yes this, a thousand times this,Re: Everybody starting with 16 int her prime stat.
Let me preface this by saying that I don't do optimization. I don't care about the difference between a 15 and a 16. I don't let "suboptimal" get in the way of a character concept. In fact I might seek suboptimal as part of the concept. I don't care for enabling minmax or charop. I don't even like these forms of play. Yet, I stand with most of the people here who don't like this change and come from the charop side of play.
My main argument is, if something can't be used for charop, it can't be used for meaningful creative expression either. That is even if we could weed out all charop potential, we shouldn't because we'd lose all potential for customization in the process. I find that unacceptable.
I like having control over my character. Yes, floating bonuses can be used for charop, but they can also be used for choosing less optimal or even entirely bad, and that choice is mostly invisible. Having them coupled to backgrounds, means there are optimal backgrounds for each class, and background choice is very visible, which means that well-meaning optimizers -and controlling optimizers- will easily have a reason to pester me for my character choices. And I have been pestered by both fellow players and DMs over my choices in the past. It has even costed me games because how I dare choosing a suboptimal class/race combo with a suboptimal weapon choice that I'm not proficient with and choosing to not use floating bonuses to patch the choice but instead to focus on somthing else?
Two canon aspects of D&D orcs are relevant here which a lot of people don't know or have forgotten:Everyone is visually looking more like reskinned humans. Orcs are the most obvious, but it even seems to be the case for all the others too.
They've had floating ASIs since Tasha's, but found that it was counterintuitively not resulting in more varied sets of character statblocks. Most people were putting them in the same places - implicitly, whatever they're class was good at - which is why they decided to tie them to backgrounds (albeit with more flexibility than how species-locked ASIs were handled previously).
This is a half-truth, and didn't claim it wasn't true at all, so you're putting words in my mouth, and that's just going to cause confusion.
WIS is only strong or useful at all if you ALSO have access to:
A) Perception (and preferably but less importantly Insight)
B) Proficiency in WIS saves.
Otherwise it's hugely worse than CON as a secondary, and worse than DEX for anyone who isn't wearing heavy armour.
I mean, how many WIS saves do you make in a long campaign? 20? 50? And how many times is you AC rolled against? 200? 1000?
HP and AC are more directly useful to every single character (and saying they aren't is just not realistic).
It should be noted that you are starting the argument from the base of an adventurer - not the general public. Therefore, everything you are saying is invalid. The commoner, and by that I mean blacksmith, carpenter, merchant, sailor, farmer, etc. has a 10 intelligence. That is the average. So, anyone with a 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, or 16 is above average. Spend two points in the point buy, and the urchin is starting out of average intelligence. Spend 3 and they are above average for the population as a whole.
So this is not class essentialism. It might be some adventurer problem where some players will have a problem having a 15 (way above average) instead of a 16 (way above average).
I really don't grasp the concept of "characters pulling their weight".Keep in mind my point such a character is more a liability than a boon. If your PC is going to spend most combats on the floor bleeding out, soaking up the actions and healing that could be used to support characters who act actually fighting the monsters, I question why that character is there. The character OB1 and I discussed in 5e is minimally viable as a healbot, but isn't contributing meaningfully beyond that. If your joy is to be a walking, talking potion of healing, that's fine. But don't be too surprised if the other players stop wasting their actions to stabilize you after the 30th time you go down in round one to a fireball or critical hit.
Probably for most people yes, but it is not the end of the world. Worst case, the character dies and yoyu roll up a new one.Look, I can't convince you that playing a character with all 3s isn't possible. I'm saying though it's not the enjoyable experience people who advocate for rolled scores say it is. If it was, Gary wouldn't have wasted space creating 12 alternative ways to generate ability scores in the DMG and UA, one of which becoming the default method in all subsequent versions of rolling (4d6).
Which could be fine if it was a situation where wasting it kills you, but worrying if it was easy to save them.All I'm saying is if you play a character that sucks and can't contribute meaningfully, don't be surprised if I don't waste precious resources to save them.
Yes, we noticed that too. A 16 is desirable. But if you start with a 15 and raise it at level 4 with a half feat, that is ok. At that point, either both have taken the half feat and the difference is not noticable anymore or you are +1 behind but your character is more interesting because you took a feat.I also want to briefly hit this from the other side. A game I am currently in we all rolled for stats, and we all rolled GODLIKE stats. After the +2/+1 my character is sitting at a 16, 16, 16, 13, 19, 12 and I know another party member started with at least two 18's before the mods, and I think currently has two 20's.
We barely notice.
Legitimately, we are not running around like gods among men. I've occasionally referenced my character's unusually high strength for a cleric, and I've taken advantage of having a decent dex score since I'm playing a trickery cleric and ended up defaulting into being the rogue of the group, but none of us feel we aren't challenged or that the game is too easy. Heck, we nearly TPK'd in our last fight.
I know people are going to claim that this means we wouldn't notice the low scores either, but that's actually wrong. I've played in games with someone who decided to play with consistently low stats... and we all noticed it. We were very aware that they just had a worse chance of success than most of the rest of the party. They did consistently fall short, their spells did consistently fail to land. In another game we just had our sorcerer one-shot because at level 3 they have only 14 hp. They rolled a crit to avoid being kidnapped and warned us of an ambush, then was instantly dropped before they could do anything else. No one else in the party is that fragile, including the wizard.
I know it seems counter-intuitive to people. But a 16 seems to be the pivot point in the math. I've seen multiple characters who had multiple scores above that number, and other than the occasional "oh, the wizard broke down the door... neat" it is hardly noticeable. And I have seen multiple characters without a 16 in any score, struggle and grasp at straws to not burden the party. Yes, it is a one point difference, but it seems to actually matter to the math of the game. Maybe it is just my games, maybe it is just my sample size, but it does seem to actually make a significant difference. And a character with no score higher than 10? No one is interested.
This is just laughable. There's no actual argument here. The idea that having vastly less HP is fine because "above level 16" (a range no-one plays in) WIS saves are common is hilariously nonsensical. Even enough CON to get +1 HP is a gigantic boost to real-terms survivability - If you have a d6 HD, that's about 30% more HP per level (ignoring the L1 max HP, but we can factor that in if you want to be difficult - you'll be doing the maths though). d8, it's still about 25% more. d10, 20% more, and so on (also it's slightly less of gain with fixed HP/level, but only slightly - what like 5% less?). +2 or more is amazing.I would strongly disagree about Wisdom being worse than Constitution, especially in levels 1-10. Failing a Wisdom save is usually more disruptive than failing a constitution save as they often cause incapacitation or worse. Constitution saves usually cause poisoned or restrained which are less detrimental and they often take an effect on a hit, making dexterity a first line of defense to mitigating them.
A good Wisdom helps a lot for saves, at high level this is less useful without proficiency, but at level 5 the difference between a -1 and a +2 is huge, then add all the skills it is used for on top of that. This is a lot better than the 15 hit points the trade in Constitution gives you.
More than you make concentration saves and it is worse when you fail them. Wisdom proficiency is pretty much mandatory above level 16 for any character if you want to actually be in control of it. Meanwhile I played characters from level 1-20 with a 10 Constitution and never had much problems.
AC yes, hit points no, or more specifically the hit points you get from a higher constitution no. Pushing Constitution just doesn't give you enough hit points to matter, especially with how available healing and temporary hit points are and how minimially debilitating even being at 0 hit points is as long as a party member has healing word.
Also Wisdom drives how much YOU will be surprised regardless of other characters perception. That again is more valuable than the few hit points you get.
The only build that really needs to drive hit points high is someone who wants to tank with a low armor class - like a typical Barbarian. While those characters do "need" a high Constitution, that is not an optimal way to fill that role. Getting a screaming high AC and saves so you won't easily be incapacitated is a far more effective way to do that.
Failing a save against something like Hold Person while you are tanking is going to drain all those constitution hit points in a New York minute.
Nonviable is subjective. I'd play them, and they would be sickley as all get out.