 2013/2014.

Most people are getting along fine. So fine that they invite their friends and they invite theirs and so on.

Most people have no or little trouble with the rules.

It is hubris to believe that because the person has trouble understanding rules that it is the rule's fault and not on the person themselves.

People had a far tougher time understanding 3e.

 

[Krachek]

A smart DM should do his world building in a way to survive multiple edition change.
If optional floating ASI shake up your world building, then should revise your strategy and link to actual rules.

Floating ASI is a very small add to optimization. There is many other optimization concerns in Tasha. A Dm that deals with optimization regularly should not be afraid that much by floating ASI.