Unearthed Arcana WOTC still can't get the backgrounds right in the new FR book.

[ECMO3]

The effectiveness of the player is how much he decreases the party effectiveness with only him having 1 less mod….

No it is not. That is the party effectiveness, not the individual players effectiveness.

Is a paralyzed player still effective because the party wins 99% of the fights without him? I mean the party effectiveness didn't change, so I guess paralyzation does not change the player effectiveness.

If your position is that having a low stat player does not have a big impact on the party effectiveness I agree with you, but I do not agree that it is not a significant impact on the PC themself.

Changing the rest of the party nullifies that test. You are no longer testing player effectiveness but party effectiveness. That’s what you are doing with your tests.

The rest of the players are not a constant, they are a variable. If they are not part of a test or part of a control but they are influencing the outcome in a non-stochastic fashion then they are a random variable. In any test you want to isolate random variables to the maximum extent possible.

By changing all the players I am evaluating a party of low stat players against a party of non-low stat players. This makes all the players in the party as part of the test group and part of the control group respectively. If you insist on using multiple players and using overall party effectiveness as your MOP that is the only valid way to do it. Otherwise your results are trivial and driven primarily by on the number of additional players (i.e. random variables), not the effectiveness of the player you are trying to evaluate.

You can evaluate a single player in a group of other non-similar players but you need different MOPs, you would need to compare individual party members to each other, not the overall party performance of one party vs another.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Behold the mighty goblin puncher. They now do 2 damage instead of 1. They kill their one 12 hp goblin in 6 rounds instead of 12...
... meanwhile the rest of the party waits only for 5 rounds instead of 11 after they fried their goblins with burning hands.

 

[Maxperson]

Amd int. PCs try to investigate things. And always ask, if their characters know things. If you actually roll instead of just winging it, int is really important.

All the stats are good in various spots, but charisma can shift the course of nations.

 

[ECMO3]

Behold the mighty goblin puncher. They now do 2 damage instead of 1. They kill their one 12 hp goblin in 6 rounds instead of 12...
... meanwhile the rest of the party waits only for 5 rounds instead of 11 after they fried their goblins with burning hands.

It wasn't my example, I just provided the actual math for it (and the 7hp Goblin).

 

[ECMO3]

Missing 1 mod is now equivalent to paralyzed?

No, but both of them would show little change in party effectiveness if I tested them in a group of PCs who were unchanged.

In terms of measurables, they would actually be pretty close if tested as you propose, which illustrates why this is not a good test method.

I still don’t understand why you don’t just run the proper test through your simulator.

I don't have a simulator. I coded what I put above into Matlab and solved it numerically. It took about 150 lines of code.

 

[Maxperson]

Ok here you go, No feats at all.

1. Four 2nd level Fighters vs 2 Ogres (this is your example) with 15 Strength and 15 Constitution, 2 with Longswords (AC19), 2 with Greataxes (AC17) in close melee and random initiative order:

Chance of TPK: 2%
Chance of 3 downed fighters: 5%
Chance of 2 downed fighters: 18%
Chance of 1 downed fighters: 55%
Chance of no downed fighters: 22%

Expected outcome: 1 Fighter downed

2. Four 2nd level fighters with 16 Strength and 16 Constitution with the same weapons and same conditions:

Chance of TPK: less than 1% (0.3%)
Chance of 3 downed fighters: 1%
Chance of 2 downed fighters: 7%
Chance of 1 downed fighters: 35%
Chance of no downed fighters: 57%

Expected outcome: no fighters downed

So there you go. That is the scenario you asked for, without any feats, concentrated attacks and includes Sap, Cleave, Action Surge and Second Windx2. I am sure you will still find a reason to complain about it though.

Well, you flubbed the second group. We are trying to look at what +1 str bonus does, yet you gave that group an additional con bonus as well. That needs to go, because it skews the results.

 

[ECMO3]

Well, you flubbed the second group. We are trying to look at what +1 str bonus does, yet you gave that group an additional con bonus as well. That needs to go, because it skews the results.

We are looking at the best backgrounds vs the worst aren't we? The best background for this provides Strength and Constitution (and feats which I am not even using).

You claimed that the ASIs you get with the background are almost irrelevant, but you won't let me use the best two backgrounds to show that they actually are relevant?

You know what though it matters little as it is only 2hps.

2. Four 2nd level fighters with 16 Strength and 15 Constitution with the same weapons and same conditions:

Chance of TPK: less than 1% (0.4%)
Chance of 3 downed fighters: 2%
Chance of 2 downed fighters: 9%
Chance of 1 downed fighters: 38%
Chance of no downed fighters: 50%

Expected Outcome: no fighters downed

Now, I would like you to admit that the 3 points of ASIs you get from backgrounds can result in a significant mechanical difference based on what background you take and where are allowed to put those ASIs.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It wasn't my example, I just provided the actual math for it (and the 7hp Goblin).

The actual math for situations where it does not matter.

People like to bting up edge cases. And then disregard things like crits.

AC. If my AC goes up from 23 to 24, against goblins with +4 to hit, I am now only hit on a 20 instead of 19 and 20. Which is a 100% increase in effective hp.

1st. It is not 100%. As every hit on you is a crit. So effective hp just went up by around 60%. (Assuming Goblins doing 1d6+2 damage on a normal attack)

2nd. When does that make a difference? If you can afford that much armor, you are probably high level. Your hp is probably around 50 to 100. Since you already deflected most attacks (90%), your effective hp is somewhere between 390 and 780. (I counted a crit as 1.63) attacks).
With AC 24, your effective HP just went up to somewhere between 630 and 1260.

So you go from unkillable to extra unkillable.

So again. When does that matter? If you run alone into a goblin army armed with bows so you are targeted by 20 goblins each turn...

The most effective increase always happens when odds are bad anyway.
For attacks, the most effective increase is when you raise a stat from 8 to 10 mathematically.
(for example: if you raise str from 8 to 10, your punches actually do damage, and against AC 15, you now hit on a 15, not on a 16 -> 20% increase... disregarding crits, as there are no dices rolled)

But in actual play, the difference between 8 and 10 usually does not matter, as you just suck a little bit less.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

All the stats are good in various spots, but charisma can shift the course of nations.

I really miss the 5.14 rule of auto success on DCs of stat-5 or proficiency.

Because in that case raising a stat from 8 to 10 or from 14 to 15 really matters.

Cha8 and you can actually fail very easy DC5 checks once in a while like farting in front of the king. While a 10cha guy always knows not to do that.

 

[Azzy]

I misread your response(still groggy from sleep).

Edit: The reason for the limitation is that some backgrounds will not fit the setting or DM's particular campaign, so the DM needs veto power.

That applies equally to species, classes, feats, the existing pre-made backgrounds, and what not, though, so there's no need to gate custom backgrounds in the DMG that players usually don't have access to when other character options aren't also cordoned off. Also, the PHB already tells the player to work with the DM (in the Talk With Your DM, on page 33) when creating a character as one of the first things in the character creation section, so the DM already has veto power. Cordoning off customizing and creating backgrounds to the DMG is unnecessary.