D&D 4E How Badly Do Randomly Rolled Stats Affect 4E Math?

[Solvarn]

You inverted your equation there - you'd want *1.5.

I should have been more clear, in the next line it states to multiply the XP budget by 1.666. I'm not sure how I'd indicate that appropriately in formula. I guess:

New Encounter Budget = B * [1 + (8 / A)] where B is the normal budget expressed in the DMG and A is the average ability modifier of the PC's in your party?

I agree with all of your points, if the stats aren't placed in optimal places, than the encounters might be too difficult for the PC's. Also, if say the average swings wildly and your defender has key stat deficiencies, there might be an issue.

In general I disagree with the random generation approach and suggest only experienced DM's try it.

 

[Solvarn]

I don't see what you're getting at here, outside of armor proficiency feats. Either your two main stats include Dex or Int (and thus you're ok with light armor, either way), or it doesn't (in which case you'll need heavy armor. The great starting stats just push it back from Heroic to Mid-Paragon)

You have a reference? It certainly looked to me that the feat sections in later books have much fewer stat requirements. (Now, PHB1 has a lot of really important feats, so stat requirements are still important for characters)

Such as? I know polearms are rather MAD, but it was possible to pull off on a standard point buy. Broom builds are just a bit easier now. Don't see that as a huge change (and really, don't see Broom builds as a serious issue anyway)

It all really depends on how random the random rolling is. The point is that there are mechanical options that have been balanced on the assumption that there is a 22 stat buy. Certain options and combinations become open that should otherwise be impossible or penalized based upon sacrificing ability scores. For example, a paladin in point buy that puts a 16 (before racial mods) in Str and Cha can use feats to get higher damage on Divine Challenge, but is penalized by the powers with Wisdom as a secondary stat not being effective. If Wisdom is also a 16, then that penalty is gone and effectively you just have a character with a higher Divine Challenge, based on the math.

There are numerous examples that can be named.

Everyone is different, but in my opinion you forced to spend more time on balance for something that really isn't that great a benefit compared to the work involved. I am a busy person, when I'm DMing I only have a certain amount of time to prepare stuff. It's important that you take the shortcuts when you can, and that you don't unnecessarily complicate your game, unless it is going to increase the fun of all the people involved. I can probably list like ten activities that a DM would be better off utilizing time on than dealing with the math of introducing variables into a static equation.

 

[jbear]

Don't know if this helps, but I'll share my experience of our game from levels 1-6.

All my players receive +7 points to distribute on stats; two of the most common combinations are 18 16 12 12 10 8 or 16 16 16 12 10 8 before racials (and off the top of my head without working out if I'm a point or two off). Which, if you were rolling, I think most people would be pretty okay with. Then again you might be doing a roll 4d6, drop the lowest, reroll 1s and you can make 12 characters and choose the best, so I can't say...

I also have allowed them to choose 2 backgrounds; one that ensures their highest stat determines HP and another that relates to their prefered skill boost.

As far as feats and powers, I help them all choose very tight optimal choices that synergise with one another. I don't have access to the books in Spanish so it is very difficult for my players to do this for themselves.

I have also awarded them Versatile Expertise at level 5 as an in-game boon which has far reaching consequences plot-wise.

So they are all well over par charcters.

As far as treasure: I follow the guidelines as per the DMG; often treasure is missed by lack luster searching on the part of the players. This is balanced by the fact each has a customised magic item that each player has 'invented' with my approval and has begun to slowly awaken. This was a bribe I offered my players as the condition was they had to develop their backstories and tie the object into their past, giving me a reason why the innate power was only beginning to awaken now (providing me with loads of story hooks for future adventures)

My experiences in so far as game play:

-Their accuracy is very very high; any use of lower level creatures in an encounter means some of them are hitting on a roll of 3.

- In a one encounter per day type situation they can take anything down.

- They have been able to stand up to some very nasty encounters of +6 above their level which included very challenging terrain that put them at a serious tactical disadvantage.

-However there have been 4 near deaths. When I say near, I mean very near. In fact I had to allow one of the players to improvise with a 'Do Something Cool' Homebrew Encounter power to alter her Daily Utility 'Back from Death's Door' to save another player's life who had been brutalised into negatives past her bloodied value. If I had of played by the rules, she was dead, done and gone.

-The PCs are still vulnerable to normal level encounters but you have to make the situation itself challenging, as the monsters in a straight fight will be a cakewalk. However PCs in a boat trying to be tipped out by aquatic zombies in crocodile infested swampwater is still challenging and fun where as 5 same level zombies in a room with a table and 4 chairs is not. This is true even for normal PCs and even more so for Super PCs.

-Also my PCs are challenged by situations where it is difficult/impossible/against the pcs interests to take an extended rest. The current day in my game has seen 6 encounters so far and during the 6th they have unfortunately triggered a 7th and an 8th by some very unfortunate decision making. Healing Surges are seriously low, despite the fact that all the encounters of the current day have been of same level or +1 (maybe one of them was a +2 encounter); After 6 encounters losing one or two healing surges per encounter becomes a serious problem if time is of the essence and you need to push on.

-As for setting off two encounters (both of their level) at once before being able to rest from the last ... well, to be honest I fear for their lives. That is where we left the last game session. I really have no idea if they will be wise and find a way to survive.

So I think that the length of the adventuring day (at least at heroic levels) seriously adds to the challenge even for super heroic heroes. As does combining encounters.
You will need to make the encounter in itself challenging and interesting, as opposed to just relying on monsters and xp buy to create challenging encounters.
Also you can make the out of combat stuff more challenging, having their decisions make a greater impact on the game/ the world they live in.
One of the last skill challenges I designed was quite deadly, during which one of the PCs nearly died. It was a very memorable moment.
You make the challenge, not the monsters; they are just a few of many tools you can use. And of course they are best used in tandem with your other tools as well. Be creative. Push them and see how much they can take... but not all the time, every encounter, one after the other. Sometimes they should be an unstoppable, untouchable force ... that makes encounters where they are not so untouchable a lot scarier.

I hope you can glean something useful from this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't see what you're getting at here, outside of armor proficiency feats. Either your two main stats include Dex or Int (and thus you're ok with light armor, either way), or it doesn't (in which case you'll need heavy armor. The great starting stats just push it back from Heroic to Mid-Paragon)

Armor proficiency, hafted defense, TWD, shield feats, specialization, etc are normally not all possible to stack up. Again just looking at fighters you get the option to crank on a specific weapon (lets say hammers), pick up several of these types of feats, and STILL have a significantly higher strength and wisdom, which in turn can open up several more feats.

You have a reference? It certainly looked to me that the feat sections in later books have much fewer stat requirements. (Now, PHB1 has a lot of really important feats, so stat requirements are still important for characters)

I simply went through and added up numbers of feats in different books that had prereqs and binned them a bit. My recollection is that PHB1 indeed has the most prereqs (by a good distance at epic) but after that all the other books are close to the same. There was no downward trend and all of them have a substantial number of feats that have prereqs. I didn't include PHB3 at the time as it wasn't out. Just eyeballing it looks like that book does have very few, but it also has very few general feats of any kind (5 epic tier feats that are not race or class specific, total).

The point is even discounting PHB1 feats there are a lot of feats and often many of the best ones that do have prereqs. The other aspect of that is that the game tends to channel people's focus into specific areas using prereqs. Even if you CAN take feat A that relates to build X without a decent stat you can't take feat B that really makes that choice worthwhile so its largely moot.

Such as? I know polearms are rather MAD, but it was possible to pull off on a standard point buy. Broom builds are just a bit easier now. Don't see that as a huge change (and really, don't see Broom builds as a serious issue anyway)

Except normally if you are going to run a build like that you are not also going to be affording armor specialization, crit fishing feats, etc AT THE SAME TIME. No one of those things is by itself a serious issue. When you can stack together a bunch of stuff that normally simply cannot be combined it WILL give someone with a good knowledge of the system a way to boost themselves a lot in epic. Like I said a few posts ago, its not going to break the system, there are limits to what you can accomplish overall (sans a few total cheese builds that really have nothing to do with ability score anyway, there could be a couple more of those opened up but I don't know for sure).

One of the main problems with this kind of discussion is there just haven't been people spending time exploring what can and can't be done with non-legal array builds. You can find 1000's of pages of information on optimizing WITHIN the legal arrays, but nobody bothers to go outside that. For one thing it just isn't that challenging, but mainly most players that are into that kind of thing want legal builds. Sitting down with CB and playing around would be informative though. I think you may be surprised at how much mileage you can get out of even just a couple extra points in a couple of key stats.

 

[kilpatds]

Like I said a few posts ago, its not going to break the system, there are limits to what you can accomplish overall (sans a few total cheese builds that really have nothing to do with ability score anyway, there could be a couple more of those opened up but I don't know for sure).

Ok, we are mostly in agreement. I don't deny that having straight 18s will make you more powerful. I just don't think it's more than a level or 2 worth, at least outside of heroic, and I don't think it breaks the game.

The different critical feats: interchangeable. It usually won't matter which one you get, and strikers and defenders will usually be able to get one (class specific, usually. Wizards and Clerics won't... but they probably have other things to spend feats on anyway). The different defensive feats: didn't see any combination better than what's available in point buy (shields and TWD don't stack for non-stat related reasons). Yes, Hide/Scale Specialization's 15 Con/Dex requirement is a bit annoying, but +1 isn't that significant, and the small penalty to your secondary stat you'd take to get it in a normal game isn't signficant either.

Other than the armor-spec feats, the stat requirements general just serve to keep you from seeing feats in the builder you wouldn't take anyway...

I've seen this subject come up a couple of times on the other place. And I've never seen a great abusive result come out.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

One thing is for sure if you have higher overall ability scores you can qualify for more feats more easily. The again, there are really awesome builds within the rules already and even with more feats to choose from you can't have more feats. The number of feat slots stays the same.

For me there is no big difference in wether the at-will dpr is 93 or 98 in the epic tier based on a feat that is only available due to rolled ability scores.

There are already Chaladin Polearm Control builds and they are good even though they are MAD. There is of course one type of feat that would be easier to obtain and that would be the various 19-20 crit expanding feats in epic tier.

To get back on topic, if you as a DM conclude that the encounters as suggested in the DMG are too easy, make them harder. But wether or not this has anything to do with above average ability scores is debateable at least beginning with mid-paragon levels.

 

[nightwyrm]

Have we taken a look at the other side of rolling stats (ie. rolling poorly). An array like 14,13,13,12,12,10 is legal but still makes a subpar character. 4e stats really wants at least one relatively high number and tends to reward pairs of high/low numbers due to how NADs are done. An array of all average numbers is probably going to be worse than 3 high and 3 low numbers. An array of all 12s might even be unplayable.

 

[keterys]

Eh, if you've rolled all 12s, you'll have -2 attack and damage, -2 to some defenses and riders, and important skill checks. Sucks, but "unplayable"? Hardly.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Eh, if you've rolled all 12s, you'll have -2 attack and damage, -2 to some defenses and riders, and important skill checks. Sucks, but "unplayable"? Hardly.

I suggest you play a lazy warlord in this case.

But generally a 16 before racials should be the minimum for your primary ability score. At least, if you want to have an equally fun-experience as the rest of your party.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Have we taken a look at the other side of rolling stats (ie. rolling poorly). An array like 14,13,13,12,12,10 is legal but still makes a subpar character. 4e stats really wants at least one relatively high number and tends to reward pairs of high/low numbers due to how NADs are done. An array of all average numbers is probably going to be worse than 3 high and 3 low numbers. An array of all 12s might even be unplayable.

It will be somewhat sub-par, but then again with a racial boost to the 14 you have a viable attack stat. Make the character a bard and just leverage the fact that you can perform most skill checks at reasonable competence if you focus on the utility aspects of the class. Pick up a bow to use as an implement and you can drop some weaplement goodness on that, which helps some too. Its never going to be a combat powerhouse but as a leader you can do useful stuff, make credible if not spectacular attacks when needed, and enjoy your vast skill versatility (which is pretty easy to supplement, you have good enough stats for most MC feats and you can certainly take JoaT and even some skill focus for stuff you really want to do extra well. I think if the player is knowledgeable on 4e builds they'll be able to have fun with the character as long as they don't pine too much for high damage output.