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

[Chaosmancer]

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.

You don't get to remove relevance from my point where it does exist. The Justifications matter. Period. They do have bearing on the conversation. Period.

Now that we are done "Period."-ing each other, Maybe we could have a conversation instead of you making demands on how the conversation has to go. Or you can refuse to engage further. But trying to forcefully limit me to only discussing the points you agree with is no conducive to anything.

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.

Yes it is. Period.

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

I'm speaking exactly to that. The thematic elements of character creation are not impacted by the choice of taking the standard array. Neither are the mechanical elements of character creation. The only impact is on the player, who is choosing to not have their character's stats randomly decided.

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.

I don't care what you call it. I'm tired of DM Entitlement. And then turning around and blasting players who try and stand up for something as simple as this. This isn't some mech-pilot in Dark Sun, this is just taking some static numbers instead of rolling. This shouldn't be anything for the DM to worrt about, let alone ban.

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

And then 90% of people would be too powerful, and we are in the exact same position, but the game is unbalanced as well. Just like if they balanced around having a +0.

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.

How about I do you one better than a CEO saying they don't care about people. Here is a link to study:https://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

This study found that 31% of all laptops fail withing 3 years (that looks like 10% year). Now, looking deeper into the synopsis, that is ~20% of it from hardware failure, which is a direct control of the company. ~10% is from accidents, which would be like randomly rolling dice and getting all 8's and 9's. Hewlett-Packard makes laptops. They are a major company. They aren't below the 16% reliability of Toshiba.

Think the customers are happy when their laptop burns up and dies within a year or two? And that would account for at least 10% of the people who buy the laptop.

Here is a similiar study for iphones.

iPhone failure rate by model worldwide 2017-2018 | Statista

The statistic shows a ranking of iPhone models worldwide by failure rate in the second quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018.

www.statista.com

They covered a lot of models over many years, but we've got a range of failure rates. And, if you look, it keeps increasing, until the Iphone6 had a 26% failure rate.

And here is something from Ford: Ford Reliability - 2021 Ratings | RepairPal

Some important lines "On average across all Ford models, 15% of repairs are considered severe. This compares to a probability of 12% for major issues across all models."

12% probablity of major issues for all cars on the road.

So, I don't really need a statement from the CEO saying that 10% mild unhappiness because you took a risk and it didn't pan out is acceptable. Because there is a 10% chance of your car, phone or comuter having a severe techinical malfunction, and those companies seem to be doing fine. Ford Tough and all that.

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.

Having a 20 at level 1 is a less than 10% chance from rolling (9.34) since half of all players don't roll according to our assumptions, we are looking at something like 5%. So, do you think they were willing to alter the official dnd stat rolls that have been used for 30 years over a 5% chance? I don't.

And yes, there is some variannce around the line. That's obvious, that is how a power curve works. But they had to pick a center for that line, and that center wasn't (anything from 14 to 20). It can't be.

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.

Doesn't sound random, sounds too complex to compute. There is a difference. And it can't be a random spread of genetics, or we couldn't have genetic matching. Do we know beforehand which combination of genes will be present? No, because again, too complex to calculate and we don't have access to the proper data, but that doesn't make it random.

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.

Point buy was not made equal, not because it is mathematically not equal (as you showed it is) but because it offers far more control of the results.

And, the standard and rolling are equivalent except for the one thing that makes them different. This isn't a spot the difference game, this is showing that they are largely equivalent in the way you are so concerned about.

 

[Garthanos]

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

indefinitely would be crazy but some is pretty good and you can ignore a group of nested responses ala facebook pretty easily too.

 

[Lyxen]

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?

But can you ? Try your hands at suggestion, for example.

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.

I usually don't need to do this, honestly, see below.

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.

This is probably because you want a more realistic game, but that has never been the intent of D&D. Falling damage has been discussed in every single edition of the game, much more complicated models have been made, but none have ever been adopted by the community.

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.

And on the other hand, this encourages the players at our tables to be imaginative and find fun or interesting uses, and they know that as long as they don't try to go against the very simple rules (no self harm, no long domination), it should not be a problem.

In the end, it all comes down to trust. I trust my players not to abuse the rules, and they trust me to provide an interesting adventure. It's come to the point where I don't even read the character sheets of the players in my campaign, I completely trust them not to abuse or forget anything and to use their powers to amuse each other.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't get to remove relevance from my point where it does exist. The Justifications matter. Period. They do have bearing on the conversation. Period.

They matter only to the justification, though. They are completely irrelevant to my point, which was what you were trying to counter. Countering a point with irrelevance is......................irrelevant.

I'm speaking exactly to that. The thematic elements of character creation are not impacted by the choice of taking the standard array. Neither are the mechanical elements of character creation. The only impact is on the player, who is choosing to not have their character's stats randomly decided.

Being able to pick only one race, class, have only 1 hit die for hit points, start with limited gold, etc. are the same as far as player limitation goes.

This shouldn't be anything for the DM to worrt about, let alone ban.

You don't get to make that decision for me.

And then 90% of people would be too powerful, and we are in the exact same position, but the game is unbalanced as well. Just like if they balanced around having a +0.

Except the game already takes them all into account. There is no "would." From 14-20, it all works well without being unbalanced.

How about I do you one better than a CEO saying they don't care about people. Here is a link to study:https://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf


This study found that 31% of all laptops fail withing 3 years (that looks like 10% year). Now, looking deeper into the synopsis, that is ~20% of it from hardware failure, which is a direct control of the company. ~10% is from accidents, which would be like randomly rolling dice and getting all 8's and 9's. Hewlett-Packard makes laptops. They are a major company. They aren't below the 16% reliability of Toshiba.

Think the customers are happy when their laptop burns up and dies within a year or two? And that would account for at least 10% of the people who buy the laptop.

Fewer than 5% fail in the first year. As for the rest, that's what warranties like the ones the writer of the article sells are for. No bias there. They also cite heavy use, subjecting the laptops to heat, etc. as reasons for the failures. I bet the other 70% actually take care of their devices and don't misuse their devices.

Here is a similiar study for iphones.

iPhone failure rate by model worldwide 2017-2018 | Statista

The statistic shows a ranking of iPhone models worldwide by failure rate in the second quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018.

www.statista.com

They covered a lot of models over many years, but we've got a range of failure rates. And, if you look, it keeps increasing, until the Iphone6 had a 26% failure rate.

It's amazing how long they last when you don't drop them constantly.

And here is something from Ford: Ford Reliability - 2021 Ratings | RepairPal

Some important lines "On average across all Ford models, 15% of repairs are considered severe. This compares to a probability of 12% for major issues across all models."

12% probablity of major issues for all cars on the road.

Not within the first 4-5 years. But yes, when cars get old they start costing money. In the first 4-5 years, you might have an unscheduled flat tire or alignment issue. And of course your scheduled oil changes. You're article just averages times per year over the lifetime of the car. It doesn't tell you that most of that is when it has been used to hell and is breaking down due to age.

Now find me what I actually asked for, which is completely different than products that break down when abused or when they get old.

Having a 20 at level 1 is a less than 10% chance from rolling (9.34) since half of all players don't roll according to our assumptions, we are looking at something like 5%. So, do you think they were willing to alter the official dnd stat rolls that have been used for 30 years over a 5% chance? I don't.

I don't either, which is why they accounted for it so that it wouldn't be unbalancing.

Doesn't sound random, sounds too complex to compute. There is a difference. And it can't be a random spread of genetics, or we couldn't have genetic matching. Do we know beforehand which combination of genes will be present? No, because again, too complex to calculate and we don't have access to the proper data, but that doesn't make it random.

Genetic matching is a crap shoot. They can get you into the ballpark, but after that randomness takes over. They're just trying to minimize the level of random.

Point buy was not made equal, not because it is mathematically not equal (as you showed it is) but because it offers far more control of the results.

Array is not mathematically equal, either. It's always the same. Rolling varies considerably from the standard array most of the time. I used a stat generator for 10 sets of stats. Which one matches the array?

1. 11, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
2. 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17
3. 12, 13, 15, 15, 15, 16
4. 7, 10, 13, 13, 15, 16
5. 10, 13, 14, 14, 14, 15
6. 4, 7, 10, 10, 12, 13
7. 11, 13, 14, 14, 14, 15
8. 9, 11, 13, 13, 13, 15
9. 10, 12, 14, 15, 15, 15
10. 7, 11, 11, 12, 16, 18

 

[Helldritch]

Not that I want to get into a mathematical contest but you all realize that on d20, +1 equate to 5%...
I work in a power plant and a 5% margin is quite normal and expected. I am certain that WotC took that into account.
+2 or +3 nearly has no bearing except in the eye of the beholder. So only a +1 less than the +3 isn't that much.
Yes it can be argued that +1 can make a difference. It makes it 5% of the time on a d20. And yet, that is enough for some to say that fixed ASI prevents them from doing their stuff...

Fixed ASI for LIIIIIFFFFE babes! Time to do some push ups... (yep playing Borderland 3 )

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not that I want to get into a mathematical contest but you all realize that on d20, +1 equate to 5%...
I work in a power plant and a 5% margin is quite normal and expected. I am certain that WotC took that into account.
+2 or +3 nearly has no bearing except in the eye of the beholder. So only a +1 less than the +3 isn't that much.
Yes it can be argued that +1 can make a difference. It makes it 5% of the time on a d20. And yet, that is enough for some to say that fixed ASI prevents them from doing their stuff...

Fixed ASI for LIIIIIFFFFE babes! Time to do some push ups... (yep playing Borderland 3 )

Yeah, 5% isn’t much.

What do you think, though: if it were, say, 20% would it be worth it?

 

[Chaosmancer]

But can you ? Try your hands at suggestion, for example.

Odd you would turn to that after you said that you had the answer and provided it.

Honestly, I'm not familiar with the brouhaha surrounding the spell. Wisdom save, if you fail you do what they said. It doesn't allow you to have them commit suicide. More clever wordings might end up with more clever things happening. I might be able to give a more satisfactory answer if I knew the problem or had a specific example to work from.

This is probably because you want a more realistic game, but that has never been the intent of D&D. Falling damage has been discussed in every single edition of the game, much more complicated models have been made, but none have ever been adopted by the community.

No, I don't want a more realistic game. I personally have no problem with the person superhero landing and taking a d6 damage. It is going to look epic.

My point, which you missed by deciding that I want realism, is that if a player and DM sit down with different expectations of the game, it can be very jarring. DnD is closer to a comic book than it is a ren fair. People are going to do things that would seem insane, but that is just the world they live in. But, I need to be on the same page as the DM, or else we are going to run into things like my character being fully capable of handscaling a 3rd story building in 6 seconds, but the DM saying that I must roll a DC 20 check for every 10 ft because I don't have pitons.

However, I also want to make sure that I understand what the game expects. Because that reality isn't always the one I'm picturing. Jumping the length of a school bus isn't outside the realm of possibility for a character in DnD. So, before I make a ruling on something I need to make sure I understand the intended reality of the game, because there are weird rules, and something those rules won't interact, and other times they will.

And on the other hand, this encourages the players at our tables to be imaginative and find fun or interesting uses, and they know that as long as they don't try to go against the very simple rules (no self harm, no long domination), it should not be a problem.

In the end, it all comes down to trust. I trust my players not to abuse the rules, and they trust me to provide an interesting adventure. It's come to the point where I don't even read the character sheets of the players in my campaign, I completely trust them not to abuse or forget anything and to use their powers to amuse each other.

I agree it is about trust. And part of WHY my players trust me is because they know I'm going to tell them. I'll pull aside the curtain and tell them when I'm making a ruling, and why I'm making it. I tell them how I see magic working and therefore why it interacts one way and not the other.

And if they came to me wanting to ask about how an ability they might take in six levels would work, because they are idling planning ahead, I'll answer them as completely and honestly as I can, probably with an addendum that I'll look into the situation and see if there is something I'm not considering, and that that might change my mind. What I wouldn't do is start calling them a powergamer, or act like they are trying to lock me down and remove the possibility of imagination and group storytelling.

Heck, I've told players before when I've homebrewed a monster, to warn them that it might be able to do things they aren't expecting. I don't usually tell them what it can do, but I've found that after doing so when I reveal the homebrewed abilities they don't react with a "what? You can't do that?" and instead they react with "crap, THAT'S what he did? How are we going to deal with this?"

I find fewer and fewer reasons not to tell my players more and more information. Sometimes, rarely, a mystery is worth it. But the more I foreshadow and explain, the more engaged people have seemed to be, because they have a stake and they have the knowledge, and I try and make it so that having the knowledge isn't the challenge.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They matter only to the justification, though. They are completely irrelevant to my point, which was what you were trying to counter. Countering a point with irrelevance is......................irrelevant.

Your point is to say that a person not being allowed to take a legal option that in no way changes the power of the game is the same as not being allowed to cheat and break the power of the game, because both are a "restriction" on character creation.

Sitting outside a coffee shop and using their wifi without going inside is breaking the law (technically). Building a nuclear bomb under a major city with the intent to kills hundreds of thousands is breaking the law. These things are not the same, despite the fact that both are breaking the law.

You keep claiming that the fact that one of these is cheating that spits in the face of fair and expected play and rips the social contract to shreds is irrelevant, but really, it is the only part of it that is relevant. Using the standard array isn't cheating. Comparing it to cheating and saying "well you are okay with preventing one and not the other" is ludicrous. You should recognize a False Equivalence, you accuse people of them often enough.

Being able to pick only one race, class, have only 1 hit die for hit points, start with limited gold, etc. are the same as far as player limitation goes.

No, because picking two races is cheating. Picking two classes is cheating. Rolling two dice instead of one for hit points after 1st level, is cheating. Starting gold is highly negotiable, but if you aren't consulting with your DM and just take an amount of gold not allowed by the character creation rules, you are cheating. If you right 9th level spell slots on your character sheet at level 1, you are cheating. If you write 80 AC on your character sheet, you are cheating.

Using the Standard Array is not cheating. It is an allowed choice, in the base rules. Stop trying to compare cheating with picking between two legal options.

Except the game already takes them all into account. There is no "would." From 14-20, it all works well without being unbalanced.

Without being too imbalanced I would say. Because there is a clear imbalance in the guy whose highest stat is a 20 and the one whom has a 14. A blatantly impossible to miss imbalance.

Fewer than 5% fail in the first year. As for the rest, that's what warranties like the ones the writer of the article sells are for. No bias there. They also cite heavy use, subjecting the laptops to heat, etc. as reasons for the failures. I bet the other 70% actually take care of their devices and don't misuse their devices.

It's amazing how long they last when you don't drop them constantly.

Not within the first 4-5 years. But yes, when cars get old they start costing money. In the first 4-5 years, you might have an unscheduled flat tire or alignment issue. And of course your scheduled oil changes. You're article just averages times per year over the lifetime of the car. It doesn't tell you that most of that is when it has been used to hell and is breaking down due to age.

Now find me what I actually asked for, which is completely different than products that break down when abused or when they get old.

No CEO on the planet is not market saavy enough to avoid outright stating it. And, yes, some of the phone damage was from dropping. Not all of it. Some of those laptops might have be used heavily... but that isn't misusing a device meant for daily use. And I know people whose brand new car broke down in the first month.

But, your point is that no successful company would ever take 6% to 10% of customers maybe being unhappy because they took a risk as an acceptable amount. I've shown multiple searches that took me only minutes to find, that hint at the fact that... actually, while 10% might be a little high for some, it falls into an expected trend.

90% to 94% of the customer base being happy is a tremendous success. Stop trying to act like it is somehow negligent and impossible that a company sees that.

I don't either, which is why they accounted for it so that it wouldn't be unbalancing.

You can't account for a difference that big while designing the game. You just can't. You need to pick a middle number. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 can't all be the middle number. Some of them have to be high, and some of the have to be low. And we all know that 18-20 is the high end of the scale. Nobody sits down at the table with an 18 expecting to be average.

16 is average. 14 is low. You can hate that fact all you want, but it is how the game has been analyzed and talked about since the release.

Genetic matching is a crap shoot. They can get you into the ballpark, but after that randomness takes over. They're just trying to minimize the level of random.

Minimize the level of random by giving us more information, which changes nothing about the process. And if we had even more information, it would probably appear even less random.

The appearance of randomness in this case is a lack of information. Given perfect information (which is likely impossible) there would be no randomness.

Array is not mathematically equal, either. It's always the same. Rolling varies considerably from the standard array most of the time. I used a stat generator for 10 sets of stats. Which one matches the array?

1. 11, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
2. 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17
3. 12, 13, 15, 15, 15, 16
4. 7, 10, 13, 13, 15, 16
5. 10, 13, 14, 14, 14, 15
6. 4, 7, 10, 10, 12, 13
7. 11, 13, 14, 14, 14, 15
8. 9, 11, 13, 13, 13, 15
9. 10, 12, 14, 15, 15, 15
10. 7, 11, 11, 12, 16, 18

4 , 8 and 10 appear to be the closest mathematically, but again, the point of the array is that it is static, and adheres to the average. Of course blindly throwing darts at a board means you aren't going to hit a bullseye every single throw. But even with as trivially few results as 10 tries is, you got three that were darn close to an exact mathemtical value match. System working as intended.

 

[Maxperson]

Your point is to say that a person not being allowed to take a legal option that in no way changes the power of the game is the same as not being allowed to cheat and break the power of the game, because both are a "restriction" on character creation.

No. Not even close.

Using the Standard Array is not cheating. It is an allowed choice, in the base rules. Stop trying to compare cheating with picking between two legal options.

It is cheating. In my game anyway. It's as allowed as two races or two classes.

Without being too imbalanced I would say. Because there is a clear imbalance in the guy whose highest stat is a 20 and the one whom has a 14. A blatantly impossible to miss imbalance.

There's an imbalance between Rangers and Wizards, too. Like the imbalance between Rangers and Wizards, the imbalance between 14 and 20 is not too unbalanced for the game.

But, your point is that no successful company would ever take 6% to 10% of customers maybe being unhappy because they took a risk as an acceptable amount. I've shown multiple searches that took me only minutes to find, that hint at the fact that... actually, while 10% might be a little high for some, it falls into an expected trend.

You didn't show that at all. Every last example was one where the vast majority of that 10% happens years later. Sure, you might buy a lemon. 99 times out of 100 your car isn't going to give you issues for years. Sure, you might buy a defective laptop, the vast majority of the time if you treat your laptop right, it's not going to break for years.

You can't account for a difference that big while designing the game. You just can't. You need to pick a middle number. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 can't all be the middle number. Some of them have to be high, and some of the have to be low. And we all know that 18-20 is the high end of the scale. Nobody sits down at the table with an 18 expecting to be average.

The middle number doesn't matter. The game is designed so that 14-20 do not disrupt game balance. It's designed to handle at least that range.

16 is average. 14 is low. You can hate that fact all you want, but it is how the game has been analyzed and talked about since the release.

A lot of people analyzed the earth as flat, too. The guesses of these people might be correct, or it might not.

4 , 8 and 10 appear to be the closest mathematically, but again, the point of the array is that it is static, and adheres to the average. Of course blindly throwing darts at a board means you aren't going to hit a bullseye every single throw. But even with as trivially few results as 10 tries is, you got three that were darn close to an exact mathemtical value match. System working as intended.

30% being somewhat close doesn't make them equal as you claimed. Especially when you note that both 4 and 10 have numbers that are impossible to achieve with an array, and 8 only has a single +2.

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah, 5% isn’t much.

What do you think, though: if it were, say, 20% would it be worth it?

Your fighters endgame athletics is probably a raging 20 percentiles better at end game than when he hits level 5. These percentiles in a game with that little progression seems I do not know relatively significant.