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

[Maxperson]

Let me put it this way. I haven't seen a non-MAD character in years without a 16+ at level one.

I've seen them, but they're rare. That doesn't make the baseline math +3, though. I also see people push their main stat to 20 very quickly, even though it's not necessary to do so. What people like and what the game assumes don't have to line up.

 

[TwoSix]

Any group that would shun a player for making that sort of decision isn't worth playing with. They're fairly crappy people. Especially in 5e where the game is so easy that it doesn't really matter anyway. People should be able to play the character they want, without others giving a rats behind about it.


I do it occasionally. In the last game I ran we had a Half-Orc multiclass Barbarian/Bard. Everyone at my table thought that was cool. No shunning involved.

Who mentioned shunning?

 

[Phoebasss]

I've seen them, but they're rare. That doesn't make the baseline math +3, though. I also see people push their main stat to 20 very quickly, even though it's not necessary to do so. What people like and what the game assumes don't have to line up.

Let's say that they should line up. Because if the game is assuming things too far off of what your PCs are actually capable of, you're either going to get a TPK or a very easy game.

 

[tetrasodium]

Ok but isn't this a subcategory of #2? Culture differentiation instead of racial differentiation, but same argument, right? Or am I missing something?

Not really & probably not, I used one of the nations on khorvaire (eberron), an elf, goblin, & ogre from karrnath are all karrnathi & have more in common than someone of the same race from say breland where they were literally bitter enemies during the last roughly hundred years of civil war. Race is funny in eberron

 

[Guest 6801328]

Any group that would shun a player for making that sort of decision isn't worth playing with. They're fairly crappy people. Especially in 5e where the game is so easy that it doesn't really matter anyway. People should be able to play the character they want, without others giving a rats behind about it.


I do it occasionally. In the last game I ran we had a Half-Orc multiclass Barbarian/Bard. Everyone at my table thought that was cool. No shunning involved.

WTF? Where did this "shunning" thing come from?

 

[TwoSix]

I literally gave an example of how linking them to culture/background as seems likely allows the gm to leverage them to enhance the PC link to the world that included one culture for each attrib & someone flew off the handle about how they were prevented from playing a sorcerer from one of those cultures, not thinking much of it I gave some reasons why & someone else suggested a nonlocal culture +working out something with the gm but the protest about how unfair this is. There aren't many other conclusions to jump to in this case.

Personally, I'd rather the player come up with the culture, and we can work out the backstory together of why that culture is good at sorcery or what have you.

But I like to encourage player ownership within the setting. Of course, I'm one of the unserious gamers who doesn't think NPCs are just in-utero PCs-to-be.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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?

See, I want to make choices in character gen that preclude other choices, and I want the options I choose to have some reflection in the game world. Floating ASIs prevent that by just being math unconnected to the world. Also, I want large numbers of existing D&D players to play this game, and I think floating ASIs or no ASIs would be too jarring for most players and it would prove to be less popular outside of the rarified air of places like this.

 

[Guest 6801328]

See, I want to make choices in character gen that preclude other choices, and I want the options I choose to have some reflection in the game world. Floating ASIs prevent that by just being math unconnected to the world.

And non-ASI racials (Fey Ancestry, Halfling Luck, etc) don't achieve that for you?

Also, I want large numbers of existing D&D players to play this game, and I think floating ASIs or no ASIs would be too jarring for most players and it would prove to be less popular outside of the rarified air of places like this.

Eh. Conjecture. I disagree, but neither of us has any data to back up our opinions.

 

[TwoSix]

See, I want to make choices in character gen that preclude other choices, and I want the options I choose to have some reflection in the game world. Floating ASIs prevent that by just being math unconnected to the world. Also, I want large numbers of existing D&D players to play this game, and I think floating ASIs or no ASIs would be too jarring for most players and it would prove to be less popular outside of the rarified air of places like this.

Doesn't every choice in character gen preclude the other choices? If you pick dwarf, you preclude elf.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Doesn't every choice in character gen preclude the other choices? If you pick dwarf, you preclude elf.

I assume they mean that each choice narrows the options (in some way) at the next stage of choices.

Which is a totally valid aesthetic preference.