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

[Jfdlsjfd]

I am wondering if ASIs have the same result when doing standard array and rolled stats.

With standard array, you are sure to get a 15. You need the ASI to get to 16 or 17 (to set yourself up for a half-feat at level 4) and reach 20 at level 8 in all cases.

With rolled and floating ASIs, your odds of starting with a 16 is 7,25%, 17 4,2% and 18 1,62%. If you only care for the main stat and can freely assign, one character in 10 will start with a 18+2 at level 1, one in four with a 19 and nearly half with get a 16+2. If one considers that 16 or 17 is the baseline for effectiveness, rolled stats have good chances of allowing it irrespective of how the racial ASIs are attributed. Starting with 20 isn't the boon it seems, since some excellent half-feat would lose a lot of their appeal. With racials ASIs, it is still possible to get a starting 17 in you main stat even if the racial ASI goes to another stat (though the odds are around 1 in 4).

Since there is no way to have more than 20 and many want to have the ability to be "the best", I wonder if the whole ASIs debate wouldn't be less important if the point-buy allowed for scores up to 18 and standard array was replaced with heroic array 17, 16, 15, 14, 12, 10 ? And have more half-feats?

I feel that the need to have floating ASIs is to be able to ensure the match of 15+2, because starting with 15 is perceived subpar. Maybe being less restrictive on the array would solve part of this problem?



(Slight tengeant: after playing with standard array for a long time, I just started a new campaign (pitch: a Cannith branch endeavouring to restore Cannith's former greatness). We had been playing with standard arrays for a long time and this time a player asked to roll for stats, and we ended up, all the dragon-marked Cannith characters, with a very lucky rolling session (12, 16, 13, 17, 15, 13 and I wasn't even the luckiest). I must admit that I wasn't convinced of that "rolling stats will define your character" because I usually enjoy writing the backstory before creating the mechanical aspects of the character but in this case... with the good rolls, our Cannith branch really, and mechanically, think themselves as Cannith/Malfoy like. It was obvious because of the dragonmark, but the proof that in-breeding would create the best children... Not something that would have evolved with standard array. So I am convinced now that you can "roll with the rolls" (and the DM is struggling to balance things with the other players who preferred point buy...)

 

[Bill Zebub]

Basically yes.

That’s helpful, thanks.

 

[Yaarel]

Why not just have material plane humans and feywild humans then? What does having elves add to this?

Because setting.

Elves are nature beings. (Norse skyey sunlight, Scottish earthy soil.) They are nonhumans, who choose to appear as if humans.

When humans become fey, they become nonhuman, abandoning their material bodies and existing as spirits. They retain Material Ancestry from their nonfey origin, but can utilize whatever mechanics are available to a fey.

Also, I have to say that having one's nature to be essentialised based on ones place of origin is pretty much identical to a lot of real life racist beliefs and the essentialisation here (has magic vs. doesn't have magic) is far more fundamental than anything the racial ASIs ever produce (has a tendency to be slightly better at a thing.)

In D&D, a fey can become material. Viceversa, a material can become fey. There is no essence.

Likewise. Humans do have magic. There are human individuals who are as poweful as any elf mage, and so on.

Both the elf and the human are fluid, and lack an essence.

 

[Maxperson]

No it did not make it hard to play a character. It made it hard to play an optimized character. But there is no problem in any edition in playing a character with a 14 in its prime stat.

You mean a 12. You got a -2.

 

[Maxperson]

For the record, I have zero interest in "playing against type". I consider it a racist way of thinking. It is the application of a racist stereotype, reinforced by "youre not like the rest of your race".

Quite frankly, that's a ridiculous claim. All it means is that the character is different that the norm. Not that other elves or other races are thinking of him differently or in a negative way due to race.

 

[Maxperson]

In 5e, where the human average is +1, a +0 is an ability score "penalty", narratively.

Is the human average +1? I couldn't tell you what percentage of humans in the game world are variant humans. It could be 50/50. I also disagree that no bonus is a negative. 3e did not have a double dose of negative because it gave -2 to a stat. It was actually a negative to the stat.

Mechanically, within the context of 5e design of bounded accuracy, each bonus increase becomes exponentially more powerful. In many contexts, including proficiency bonus and typically a magic bonus, a +5 ability bonus is virtually an autowin, followed up by a routine advantage die, just in case.

Right. Which is why it's not a penalty to have a 0 racial bonus to a prime stat. The game is almost surely balanced around +2 stat bonus + proficiency.

The head start by a race ability score improvement is an extreme incentive for a race to pick only certain classes in 5e.

This is where you lose me. If a +1 is so huge, then it's better to get that +1 outside of your prime stat where you actually need it, rather than in your prime stat to make an easy game even easier.

The absence of one is a punishment, both narratively being less than a human and mechanically losing out on a feat in order to catch up mathematically.

No. A punishment is specifically something your are doing to someone because they did something bad. A consequence for a choice is not a punishment.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Isn’t the reason the story of the Jamaican bobsled team is so compelling is that it’s “against type”? Is it racist? (I don’t think so.). It’s because they’re from a tropical island, not because they’re black.

I have a problem with saying that Dwarves tend not to be wizards because of their intelligence, but I have no issue with ascribing it to tradition. So, yeah, a dwarven wizard is “against type”.

Wait, I’ve got it figured out! Just like Jamaica is a tropical island, and bobsledding is from northern countries, Dwarves live underground and, as we all know, wizards live in….






…towers.

 

[Yaarel]

Quite frankly, that's a ridiculous claim. All it means is that the character is different that the norm. Not that other elves or other races are thinking of him differently or in a negative way due to race.

In 1e, a "race" meant a racist stereotype, complete with requirements to roleplay racist supremacism and hate, including a table listing which race hates which race.

The subversive angle is, there is only one human race.

But the gaming assumption is full-on racist worldview. Defacto, these nonhuman races gained narrative descriptions that are reallife racist tropes about various ethnic groups.

The origins of D&D "races" is reallife racism.

 

[Maxperson]

I was just thinking about how the two ASI options (racial and floating) mirror this: floating ASIs are the general approach, like Point Buy, and racial ASIs are the recommended specific case, like Standard Array.

Which leaves me with a question for @Scribe (and others): would it be sufficient if the rules suggested or recommended where to put ASIs, perhaps akin to the quick builds offered in the class chapter, or in your opinion must it be presented as two different rules options, sort of like the attribute generation rules?

Not for me, no. A suggestion does not tell me what the race as a whole is. For me it needs to be racial bonuses as the default and an official optional rule for floating ASIs.

 

[Maxperson]

So having an elf who dislikes magic would be racist?

No it wouldn't. Nor are any of the other traditional "against type" characters.