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

[CapnZapp]

I pretty much wholesale reject the idea that DnD isn't the "generic fantasy character" game already. It's the default game for any fantasy gaming group, and most people who play other games have reasons for doing so, while people usually pick DnD because... why not?

D&D is most definitely a particular and oddly specific game. It most definitely is its own thing, and far from a generic game.

You are not creating generic fantasy characters. You are specifically creating D&D characters.

This is what Level Up can't afford to misplace.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yes, their sample NPCs work as sample NPCs, to facilitate one method. They don't need to create samples for how to create characters as PCs, using the other method; we wouldn't expect them to, because they aren't needed, so their absence doesn't indicate support for one method over the other.

Ha! I knew you would find a way to dismiss that evidence.

 

[Maxperson]

Explain how I’m going to get a half-orc wizard with a 16 at level 1.

Roll stats. It's the default method after all.

 

[tetrasodium]

This is just the absolutism about "minmaxers" again. The only thing that seems to consistently skew race choice among most players is the ASIs. I and many of my players would be happy with having different mechanical benefits based on race. But losing the ASIs just for roleplay reasons just isn't an option for many people. Say what you want about those reasons, but you'll see more diversity if you float the ASIs. And that's the long and short of it. I want to see more diversity in race/class combos at my tables. If you aren't interested in that as a goal, fine. But let's not have any pretensions that 5e is perfectly open to all race/class combos, and its all in my head. If it were all in my head my players wouldn't feel the same way.\

EDIT: 5e forces you to pick either the story you want to tell, or a character with a 16. Whether you call that the baseline or not, that's the choice.

Why do you keep repeating this false statement to suggest imply or outright say people want to remove them from the game in support your argument. People can talk about removing ASIs from races without suggesting they should be removed from the game. That much has long been clear to pretty much everyone & is so clear that the vast majority of this thread has been after the knowledge they would be moved elsewhere was established as a fact preventing the need to constantly include that they should be added elsewhere while saying why race is a poor location for them. @Morrus made that even more clear by giving a vague description of what would be in place here in the character creation thread. Specifically he said this in the spoiler, so relax

Spoiler: Background has two +1 ASIs, one set, one floating

So here's what our first playtest packet might look like (we've started work on it).

NOTE -- playtest packet means we're looking for the good and the bad. If it doesn't work for you, that's data. If it does, that's also data. Above all, we want data.

So...

• Heritage has a feat instead of ASI
• Culture contains the non 'biological' aspects of what was once 'race'
• Background has two +1 ASIs, one set, one floating

The model looks like this:

Heritage -- Elf - bio stuff, feat
...Culture -- wood elf
...Culture -- high elf
...Culture -- dark elf
...Culture -- (new elf)
Background - (inc ASIs)

+ some 'general' Cultures (like Cosmopolitan, Lone Wanderer, Nomad)

Any Heritage can take any Culture and any Background (if the [GM*] agrees).

We refer to these three building blocks as your 'Origin'. As in, everything before your first class level.

*Working on our term for that.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Ugh. I hate that phrasing.

"On occasion one player or another will evidence a strong desire to operate as a monster, conceiving a playable character as a strong demon, a devil, a dragon, or one of the most powerful sort of undead creatures. This is done principally because the player sees the desired monster character as superior to his or her peers and likely to provide a dominant role for him or her in the campaign."

That's from the first DMG. I am always wary of that impulse.

You can't make your PC awesome by making your PC unique, or Drizzt, or a Gold Dragon; the best PCs are the ones that are played well- its the play that makes them special, not the creation. Anyone can craft a story of Fetch, the coolest ever orc wizard, and the only one in all of Oerth, who is just so awesome.

To which I would always reply, "Chad- stop trying to make Fetch happen."

Oh good lord you are so far off in the weeds on this one.

First you dismissed the anti-ASI crowd because they're just a bunch of dirty powergamers, and now you're dismissing them because it's really just some kind of dominance power-play, as demonstrated by a quote from 1e DMG.

So your argument is that they're not legitimate roleplayers, and thus they shouldn't get what they want?

 

[Phoebasss]

And I don't disagree with you on that. The thing is, if orcs don't start out at a relative penalty to their wizarding stat, then you can't possibly have a story about defying the expectation that orcs are bad wizards. If orcs are objectively just as good at wizardry as anyone else, then that expectation wouldn't exist.

There’s a separation between narrative and mechanics that you’re missing. The expectation can still exist due to cultural influences. This is like saying stereotypes can’t exist without being true. Of course they can. A setting doesn’t require formal stat differences to establish a narrative that orcs usually live out in the badlands in clans that value strength above all. The story isn’t dependent on the ASI, because my world isn’t based on the average racial makeups of everyone else’s tables.

 

[Phoebasss]

Why do you keep repeating this false statement to suggest imply or outright say people want to remove them from the game in support your argument. People can talk about removing ASIs from races without suggesting they should be removed from the game. That much has long been clear to pretty much everyone & is so clear that the vast majority of this thread has been after the knowledge they would be moved elsewhere was established as a fact preventing the need to constantly include that they should be added elsewhere while saying why race is a poor location for them. @Morrus made that even more clear by giving a vague description of what would be in place here in the character creation thread. Specifically he said this in the spoiler, so relax

Spoiler: Background has two +1 ASIs, one set, one floating

So here's what our first playtest packet might look like (we've started work on it).

NOTE -- playtest packet means we're looking for the good and the bad. If it doesn't work for you, that's data. If it does, that's also data. Above all, we want data.

So...

• Heritage has a feat instead of ASI
• Culture contains the non 'biological' aspects of what was once 'race'
• Background has two +1 ASIs, one set, one floating

The model looks like this:

Heritage -- Elf - bio stuff, feat
...Culture -- wood elf
...Culture -- high elf
...Culture -- dark elf
...Culture -- (new elf)
Background - (inc ASIs)

+ some 'general' Cultures (like Cosmopolitan, Lone Wanderer, Nomad)

Any Heritage can take any Culture and any Background (if the [GM*] agrees).

We refer to these three building blocks as your 'Origin'. As in, everything before your first class level.

*Working on our term for that.

I am using shorthand. By remove, I mean remove from race, by which I mean float.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Why do you keep repeating this false statement to suggest imply or outright say people want to remove them from the game in support your argument. People can talk about removing ASIs from races without suggesting they should be removed from the game. That much has long been clear to pretty much everyone & is so clear that the vast majority of this thread has been after the knowledge they would be moved elsewhere was established as a fact preventing the need to constantly include that they should be added elsewhere while saying why race is a poor location for them. @Morrus made that even more clear by giving a vague description of what would be in place here in the character creation thread. Specifically he said this in the spoiler, so relax

You are misinterpreting what @Phoebasss wrote. "But losing the ASIs just for roleplay reasons just isn't an option for many people." means "Given the choice between roleplaying the race they prefer, and getting an ASI in their primary stat, many people will choose the ASI." It has nothing whatsoever to do with removing them from the game.

EDIT: Beat me to it.

 

[Phoebasss]

?
You can't.

Which means that if I want to tell the story I want to tell, for example’s sake the story of a half-orc wizard, then I do not get a 16. So that’s what the game is making me choose between. Those are the two options.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There’s a separation between narrative and mechanics that you’re missing. The expectation can still exist due to cultural influences. This is like saying stereotypes can’t exist without being true. Of course they can. A setting doesn’t require formal stat differences to establish a narrative that orcs usually live out in the badlands in clans that value strength above all. The story isn’t dependent on the ASI, because my world isn’t based on the average racial makeups of everyone else’s tables.

The existence of a cultural taboo is not sufficient justification to make the story of defying it a compelling one. After all, we (the audience) are fully aware of the fact that orcs are just as good at being wizards as elves are. We would never expect the orc to be bad at wizardry. And the fact that anyone within the setting would ever believe such an obvious un-truth just makes them pitiable.

If we assume that most people act rationally, then we would never expect orcs to value strength over intelligence in the first place. And if the narrative requires orcs to act irrationally, then that's also not very compelling. I believe the technical term is an "idiot plot"; of the second order, in this case.