Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epic Meepo" data-source="post: 9387233" data-attributes="member: 57073">Interesting questions.For background, I’m the sort of DM who believes randomness should occur during play, not during character creation. I don’t like randomly generated ability scores or hit points, because they can have an outsized impact on the game, making in-game rolls less dramatic in comparison.When I’m sticking close to the standard 5e rules, I usually allow point buy, since some players appreciate the extra custimization. Ideally, I would instead use a fixed stat array or two, because it speeds things up, and because most point buy characters end up with similar stat arrays anyway.Given my preference for faster, less-variable stat generation, I do believe all characters should have the option of starting with the same highest score. They should also have the the option of having a few moderately-high scores instead of one maxed-out score, if they so choose.I care about this while I’m DMing because I find running a game more interesting when optimizers are given a long list of optimized builds to choose from. I don’t want to see the same two or three cookie-cutter builds popping up every time I start a new campaign or run a new one-shot.I liked “making backgrounds matter” in the playtest when custom backgrounds were the default, because optimizers weren’t locked into certain combos. They could fine-tune their mechanics and flavor it however they wanted, freeing them up to create interesting mechanic-agnostic backstories.Without custom backgrounds in the default rules, optimal class/background combos are going to see more play than other builds. I'm going to start seeing optimizers bringing the same two or three "justify-my-combo" backstories to the table, making things more homogenous and predictable.</blockquote>

Verification