D&D 5E Has anyone tried or theorycrafted a Joe / Jane average party?

[Quartz]

The idea: everyone starts with a 10 in all their stats. Now apply racial modifiers (variant human allowed). That's your starting PC. Then pick class, skills, background, etc. As you gain levels you may pick feats or stat increases as normal. How about starting with 11 in all stats?

Has anyone tried it? Has anyone theorycrafted it? How do the various classes compare?

(This was sort of inspired by the Prodigy class thread.)

 

[aco175]

My group has not tried something like this since 2e with 0-level PCs and aging affects. We tend to use the standard array and view the PCs as more super than the commoners.

 

[John R Davis]

Have a party of all wizards and slowly magic missile your way to victory

 

[Agametorememberbooks]

Another idea might be to have the group be entirely focused around stealth and sneakiness. Always having to get the drop on their enemies, tactically think through surprise rounds and giving advantage as much as possible.

Allow the (optional) flanking rule for a +2 to attack bonuses to help out the melee types while leveraging tactical choices.

 

[John R Davis]

In an urban setting ( lots places to rest and buy stuff) good chance of survival

 

[Agametorememberbooks]

In an urban setting ( lots places to rest and buy stuff) good chance of survival

Agree. In the wild there are too many predators that have the advantage in ‘their’ domain.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

There are some interesting old rules - it seems either from UA or maybe Greyhawk Adventures - that were for building zero level PCs. What was interesting at the time was it was possible to get skills outside of a class - to make a character who, while he was part of the militia, also had spell casting or thieving skills.

 

[Quartz]

There are some interesting old rules - it seems either from UA or maybe Greyhawk Adventures

That's not the sort of thing I'm asking after. Rather, starting play as a 1st level PC Wizard / Fighter / Rogue / Cleric / whatever with all stats 10 + racial mods.

 

[Umbran]

Another idea might be to have the group be entirely focused around stealth and sneakiness.

Well, that depends - if you are using 10s for PC stats, but normal MM-style stats of the opponents, there's a problem. The party generally won't be able to sneak - their bonus to stealth won't be high enough to beat the opponents' passive perception.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I would only do this if backgrounds and classes offered a bump as well. Also, you could do a revised standard array (12, 11, 11, 10, 10, 9) and point-buy with just 12 points (allowing average of 10s, but you could min/max a 12, 12, 12, 8, 8, 8). This was an idea we played around with for a while.

For example, guard has STR 13, DEX 12, CON 12, INT 10, WIS 10, CHA 10, as a 2HD creature with 11 hp.

To have a fighter PC begin with lower scores and only match hp if CON is 12 (using the only ASI +2 from race), would seem a bit too Joe IMO.

Now, if the Solder background offered +1 to STR, DEX, or CON, and the Fighter class offered +1 CON and +2 to STR or DEX, in addition to the racial +2/+1, for instance, you could "build" your PC. This would give you a +2 (STR/DEX), +2 (any), +1 (S/D/C), +1 (any), and +1 (CON).

But otherwise, just all 10's really wouldn't be very appealing personally.