D&D 5E Assumptions about character creation

[R_J_K75]

Prior to 3.x, there were no expectations for what magical items you should find, but there were also no expectations for what monsters you should be fighting. You could be perfectly fine without any magical items, or completely outclassed while wearing +5 gear, depending on what you were going against. Balance was not something they were trying to control, from a design perspective.

Both 3.x and 4E tried to achieve balance by controlling both the magic item economy and the encounter guidelines, with varying success.

It's only 5E which puts forth encounter guidelines, and then completely ignores the effect of magic items, resulting in numbers that aren't useful in most cases.

Personally I dont really bother with EL's or CR's because as you said they dont seem to hold up. I think it would be better to just remove the CR if its that flawed. I know the few times I did use wither systems seemed like it was a waste of time.

 

[DND_Reborn]

What counts as a good score is all relative. After all, Gygax did say in the 1e DMG that a character without at least two 15s wasn't really viable.

While I don't doubt you, I can't find or remember where in the DMG.

I don't belive there was any such rule in 1e. I believe it was a common house rule, and that it was in at least one version of basic, but pretty sure it never appeared in 1e.

FWIW, don't know if anyone showed this from the 1E PHB:

Which is probably what @Don Durito was thinking of.

Why 15's? Because most ability scores didn't grant bonuses until you get 15 or higher in 1E.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Nice reminder!

I am a Gygax Fan boi....

 

[Fenris-77]

The CR system is, um, lets say less than precise or useful anyway, so measuring anything that way is a carnival mirror.

 

[Yardiff]

Hiya!

While I don't doubt you, I can't find or remember where in the DMG. At any rate, I feel I must point out a HUGE reason for EGG or anyone making such a statement: "There are no skill checks in 1e PHB/DMG/MM".

If a PC wanted to bake a cake for a village competition, the DM would likely have the Player roll against the characters Int or maybe Wis. A PC wanting to jump across a 12' crevass might need to make a Str roll on 1d20 and get equal to or lower than his Str score. So...in this sense..., characters with no stat above 12 are likely to run into a situation sooner (rather than later) that gets them killed. Ergo the 'need' for at least a stat or two of 15+. I highly doubt that EGG would say the same thing about 5e, gods rest his soul.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Dont know if anyone has answered you about where in 1e EEG talked about two 15s. Its not in the DMG its in the 1e PHB page 9.

 

[Don Durito]

Dont know if anyone has answered you about where in 1e EEG talked about two 15s. Its not in the DMG its in the 1e PHB page 9.

Yeah. I remembered that slightly wrong. I thought it was with the methods for rolling characters, which is in the DMG.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

That's because lots of high stats just aren't that big of a deal as I mentioned earlier. Your class only keys off of a few stats, which are probably going to be decent to high already, and the rest don't really matter all that much. As long as your group doesn't have stat envy, stat disparity is pretty irrelevant in 5e.

Out of curiosity....if you feel that stats are fairly irrelevant to the mechanics of a PC (and I agree with you on this)....then why the hard line against stat buy versus rolling for you as stated earlier?

 

[Hriston]

The orc wasn’t a better choice though. The player happened to roll a higher int, but that had nothing to do with the choice to play an orc. If they had chosen to play a gnome, they would be a better wizard.

That's assuming they get the same rolls, but in the scenario I presented the gnome rolls a 12. I realize this is a bit ridiculous, but I think it illustrates a point that I'm not making very well, but it has to do with randomness, which is why I brought up insurance.

It's a bit like the butterfly effect. We can imagine a white room scenario where a player makes a choice of race and then rolls the same set of scores no matter what they chose, but in reality the different circumstances involved in making a different choice would have untold minor effects on the die roll such that you could never repeat the experiment the same way twice.

Because it results in scores that regularly fall 2 or 3 points above or below the average, rolling for scores interjects randomness which outweighs the bonuses from race, so sure a race that compliments your class offers a modicum of insurance against one or two bad die rolls, but like insurance, much of the time you don't end up needing it, and when you do it often isn't enough. You might as well just play the race/class combination you want to instead of thinking you have to choose something optimal.

I don't get into a lot of discussions about mechanics, but a thread I started a while ago about medium armor comes to mind. The assumption of many of the participants in that thread that the game is balanced around optimal race/class combinations made the conversation nearly impossible for me to have with them, and I didn't have the time or energy to hash it out with them, so I gave up. I found Jeremy Crawford's recent comment that the game is not balanced around racial ASI's vindicating to some extent, and it resonates with what has always been an obvious (to me) feature of 5E's design: every race goes with every class.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The orc wasn’t a better choice though. The player happened to roll a higher int, but that had nothing to do with the choice to play an orc. If they had chosen to play a gnome, they would be a better wizard.

The only scenario I can see where some races aren’t objectively better choices for certain classes than others is one where you either determine race randomly (in which case you don’t get a choice) or if you first choose a race, then roll stats in order, then choose a class. Yes, in that case you might choose orc, end up with a high int roll, and decide to play a wizard. But if you choose your class first and then assign stats, or if you roll stats first and then choose a race, gnome will always be a better race choice for a wizard than orc.

I know you said you don't want to rehash this, so I'm gonna say my piece but won't expect a reply.

Youre basing "better wizard" solely on the criteria "higher INT bonus" and not the character as a whole. This is probably your disconnect with others, because not everyone classifies "better" at a class as "highest stat bonus".

I'm currently playing a cleric who has a CON score 3 higher than his WIS but he is still a really good cleric because he can take damage like nobodies business and stay in the fight longer than a cleric with CON as a third best stat.

 

[Charlaquin]

I know you said you don't want to rehash this, so I'm gonna say my piece but won't expect a reply.

Youre basing "better wizard" solely on the criteria "higher INT bonus" and not the character as a whole. This is probably your disconnect with others, because not everyone classifies "better" at a class as "highest stat bonus".

I'm currently playing a cleric who has a CON score 3 higher than his WIS but he is still a really good cleric because he can take damage like nobodies business and stay in the fight longer than a cleric with CON as a third best stat.

That doesn’t actually address the issue, it just shifts what stat we’re talking about. If you want to make a cleric that focuses on con over wis, that’s great! I’m glad that’s an option for you. But also, that choice limits what races are going to be optimal for your build too. As long as races have fixed ability score increases, orc will always be a better race choice for this high-con cleric of yours than elf.