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

[TwoSix]

Maybe not, but I'm cool with it. Makes the world feel more real to me if you can't just do anything you want.

Well, that's really the core of the argument, right? "Character building limitations enhance my feeling of setting verisimilitude."

 

[Kinematics]

Maybe we have very different perspectives on this conversation, but I don’t think I’ve seen any mathematical arguments in favor of racial ASIs being dismissed...

It was from posts in the other thread that lead to this thread being created.

 

[Guest 6801328]

If the argument is that you want ASIs to exist and be attached to something, it certainly is not avoided.

Yeah and what I am trying to understand is why people are so attached to racial ASIs. Here's what I've seen so far:

1. Tradition.
2. They are necessary to maintain racial differentiation because without racial ASIs the various races are just "humans with masks" and non-ASI differentiators (Fey Ancestry, Halfling Luck, etc. etc. etc.) are insufficient to achieve differentiation.
3. That people who want to get rid of racial ASIs are just minmaxing, non-roleplaying scum and their opinions are invalid.
4. The suppression of funky archetypes (e.g. Dwarf bards and Halforc wizards) is a good thing.
5. At least one person, recently summarily tossed onto the virtual sidewalk outside of Enworld, seemed to think he was the lone defender of the last bridge in a real life culture war. Or something to that effect.

Any I missed?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

My players don't roll stats. We use point-buy. So there very much is something preventing players from having 7 int. Does the world need to reflect that every person born had twenty something points so everyone in every town has an average statline of 12.5 plus ASIs? Because the 12.5 average is pretty specifically just for PCs.

If NPCs can have 7 Intelligence, and PCs can't, then you have an in-world indicator of out-of-game status. Your world is necessarily less believable, and less internally consistent, than if you didn't have that.

Whether or not you (or your table) care about the world being consistent and believable is a matter of personal standards. But regardless of where you stand on that, some people do care quite a bit about it. Whether a designer should cater to players who care, or the ones who don't care, is a decision for them to make.

 

[Kinematics]

“I don’t disagree with your position, but I’ll argue against it anyway because you make it sound too philosophical”?

And I suppose I should also address this part of your post.

I'm not arguing against him, because I was not interested in being dragged into this particularly framed debate. I have not made any posts supporting any particular position on this matter. I merely expressed my feelings about how he expressed his opinions because he himself began attacking the argument methods of the opposing side, framed with the very bad faith argument that others are only arguing against him because they don't like change (combined with a number of similar ad hominem attacks he's made throughout the thread).

 

[Maxperson]

Mate. Wanting your main stat to start at +3 rather than +2 isn't ultimate minmaxing. It's the expected value for a level one character.

Has that been said by one of the game designers, or is it being assumed? It's a reasonable assumption that the 15 or 14 will go in with the racial +2 stat bonus. It's also reasonable to think that the player might set things up for say multiple 15's and look to the future. +2 could be what the expected value is and +3 might be 5% higher.

 

[Phoebasss]

Has that been said by one of the game designers, or is it being assumed? It's a reasonable assumption that the 15 or 14 will go in with the racial +2 stat bonus. It's also reasonable to think that the player might set things up for say multiple 15's and look to the future. +2 could be what the expected value is and +3 might be 5% higher.

Humans are the default race. The Standard array is the default stat array. A standard array with human +1s gives you one +3, which if you're paying attention to making a character, you will put in your main stat. +3 is therefore the expected value.

 

[Guest 6801328]

If NPCs can have 7 Intelligence, and PCs can't, then you have an in-world indicator of out-of-game status. Your world is necessarily less believable, and less internally consistent, than if you didn't have that.

Whether or not you (or your table) care about the world being consistent and believable is a matter of personal standards. But regardless of where you stand on that, some people do care quite a bit about it. Whether a designer should cater to players who care, or the ones who don't care, is a decision for them to make.

Would you feel this way about a superhero game, too? That player stats must be generated the way NPC stats are generated?

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah and what I am trying to understand is why people are so attached to racial ASIs. Here's what I've seen so far:

1. Tradition.
2. They are necessary to maintain racial differentiation because without racial ASIs the various races are just "humans with masks" and non-ASI differentiators (Fey Ancestry, Halfling Luck, etc. etc. etc.) are insufficient to achieve differentiation.
3. That people who want to get rid of racial ASIs are just minmaxing, non-roleplaying scum and their opinions are invalid.
4. The suppression of funky archetypes (e.g. Dwarf bards and Halforc wizards) is a good thing.
5. At least one person, recently summarily tossed onto the virtual sidewalk outside of Enworld, seemed to think he was the lone defender of the last bridge in a real life culture war. Or something to that effect.

Any I missed?

Yes. The opposite of number 4, really.

6. Without set racial bonuses, you can't go outside the box. Dwarf bards and Half-Orc wizards aren't bucking the trend, which is often fun to play.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Normal people don't rob dragons. Str 18 halflings, orc wizards, human fighter/wizards, and STR 16 dwarves who left the safe dwarven mines do that.

Melrond the clumsiest high elf with his DEX 10 and warlock pact is a freak in elven society.

You can view D&D worlds However you want, but categorizing unusual people (and not that unusual at low levels) as “freaks” is both incredibly distasteful, and inaccurate to how the game actually treats PCs. No published modules, and no official fiction or sourcebooks that I can think of, share your view of PCs. That seems to be purely a you thing, far as I can tell.