D&D 5E A Proper Ability Score Generation Preference Poll

[Caliban]

And you have your ways and anyone who disagrees with you claim as dishonest and disrespectful. I have seen this from you al over the forums, you post nothing constructive and are always argumentative .

More half truths and lies. I'm very argumentative, but I rarely claim that people who disagree with me are dishonest. And I'm usually constructive, unless I'm just being funny.

BYE.

Somehow, I doubt this is the last I'll hear from you.

 

[Oofta]

It’s not about best, it’s about variety and Pc generation. I guess you didn’t notice that he STILL didn’t post the PC, instead challenged me again with 5 new PCs, that’s he sign of a loser.

And BTW you have posted in PC Opp threads and guides, I guess you posted without reading them?

I may have posted responses to questions something along the lines of "Do what makes sense for your character, and what will be fun, don't listen to the optimizers". But no, I don't read them for character advice on how to build my character.

If you took the trouble to look up my history, maybe you should have read what I posted.

This is going nowhere except people desperate to protect their arrays and point buy methods for no reason other then to win on the forums.

Or people desperate to put down other peoples preferences.

I didn’t see your post about rogue otherwise I would have done it. It’s all the same with arrays any way, best stat into primary, best odd into whatever you get +1 racial in, best even into what you get +2 racial in, dump stats into dump abilities, etc. 13 or 14 into something if you intend to MC into something that doesn’t use your primary. The land of 8 STR wizard, 8 INT barbs, etc.

Nope. 16, 12, 16, 10, 14, 8. He inherited his father's physical might and endurance (high strength, constitution) but was wise enough to know he could never inspire his people like his father did (high wisdom, low charisma). So while he was the noble born son of a king, he spent as much time as possible learning how to become a rogue. There's a lot more to it, but you get the drift. He did take a few levels of fighter, but that was so he could add his strength bonus to his secondary attack with two weapon fighting; he's primarily a rogue.

Backstory and character is more important to me than optimization.

That’s the point of this thread and others, arrays and point buy are largely repetitive and boring, and rolling in no way wrecks the game. It’s the fear of someone rolling better than you that drives most people from rolling. You can see it in the posts, it’s “unfair” not “balanced” or “breaks the game” etc.

Rolling does none of those things. If you are afraid of a person cheating on their rolls why would you play with them? Call them out. Or, as I have suggested, roll in front of everyone.


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So you prefer rolling. That's fine. But if any person's characters are boring and defined by their ability scores alone, I don't think the problem is the system.

 

[Oofta]

The defenders of arrays and point buy basically claim the following is true

1. Rolling breaks the game
2. Rolling create overwhelming PC
3. Rolling destroys play balance
4. Rolling creates too much variety
5. You can’t trust other players, they always cheat if you let them roll
6. Rolling is inherently random you could get a weak PC.
7. Rolling could make your PC worse then someone else’s which
8. Would force your PC into a subservient role.


Look at those arguments, some are contradictory, some are just false. Rolling for stats doesn’t break the game or anything like that, it doesn’t destroy play balance. I guess it’s possible if you rolled 3-4 18s, but the game will balance that out as you go up since your scope is capped anyway. Why would anyone ever play with someone you think would cheat on die rolls is beyond me. Variety is good for the game, if you want to have fun try a PC with low ability score and play it to the hilt. Your PC can never be subservient unless you let them be, that’s a player fail. Your PC isn’t weaker than someone else’s because they have a starting score of 18 in their main while you have a 15 or 16.

The roll for stats people are mostly like me, old players with years of experience that argue

1. Rolling is they way we have done it for years
2. It’s increases variety and depth.
3. It’s never destroyed or damaged any game we have ever seen or heard of.
4. We don’t play with players that we think would cheat on the PC creation rolls.

Of course all of these are subjective arguments, although I could argue mathematically that if you start out at +1 for your ability modifier compares to other players it’s not breaking the game in any way, you get that extra hit or save or ability check success once in every 20 rolls on the average. Tony Vargas has been around for as long as I have (37 years at the tables) ask him or any other long time player.

The only time I have seen a player get totally screwed by random numbers in PC generation was in the Traveler game where you could literally get a result that your PC aged out and died before the game even started. Otherwise it’s a wash.

Everyone can choose anyway they want to generate their stats, the are all basically the same. However the arguments I see and hear against rolling are just not true or way off base, and the proponents of those arguments just twist themselves into knots trying to “prove” them. I think that most of these arguments are based in the fear that some other player will get over on them, have a “better” PC due to RNG.

If you roll in front of everyone then it becomes a group building thing that is enjoyable. Try it once.

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Huh. I started with the brown box set and have been using some variation of point buy since Living City was a thing back in the early 90s. Actually, now that I think of it we rarely used straight rolling for PC generation even before then. Guess not all old timers believe the same as you do.

End of the day it's a preference, so get off your high horse. It died a long time ago continuing to beat it won't change anything.

 

[redrick]

We rolled ability scores for my first several D&D 5e games — I'd always felt this was "the right way to do it", as I'd come up from basic and AD&D doing it that way. The result — one character was STACKED, basically giving him one or two free feats over other characters, plus way more hit points and, as a fighter with extra attacks, he was reliably hitting more and harder than anybody else. It didn't break the game, but it definitely made things harder for me as a DM, because he was so much more resilient than everybody else in the party. And once we got out of fireball range, combat was like a baseball lineup with all pitchers and one power hitter. It was an irritant. And sure, I could have nerfed his character, but that's no fun for anybody.

When I started a new group, we just did point buy and standard array and it just worked. And our characters are still creative and inventive. I miss the "what am I going to get" surprise of rolling ability scores, that tends to push me in a direction I wouldn't have picked on my own, but that tool from [MENTION=6779310]aramis erak[/MENTION] helps to bring some of that back.

Also, the same-iness of standard array characters is great when DM'ing with new players at lower levels. I can sit with a group of new players and I can quickly memorize all of their modifiers, because I just need to know the one or two irregularities of their character build, and the corresponding bonuses fall into place. The fact that most first-level characters are +5 to hit with their primary attacks and have a DC 13 spell save makes things super easy.

 

[redrick]

Question on this. How do you do treasure shares? In all the groups I played in cash was shared out evenly and magic items were given to whoever could get the most use out of it.

How players divide treasure is up to each group of players! Usually, it's an even split, with items going to whoever seems to get the most use out of it, but if a character gets something before it goes into the "general pool", it's up to them what they do with it. Most groups don't abuse this — treasure is mostly cosmetic anyhow — but I have played with less mature players where it was a thing, and then you have to start putting more rules in place. My point was just to illustrate that there are groups who function well with fewer rules, constraints and dictates, and there are groups that don't.

 

[Arilyn]

Rolling can be fun but in a crunchy game like DnD, where balance is endlessly debated, and bounded accuracy is touted as the game's saviour, does random rolling make sense, or is it just tradition? I mean, how can you fret that ability X is OP, if you let dice roll as they will during character creation?

One time I rolled 15 16 16 17 17 18. Everyone else was lucky to get a 12. I volunteered to scrap my "Conan", cause it wouldn't have been fair. GM would have let me keep it, cause we all rolled in front of each other. Ignoring fairness, those stats wouldn't have fit my character concept anyway.

So, yeah, arrays or point buy make better game sense, although a better point buy in 5e is needed. And as I mentioned before you need lots of arrays to choose from, at least 10. If you want randomness, roll for your array, and then you could even randomly assign numbers to stats.

 

[Satyrn]

Interestingly, Xanathars Guide recommends letting players choose between the Standard Array and the Variant Point Buy.

It seems rolling dice has fallen out of favor, apparently because it is too disruptive.

I know that recommendation is found in the Shared Campaigns appendix - which makes it a recommendation for a specific circumstance - multiple DMs working together with players able to take their character from one table to another with ease.

It is not a recommendation against rolling for the typical home game.

Unless the recommendation shows up somewhere else in the book I'm not aware of. Does it?

 

[Oofta]

Rolling can be fun but in a crunchy game like DnD, where balance is endlessly debated, and bounded accuracy is touted as the game's saviour, does random rolling make sense, or is it just tradition? I mean, how can you fret that ability X is OP, if you let dice roll as they will during character creation?

One time I rolled 15 16 16 17 17 18. Everyone else was lucky to get a 12. I volunteered to scrap my "Conan", cause it wouldn't have been fair. GM would have let me keep it, cause we all rolled in front of each other. Ignoring fairness, those stats wouldn't have fit my character concept anyway.

So, yeah, arrays or point buy make better game sense, although a better point buy in 5e is needed. And as I mentioned before you need lots of arrays to choose from, at least 10. If you want randomness, roll for your array, and then you could even randomly assign numbers to stats.

I think something people miss - or ignore - is that having a character that is significantly more powerful than other PCs is just as unwanted for many people as having someone that is significantly weaker.

All of the possible options that add up to 27 point buy...
[SBLOCK]
13, 13, 13, 12, 12, 12
13, 13, 13, 13, 12, 11
13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 10
14, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12
14, 13, 12, 12, 12, 11
14, 13, 13, 12, 11, 11
14, 13, 13, 12, 12, 10
14, 13, 13, 13, 11, 10
14, 13, 13, 13, 12, 9
14, 13, 13, 13, 13, 8
14, 14, 12, 11, 11, 11
14, 14, 12, 12, 11, 10
14, 14, 12, 12, 12, 9
14, 14, 13, 11, 11, 10
14, 14, 13, 12, 10, 10
14, 14, 13, 12, 11, 9
14, 14, 13, 12, 12, 8
14, 14, 13, 13, 10, 9
14, 14, 13, 13, 11, 8
14, 14, 14, 10, 10, 10
14, 14, 14, 11, 10, 9
14, 14, 14, 11, 11, 8
14, 14, 14, 12, 9, 9
14, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8
14, 14, 14, 13, 9, 8
15, 12, 12, 12, 11, 11
15, 12, 12, 12, 12, 10
15, 13, 12, 11, 11, 11
15, 13, 12, 12, 11, 10
15, 13, 12, 12, 12, 9
15, 13, 13, 11, 11, 10
15, 13, 13, 12, 10, 10
15, 13, 13, 12, 11, 9
15, 13, 13, 12, 12, 8
15, 13, 13, 13, 10, 9
15, 13, 13, 13, 11, 8
15, 14, 11, 11, 11, 10
15, 14, 12, 11, 10, 10
15, 14, 12, 11, 11, 9
15, 14, 12, 12, 10, 9
15, 14, 12, 12, 11, 8
15, 14, 13, 10, 10, 10
15, 14, 13, 11, 10, 9
15, 14, 13, 11, 11, 8
15, 14, 13, 12, 9, 9
15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8
15, 14, 13, 13, 9, 8
15, 14, 14, 10, 9, 9
15, 14, 14, 10, 10, 8
15, 14, 14, 11, 9, 8
15, 14, 14, 12, 8, 8
15, 15, 11, 10, 10, 10
15, 15, 11, 11, 10, 9
15, 15, 11, 11, 11, 8
15, 15, 12, 10, 10, 9
15, 15, 12, 11, 9, 9
15, 15, 12, 11, 10, 8
15, 15, 12, 12, 9, 8
15, 15, 13, 10, 9, 9
15, 15, 13, 10, 10, 8
15, 15, 13, 11, 9, 8
15, 15, 13, 12, 8, 8
15, 15, 14, 9, 9, 8
15, 15, 14, 10, 8, 8
15, 15, 15, 8, 8, 8
[/SBLOCK]

 

[Satyrn]

I miss the "what am I going to get" surprise of rolling ability scores, that tends to push me in a direction I wouldn't have picked on my own, but that tool from [MENTION=6779310]aramis erak[/MENTION] helps to bring some of that back.

I miss that, too. My solution was to randomly place the values of the Standard Array.

(And even randomly roll for race, class and background)

 

[Yardiff]

Nope. 16, 12, 16, 10, 14, 8. He inherited his father's physical might and endurance (high strength, constitution) but was wise enough to know he could never inspire his people like his father did (high wisdom, low charisma). So while he was the noble born son of a king, he spent as much time as possible learning how to become a rogue. There's a lot more to it, but you get the drift. He did take a few levels of fighter, but that was so he could add his strength bonus to his secondary attack with two weapon fighting; he's primarily a rogue.

Backstory and character is more important to me than optimization.

QUOTE]

Why is it that when people say they 'most likely' could guess at a characters ability scores based off class and standard array that other people pull out their against type/subpar characters to prove them wrong?

So this character is a 'rogue' who has also taken a couple fighter levels? You know that with those ability scores this character not a legal character via the PHB?