D&D (2024) First playtest thread! One D&D Character Origins.

[Micah Sweet]

Then what about feats that grant +1 ASI?

If ability scores are a function of genetics, then there should be no way to change them barring powerful magics. Not by feats, levels or class.

My concern is less genetics, and more that I don't think ability scores should increase so fast, and that I like feats. I've already said I prefer Level Up's origin systems to literally any version WotC has ever produced.

 

[Charlaquin]

Doing this in my head, and typing on my phone, while walking the puppy early in the morning.

If you reroll ones, and have to keep the new result, then when computing the average you are replacing the ones with the old average. I.e. for a d4 tge average expected result is ( ( 1 + 2 + 3 + 4)/4 + 2 + 3 + 4)/4, or (2.5 + 2 + 3 + 4)/4. Looks to be like that increases the average expected result by 1.5/4, or 0.375. The general pattern is an increase of (AVG-1)/4. So 2.5/4 for d6, 3.5/4 for d8, etc.

But wait! Although smaller dice get a smaller increase, we really care about the percent increase. That’s ((AVG-1)/D)/AVG which… I’m having trouble simplifying in my head.

Let’s see, replace both averages with D / 2 + 0.5, because we want to solve for D, and…we have a quadratic. (See? There was a use for those after all!) I’ll finish this when I can sit down.

EDIT: Oh, duh, there’s a simpler way: the increase is (D - 1)/2D, which gets larger with larger values of D.

So re-rolling 1s is more advantageous for larger dice. But not by much.

Unless I made a mistake.

Yeah, I caught the mistake myself later as well. But I appreciate the analysis!

 

[Cadence]

And yet players refuse to miss out on this +2 and complain endlessly that racial ASI prevents them from playing non optimal race/class combinations.

A +2 bonus might be adequate for showing the difference in strength between a gold medalist weight lifter and a typical competitive weight lifter.

It seems completely inadequate for showing the difference in strength between a typical offensive lineman and typical jockey.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The "formally correct" way--that is, the one which correctly captures all the statistics with no simplification--is that you need to expand out each result into the number of faces on the die, and then replace the N faces that show 1 with [1,...,N]. With d4, that looks like this: d{1,2,3,4,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4}.

Oh, please. There is no "formally correct" in mathematics, there is only correct and incorrect. ((1,2,3,4) 2, 3, 4) is identical to your approach. Just multiply through.

One of the most damaging things taught in school is that there is a "correct" way to solve math problems. Or maybe that doing arithmetic is doing math. Or that some people are bad at it. (There are a lot of contenders for that title.)

Alternatively, you can think of it as becoming an N^2 sided die, where you have a single 1, and then the remaining values appear N+1 times. You'll get the same average value if you just enter 1d{(N+1)/2,2,3,...,N} but you won't get the same overall statistical behavior.

Having crunched those numbers, I can now say that the ceiling of the change appears to be 0.5, as noted above. That is, we get:

d4 average improves from 2.5 to 2.88; SD falls from 1.12 to 0.93
d6 average improves from 3.5 to 3.92; SD falls from 1.71 to 1.48
d8 average improves from 4.5 to 4.94; SD falls from 2.29 to 2.05
d10 average improves from 5.5 to 5.95; SD falls from 2.87 to 2.62
d12 average improves from 6.5 to 6.96; SD falls from 3.45 to 3.19

It's rather tedious to calculate anything beyond d12 and pretty much irrelevant so I'm not going to do the full, formal numbers for any higher die values (and sure as heck not d20). If you like data visualization, you can look at plots for these with this AnyDice program.

But we can certainly say that, while the increase in the average always goes up, it pretty well appears to be bounded from above by 0.5, and thus the percentage increase is always lower for larger dice. This might not be true for broader ranges, e.g. if you could reroll 1 or 2 this way, the benefit might grow rather than shrink. (We could imagine, frex, if every value less than the average could be rerolled once, then the average benefit surely should not shrink with higher die values.)

Uh, yeah. Same result. But (D-1)/2D doesn't require 'crunching'. Plug infinity into my formula and you get (infinity - 1) / (2 * infinity) = (drumroll...) 0.5

Plug in 1 (for a 1-sided die) and you get 0.
Plug in 2 and you get 0.25

But the mistake I actually did make is that I shifted back to solving the absolute increase, not the percentage increase. I would have to divide through again by D/2+0.5. So yeah, the % goes down as the die gets larger.

EDIT: Doing the last step...on paper not in my head...an equation for the percentage increase is (D-1)/(D^2+D). Which does indeed get smaller as D gets larger (going to zero as D goes to infinity. Which makes sense.)

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

yeah I think backwards compatible means "for DMs that want to put in the work it isn't 'THAT much' work" not "yeah people will sit at tables with the 2014phb and 2024phb and not even notice.

Honestly? Yes, they are touting compatibility as "don't worry, all your books don't just became worthless", especially adventures they don't intend to reprint (and therefore, still sell) and they don't intend to ensure compatibility (like the odd effects of staking original feats and compatible feats). However, it will be difficult if they don't put a tag on the 2024 PHB saying it's a not the D&D PHB we know (and still hold). In a group with, say, 3 copies, and one is replaced because it's overused, they won't have compatible options... My guess is that they'll move to an all-digital model at some point, if that's where the bulk of their profit is.

I mean that is only true for Americans right?

Maybe more but even in Europe it's quite rare to have students fluent in 3 languages. They might be "reasonably fluent" in one foreign language, but the second language is ususally... barely enough to communicate that you want a beer in a bar. (B1 proficiency level, that students are expected to hold in the EU referential, if you're familiar with it, is really not enough to get by).

I'm not sure that flavor is worth anything

Honestly, it's worthless, yes. But I'd prefer my rules to be divorced from settings.

 

[Umbran]

I’m fine with genetics not being a big part of fantasy, but the basic idea of how breeding works should be considered. (Like someone domesticated horses and dogs IN your world so I think it fair to say people can assume that trait breeding works most but not all times.

Exactly. So, we can easily support the idea that the population of dwarves or elves typically have some usual stats, without having every single individual follow that pattern.

 

[Parmandur]

yeah I think backwards compatible means "for DMs that want to put in the work it isn't 'THAT much' work" not "yeah people will sit at tables with the 2014phb and 2024phb and not even notice.

I mean, we sat at the table with 3E and 3.5 books intermixed and didn't notice when I was in the primary target audience of the game in College.

 

[Medic]

No, the problem with this is that you're thinking about it in reverse: this is not so that my Cleric can have a charisma boost, but rather that I can play a Half-Orc Cleric and not be immediately confined by having to be strong and tough, but rather one that is wise and charismatic.

People keep looking at this from "min-maxing" and that's half-right and half-wrong: rather, it's making it so that people don't have to optimally choose their race to fit their class. Elvish Barbarians, Dwarfish Rogues, Gnomish Fighters, etc. Instead of someone looking at an elf and saying "Well, I have to fit this to best advantage my Dex bonus", they can play an elf that is wise and charismatic but also clumsy. You can now play a sickly dwarf who became booksmart because he couldn't do regular dwarfish tasks.

A dwarf scholar-wizard starts the game with 15 Intelligence and proficiency in the Arcana skill, granting them a +4 bonus to Arcana checks, a +4 bonus to spell attack rolls, and a spell save DC of 12. This is measurably better than the human baseline of +0 to Arcana checks and no spellcasting, making this dwarf a distinguished individual that is smarter and more learned than most people, even those of a species with a +2 to Intelligence.

A gnome scholar-wizard starts the game with 17 Intelligence and proficiency in the Arcana skill, granting them a +5 bonus to Arcana checks, a +5 bonus to spell attack rolls, and a spell save DC of 13. They are only marginally better than their dwarf counterpart, the difference is functionally imperceptible in play. You could always create a dwarf that is book smart and sickly with the core rules without incurring any significant penalty.

We agree that ASIs do not distinguish races in any meaningful way. They are essentially fluff, non-essential unless your objective is to increase they key ability score of your class. Having said that, I would still not create a hypothetical elf barbarian with the template presented in this playtest material - their traits do not synergize with the barbarian class as well as those of other races.

 

[TwoSix]

But the mistake I actually made is that I shifted back to solving the actual increase, not the percentage increase. I would have to divide through again by D/2+0.5. So yeah, the % goes down as the die gets larger.

Some helpful formulas:

Average of 1dN: (N+1)/2

Damage increase on 1dN, reroll and keep on rolls of 1 to R: R*(N-R)/2N

New average damage on 1dN, reroll and keep on roll of 1 to R: N^2-R^2+N(R+1)/2N

Proportion damage increase (damage increase / old average): R(N-R)/N(N+1)

 

[Minigiant]

.

And yet players refuse to miss out on this +2 and complain endlessly that racial ASI prevents them from playing non optimal race/class combinations.

It matters in combat.

The point is that +2 doesn't represent the huge difference many fans describe the difference between races. +2 STR is just a few pounds of weight lifted. It isn't 200lbs.