D&D 5E Assumptions about character creation

[Micah Sweet]

I'm point buy all the way. Rolling is outdated and leads to unhappy players from day 1, every single time.

Recently I've been using a variant of the Standard Array with 2 different arrays.

Choose either

15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8

Or

14, 13, 13, 11, 10, 8 (and a Feat)

Humans get a free skill proficiency (to make a more human-centric game) and Vumans are banned.

Unless your players like rolling, in which case that's what you have to do. My wife hates point buy and arrays in D&D, though she seems fine with them in other games.

 

[Haffrung]

I have seen a number of people claim that the game ‘assumes’ a certain score in a certain stat.

the default assumption is that scores are rolled.

just curious. I assume people put a good score in main/attack stat, but where has that been explicitly stated?

additionally, I have seen assertions about the math of the game likewise assuming certain scores in certain places.

any specifics would be great. Common sense says bonuses are good but where is that written? Just curious as the game seems to be less lethal than some past editions...

The people making that claim are big into character optimization. They’re much more common online than out in the wild.

 

[Charlaquin]

Rolling for stats has grown on me over time. I hated the very concept at first, and for a long time always insisted on point buy. But as I’ve played more, and especially as I’ve started diving into the game’s design, I’ve come around on the idea. I would always want to provide players with the option to take an array or use point buy because I know well that many players despise the idea of rolling a poor set of stats and want to be able to count on that starting 16. But the game is built to tolerate a little variance. A character who gets stuck with a below average set of rolls won’t be useless and a character who lucks into an above average set of rolls won’t break the game. And players getting upset because someone else at the table rolled higher than them hasn’t really been a problem for me in adult life.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Rolling for stats has grown on me over time. I hated the very concept at first, and for a long time always insisted on point buy. But as I’ve played more, and especially as I’ve started diving into the game’s design, I’ve come around on the idea. I would always want to provide players with the option to take an array or use point buy because I know well that many players despise the idea of rolling a poor set of stats and want to be able to count on that starting 16. But the game is built to tolerate a little variance. A character who gets stuck with a below average set of rolls won’t be useless and a character who lucks into an above average set of rolls won’t break the game. And players getting upset because someone else at the table rolled higher than them hasn’t really been a problem for me in adult life.

This is pretty hilarious given your stance on ASIs...

But I agree with you that such little imbalances do not really matter, and that's why I'm fine with racial ASIs. I don't like imbalance produced by randomness though, as I don't see it serving any purpose, whereas racial ASIs actually try to simulate something (if somewhat poorly.)

I see value in the sort of random character creation methods that actually produce a character randomly, so you might get something you wouldn't have otherwise chosen, but rolling stats randomly and then assigning them where you want really doesn't do that. It just randomly makes some characters better than others. If you randomised your race, background, class, etc then that would be the sort of randomness which might actually add something of value (though I'd probably still prefer to choose.)

 

[Charlaquin]

This is pretty hilarious given your stance on ASIs...

But I agree with you that such little imbalances do not really matter, and that's why I'm fine with racial ASIs. I don't like imbalance produced by randomness though, as I don't see it serving any purpose, whereas racial ASIs actually try to simulate something (if somewhat poorly.)

I don’t really want to drag that dead horse into this thread to beat it even more, but my issue with racial ASIs isn’t about producing unbalanced characters - I think the game can tolerate those minor imbalances. My issue is that it makes certain races objectively better suited to certain classes than others. Whether you roll your stats or take an array or use point buy, an orc is always going to be a worse race choice for a wizard than a gnome. I don’t much care about simulating the trend of gnomes being better wizards and orcs being better fighters via player-facing mechanics because I subscribe to the view that PCs are by definition exceptions to such trends. What I do care about is not mechanically discouraging players from playing race/class combinations that interest them.

I see value in the sort of random character creation methods that actually produce a character randomly, so you might get something you wouldn't have otherwise chosen, but rolling stats randomly and then assigning them where you want really doesn't do that. It just randomly makes some characters better than others. If you randomised your race, background, class, etc then that would be the sort of randomness which might actually add something of value (though I'd probably still prefer to choose.)

I don’t disagree. When I roll ability scores I prefer to do them in order, and then to choose race and class based on what I get, rather than choosing race and class first and assigning ability scores based on that. But I know plenty of players who do prefer to do the latter and still want to roll for their ability scores, and I think the system can handle that fine. If there’s going to be an issue, it’ll be players getting jealous of other players’ rolls, and like I said, that’s not really an issue I’ve experienced since high school.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don’t really want to drag that dead horse into this thread to beat it even more, but my issue with racial ASIs isn’t about producing unbalanced characters - I think the game can tolerate those minor imbalances. My issue is that it makes certain races objectively better suited to certain classes than others. Whether you roll your stats or take an array or use point buy, an orc is always going to be a worse race choice for a wizard than a gnome. I don’t much care about simulating the trend of gnomes being better wizards and orcs being better fighters via player-facing mechanics because I subscribe to the view that PCs are by definition exceptions to such trends. What I do care about is not mechanically discouraging players from playing race/class combinations that interest them.

Sure. Agree to disagree, this is a matter of personal preference.

I don’t disagree. When I roll ability scores I prefer to do them in order, and then to choose race and class based on what I get, rather than choosing race and class first and assigning ability scores based on that. But I know plenty of players who do prefer to do the latter and still want to roll for their ability scores, and I think the system can handle that fine. If there’s going to be an issue, it’ll be players getting jealous of other players’ rolls, and like I said, that’s not really an issue I’ve experienced since high school.

Yeah, rolling in order actually produces a random character. But I have never understood the appeal of rolling and then assigning.

 

[Oofta]

What I've never understood about wanting a randomized character is that if that's what you want there are plenty of ways to do it while still assuring all PCs are roughly balanced. Take the standard array or make 20 arrays or so to cover the majority of options, roll for the array to use, roll to see where you put stats. Done.

Personally I don't want random because I come up with a vision of my PC first and then background then class then ability scores. I also don't see any reason to have significant differences in PC numerical ability scores.

 

[Charlaquin]

What I've never understood about wanting a randomized character is that if that's what you want there are plenty of ways to do it while still assuring all PCs are roughly balanced. Take the standard array or make 20 arrays or so to cover the majority of options, roll for the array to use, roll to see where you put stats. Done.

Honestly, I think it’s one of those nebulous “feels like D&D” things. Sure, you could make a set of arrays and choose from them randomly, just like you could get rid of ability scores and just use the modifiers. But something about rolling a handful of d6s a bunch of times to determine your ability scores is just baked into the identity of D&D at this point.

Personally I don't want random because I come up with a vision of my PC first and then background then class then ability scores. I also don't see any reason to have significant differences in PC numerical ability scores.

That’s a lot of fun too. It’s just a different approach to character creation (and I think developing a character first is the more popular approach). I’ve never really seen any good reason to have widely different numerical scores between PCs either. Some people prefer it aesthetically I guess. But I think the core appeal of rolling ability scores is less about producing different scores among PCs and more about introducing an element of chance into character generation. It makes the game less like a story-focused RPG and more like a roguelike.

 

[Oofta]

Honestly, I think it’s one of those nebulous “feels like D&D” things. Sure, you could make a set of arrays and choose from them randomly, just like you could get rid of ability scores and just use the modifiers. But something about rolling a handful of d6s a bunch of times to determine your ability scores is just baked into the identity of D&D at this point.


That’s a lot of fun too. It’s just a different approach to character creation (and I think developing a character first is the more popular approach). I’ve never really seen any good reason to have widely different numerical scores between PCs either. Some people prefer it aesthetically I guess. But I think the core appeal of rolling ability scores is less about producing different scores among PCs and more about introducing an element of chance into character generation. It makes the game less like a story-focused RPG and more like a roguelike.

Given that there's no wrong way ... I've never liked rolling even going back to basic. We always tweaked and modified our ability scores to get what we wanted (want a paladin? lookee there, a 17 charisma!), or just kept rolling. I took a hiatus from D&D for a while and when I got back to it we used a variant for point buy which was back in 2E days.

So this is nothing new for me; I've always came up with concept first and prefer having a character that fits my vision not something random luck threw at me. I guess I've just seen groups where the disparity was huge and don't see the point.

In other words there is no "tradition" of straight rolls for me even though I've played for half of forever.

 

[Hriston]

Whether you roll your stats or take an array or use point buy, an orc is always going to be a worse race choice for a wizard than a gnome.

Not if you choose race and class first and then roll. The orc could roll an 18 to put into Intelligence while the gnome might only roll a 12. This is true if you think about the orc wizard and the gnome wizard as two separate characters, which they are.