D&D 5E (2014) Is Point Buy Balanced?

[Bagpuss]

Is Point Buy Balanced? I'm not asking if Point Buy is more balanced?, but rather, is it totally balanced?

One of those combinations is the Standard Array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. Another is 13, 13, 13, 12, 12, 12. Are these two combinations balanced against each other? Would two characters created with these combinations be equally effective? Would two characters of identical Race, Background, and Class built with each of these combinations be equally effective?

The thing is with point buy they don't need to be balanced, as the player has the choice as to what suits their character best, both mechanically or even if they wanted a more balanced character for RP reasons.

If you did random rolls and came up with one of those two you are playing a straight human fighter there is no doubt the first array is better than the second in nearly all situations. But being random you wouldn't get the choice.

 

[ECMO3]

More relevant to the topic, I feel it important to point out that while rolling techically has more possibilities, many of them are either unplayable or absurdly broken and should not be considered valid options.

If you agree to rolling abilities then it is a valid option.

As fun as it is to envision all 18s, I sincerely doubt any DM would allow that character to ever see play at a table,

I have not seen a player with all 18s but I have seen them with three 18s and we did play them. If we are playing a game that is roll abilities and I roll really well I would be pretty peeved if you booted my PC or made me reroll.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I would even go so far as to say that individually optimized characters will be a LOT less effective then a good group build. And that's not just about min-maxing, but playing characters that mesh well with each other.

OR an imbalance in the party where both started with the same resources, one went for a build optimized for roleplaying and the other optimized purely for combat. A mismatch in expectations and general incompatibility will do more damage then any imbalance in any system.

i'd wish 5e was a game where the three pillars were equally balanced in worth, use and nuance that two characters one optimized for combat and one for social (and a third for exploration) are balanced and of asymmetrical yet equal worth to each other.

 

[Clint_L]

i'd wish 5e was a game where the three pillars were equally balanced in worth, use and nuance that two characters one optimized for combat and one for social (and a third for exploration) are balanced and of asymmetrical yet equal worth to each other.

It can be done - Matt Mercer, for example, runs far fewer combats and has a lot more social and exploration play happening - but D&D does tend to default towards combat as the ultimate means of dispute resolution, even in his games. It's always been this way - more so, back in 1e, at least as I experienced it. Back then every TSR module was all combat and traps.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It’s less easy, but you can still make a very ineffective PC in PF2. Especially, if you are trying to spread your stats out.

The only time I've seen what I thought was an ineffective PF2e character was people who actively avoided what the games tell you is needed for the class you're playing; while a point or two on the roll matters, its not a game breaker.

(If someone builds a character the game tells you needs attributes X and Y and you deliberately lowball them, I think that's a self-inflicted wound. But I've spread my attributes around and still found I could hold up my end, I just made sure that those core attributes were among the ones I was emphasizing.)

 

[Xeviat]

Long thread already, so apologies if someone already said it.

5E's point buy is pretty close to the statistical average of 6*(4d6, drop the lowest), but it's just a little behind standard rolls IF the DM allows rerolling garbage sets (which 3E had defined as nothing above 13 or cumulative bonus less than +1 iirc). If rerolls are allowed, the average rolls go up more.

Whether different point buys are balanced against each other is hard to say. That answer actually depends on how high level the campaign will get to and which feats you're interested in. The game math wants* you to start with around a +3 mod for your attack stat and it hopes* you get that mod to +5 eventually. With Point Buy and background bonuses, you could start with a 16 or 17 and get to 20 by 8th level if you don't mind taking "ability score increase" as your feat/s. If there aren't any tests you want, you could get a 20 if you start with a 10, so a 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 13 spread, boosted to 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, 14 could be "viable" if you really wanted high saving throws or something.

I tend to go with the 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 spread with the intent to bump the 15 and 14 to 16s with my background boosts.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A mismatch in expectations and general incompatibility will do more damage then any imbalance in any system.

However: An imbalance coded into the system can create a mismatch in expectations or a general incompatibility.

Because we've literally heard from folks on here--IIRC Charlaquin, or possibly Steampunkette?--how their innocent pursuit of thematic stuff for a character caused them to become stupidly powerful (e.g. taking Incantatrix because they thought "oh cool, my character loves tinkering with spells, this perfectly expresses that!"), while other players at that same table, equally innocently pursuing thematic stuff for their characters, caused them to end up being far weaker and far less able to contribute.

This is part of why it's so dangerous to blithely dismiss system as being totally overwhelmed by external factors. The system itself can spawn the very "external factors" you're claiming are always more important. Hence, they aren't always the most important factor, even if they are the direct cause. Sometimes, the indirect cause is more important than the direct one, just as (say) "lung failure" was the direct cause of my paternal grandmother's death, but the most important cause was the asbestos she was exposed to as a young adult, which gave her mesothelioma in her later years, which resulted in eventual lung failure.

This does not mean that "perfect" balance is attainable--I don't believe it is, and as I said previously I don't expect it of anything. But it does mean that "well mismatches in expectations are way more important" can blind us to how system actually does play a part, some of the time. It can't be all of the time, because if it were that would mean TTRPGs were mind control. But it is false to assert that poor balance is never the reason why problems happened, even when we recognize that the most direct cause is often expectation mismatch.

I mean, we can literally see how the design of 3e did exactly that. The designers expected people to play the game precisely as they did 2e, as though all the benefits and detriments were unchanged. In fairness, early on, most did just that. Then people started playing the game actually presented to them, and rather a lot of problems appeared.

 

[Cergorach]

It can be done - Matt Mercer, for example, runs far fewer combats and has a lot more social and exploration play happening - but D&D does tend to default towards combat as the ultimate means of dispute resolution, even in his games. It's always been this way - more so, back in 1e, at least as I experienced it. Back then every TSR module was all combat and traps.

That thus depends fully on the DM/group style if that works or not, and imho that's not balanced! In the social setting the the combat person is useless, and in the combat the social person is useless. You're essentially playing different games, with different people, and the rest of the people wait for you to finish the others game before you continue their game. This tends to be not fun for all involved. And the more sub games you have the longer the wait becomes. This is the same issue as splitting the party with a single DM, running different games while others wait around.

There should be player/character involvement in all aspects of the game, everyone should be able to participate in combat, in social, and exploration. And this is what I mean with building characters as a group, not to have an expert in each field, but to make sure there are no extremes and no 'holes' in both the group AND the characters. It's also to get everyone in the same mindset for the adventure/campaign.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Long thread already, so apologies if someone already said it.

5E's point buy is pretty close to the statistical average of 6*(4d6, drop the lowest), but it's just a little behind standard rolls IF the DM allows rerolling garbage sets (which 3E had defined as nothing above 13 or cumulative bonus less than +1 iirc). If rerolls are allowed, the average rolls go up more.

Whether different point buys are balanced against each other is hard to say. That answer actually depends on how high level the campaign will get to and which feats you're interested in. The game math wants* you to start with around a +3 mod for your attack stat and it hopes* you get that mod to +5 eventually. With Point Buy and background bonuses, you could start with a 16 or 17 and get to 20 by 8th level if you don't mind taking "ability score increase" as your feat/s. If there aren't any tests you want, you could get a 20 if you start with a 10, so a 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 13 spread, boosted to 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, 14 could be "viable" if you really wanted high saving throws or something.

I tend to go with the 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 spread with the intent to bump the 15 and 14 to 16s with my background boosts.

The original intent was to compare across different arrays. I did an analysis upthread (which was a more laboriously spelled-out version of apparently a couple of analyses previously done, but which I had not seen), where I applied what I felt were a set of relatively reasonable restrictions. The first was that at least one score had to be 14 or 15; the second was that at least two scores had to be 14 or 15, preferably one each; and the third was that odd stats should be mitigated for the final result, which means you prefer to have either exactly one (so you go for +2/+1 from BG in 5.5e or race in 5.0) or exactly three (so you go for +1/+1/+1).

65 arrays can be validly purchased through PB, though three (the maximally-distributed ones) don't even meet the first and most general requirement, so I'll leave them out, and thus 62 remain.

Of those 62, nine are what I would call "very good" and a further eleven are what I would call "good". If we broaden things a little, about two-thirds are at least decent, especially if you have a plan (e.g. "I know the GM rushes us to 5th level, so I can just wait and pick up a feat"). Hence, my verdict is that, within a reasonable scope of balance, 5e's point-buy rules are pretty well balanced. This is not something I say much about anything in 5e, so I hope that lends weight to the claim. I don't praise it lightly, nor often.

 

[Cergorach]

However: An imbalance coded into the system can create a mismatch in expectations or a general incompatibility.

Because we've literally heard from folks on here--IIRC Charlaquin, or possibly Steampunkette?--how their innocent pursuit of thematic stuff for a character caused them to become stupidly powerful (e.g. taking Incantatrix because they thought "oh cool, my character loves tinkering with spells, this perfectly expresses that!"), while other players at that same table, equally innocently pursuing thematic stuff for their characters, caused them to end up being far weaker and far less able to contribute.

This is part of why it's so dangerous to blithely dismiss system as being totally overwhelmed by external factors. The system itself can spawn the very "external factors" you're claiming are always more important. Hence, they aren't always the most important factor, even if they are the direct cause. Sometimes, the indirect cause is more important than the direct one, just as (say) "lung failure" was the direct cause of my paternal grandmother's death, but the most important cause was the asbestos she was exposed to as a young adult, which gave her mesothelioma in her later years, which resulted in eventual lung failure.

This does not mean that "perfect" balance is attainable--I don't believe it is, and as I said previously I don't expect it of anything. But it does mean that "well mismatches in expectations are way more important" can blind us to how system actually does play a part, some of the time. It can't be all of the time, because if it were that would mean TTRPGs were mind control. But it is false to assert that poor balance is never the reason why problems happened, even when we recognize that the most direct cause is often expectation mismatch.

I mean, we can literally see how the design of 3e did exactly that. The designers expected people to play the game precisely as they did 2e, as though all the benefits and detriments were unchanged. In fairness, early on, most did just that. Then people started playing the game actually presented to them, and rather a lot of problems appeared.

I think that's based on assumptions, randomness, not understanding the system, and a certain level of unintentional min/maxing.

In D&D 3e the issue was worse, partly due to how the system was implemented, partly due to how much choice there was with all the official books and people assumed that if it was official they could use it. And a healthy dose of power creep and maybe not enough internal consistency. 5E 2014 was already a little better, there was less stuff even after a decade of use, and 5e 2024 was even better. After I had DMed last in 3.5e I also figured out that I would NEVER allow complete usage of all books again if I DMed again, and with my latest 5e 2024 campaign I said "Only from the 5e 2024 PHB, nothing else!", it gives enough options to keep internal balance.

But I still say that when people make choices in an RPG without understanding the RPG, the group, the other players/characters, the DM, and the adventure/campaign. You'll have issues exactly as you describe them. By making a choice THEY find cool/interesting, without seeing that in context. One player might find something powerful cool and interesting, another player might find something weak cool and interesting, and if that continues in the same way for every moment they can make a choice, it snowballs. This is not just an issue with character building, these issues also present themselves when building adventures/campaigns, people making choices in adventures/campaigns that are not related to your character mechanical advancement.

Rule #0 and Session #0 should be imho: get everyone aligned in expectations, in objectives, in style, mechanics, etc. RPGing is a group activity, not an individual game. But when people treat parts of an RPG as an individual activity because their choices matter more then other choices, your going to get back to the same problem, no matter the system and how balanced it is. Even is something like Vampire, I can build completely different style characters, but due to the expectations of Vampire a certain style is assumed.