Level Up (A5E) Do Player Characters Have Average Population Stat Distributions?

[DND_Reborn]

This discussion is in the context of a "AD&D5e" type thing. Any choice is equally "easy". Plea to "ease" is to ignore the premise.

Fair enough. In that case just offer half a dozen different variants, and most people should find one (at least) they can live with and be happy about it.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ve never heard of a 400-pound, low muscle mass person who can perform half the feats D&D adventures do on a daily basis, even without a single strength check.

You’ve also conveniently ignored the 27 pound halfling with 23 strength. That’s barely over a pound per point of strength!

Yep. There are things that don't make 100% sense. Take stone. It's nonsensical that a castle wall has damage threshold(damage reduction), while a stone wall and a stone door do not. Or that you can take your sword and hack your way through a 6 inch thick stone door and a two foot thick stone wall, but can't hack through a 15 foot thick castle wall. The reality is that your sword would shatter against all three after doing the same amount of damage to each.

According to your "It doesn't translate in a way that makes sense, so it's only mechanics with no fluff logic," we can't call those things stone(fluff) or doors/walls(fluff) anymore. They're just AC 17 has hit points, AC 17 has more hit points, and AC 17 has even more hit points and damage threshold.

“Fluff doesn’t matter” is not my claim. My claim is that ability scores do not translate directly to physical characteristics in a way that makes sense.

But there is some sense to it. That it doesn't make complete sense in all situations is just the norm for D&D in the majority of instances. It's incorrect to think that just because something doesn't make complete sense that you have to toss the fluff out and just have it be mechanics and nothing more.

 

[Maxperson]

Fixed that for you.

You can literally sit at the table, give everyone the same index card with the commoner stats from the MM, and say "choose your race and name" and go from there with no change to the sheet, and have people roleplay different races.

So you "fixed that for me" in a thread/discussion about 5e? Um, thanks I guess. I figured you knew it was a 5e discussion. My bad.

 

[Minigiant]

Not really & you left off a +2 either by accident or.... What I said was "5 7 [7] 9 10 12 base & add a +1 base or magic item to one of those from your culture along with a +2 one from your background. " I accidentally only listed 5 stats instead of six, maybe throw in an extra 9 or 7 to bring that up to six attrib values & I'll use the 7 for the rest of this post.

Put that into perspective against the default array of 15,14,13,12, 10, 8/whatever pointbuy where you have stat bonuses of +2, +2, +1, +0,+0, -1 this works out to +1, +0, -1*, -2*, -2*, -3* with your culture including the ability to raise one of those odd numbered penalty atribs by one using the suggested base value or magic item based +1 attrib item & your backgound including a +2 base value or item. If you want to stick that culture item in your primary or secondary stat you could start with +2, +0, -1*, -2*, -3* or +1, +1, -1*, -2*, -2* -3* using the culture item to bump one of those odd number asterisked values by 1.

This allows quite a few things, but the most dramatic change is that there are immediately a lot of subjective ways to allocate your stats & the choice of both primary/secondary and dump stats will make different characters feel extremely different even within the same class. The room for growth including reasonable early goals like attribute boosting magic items people care about & are almost certain to not say "well I don't use $stat" or "bob is $class so obviously he should get the item that the gm put in pretty much for bob]". More importantly it also includes the ability to differentiate a martial with a little casting from a caster with a little martial or a pure martial/pure caster in a balanced manner right out of the gate without needing to do it too heavily because the dump stats now viscerally matter and you can set "do I use dex based finesse weapons, strength based martial weapons, or the int/wis [cantrip] wand weapons of a caster" to something other than a class level thing because those penalties are too big to accomidate something like CoDZilla no matter what abilities your class adds to the mundane staple attack choice you make. If you are building yourself a pure martial/caster your probably going to dump the stats for the other side of that coin. If you want to build a a gish you can & will probably wind up dumping saves so you can bring your secondary (ie dex/con) stats up to snuff or maybe any number of possibilities.

I was talking about a level 1 PC with no magic items. PCs start as freaks. They start with a 15 as a roll. This is something normal NPCs and even elite NPCs don't get. They don't even start with 15s at HD 1.

PCs are the basketball, football (both), baseball, and gymnastics stars of their worlds. You have to be born a freak to compete.

 

[tetrasodium]

I was talking about a level 1 PC with no magic items. PCs start as freaks. They start with a 15 as a roll. This is something normal NPCs and even elite NPCs don't get. They don't even start with 15s at HD 1.

PCs are the basketball, football (both), baseball, and gymnastics stars of their worlds. You have to be born a freak to compete.

That's part of the problem. They start on the peewee league or maybe even middle school team but with pro or near league stats. That results in removing the ability to grow through it with anything too much shy of a training montage.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yep. There are things that don't make 100% sense. Take stone. It's nonsensical that a castle wall has damage threshold(damage reduction), while a stone wall and a stone door do not. Or that you can take your sword and hack your way through a 6 inch thick stone door and a two foot thick stone wall, but can't hack through a 15 foot thick castle wall.

Not in my game you can’t...

According to your "It doesn't translate in a way that makes sense, so it's only mechanics with no fluff logic," we can't call those things stone(fluff) or doors/walls(fluff) anymore. They're just AC 17 has hit points, AC 17 has more hit points, and AC 17 has even more hit points and damage threshold.

Or, rather, according to my actual logic and not an intentional mischaracterization of it, there’s no reason an AC 17 object with X hit points and damage threshold Y needs to be described as stone. Obviously it needs to be described as something, but if stone isn’t a good fit, pick something else that is.

But there is some sense to it. That it doesn't make complete sense in all situations is just the norm for D&D in the majority of instances. It's incorrect to think that just because something doesn't make complete sense that you have to toss the fluff out and just have it be mechanics and nothing more.

Who said toss out the fluff? Ability scores are as ability scores do. They do a fair bit, even if what they do doesn’t directly translate to a character’s physical characteristics. Design good mechanics and then pick fluff that suits them, rather than screwing up your mechanics trying in vain to make them fit fluff you’ve already decided on.

 

[Minigiant]

That's part of the problem. They start on the peewee league or maybe even middle school team but with pro or near league stats. That results in removing the ability to grow through it with anything too much shy of a training montage.

Why is that a problem?

Some people are born exceptional. I knew a lot of giant kids in school. And they just got bigger and better.


Even the stars need training by their coaches. There are minor leagues and local talent shows for a reason.

 

[Maxperson]

Not in my game you can’t...

Or, rather, according to my actual logic and not an intentional mischaracterization of it, there’s no reason an AC 17 object with X hit points and damage threshold Y needs to be described as stone.

So you are altering the game. Cool. I alter it, too. I'm just not claiming that the rule books don't mean something when they say it.

Who said toss out the fluff? Ability scores are as ability scores do. They do a fair bit, even if what they do doesn’t directly translate to a character’s physical characteristics. Make the fluff fit the mechanics, rather than trying in vain to make the mechanics fit the fluff.

This is the rules description of what the stats are.

1. Strength measures bodily power, athletic training, and the extent to which you can exert raw physical force.
2. Dexterity measures agility, reflexes, and balance.
3. Constitution measures health, stamina, and vital force.
4. Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy o f recall, and the ability to reason.
5. Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition.
6. Charisma measures your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality.

 

[Charlaquin]

So you are altering the game. Cool. I alter it, too. I'm just not claiming that the rule books don't mean something when they say it.

You actually don’t need to change any rules to prevent characters from hacking down stone walls with swords. The DM adjudicates actions and can rule that an action fails without a check if it has no chance of success. Trying to hack down a stone wall with a sword has no chance of success. Maybe if you try with a trebuchet 17 AC and whatever HP and damage threshold will be appropriate.

This is the rules description of what the stats are.

1. Strength measures bodily power, athletic training, and the extent to which you can exert raw physical force.
2. Dexterity measures agility, reflexes, and balance.
3. Constitution measures health, stamina, and vital force.
4. Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy o f recall, and the ability to reason.
5. Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition.
6. Charisma measures your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality.

In other words, abstract representations of the characters’ ability to do the things the abilities’ mechanics do. There’s no reason a halfling can’t have more bodily power, athletic training, and the extent to which you can exert raw physical force than a Goliath, even though the Goliath undeniably has more muscle mass.

 

[Guest 6801328]

That's not accurate. It doesn't matter if the individuals all have identical stats. How they got there was through mechanical racial differentiation. Elves a bonus to dex, dwarves a bonus to strength, etc.

The journey to the destination is often more important than the destination itself.

I can't believe an avowed anti-metagamer, anti-player-knowledge zealot posted this.

So you're claiming that what's essential for roleplaying is not just the numbers on the character sheet, but also how those numbers were generated?

That strikes me as a purely emotional, but logically indefensible, position.

Let's say we're in a game together, and the DM lets me play a new race that you didn't know about. I let you look at my character sheet. I roleplay the character according to the fluff. I show you artwork that I found on teh Interwebz. I have a hand-painted mini.

Are you seriously saying that without knowing how I arrived at my ability scores...without knowing what the racial ASIs are...you don't really have a sense of that character?

If so, perhaps you genuinely feel that way, but I'll note that to an observer such a position is indistinguishable from "I don't really have an argument for how racial ASIs impact the game, so I'm going to dig my heels in and say that it's the method, not the result, that matters."