D&D 5E Ability Score Increases (I've changed my mind.)

[Maxperson]

No, preventing a massively overpowered situation that was never intended and has careful rules to govern when it does happen is not the same as something they blatantly state that you should do and that it has no problems with the game balance. This is like trying to claim flood insurance because you dropped a glass of water, the scale is absurd on the face of it.

Me: Both control character generation in the same way.
You: You're saying it's about the justifications, and that's bad and this is why.(Strawman!)
Me: It's not the justifications, it's that both control character generation in the same way. I do note the Strawman.
You: You're saying it's about the justifications, and that's bad and this is why.(Strawman!)

C'mon man. The first time could possibly be a mistake. The second is just flat out disingenuous.

Why tie your fun to something so inconsequential?

I don't. Your personal opinion on what is or is not consequential doesn't in any way alter what is or is not consequential to myself and others with the same view.

Or, 10% of the players maybe having less than 15 to start with, and then choosing not to have a +2 race to boost their 14 or 15 up to 16 plus, which is starting to get into the range of single digit percentages, was a small enough consideration that they decided that being slightly less powerful was fine in the rare times it happened. It was never going to be 100%, and once you are in the 90% ranges, you are generally pretty safe in your assumptions.

90% isn't safe when there are millions of players. They aren't going to hang literally hundreds of thousands of players out to dry.

The factors that determine such things are far from random.

They may not involve dice, but they are very random. I'm not going to get into teaching you sex ed. You can look it up yourself.

Well, since they never really bothered to speak on the realism of the stat generation method of DnD, I doubt they are going to have said anything on the matter, explicitly.

Then maybe don't claim that they did.

The two options are presented as equal.

Nope. They aren't. Both are simply offered. Nothing says or implies equality.

The array and the average of rolled stats are incredibly close (not exact, but that is because they didn't want people to start with an 18). There is no way to differentiate them, except one is randomized and the other isn't. Which is the entire point.

A huge percentage of rolled stats don't conform to the average. You have to roll many thousands of stats to actually see the average play out. More than the number of characters a player will make in his lifetime.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Me: Both control character generation in the same way.
You: You're saying it's about the justifications, and that's bad and this is why.(Strawman!)
Me: It's not the justifications, it's that both control character generation in the same way. I do note the Strawman.
You: You're saying it's about the justifications, and that's bad and this is why.(Strawman!)

C'mon man. The first time could possibly be a mistake. The second is just flat out disingenuous.

They do not control character generation in the same way and trying to compare them is disingenuous. You could generate stats by pulling numbers out of a hat or having a gopher races, and as long as you ended up with numbers between 3 and 18, the game doesn't care.

Having someone play a Fighter-Wizard with all the abilities of each as a level one character is utterly broken. You'd have double the hp, and access to abilities that were not meant to be stacked at level 1, ect ect. You are trying to say that completely breaking the game on a fundamental level is somehow the same as following the rules to generate reasonable stats. They aren't.

I don't. Your personal opinion on what is or is not consequential doesn't in any way alter what is or is not consequential to myself and others with the same view.

But there is literally no way for you to tell. If you sat down at a table and played with a group of people, but you hadn't seen how they generated their stats and weren't staring at their character sheets, you'd have no idea whether they rolled or took the array.

So, how can this matter to you as the DM, if the only reason you can tell is because you watched how they got their stats? You just keep hammering the drum of "it isn't realistic" as though a lack of realism is the death knell of something in a fantasy game.

90% isn't safe when there are millions of players. They aren't going to hang literally hundreds of thousands of players out to dry.

Sure they are. You can't get much more accurate than 90%, and the only other route is to balance lower, so that 90% of players are more powerful than they are expected to be. Which still leaves hundreds of thousands of players out to dry, because they are still weaker than 90% of the other players meaning they are weaker than the expected line of power for the game.

So, the designers either designed so that 90% of players were in line with the power the designers wanted, and a small 10% who chose to roll for stats is a little underpowered. Or they designed so that 90% of players were above the line of power, and 10% were in line, because they decided to roll stats and got low... well, low but not too low.

The obvious choice is obvious, you don't overpower 90% of the player base for no reason.

They may not involve dice, but they are very random. I'm not going to get into teaching you sex ed. You can look it up yourself.

They are very much not random. Not to a degree that matters. Sure, there is a 0.01% chance of something bad happening, maybe a 20% chance you'll take more after your grandparents than your parents, but after birth if you a strength training, you get stronger. If you are studying, you tend to know more, if you do endurance training, your endurance increases. And the ways those things happen are complex, too complex to accurately track with our current understanding, but they are far from random. And nutrition, exercise and upbringing decide a LOT about your life and things like physical fitness.

Is there a biological component? Sure, but go to any top-tier athlete and ask them how they go so strong/fast/agile/ect and they aren't going to say "I was randomly born this way, just luck of the draw" they are going to say they trained and practiced and ate right and follow a strict regimen that is proven to work for their body. And even that biological component is completely random, there is a reason doctors ask for a family medical history and we talk about "taking after your parents" you are working from a very small subset of options when the zytgote is formed. Almost like, if there was an array, of a smaller subset of numbers...

Then maybe don't claim that they did.

I claimed that the two were obviously equal, since they are presented as equal. You have claimed that dice rolling is more realistic, yet I don't see you quoting the designers explicitly saying so. So, maybe you should retract your claim.

Nope. They aren't. Both are simply offered. Nothing says or implies equality.

Except that they are both offered, and that nothing is said about one being different than the other except via randomness. And an analyses of the data shows that they are very likely to be roughly equal, so they should be considered roughly equal.

A huge percentage of rolled stats don't conform to the average. You have to roll many thousands of stats to actually see the average play out. More than the number of characters a player will make in his lifetime.

And? That literally does nothing to disprove the point. Of course there are results other than the average, that's what a random dice roll does. But the average still exists, and unsurprisingly, the standard array is very close to conforming to that average. Which, since it is static, makes sense for exactly where you would want to be as an option.

 

[Maxperson]

They do not control character generation in the same way and trying to compare them is disingenuous. You could generate stats by pulling numbers out of a hat or having a gopher races, and as long as you ended up with numbers between 3 and 18, the game doesn't care.

Having someone play a Fighter-Wizard with all the abilities of each as a level one character is utterly broken. You'd have double the hp, and access to abilities that were not meant to be stacked at level 1, ect ect. You are trying to say that completely breaking the game on a fundamental level is somehow the same as following the rules to generate reasonable stats. They aren't.

Both reduce your option to 1, prior to character generation. The class limitation reduces you to one class. The removal of the array reduces you to one type of stat generation. That's the same. Any power levels and such aren't relevant to that. Those are just the justifications which have no relevance to what I am saying.

But there is literally no way for you to tell. If you sat down at a table and played with a group of people, but you hadn't seen how they generated their stats and weren't staring at their character sheets, you'd have no idea whether they rolled or took the array.

So, how can this matter to you as the DM, if the only reason you can tell is because you watched how they got their stats? You just keep hammering the drum of "it isn't realistic" as though a lack of realism is the death knell of something in a fantasy game.

1. It isn't as realistic(bolded and underlined because you keep ignoring it for some reason and it's important). 2. It doesn't matter if you can understand why it's consequential to me. I've said that it is and that's all that matters.

Sure they are. You can't get much more accurate than 90%, and the only other route is to balance lower, so that 90% of players are more powerful than they are expected to be. Which still leaves hundreds of thousands of players out to dry, because they are still weaker than 90% of the other players meaning they are weaker than the expected line of power for the game.

You can get 10% more accurate. Leaving hundreds of thousands of players out to dry isn't acceptable to a company that wants to make money and they wouldn't do it.

So, the designers either designed so that 90% of players were in line with the power the designers wanted, and a small 10% who chose to roll for stats is a little underpowered. Or they designed so that 90% of players were above the line of power, and 10% were in line, because they decided to roll stats and got low... well, low but not too low.

The obvious choice is obvious, you don't overpower 90% of the player base for no reason.

It doesn't overpower any of them. The game is balanced for 14-20 as starting stats. 18's get rolled a high enough percent of the time that they would have to take those hundreds of thousands of players into account as well.

Sure, there is a 0.01% chance of something bad happening, maybe a 20% chance you'll take more after your grandparents than your parents, but after birth if you a strength training, you get stronger. If you are studying, you tend to know more, if you do endurance training, your endurance increases. And the ways those things happen are complex, too complex to accurately track with our current understanding, but they are far from random. And nutrition, exercise and upbringing decide a LOT about your life and things like physical fitness.

There's a hell of a lot more random involved than that.

Is there a biological component? Sure, but go to any top-tier athlete and ask them how they go so strong/fast/agile/ect and they aren't going to say "I was randomly born this way, just luck of the draw" they are going to say they trained and practiced and ate right and follow a strict regimen that is proven to work for their body. And even that biological component is completely random, there is a reason doctors ask for a family medical history and we talk about "taking after your parents" you are working from a very small subset of options when the zytgote is formed. Almost like, if there was an array, of a smaller subset of numbers...

If they tell you it was just hard work they're BSing you. Genetics is more important. There'd be many, many, MANY more world class athletes if hard work did it.

I claimed that the two were obviously equal, since they are presented as equal. You have claimed that dice rolling is more realistic, yet I don't see you quoting the designers explicitly saying so. So, maybe you should retract your claim.

Nothing is presenting them as equal. You made a claim, you need to prove it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Both reduce your option to 1, prior to character generation. The class limitation reduces you to one class. The removal of the array reduces you to one type of stat generation. That's the same. Any power levels and such aren't relevant to that. Those are just the justifications which have no relevance to what I am saying.

And you are wrong to say there is no relevance. These are not comparable things. Your options for dinner are effectively reduced to a single option if you are a child whose parents are cooking and if you are a thrown in a PoW camp. But saying that your parents house is exactly comparable to a PoW camp is ludicrous.

Additionally, the array is a part of the rules. It is a choice in the rules. Taking two classes simultaneously is not. One of these is taking out an option, the other is simply following the common sense of the game, and removes no options from the rules. No matter how you try and twist and pervert this, they are not comparable.

1. It isn't as realistic(bolded and underlined because you keep ignoring it for some reason and it's important). 2. It doesn't matter if you can understand why it's consequential to me. I've said that it is and that's all that matters.

And it matters to me to point out that a DM banning a legal option, that in no way increases any power, that in no way impacts any thematic elements of the game, simply for the reason that they personally don't like it, is problematic. Which is why I said at the start of this tangent, it is a player's right to use the standard array. It is not an optional rule in the book that a DM can turn on and off, beyond the blanket belief that DMs can do everything and anything in the rules with no regards for social contracts or other people's desires. The game was designed to give you a choice at how you generated your stats. DMs should not take away that choice, encourage people to make a different choice? Sure, but flatly banning the choice? No.

You can get 10% more accurate. Leaving hundreds of thousands of players out to dry isn't acceptable to a company that wants to make money and they wouldn't do it.

Firstly, they can't get much more than 10% more accurate. Not without knowing exactly how people will choose. Though the percentage it lessened the more people take the array, and is also lessened by the inclusion of Point-Buy. So, it is very much less than 10%, we just can't reliably say how much smaller. It could be that 20% if the player base uses Point-Buy or some other method the Devs couldn't take into account, reducing us to 6% of the gaming population who is rolling for stats and rolls under expected results.

Secondly, 10% is an acceptable amount of people to "leave out to dry" by a company that wants to make money. There are many companies that specialize in dairy products that contain lactose. About 10% of the US population is lactose intolerant and "left out to dry" by those companies.

Thirdly, There is always going to be a risk of getting a bad score by rolling. That's the point of rolling for a lot of people. So, since this 6% - 10% of the gaming population is solely compromised of people who chose to roll, and who rolled below average, this is the expected result. No one expects to roll and randomize stats and have that work out perfectly every single time. That percentage is never going to be zero. And once you've hit a 90% or so accuracy rate, it is good enough.

It doesn't overpower any of them. The game is balanced for 14-20 as starting stats. 18's get rolled a high enough percent of the time that they would have to take those hundreds of thousands of players into account as well.

The baseline curve of power cannot be that wide. You can't demonstrate that a +2 is equal to a +5, or even close in a system that generally goes from -1 to +5 on these numbers. That is half of the potential values in the game.

Now, the math is fairly loose, and being 1 point above or below the line isn't a huge deal gameplay-wise, but that isn't the same as balancing around such a massive spread of possible values.

There's a hell of a lot more random involved than that.

Not really. It is just complex enough to be hard to compute, but it isn't random.

If they tell you it was just hard work they're BSing you. Genetics is more important. There'd be many, many, MANY more world class athletes if hard work did it.

Or it takes someone especially dedicated to put in that much hard work. Sure, certain sports favor certain body types (which is often determined by your parentage, not random) but whether or not you have the physicality to play the game at a certain level isn't randomly determined at birth. And if you don't put in mountains of hardwork and training and diet it isn't going to happen.

Nothing is presenting them as equal. You made a claim, you need to prove it.

They are equally presented in the rules as baseline options for generating stats. You can roll or you can take the array. These choices are equivalent, with no further explanation given other than the array is not random. That is proof enough. If they were not meant to be seen as equal, then the devs would have separated them out, as they did with Point-Buy.

 

[Lyxen]

That it worked for you isn't proof that it works universally and doesn't remove the proof that discussions are still happening on these boards, despite the purported qualities of "natural language".

The natural language is not perfect, but in the case of your groups, demonstrably much better than the jargon of 3e/PF. And honestly, I don't se more fights these days than I saw in the 3e days, these days the fights are mostly rehashing the same silly small problems.

It's basically because you argued that rules can be changed at a whim's notice by the DM that I included the provision that you can't rely on a former ruling, according to your statement about designer's intent. If rulings can "be changed at a whi'ms notice by the DM", there is a risk that today's horse isn't exactly the same as yesterday's horse. Generally, I'd have said " a DM must be consistent" but I wouldn't have been able to provide a quote of the rules with page number. So I accept your position that it can be inconsistent... so asking is needed.

In general, DMs are not crazy, you know. Most people are internally consistent, it's just that sometimes you don't see the consistency because your own is based on different parameters and different values, or because there are facts that you are not aware of.

So when a DM seems inconsistent to you, it's not because he is inconsistent on purpose. The most probable explanation is that he might simply have forgotten a previous ruling, or simply made a different one because, for him, the circumstances are different. And the thing is that, there is no obligation for him to explain why the circumstances are different, as it might be something your character does not know.

So I think it's good that you did not find a requirement for the DM to be consistent in his decisions from everyone's point of view, because it would prevent the DM to do what he needs to do, which is to tell you exactly (and this is what the rules say, by the way) what happens as a consequence of your actions. He is not obligated to do more by the rules. Sometimes, he may do more if he feels that an explanation is warranted.

But the main principle is for the players to trust that he is not crazy, and therefore he is consistent, and that the rulings that he is doing is for the fun of the table. And in the end, this is what bugs me the most in this discussion, the fact that somehow the DM who provides the game for the fun of the players, has to sit at the place of the accused if he dares make a ruling that does not seem consistent to the players.

Again, it might be everyone's preference at the table that the DM always is transparent and openly consistent and writes everything down. But it's not a requirement of the game, there are other ways of playing which involve trusting your DM because there are things that you don't know.

Finally, another point that severely bugs me with this rules-based approach, is that if a consistency is needed, it's not that of the rules, it's that of the world. It's the DM's job to create a world and have the adventurers in it. If the world is consistent, it's the best place to be. After that, what 5e tells you is that, just like theories in physics, rules are just tools to try to understand the world, but the world exists on its own, he does not obey the rules just as the physics theories are just approximation of the way the universe behaves.

So consistency of the world comes first, and the rules are a far second in terms of objectives.

I am pretty unable to get what is your position in this debate. Are you in favor of consistent ruling (so they become, in effect, supplemental rules) or are you in favor of malleable ruling (so the players can't rely with certainty on former experience and is better of asking in case ruling changed for some reason, good or bad). My position is that rulings are just a collection of house rules to fill the gap left by the natural language, so they must be consistent, but that didn't seem to fly with you yesterday.

First, as I've mentioned before, the rulings are not there because of the natural language. I had 20 pages of rulings in 3e when there was no natural language being used. The rulings are due to edge cases simply not covered by the rules. Now, it's certain that 5e is a much less complete system than 3e/PF/4e ever where, and it was part of its intent when designed, the rationale being that there will always be edge cases anyway, and as it's not possible to cover them all, the system might as well enable the DM to cover them when necessary without burdening the players with an uncontrollable number of rules, rendering the game unplayable (just as 3e ended up being).

So there might be more edge cases that need to be covered from your perspective, but it's not the case from ours, there are actually fewer edge cases because the system is less complex. For example, as we are using mostly Theater of the Mind, or at worst gridless maps, we have no rules for grids and therefore no rules for edge cases on grids.

As for the players, they should not be there to ask about rules (remember, that, again, in the designers's words, you don't need to read all the rules to get the best experience of the game), they are there to describe their actions, and hear what happens from the DM.

So of course, they can ask for precisions, or even estimation of danger or appropriateness of what they are doing, in their character's view. But pestering the DM will not make the game run better, for once, and second, once more, the explanation might simply be "you don't know, maybe something has changed, but this is the way it happens". And this is not inconsistency, it's just the universe not being described by a few simple rules.

Not that i know of. My point was clearly stated it was rulings pertaining to the character's capabilities.

Unless otherwise stated, they should function as in the rulebook, with the experience that the character has. Now, if he has never used them before, how would the character know how they would function ? So asking question about current abilities is fine, asking questions about abilities to be had in a few levels should wait until the character reaches that level, if he survives until then, otherwise it's just a loss of time. Who knows what might happen until then anyway ?

Which covers what is on his character sheet and what to expect when jumping on a horse or hanging from a chandelier.

In general, I don't think that would be the cause for a lot of questions. After that, the circumstances might be very different from one case to the next. The DM being consistent with his view of the world will provide the answer, why should he spend time explaining all possible cases of these and their consequences ? Why should he make rulings in advance for all possible situations, when it's not even possible to imagine ll of them ? And what would you expect there, for "jumping on a horse or hanging from a chandelier" ?

Then please contribute to the many threads about, say, the Suggestion spell. They will clearly be helped by your way of resolving things, because after, what, 15 years, many contributors on this board still think it's unclear what that spell actually does (ranging from being Improved Dominate Person to being... exactly similar to a Persuasion check).

First, it has not been 15 years, but that's a detail. As for the spell, it does exactly what it says on the description. I have participated to a number of threads on the subject, with the people always forgetting half the sentences in the description and focusing only on the other half because it does not suit them. But briefly, it's magic (so it has to be more than a persuasion check), and it's level 2 (so it has to be less powerful than a dominate). After that, I'm not interested in examining all the possible suggestions spells that could be cast, it's pointless and undoable anyway. So I'll wait until a player (and it has happened many times in our campaigns, it's a fantastic intrigue and roleplaying spell) casts it, and then:

• If the player has phrased it like a simple persuasion, it will be extra strong and I will roleplay the target accordingly
• If it's according to the description (and there is an example), it will work as indicated
• If it's an attempt to abuse it by making something unreasonable (and you have examples provided), or more in line with a much higher level spell like dominate, it will just fizzle and not work.

And that's it, like any other magic in the book. I've spelled it out for you, but never had to for any of the players at our tables or when I used it. It went smoothly, with no abuse and was great fun. Why complicate this with rulings in advance. Just wait until someone casts it and allow it or not depending on what it is, based on its own merit and on the rules.

Or on the Alert feat, given that many DM are giving ruling on what being surprised is and works.

The problem with this one is not about the wording, it's the fact that people think that it's really powerful. But then it's a feat, it's optional, and if you think it's too strong, just don't allow it. But as written, I am not aware that there is a problem surprise is fairly well described, it's stealth and perception that people have trouble with, once more because they usually read only part of the rules and cling to one sentence above all else to try and make a point.

That your table doesn't have a problem with the way rules are written in 5e doesn't mean noone has or that they are all powergamers trying to abuse the system.

I actually does, in general, case in point, the two examples above. If people did not try to abuse suggestion by turning it into a dominate, no one would have a problem with that spell, at worst it would be weak and not used. Same with the alert feat, because it's powerful. It's powergaming that creates these problems with the rules, not the rules themselves.

And where I'd like a rule to determine what the Suggestion spell actually does, I am left with "provide a ruling to your table". Which means it's the GM work to find a suitable and balanced solution, instead of relying on the book I bought to give me this information.

The book tells you everything as long as you are properly reading it, including the level of the spell, the fact that it's magical, etc.

If I may, the best solution is NOT to make a general ruling, but just to tell your players that the spell works as written, but if they try to abuse it, it will automatically fail (just like any other spell). With that forewarning, it's up to them to be reasonable in the use of the spell. And the nice thing is that it's consistent through the world, because as long as they have not tried a specific use, there is no reason for them to understand exactly how it works. And even if they have tried a similar use, but with slightly different circumstances, it is still no guarantee that it will work. No set of rules will EVER take into account all these case, it's only the consistency of world, as provided by the DM's rulings, that can account for it.

 

[Lyxen]

It's worth considering whether your confirmation bias is at play here too.

Consider this. From what I recall, you said earlier that the intent of the game didn't include any notions of the players accumulating power or wealth.

Wrong I said that the intent of the game is not about accumulating power or wealth. And I'm speaking of the intent, not about the way they go about achieving it. Note that these mentions in the introduction are linked specifically to campaigns.

What does it say about the game's intent when it writes, "The adventurers grow in might as the campaign continues. Each monster defeated, each adventure completed, and each treasure recovered not only adds to the continuing story, but also earns the adventurers new capabilities. This increase in power is reflected by an adventurer's leveI."

First, it's not about the game in general, this section talks specifically about campaigns. Second, the fact that it may happen in campaigns is not an indication that it's the goal of the game as some have pretended here.

To me at least, this suggests that part of the game's intent is for the PCs to acquire power and new abilities through gaining levels and acquiring magical items through adventures. There is also a Iot in how 5e is written to support this too.

Not necessarily, you could play only one shots.

And when "Optimizing" is a considered a valid play engagement for players or style of play in the "Know Your Players" section of the 5e DMG alongside "Storytelling" and "Acting," then maybe we shouldn't cast aspersions at players who like to optimize in 5e.

Amongst the two of us, you are the only one casting aspersions here. I never said it was not a valid ways of playing, on the contrary, I write very often that nothing is invalid as long as people are having fun.

My point of view, however, is that the Floating ASIs are a powergamer option (because the nonsense that it allows the exploration of character options has no validity when all these options were available before the Floating ASIs, it's only the power that prevented people from exploring them), and that, on top of this, I don't like to encourage these options because in my experience the powergamer mindset is not compatible with the mindset of more casual players, only with other powergamers, so I want to limit the power gap.

It seemed to me that you were saying that it was my argument that these people are immoral.

No, I only said that you were the one using that word. I'm cutting of the rest, because now that it's clarified, maybe we can go back to the topic of the thread.

That said, I do sometimes advise caution when it comes to what the writers say about the game, particularly when dealing with general statements in the Introduction. Writers saying that their game is meant to be about fun or telling stories together doesn't necessarily tell me much about how to approach playing/running the game.

Well when these are followed by an example of play that reiterates it, it should give you a better indication. When, on top of that, the whole design is based on these ideas (natural language, fuzzy rules, DM's rulings), it should reinforce the idea. This is why people who want to play in a specific mode distinct from this one, usually need more, in particular they want their own local rulings to supplement the rules, invent their own jargon as references, etc.

Nothing wrong with that, it's distinct from the intent and the design but it has been clearly included as a possibility and as long as people are having fun, who cares ? Just be open about your preferences, that's all.

The main problem is susceptibility, I have zero problem admitting that I was a powergamer at some point in time, in particular when encouraged by the design of 3e. And if I wanted to continue powergaming today, I would probably choose another, more precise game like PF, because it would be too much work on 5e. But if people prefer doing the work on 5e, good for them.

 

[Aldarc]

When you get into quoting wars featuring walls of quote text, maybe it's time to stop.

 

[Maxperson]

And you are wrong to say there is no relevance. These are not comparable things. Your options for dinner are effectively reduced to a single option if you are a child whose parents are cooking and if you are a thrown in a PoW camp. But saying that your parents house is exactly comparable to a PoW camp is ludicrous.

You don't get to attach relevance to my point where none exists. I'm not comparing justifications. Period. Those have no bearing on my point. Period.

Additionally, the array is a part of the rules. It is a choice in the rules. Taking two classes simultaneously is not. One of these is taking out an option, the other is simply following the common sense of the game, and removes no options from the rules. No matter how you try and twist and pervert this, they are not comparable.

That's true, but also not relevant to my point. Both are in fact similarly restrictive. Period. The why is not relevant to that similarity.

And it matters to me to point out that a DM banning a legal option, that in no way increases any power, that in no way impacts any thematic elements of the game, simply for the reason that they personally don't like it, is problematic.

If it has no impact on thematic element of the game, that includes character creation.

Which is why I said at the start of this tangent, it is a player's right to use the standard array. It is not an optional rule in the book that a DM can turn on and off, beyond the blanket belief that DMs can do everything and anything in the rules with no regards for social contracts or other people's desires. The game was designed to give you a choice at how you generated your stats. DMs should not take away that choice, encourage people to make a different choice? Sure, but flatly banning the choice? No.

The player has no right to assume any rule in the game is going to be present. None. Even the PHB tells the player to find out from the DM if there have been any changes made. This is a pure player entitlement argument that you are making.

Firstly, they can't get much more than 10% more accurate. Not without knowing exactly how people will choose. Though the percentage it lessened the more people take the array, and is also lessened by the inclusion of Point-Buy. So, it is very much less than 10%, we just can't reliably say how much smaller. It could be that 20% if the player base uses Point-Buy or some other method the Devs couldn't take into account, reducing us to 6% of the gaming population who is rolling for stats and rolls under expected results.

They can get significantly more than 90% accurate by simply balancing around +2.

Secondly, 10% is an acceptable amount of people to "leave out to dry" by a company that wants to make money.

I'll make this easy on you. Find ANY profitable major company that has said this and show me the quote. I'm not even going to ask you to have it be WotC.

There are many companies that specialize in dairy products that contain lactose. About 10% of the US population is lactose intolerant and "left out to dry" by those companies.

They aren't leaving those 10% out to dry any more than someone who doesn't like chicken is being left out to dry by chicken companies. Being left out to dry means people who are actually customers being screwed over by the company.

The baseline curve of power cannot be that wide. You can't demonstrate that a +2 is equal to a +5, or even close in a system that generally goes from -1 to +5 on these numbers. That is half of the potential values in the game.

I don't need to prove that 2=5 or even that 3=4. I just have to understand that while there is variance, the game is okay with it. It's not unbalancing to have a 20 at level 1.................................or they would have made rules preventing a 20 at level 1 instead of including it as a default method for generating stats.

Not really. It is just complex enough to be hard to compute, but it isn't random.

There's no way to figure out which of the billion sperm is going to make it to the egg. It's not the strongest. That one might randomly be in the back. It's strongest one that's randomly the closest. The combination of genetics that come from the sperm and the egg is pretty random. Outside of identical twins, you won't see identical siblings. There's a lot of random involved.

They are equally presented in the rules as baseline options for generating stats. You can roll or you can take the array. These choices are equivalent, with no further explanation given other than the array is not random. That is proof enough. If they were not meant to be seen as equal, then the devs would have separated them out, as they did with Point-Buy.

Yes. I agree. One being random is proof enough that they cannot be equivalent.

And you do realize that point buy can buy the array, right? That with the minimum of 8 in a stat, point buy is closer to being the same as the array than rolling is? Not that it's equal, either.

 

[Bill Zebub]

When you get into quoting wars featuring walls of quote text, maybe it's time to stop.

The part of me that wants to slow down and look at car accidents also wishes that quotes were indefinitely nested.

 

[Chaosmancer]

In general, I don't think that would be the cause for a lot of questions. After that, the circumstances might be very different from one case to the next. The DM being consistent with his view of the world will provide the answer, why should he spend time explaining all possible cases of these and their consequences ? Why should he make rulings in advance for all possible situations, when it's not even possible to imagine ll of them ? And what would you expect there, for "jumping on a horse or hanging from a chandelier" ?



The book tells you everything as long as you are properly reading it, including the level of the spell, the fact that it's magical, etc.

If I may, the best solution is NOT to make a general ruling, but just to tell your players that the spell works as written, but if they try to abuse it, it will automatically fail (just like any other spell). With that forewarning, it's up to them to be reasonable in the use of the spell. And the nice thing is that it's consistent through the world, because as long as they have not tried a specific use, there is no reason for them to understand exactly how it works. And even if they have tried a similar use, but with slightly different circumstances, it is still no guarantee that it will work. No set of rules will EVER take into account all these case, it's only the consistency of world, as provided by the DM's rulings, that can account for it.

See, this view isn't one I really want as a player or as a DM. Sure, I'm never going to be able to cover every single possible permutation of every single possible outcome. But, if I can get the majority of them? Then when the player asks to do something at the table, I don't have to go digging through to check and see how I should handle it.

Because, despite thinking that DnD works as expected, it doesn't. I'd expect that a 300 lb man who jumps off a balcony while holding an incredibly sharp and deadly weapon in one hand and a shield in the other is going to end up seriously injured, possibly even dead. In DnD, that could be 1d6 damage and barely a blip.

And as a player, just being told "don't abuse it or it won't work" tells me not to try and use it in anyway except the exact wording and most obvious way to use it. Because I don't want to waste a spell slot. And this is going to trickle down, because if I can't know anything about how things work, I'm going to act more conservatively, because I don't know what is going to trip a landmine.