D&D 5E Array v 4d6: Punishment? Or overlooked data

[Parmandur]

are you jokeing everything you have said for pages has been a strawman...














here is that strawman of yours again... what is it that you don't understand... no one is NOT ACTING LIKE AN ADULT.... it is perfectly fine to as an adult be reasnolbe and say "Hey I don't like this game I'm feeling really over shadowed..."

If somebody was that insistent that everyone use point buy shen we are having fun with rolling...yeah, they can leave the game if they care that much. Their loss.

 

[Ranes]

ok, How would you stress something that you felt was being ignored in a previous post?

The essential point is made in a statement like this:

"You are failing to address my question."

To emphasise the point that the question has gone unanswered more than once, I could say:

"I repeat, you are failing to address my question."

And when I'm getting fed up with the number of times the question has not been addressed, I can allude to that by emphasising the repetition, like this:

"I repeat, yet again, you are failing to address my question."

No caps. No italics. No underlining. Just emphasis.

But let's get back on topic.

A couple of years ago I ran a mini campaign in which all PCs were created with 3d6, in order. How did I talk my group into this? I promised them that every creature and every NPC would be generated exactly the same way.

It was a lot of fun. Some of the die rolls that hit and missed (both the players' and mine) were unbelievable. Casters (PC and NPC) sometimes struggled to cast the most powerful spells granted them by their level and there was a distinct lack of wands of CLW.

It was only a mini campaign because we were a group of old friends getting together for a week of D&D (something we hadn't done for thirty-odd years). But high scores? All relative.

 

[Umbran]

Players of course have the ability to tell the DM they are not having fun. However, unless you are setting up a safe zone free from criticism then there is the possibility that they will in turn be criticized back.

Note that "I am not having fun" is not really criticism. It is a statement of personal state. You may *take* it as criticism. But that's an inference.

Stepping back a bit, to a previous statement...

If the rest of the group is having fun and you are not why should the rest of the group be expected to stop and cater to your needs over theirs?

Note how this is phrased and positioned. Note the connotations. Allow me to restate pretty much the same thing in another way that is not driving it to the inexorable uncompromising polarization:

"If the rest of the group is having fun, and you are not, why shouldn't the rest of the group consider some small adjustments to help you find your fun?"

I mean, really, if we are talking about friendly folks sitting down to pretend to be elves, why shouldn't we hope for a bit of compromise here and there?

I think the world, and the typical situation, is far, far less black-and-white and all-or-nothing than many here seem to paint it. Compromise ought to be a pretty common thing, as it usually has good results, and doesn't end up with one immature person riding roughshod over a whole table of others. Making an allowance here or there isn't DOOOOMMMM!!!!1! or something. It's just a game. Play. Not Serious Business.

 

[pemerton]

In general, use of language is more efficacious than use of typography.

Last time I checked Kant, Hegel, Marx and the other 18th/19th century German philosophers were adults. Who could use language. And also used a lot of italics.

Just as voice stress is an important element in spoken language (at least in English, and I am guessing from the above philosophers in German also), so typography can be an important part of written language.

 

[pemerton]

That's up to the player to decide to pick a class that works for the attributes he has.

<snip>

It is fair because all the players start with the exact same attributes. It is up to them to pick a race and class.

I don't see how it is any more fair then saying every PC has one 16 and the rest 12s, and then the players get to choose where to put the 16.

This doesn't work because point buy only allows for stats between 8-15.

But it's not as if the universe has decreed in holy writ that this is how point buy must be. It's not as if rolling stats is the only way to get wider variation. You can design point buy systems, or arrays, that allow for more variation in either direction. (Though I think there is probably good design reason for the upper cap.)

 

[pemerton]

The idea that it is jealousy or sour grapes to be irritated by one's PC being overshadowed by another - especially when it is a fighter overshadowed by a melee cleric who also has a full suite of spells - is ridiculous to me.

D&D isn't part of the school of hard knocks. It's a leisure activity. There is no reason why it should't be fun for everyone, equally, all of the time. For many players - certainly all the ones I play with, and I think have ever played with - doing meaningful stuff with one's PC is part of that fun. Part of what makes stuff meaningful, particularly in a class-based party game which is typical of how D&D is played, is that one's PC has a special contribution to make.

To the extent that rolled stats get in the way of this - as they clearly do for [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION], but not only him - that is a reason not to use them.

If rolled stats don't get in your way, great. Go ahead and keep rolling your stats! But you preferences have no relevance for anyone else, and provide no evidence that anyone else is jealous or suffering from sour grapes.

 

[Crothian]

I don't see how it is any more fair then saying every PC has one 16 and the rest 12s, and then the players get to choose where to put the 16.

IMO, because not all the attributes are created equally.

But it's not as if the universe has decreed in holy writ that this is how point buy must be. It's not as if rolling stats is the only way to get wider variation. You can design point buy systems, or arrays, that allow for more variation in either direction. (Though I think there is probably good design reason for the upper cap.)

I'm not sure what you point here is. My comment was in response to the request that people who use dice rolls to show what the attributes would be using the point buy system to determine if in actual play people's attributes are higher, lower, or about the same as using the point buy system. But the point buy system as presented in the book does not handle all the numbers making the request impossible.

Other point buy methods and ways of attribute generation are perfectly valid and I prefer many of them to rolling dice or the book version of point buy. But they were not what the request was about.

 

[Ranes]

Just as voice stress is an important element in spoken language (at least in English, and I am guessing from the above philosophers in German also), so typography can be an important part of written language.

Hence the qualifying clause in the sentence you quoted.

 

[pemerton]

Playing it safe means taking no risks. Your next rolled PC could have three 18s at level 1. One of the PCs in my group rolled exactly that.

And? This just reinforces the reasons why I, and others, prefer not to use rolled stats. It doesn't show that it is adding anything to the game.

The actual topic of this thread is "I feel like I'm being punished for being told to roll dice in a DICE ROLLING GAME". I mean, seriously.

Don't roll the dice if you won't want to pay the piper when you get snake eyes. Don't play a game with dice in it if you don't like the fact that dice just as often as not, let you down.

You continue not to address the difference between PC build and action resolution. That dice play a role in the second doesn't give me any reason to want dice to play a role in the first.

Hence I don't use them for PC generation. That's hardly a radical approach to the game.

Play a human (14 dex, 14 int) with archery style for +2 to hit, or a wizard that doesn't rely on blasting stuff, and you can easily have the equivalent of an 18 in your attack stat or a perfectly viable character. If you played this character without whining about it, as a DM I might even drop a belt of ogre power or headband of intellect or something for you to find.

So rolling stats is good because (i) I can play a non-stat dependent PC if I roll badly (too bad if I wanted to play a melee fighter), or (ii) the GM might drop magic items that make my stats irrelevant?

How are these reasons not to use a different stat generation method which (i) allows me to build the melee fighter I want to play, and (ii) doesn't need magic items to compensate for the outcomes of the dice rolls?

I could make a PC with a 14 main stat work quite well.

Bully for you! Do you think you're somehow unique in this regard?

The point under discussion isn't whether or not I, or [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION], or anyone else, can make a 14 main stat character work well. We've all been round the D&D block a few times, and I think we could all handle it. The question is whether it adds to, or detracts from, the game when the PCs have significant variation in mechanical capability.

I and others think it does. That a situation is tolerable goes very little distance to showing that it is ideal.

 

[Ranes]

Last time I checked Kant, Hegel, Marx and the other 18th/19th century German philosophers were adults. Who could use language. And also used a lot of italics.

And their work might have been much more entertaining to read had they broken into block capitals half way through a sentence, every now and then. Good point.