Yep. I messed up on the number thing. That doesn't make it unuseful, let alone a detriment. Once you know what is in the area, you can set about trying avoid it, plan for it, or find it. It's not the best ability, but it is only level 3.
Except now you can plan for it, where before you couldn't.
Why couldn't you plan for it before? The only reason you spent a spell slot was because you suspected there were dragons in the area. You could plan for Dragons to be in the area without confirmation, just based on the information that led you to use Primeval Awareness.
And how do you go about finding it? It could be six miles behind you, running away. It could be three miles in front of you, sleeping. It could be lurking 4 miles below you in inaccessible caverns. It could be a mile overhead observing you. It could be polymorphed into the horse you are riding. You have no possible way to use this information. And while it is "only 3rd level" Third level is chock full of actually useful abilities for most other classes.
Assumed. All that is assumed to be correct.
Which is why people did Math. Math to check their assumptions. Math which you don't engage in because you have a gut feeling the designers did something else.
Look, I know I haven't had time to dig into the math, and try and show it to you, but it has been all over various forums, and people don't come to these numbers by just making an assumption and twisting the data to show it. If they did, it would be swiftly debunked.
It's arbitrary because they are just picking the number out of the air. They could just as easily have assumed 60% and a 14 in the stat as the expected numbers for the CR armor classes. It's pure guesswork that the particular numbers they selected are what the game has as the baseline.
No, it isn't. It was based partially on the designers saying years ago that they wanted to have a more than 50% success rate, and 65% is comfortably between being too easy and too hard. Additionally, 16 is the number from dozens of different ways to calculate it. Your 14 is based solely on a gut feeling and the mistaken idea that pushing the scale downward was desirable to them, because you think 5e is easier than 3.5, so the numbers must be lowered.
Equal means equal. 72 does not equal 74. 100% average does not equal rarely average due to small sample sizes.
I have no idea what you are trying to say with the bolded. Again I am left assuming you just don't understand how a small sample size can warp data.
And for the second, ONCE MORE, the Standard array was altered from the true average. We know this. We've known this. Because the designers didn't want the Standard array to offer a 16, because they didn't want the +2 races to start with an 18 without rolling. They did the exact same thing when setting up the point buy. Which is why you can't buy a 16, only a 15.
Additionally, when talking about numbers less than a standard deviation apart, they are close enough to be considered equal, without needing to be identical. Heck, the true mathematical average could be 73.62487 but since you can't roll a decimal place it had to be rounded. Not being identical doesn't change anything, because I never claimed they were identical.
The game works at the group level, not the collective level. At the group level is where arrays are going to be compared to rolling, and they are not going to be equal.
The game was designed at the collective level, with hundreds of thousands expected to play it. It is impossible to accurately predict what any five people will do when given 3 options, only one of which is static and the other random and the third controlled values. They couldn't possibly design the game with your assumptions. They had to take an aggregate value and work with the averages as an assumption.
And your statement is farcical on the face of it, because rolling allows for massively powerful and massively weak characters. I've seen people roll where their modifiers were (+2, +1, +1, +0, -2, -1) and I've also seen them roll where they were (+4, +4, +3, +2, +2, +0). The entire point of rolling is the potential to get a far more powerful character than average, while risking getting a character weaker than average. But for that to be the case, an average must exist. And it does. The average doesn't suddenly disappear because no one rolled in when they rolled only four times. That's like saying that the chance of heads on a coin flip is 75% because you flipped four times and 3 of them were heads.
And you seem to be under the misapprehension that you can tell what it is that I'm saying, even when I clearly say it. I just said to you that it would take 100 years and many campaigns to see the average show up, and yet you(once again) have me saying the opposite of what I actually said.
Because that doesn't matter. Your "100's of years and many campaigns" is a red herring assuming that the average must show up at a specific table of 5 reliably to be a real factor. That isn't how probabilities work. The average of the dice doesn't care whether or not it shows up at your table, it exists despite your table. And since the designers can't predict what you will roll every single time, their best bet is to go with the average. Which we can see they clearly did.
All rules are subject to change. Literally all of them. The PHB directs the players to check with the DM to see what changes he made to the rules. Players are not entitled to the array. They aren't entitled to have any particular race or class in the game. They aren't entitled to feats. They're not entitled to lots of things that affect their characters.
They aren't entitled to Hp. They aren't entitled to AC. They aren't entitled that a positive modifier doesn't lower their roll because the DM decided that you have to roll under. The DM can decide that all monsters critically hit on a nat 1 and a nat 20, while players critically miss on a nat 20 and a nat 1.
Make sure your DM teaches you the game, because they are entitled to change literally any aspect of it regardless of the group or individual.
I think you can see why I'd prefer to play with people who are slightly more judicious in which rules they change, because "I have the right to literally change anything I want, because I am the Master of this game." isn't a healthy attitude in my opinion.
