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

[Lanefan]

Realistically, day-to-day living should cause XP loss, proportional to the amount of total earned XP, representing the natural erosion of the edge life-or-death experiences give.

Training and practice can ameliorate this decline, but not arrest it.

Agreed, and as in my eyes this has always been a rather big hole in the game system, a year or two back I finally got around to designing a system to handle exactly this.

It's here if you're interested:

Blue Book - Part 9 - Development

 

[ECMO3]

That 20 strength barbarian will be doing almost double damage on average

It is possible the 20 strength Barbarian does double the damage of the 14 strength Barbarian during a session, it is also possible the 20 Strength Barbarian does less damage than the 14 Strength Barbarian during a session and it is possible they will be within 25% of one another over the course of a session or be "balanced" within this tolerance despite the difference in ability scores.

More importantly this is still all true even in they both have a 20 strength ... or if they both have a 14 strength.

 

[AlViking]

It is possible the 20 strength Barbarian does double the damage of the 14 strength Barbarian during a session, it is also possible the 20 Strength Barbarian does less damage than the 14 Strength Barbarian during a session and it is possible they will be within 25% of one another over the course of a session or be "balanced" within this tolerance despite the difference in ability scores.

More importantly this is still all true even in they both have a 20 strength ... or if they both have a 14 strength.

Averages matter. Once-in-a-blue moon doesn't to me.

 

[ECMO3]

Averages matter. Once-in-a-blue moon doesn't to me.

Yeah exactly.

A 1st level raging Barbarian with a 16 strength swinging a Greataxe against a 16 AC foe has mean damage of 6.1 with a standard deviation of 6.7! An "average" session is probably between 3 and 12 rounds of combat depending on the table.

So two characters with the same strength and same mean output per attack will vary wildly in an "average" session. Once in a blue moon you will have a balanced session.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Yeah exactly.

A 1st level raging Barbarian with a 16 strength swinging a Greataxe against a 16 AC foe has mean damage of 6.1 with a standard deviation of 6.7! An "average" session is probably between 3 and 12 rounds of combat depending on the table.

So two characters with the same strength and same mean output per attack will vary wildly in an "average" session. Once in a blue moon you will have a balanced session.

From my limited understanding of statistics, a Standard Deviation of 6.7 here is gigantic! I imagine the bell curve would be rather hard to see.