D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Ratskinner]

I am lost here.

Could someone explain to me how this (seemingly pedantic) discussion on whether there were upper limits on play in early editions of D&D has anything remotely significant to do with the topic of the thread?

IIRC, the actual topic of this thread was lost somewhere in the single-digit page numbers. It does occasionally get resurrected.

The culture of this board does seem to have a strange aversion to starting new threads.

 

[Ahnehnois]

err...normal distribution does not imply representivity in any way, it just allows the other equations to work. The social end of statistics derives far too much confidence in the math working out being applicable. "The math works out" isn't nearly enough to justify it on its own.

That's a really, really, important point. Simply having normally distributed data does not speak at all to whether the study sample represents the population of interest.

And again, there's every reason to believe that the average game is exceptionally difficult to study.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Seriously? Are you really going to go there?

You know damn well that you cannot sit there and use that survey as evidence to prove your claim is 100% accurate. All you can say is that amongst the people that were actually surveyed, the majority of games don't make it to 20.

Kind of funny if you think about it. This survey is supposed to represent a majority who don't make it to 20 and yet they create an edition that technically has no end.

You can hold that survey up all day long but its not a valid source to back up your claim. My original stance remains correct and remains the same.

Humans make better wizards than elves.

1: No level cap.
2: Can be raised.
3: Doesn't have a -1 to con.
4: Access to 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells.
5: Humans age quicker so they gain those bonuses to their mental stats quicker.

All five of those benefit the wizard directly.

Want to remind me again how an elf is better?

On the survey? Dude, go take that Statistics 101 course you talked about. If you HAVE taken it, get a refund!

Elves make better wizards because:

1. Has a +1 to Dex
2. Has a +1 to Cha
3. Has a bonus to surprise
4. Has a bonus to finding hidden things
5. Ages slower so aging effects are almost meaningless and doesn't lose CON and STR for centuries
6. Can multi-class into fighter or thief (or cleric, though I never found that one to be too compelling).
7. Resistance to sleep and charm effects (very common and rather deadly).
8. Possibly other benefits depending on edition and supplements in play. If Complete Book of Elves is in play, forget about it!
9. Infravision!

Really #6 is the main one. Having half-fighter hit points, etc is a killer. Your human may be able to be raised, but my elf has approx 3x his hit points and many other benefits at a marginal cost of being half a level behind in each class. Its worth far more over 90% of the likely level range PCs will be at vs the human.

 

[Balesir]

err...normal distribution does not imply representivity in any way, it just allows the other equations to work. The social end of statistics derives far too much confidence in the math working out being applicable. "The math works out" isn't nearly enough to justify it on its own.

Heh, no - did you really think generations of mathematicians have got the concepts that wrong? Let me say that again, in more detail:

1) Take a population - any population, really, of data will do.

2) Take an independently and identically distributed sample (e.g. a totally random sample) from that population - 50-60 data points will suffice.

If you were to do (2) many times, and take a measurement from the sample (the average, for example), those measured averages for all the samples will themselves have a normal distribution about the "real" value of the average for the whole population. This applies regardless of the distribution of the original population - that's the beautiful part about the maths. The answer you get from just one sample will not, therefore, tell you the distribution pattern of the whole population - but it will tell you the approximate value of the average with a confidence interval for any given level of confidence - "the average is between 3.5 and 4.3 with a 95% degree of confidence", for example - because we know what percentage of a normal distribution lies within any set number of standard deviations of the mean.

So, the distribution pattern of the original population is actually irrelevant if all you want to know is the average figure or a set of proportions - as was reported in this case. The figures would also have had confidence intervals, which we unfortunately don't know, but I wouldn't expect them to be very wide with sample sizes in the hundreds.

 

[Ahnehnois]

(e.g. a totally random sample)

Which is what we don't have.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

On the survey? Dude, go take that Statistics 101 course you talked about. If you HAVE taken it, get a refund!

Elves make better wizards because:

1. Has a +1 to Dex
2. Has a +1 to Cha
3. Has a bonus to surprise
4. Has a bonus to finding hidden things
5. Ages slower so aging effects are almost meaningless and doesn't lose CON and STR for centuries
6. Can multi-class into fighter or thief (or cleric, though I never found that one to be too compelling).
7. Resistance to sleep and charm effects (very common and rather deadly).
8. Possibly other benefits depending on edition and supplements in play. If Complete Book of Elves is in play, forget about it!
9. Infravision!

Really #6 is the main one. Having half-fighter hit points, etc is a killer. Your human may be able to be raised, but my elf has approx 3x his hit points and many other benefits at a marginal cost of being half a level behind in each class. Its worth far more over 90% of the likely level range PCs will be at vs the human.

Mmmm I'm looking at the elf right now and I only see a +1 to Dex and a -1 to Con. I see nothing about about a + to Cha, which helps Wizards how, and since when does a Wizard give a crap about losing Str, Dex, and Con when you gain a +1 in Int, Wis, and Cha?

We aren't talking about multi-class, we are talking about the Wizard because that was the class that was mentioned. Who cares about Infravision when the human Wizard has it as a spell.

Did I also mentioned access to 7th, 8th , and 9th level spells which trumps everything else an elf gets?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which is what we don't have.

And you know this how? ANY market research person with half a brain will come up with a random sample. In fact as long as you have a reasonable idea of what the structure of the actual population is (IE which factors are correlated with the factor of interest) you can correct for any bias in your actual sample. This is not all that hard to do. As I said before, I worked for a company (briefly) who's entire existence was for exactly that purpose. They would design and execute a study which would both tell you about the population you were interested in, and estimate the bias in whatever sample you got. This is all routine stuff which has been well-understood for 100 years. Just the mere fact that the survey Ryan refers to uses correct terminology and is structured in a fashion that matches common market surveys tells me that it is probably done with a standard methodology. That doesn't make it perfect, but unless a total idiot was in charge there's no reason to assume it didn't produce accurate results in terms of what it was designed to do.

 

[Ratskinner]

Heh, no - did you really think generations of mathematicians have got the concepts that wrong?

Not really. I've taken statistics/data analysis from physicists, mathematicians, and social scientists. IMO & IME, the social scientists rarely understand the maths well enough to actually apply them. YMMV.

Let me say that again, in more detail:

1) Take a population - any population, really, of data will do.

2) Take an independently and identically distributed sample (e.g. a totally random sample) from that population - 50-60 data points will suffice.

As somewhat ninja'd by [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION], we absolutely know that we do not meet condition 2.

 

[n00bdragon]

If you ask 100 totally random people on the street whether they like X or Y better you still end up with an extreme bias towards "people who walk on streets" which necessarily excludes people who can't walk, agoraphobics, etc. While this selection bias can sometimes be a problem generally it's not. People who don't, for whatever reason, walk on streets tend to have roughly the same views on X and Y as people who do walk on the streets unless X and Y are intimately related with the act of walking down the street.

I think you're just being suspicious of the study because you don't like its results.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Mmmm I'm looking at the elf right now and I only see a +1 to Dex and a -1 to Con. I see nothing about about a + to Cha, which helps Wizards how, and since when does a Wizard give a crap about losing Str, Dex, and Con when you gain a +1 in Int, Wis, and Cha?

We aren't talking about multi-class, we are talking about the Wizard because that was the class that was mentioned. Who cares about Infravision when the human Wizard has it as a spell.

Did I also mentioned access to 7th, 8th , and 9th level spells which trumps everything else an elf gets?

Under 2e, which seems to be your point of reference, a Grey Elf gets +2 Int, which is hard to beat, even for a -2 Cha penalty (they still get the +1 Dex / -1 Con). That's huge.

Yes, it was in the Complete book of Elves (and for all I know Dragon before that), but I rarely played at a table that didn't have it once it came out. This was also included in the later Player's Option series, which were used at every table I played at (and that was a lot).

Then there's the part where Elves can by default go to level 15, which means they have access to level 7 spells already, and with the option to advance further with higher stats (trivially easy for them), they can easily gain the other 2 missing spell levels (+4 for a 19 Int brings their cap to level 19). So they miss out on 1 level that a human gets, which amounts to 1hp, 1 6th level slot, and a second 9th level slot.