Why couldn't you plan for it before? The only reason you spent a spell slot was because you suspected there were dragons in the area. You could plan for Dragons to be in the area without confirmation, just based on the information that led you to use Primeval Awareness.
You'd have to plan for everything in advance, since you don't know anything. There are spells and items that you might save or use differently if you KNEW a dragon was in the area. You might brainstorm ideas for a fey encounter. These things are just wastes of time if you don't know, since it's highly unlikely that either one is present at the moment you are passing through.
And how do you go about finding it? It could be six miles behind you, running away. It could be three miles in front of you, sleeping. It could be lurking 4 miles below you in inaccessible caverns. It could be a mile overhead observing you. It could be polymorphed into the horse you are riding. You have no possible way to use this information. And while it is "only 3rd level" Third level is chock full of actually useful abilities for most other classes.
That's not true. You can look for probable terrain. You can use spells. Maybe the eagle totem barbarian will use his sight to look. Maybe you have spells that can help. Maybe the fey are in that copse of woods over there. But go ahead and call it not just useless, but an actual detriment to the Ranger. I'll put it to good use in my game.
Which is why people did Math. Math to check their assumptions. Math which you don't engage in because you have a gut feeling the designers did something else.
Math can't confirm anything here. It's confirmation bias. They're assuming 65% is the base, so 16 checks out to meet 65% and the ACs are in line for 65% if you have a 16. The problem is that if you assume 60%, then a 14 checks out for 60% and the ACs are in line for 60% if you have a 14.
There's nothing other than their arbitrary selection of 65% that makes 16 the "baseline." The math only serves to confirm what they want to believe.
No, it isn't. It was based partially on the designers saying years ago that they wanted to have a more than 50% success rate, and 65% is comfortably between being too easy and too hard. Additionally, 16 is the number from dozens of different ways to calculate it. Your 14 is based solely on a gut feeling and the mistaken idea that pushing the scale downward was desirable to them, because you think 5e is easier than 3.5, so the numbers must be lowered.
So it could be 55%, 60%, 65%. 70%... They are still just arbitrarily selecting a percentage based on a vague designer statement from years ago.
Additionally, when talking about numbers less than a standard deviation apart, they are close enough to be considered equal, without needing to be identical. Heck, the true mathematical average could be 73.62487 but since you can't roll a decimal place it had to be rounded. Not being identical doesn't change anything, because I never claimed they were identical.
72 is not equal(not identical, equal) to 81, 76, 78 or any other number that isn't 72.
The game was designed at the collective level, with hundreds of thousands expected to play it. It is impossible to accurately predict what any five people will do when given 3 options, only one of which is static and the other random and the third controlled values. They couldn't possibly design the game with your assumptions. They had to take an aggregate value and work with the averages as an assumption.
If they include rolling, then they are including a method that they know will not produce average stats most of time given the small sample size. They deliberately give unequal methods of stat generation.
And your statement is farcical on the face of it, because rolling allows for massively powerful and massively weak characters. I've seen people roll where their modifiers were (+2, +1, +1, +0, -2, -1) and I've also seen them roll where they were (+4, +4, +3, +2, +2, +0). The entire point of rolling is the potential to get a far more powerful character than average, while risking getting a character weaker than average. But for that to be the case, an average must exist. And it does. The average doesn't suddenly disappear because no one rolled in when they rolled only four times. That's like saying that the chance of heads on a coin flip is 75% because you flipped four times and 3 of them were heads.
Me: "The methods are not equal because rolling at the group level produces wildly different characters from the array most of the time."
You: "That's a farce! They are equal(your claim), because I've seen people roll massively powerful and massively weak characters!!"
And the average does exist. It's called an array. It's the only way characters are going to average out in your lifetime. There's too much variation for a small sample size like a group to hit average when rolling.
Because that doesn't matter. Your "100's of years and many campaigns" is a red herring assuming that the average must show up at a specific table of 5 reliably to be a real factor. That isn't how probabilities work. The average of the dice doesn't care whether or not it shows up at your table, it exists despite your table. And since the designers can't predict what you will roll every single time, their best bet is to go with the average. Which we can see they clearly did.
Don't add in reliably to my argument. It's not going to show up at all at the group level.
They aren't entitled to Hp. They aren't entitled to AC. They aren't entitled that a positive modifier doesn't lower their roll because the DM decided that you have to roll under. The DM can decide that all monsters critically hit on a nat 1 and a nat 20, while players critically miss on a nat 20 and a nat 1.
This is all true, but at the bolded point the DM is violating the social contract regarding fairness, rather than just enacting reasonable house rules. Your disagreement with me on my house rule does not make it unreasonable. You just don't like the reason, and that's okay. Don't play in my game or one where you can't use an array.
I think you can see why I'd prefer to play with people who are slightly more judicious in which rules they change,
Yeah. Apparently it's because you like Slippery Slopes.
"The DM removing arrays, leads to taking away hit points and giving us a different system, which leads to taking away AC and giving us something else, which leads to the DM being a jerk and making it so monsters kill us and we can't kill the monsters, which leads to dogs and cats living together, which leads to complete anarchy!" Or else I just have a few house rules that are easy to learn.
