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

[Morrus]

Absolutely disagree.

Unless all the PCs are aliens dropped into the game world from somewhere else, they have to be created on the same chassis as NPCs - and NPCs must be created on the same chassis as PCs - or else the setting (or even the whole game) is garbage.

It's non-negotiable.

It's negotiable.

D&D hasn't had NPCs use character creation rules since 2003.

The game isn't garbage.

 

[Lanefan]

Keep on keepin’ those gates, Hodor! If no serious gamer would want to play games that are self-aware of their fictional nature, then I’m proud not to be a “serious gamer.”

Odd, in that I don't count myself a 'serious gamer' (in that I don't take it seriously and am often in it for the laughs) but yet still see the need for an internally-consistent setting into which the PCs seamlessly fit as absolutely essential.

 

[Morrus]

(aside from silly gimmick settings, that no serious gamer would ever want to play in).

No serious gamer? What? That's some gatekeeping crap right there.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Not at all, for ordinary folk. The whole point of a supers game is that the superheroes' abilities are completely (and almost always utterly unrealistically) removed from what the common folk can do. That said, an NPC superhero (or supervillain) should use the same generation chassis as a PC.

D&D isn't a supers game, however, despite the IMO very sad attempts of some recent editions to turn it into one. The PCs, at least to start with, are - and for a few levels remain - grounded within their setting.

High-level play in any edition tends to get far too supers-like for my liking.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No serious gamer? What? That's some gatekeeping crap right there.

That's not how I mean "serious" in this context. I mean, if you choose to play in Discworld, then you probably aren't looking for drama. Weird meta-settings are used to tell weird meta-narratives.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Ah - there's problem one: point-buy does not give anything remotely resembling a bell-curve distribution across a population. It's a purely gamist idea (ditto with standard array, only more so) not meant to reflect reality in the game world, and thus IMO useless for anything except PC creation if your specific intent is to shoehorn all your PCs into a narrow window within the available bell curve.

You and Saelorn have very odd ideas.

 

[Minigiant]

Right from the start? Hell no.

They start out as Joe-Just-A-Little-Better-Than-Average. With time, lots of adventuring, and a huge slice of luck maybe they become LeBron James sometime late in their careers; or die trying. The fun - and IMO the whole point - is watching them and playing them as they grow from one into the other.

Nah. You have to be born Lebron James. You can't exercise yourself into Lebron James starting from Kevin Hart.

Some PCs are Joe-Just-A-Little-Better-Than-Average, yes. But you only get to Achilles by starting as Joe Starts-With-A-16. And a lot of PCs are rocking 15s and 16s in their prime ability score and a 12-14 in their secondary before racial adjustments.

 

[Lanefan]

Freaks is a harsh word. The point I was trying to make is that PCs aren't normal. They are anomalies. PCs are usually irregular at the "genetic" level and a noticeable amount are culturally usual as well.

But PCs are not normal average folk of their race.

The question then becomes, what degree of anomalousness are we willing to accept before it starts invalidating the setting?

PCs may not be the normal average folk of their race but they should still carry underpinnings of what those normals and averages look like. A very easy way of showing this mechanically is stat bonuses/penalties baked in to the creature you're playing.

 

[Cadence]

It means that the process of rolling stats for an NPC is the same as rolling stats for a PC, just like it says in the DMG. There's nothing stopping you from having an NPC with 7 Intelligence, the same way that there's nothing stopping you from having a PC with 7 Intelligence.

I'm picturing using this in 3e or before and the party running into the worlds greatest mage... who can't cast actually cast 8th or 9th level spells because the DM rolled poorly in making the arch-mages stat array.

 

[Morrus]

The question then becomes, what degree of anomalousness are we willing to accept before it starts invalidating the setting?

You're begging the question. We don't agree with the premise that it invalidates the setting, so the question has no meaning. PCs can be exceptional. They're literally 1 in a million. Billion. You disagree, but that's all it is.