D&D General How Did You Generate Your Most Recent Character's Stats?

Lanefan said:

And IME that guy hiding in the back being ineffective ain't always the one with the bad stats. Quite the opposite, in fact: bad-stats guy is often the one front and centre trying to prove himself.

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Or trying to commit suicide by goblin so the player can roll up a new character.

Clint_L said:

What my students had a problem with was the obvious inequity built into the rules. It was like starting a soccer game where some players might, randomly, only get to wear one shoe. Yes, you can argue it's fair in that everyone has the same chance of being advantaged/disadvantaged...but how does that make it a better game once you're actually playing it?

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Thing is, disparity is not a bad thing. Right now Alphonso Davies is a far better football player (when he's not injured!) than most of the other pro players out there; ditto Connor McDavid when it comes to hockey. Do those disparities make football or hockey worse games? No.

Why not? Because while those individuals might dominate right now, they won't be at their peaks forever; and others will rise to take their places.

Another example: look at the MCU and the power disparities between the original six Avengers. In a straight-up fight Thor or Hulk would wipe the floor with either of Hawkeye or Black Widow.

And yet when the chips were down they worked fine as a party.

AlViking said:

Or trying to commit suicide by goblin so the player can roll up a new character.

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Sure, I'm fine with that. There's ways of doing it that aren't too obvious.

Lanefan said:

I'm more "what goes around, comes around" when it comes to this.

And, IME (even including 3e) I've had great stats on characters who didn't get out of their third session and relatively awful stats on characters who lasted for years.

Further, if a character just isn't working - be it due to stats or some other reason - nothing ever stops you (I hope!) from either having it go out with a whimper and simply retire from adventuring or having it bravely throw its hit-point-laden self at the enemy in hopes of going out in a blaze of glory.

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if i'm allowed to simply retire them any time i like whats the issue with retiring them straight away when i see their initial stats until i get a character with stats i do want to play?

CreamCloud0 said:

if i'm allowed to simply retire them any time i like whats the issue with retiring them straight away when i see their initial stats?

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Because getting the character into play gives it a chance to work out OK despite its stats (believe me, some do!). If it doesn't, retiring it serves to make the campaign setting* just that little bit broader and deeper in the long run.

* - irrelevant if the DM is running a hard-line AP with no deviation into the rest of the setting, so let's ignore those.

In any other campaign your retired character has the potential to become a known contact, a possible information source, a reason to maybe flesh out the town or wherever that it retired to, and-or a possible anchor point for a party base of operations (which could be as simple as the retired character's house). Further, that character is and remains available for you to cycle back in later if doing so makes sense and-or you have new or better ideas for it.

This assumes your retired characters don't instantly become NPCs; your characters belong to you even if they're not adventuring, and any DM who claims them as NPCs if they retire is IMO a DM well worth walking out on.

Lanefan said:

Thing is, disparity is not a bad thing. Right now Alphonso Davies is a far better football player (when he's not injured!) than most of the other pro players out there; ditto Connor McDavid when it comes to hockey. Do those disparities make football or hockey worse games? No.

Why not? Because while those individuals might dominate right now, they won't be at their peaks forever; and others will rise to take their places.

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Inherent disparity makes those games MUCH worse if you aspire to be more than a spectator at the highest levels. You can argue that it makes them better entertainment, but I don't think disparity makes them better games.

Whereas in a tabletop game, we don't have to have random disparity. So why should we? We control all the variables. Nobody is born with a certain size, brain, personality, etc.

Lanefan said:

Another example: look at the MCU and the power disparities between the original six Avengers. In a straight-up fight Thor or Hulk would wipe the floor with either of Hawkeye or Black Widow.

And yet when the chips were down they worked fine as a party.

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As a form of entertinment, 100%. But if you were actually playing them as a TTRPG, I suspect the person playing Hawkeye would feel pretty useless in most situations when compared to the person playing Thor, once the dice start rolling. Yes, a skilled DM could try to balance things ("Oh look, another trap that involves pinpoint accuracy!"), but most of the time, it's not gonna feel like you're contributing much.

If D&D was pure roleplay, this becomes less of an issue. But it's still a game. With a lot of rules and a lot of rolls. Balance is normally very important in games. When we play Eldritch Horror, each character is different and you can argue about which are better or worse overall, but it is clear that the designers were at pains to make them as close to equal as possible. Ditto Pandemic, or whatever. Same for almost all TTRPGS that aren't D&D or D&D clones like Pathfinder.

Going back to my example, would soccer be a better game if we randomly assigned some kids to have an extra disadvantage at the start, like one less shoe? I think we all agree that no, it would not. It doesn't make sense to make the parts of the game that you can control unfair. People inherently rebel at that.

I played D&D for years when rolling was the only method, and I can't think of one time when the game was improved by some players having better ability score totals than others. And I can think of lots of times when it was a problem. Maybe not a huge problem, but it was there.

Swarmkeeper said:

If a player (or players) enjoy(s) playing an underdog type, or a character that otherwise has some glaring mechanical disparities relative to other characters in the party, is that inherently worse gameplay?

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I mean, I don’t have a problem if a specific player wants to opt-in to having a weakness. But a truly random methodology isn’t going to assign that weaker set to that specific player.

TwoSix said:

To me, the argument for rolling falls down because there’s no positive argument that having 2 players with characters with a wide disparity in stats is actually positive in play. At best, it can be endured, but there’s no argument it enhances your play.

I can see valid arguments for more organic character creation, but there’s are plenty of stat generation methods that provide variety without disparity.

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This is where my logic takes me - the risk may be very small, but there's no upside to rolling that can't be achieved other ways without adding that risk.

(caveat: I'm assuming roll-and-assign here, where you're really just rolling to see what your base power level is. Even then, it takes a pretty big disparity to notice unless two players have very similar characters. Roll-in-order is a whole other bag of chips to say the least, though meaningful disparities are much more common in such systems.)

The only pro-rolling argument I have is "it's easier to convince dms to allow rolling with bonuses that it is to convince them to allow higher arrays," which kinda shouldn't be an issue but it's my experience. And it assumes the upsides of slightly more powerful characters (more viable-feeling build options) outweigh the downsides.

I prefer rolling in general. I like to have my character revealed to me - or at least certain aspects of the character - so then I can see what I can make of them.

For other pro-rolling arguments, I do have a couple:
1) The stat values are independent variables. One isn't higher because one is lower (and vice versa) - a tradeoff that's always inherent in point-buy systems, particularly one with such a narrow set of characteristics to buy (just 6). I think it works better if the whole PC is purchased with points and everything trades off against everything else - such as in Mutants and Masterminds, Champions, and GURPS. Six characteristics and no skills, powers, traits, or anything else is too few to make the exercise worthwhile.

2) Point-buy exacerbates the problems you see when some classes are SAD and others MAD. The discrepancies between SAD and MAD characters is, I think, not improved compared to the discrepancies between a lucky and an unlucky set of rolls when stats are rolled that so many people are complaining about. And worse, it isn't luck that's behind it, it's a systematic problem that penalizes MAD characters with the scarcity of points in the budget.
I think this was really obvious with 3e, and I've been wary of point-buy ever since.

Clint_L said:

Inherent disparity makes those games MUCH worse if you aspire to be more than a spectator at the highest levels. You can argue that it makes them better entertainment, but I don't think disparity makes them better games.

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So you're not a fan of dynastic teams, then. Fair enough.

Clint_L said:

Whereas in a tabletop game, we don't have to have random disparity. So why should we? We control all the variables.

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Except that in the situation where the PCs are intended to be reflective of a bit of a cross-section of their respective populations...

Clint_L said:

Nobody is born with a certain size, brain, personality, etc.

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...then certain characters ARE born with a certain size, brain power, etc. (personality too but that's nore nurture than nature I think). Random rolling (including roll-and-assign, which is my default) merely abstracts this into game mechanics.

Clint_L said:

As a form of entertinment, 100%. But if you were actually playing them as a TTRPG, I suspect the person playing Hawkeye would feel pretty useless in most situations when compared to the person playing Thor, once the dice start rolling.

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Maybe, maybe not. The Hawkeye player is challenged to find a way to have Hawkeye contribute even if-when he's completely out of his depth, similar to (in old-school games) the player of a very low-level character being challenged to find a way to contribute even when in a higher-level party.

Clint_L said:

Yes, a skilled DM could try to balance things ("Oh look, another trap that involves pinpoint accuracy!"), but most of the time, it's not gonna feel like you're contributing much.

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And when the DM tailors the challenges like that it starts feeling contrived in a hurry, because it is.

Clint_L said:

If D&D was pure roleplay, this becomes less of an issue. But it's still a game. With a lot of rules and a lot of rolls. Balance is normally very important in games. When we play Eldritch Horror, each character is different and you can argue about which are better or worse overall, but it is clear that the designers were at pains to make them as close to equal as possible. Ditto Pandemic, or whatever. Same for almost all TTRPGS that aren't D&D or D&D clones like Pathfinder.

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The WotC editions are certainly much more game-centric, or at least that's how it seems. I don't see this as a positive, though.

Clint_L said:

Going back to my example, would soccer be a better game if we randomly assigned some kids to have an extra disadvantage at the start, like one less shoe? I think we all agree that no, it would not. It doesn't make sense to make the parts of the game that you can control unfair. People inherently rebel at that.

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You don't need to deny some of them their shoes. Throw 22 random kids - let's even make them all the same age - on a soccer field and split 'em into two teams and there's going to be wide disparities in raw talent, desire, athletic ability, and "game sense" no matter what.

Those disparities in raw talent and, perhaps, athletic ability and game sense (maps to wisdom) are what the rolls are trying to mirror. Disparities in desire show up in the roleplay.

And someone with at-best-moderate athletic ability and no real raw talent whatsoever can still be a very useful contributor to the team on pure heart and desire alone.