D&D 5E (2014) Is Point Buy Balanced?

[Maxperson]

Unfortunately, @Maxperson is bang-on right: intimidation in real life works exactly as he says it does. Many (most?) of us have direct experience with this.

If the intent is for it to work differently in the game they should probably have put a different name to it.

And they should have described it differently.

5e: "Intimidation. When you attempt to influence someone through overt threats, hostile actions, and physical violence, the DM might ask you to make a Charisma (Intimidation) check."

5.5e: "Intimidation. Awe or threaten someone into doing what you want."

 

[Rocker26a]

I was trying to think if Intimidation could be relitigated to be a bit less rigid, like "Presence" or something like that. Y'know, "Fear is not what you owe me. You owe me awe!" etc. I don't know if that'd be more trouble than it'd be worth, though.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No argument from me on any of this.

So how to fix, or at least mitigate?

You've already suggested divorcing initiative from Dexterity. Good idea. Divorcing offense in combat from Dexterity would be the next step, with the intended end result being that Strength helps offense, Dexterity helps defense.

Again, this comes with a serious downside that a lot of people do not want: it means that 100% of people who are good at combat HAVE to be more like Conan/AHNOLD than they are like Zorro/Errol Flynn. That's a sacrifice a lot of people aren't willing to make.

As a result, while I totally understand why you want to do this from a purely gamist standpoint, from a standpoint of capturing concepts and experiences--not exactly "narrative" or "simulation" per se, but definitely the aesthetic value of the rules expression--this is a sacrifice that is too dramatic to accept. If we're going to keep six stats, and one of those stats refers specifically to Mighty Thews, then there need to be combat-ready characters who do not use that Mighty Thews stat and instead use precision, deftness, speed, and mobility to succeed, not brute force.

Could perception somehow tie in to both Int and Wisdom? E.g. on an easy check you use the higher bonus, on a normal check you use the average of the two bonuses, and on a hard check (but not hard enough to give disadv.) you use the lower of the two - could that work?

Potentially. You might find the 13th Age approach to certain stat things interesting. There, your AC, physical defence (PD), and mental defense (MD), scale based off of the middle of three stats. AC, for example, is Con, Dex, and Wis. You ignore the highest and lowest. This has the side benefit of making min-maxing no longer a trivial calculation, because you need many high stats to have the middle stat be the best one.

If we did take this route, then perhaps Perception is a function of Wisdom, Intelligence, and Constitution--the latter because you need to be awake and alert to detect things, and the ability to resist fatigue is usually tied to Constitution.

As for making Charisma more important more of the time, it'd help greatly if some 0e-1e conceits hadn't fallen by the wayside over the years. Charisma was the main stat in those versions for attracting and retaining henches, hirelings, and followers; all of which were rather important to one's career as both an adventurer and - later - as a domain keeper. And even with that, Charisma was often seen as the best stat to dump; I'm not sure that's ever changed.

In 5.5e a bit of this might be revivable via the Bastion rules, but that's again a bit niche and not all campaigns will use them.

Yeah this has much the same problem as carrying-capacity stuff for Strength. That is, hirelings, henches, retainers, etc. are usually really boring to manage, mostly just inducing craptons of paperwork. Yes, the benefits might be enormous--there's a reason Leadership was the single most banned feat in 3rd edition, since it literally gave you a second character--but the paperwork is not worth the reward.

If you can find a way to make hirelings a breeze for both players and GMs to interact with, without making them overpowered or unimportant, then I could certainly see this working out. As it stands, the simple reason this got left behind is because it wasn't worth maintaining, and the one time D&D tried, it pretty clearly went to hell in a handbasket.

It would take a fairly big adjustment to how people think of things, but one could in part define Charisma as being "strength of spirit/soul". Once you do this, then anything affecting the soul or spirit (most notably, death saves, which are another near-inevitability) would exclusively run through Charisma; as would revival from death if any uncertainty gets introduced there.

Well, I come from a context where there should be few to no bonuses to your death saves. But that's a separate concern. I do agree that this is an interesting direction to take Charisma, making it a very literal force of personality/self. I could see this working, as you say it would primarily be a matter of selling the community on the concept. Unlike the Dex/Str issue above, though, I think this one really could happen, though I'm not sure whether the design side or the persuade-folks-to-like-it side would be more difficult...both will be major challenges, at the very least.

Unfortunately, @Maxperson is bang-on right: intimidation in real life works exactly as he says it does. Many (most?) of us have direct experience with this.

If the intent is for it to work differently in the game they should probably have put a different name to it.

I mean that's literally what I was saying. We need a new skill which covers more or less the ground Intimidate does, but also does other things, and isn't the Evil Social Skill For Evil Evils Who Evil Evilly.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And they should have described it differently.

5e: "Intimidation. When you attempt to influence someone through overt threats, hostile actions, and physical violence, the DM might ask you to make a Charisma (Intimidation) check."

5.5e: "Intimidation. Awe or threaten someone into doing what you want."

"Awe." A verb, here. As in, per Dictionary.com, "to inspire with reverence or dread." Or per Collins Dictionary, "If you are awed by someone or something, they make you feel respectful and amazed, though often rather frightened." Or Merriam-Webster, "to inspire or fill with awe", where the noun "awe" is defined as, "an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by overwhelming greatness (as in beauty, power, or size)".

Which is exactly what I mean. The text supports readings of Intimidate that are not about torturing people or threatening them or whatever. It can also include things like, I dunno, making them feel small and feeble, or making yourself seem like an all-powerful figure, or inspiring a deep respect for some quality of greatness you possess (such as great intellect, great physical prowess, great beauty, etc.)

But no. It has to be the evil skill for evil socialization. Even you are doing this.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Through your roleplay of the NPC, ideally.

If the NPC comes across as prideful or self-confident or courageous than persuasion is more likely to work.
If the NPC comes across as diffident or insecure or cowardly then intimidate is more likely to work.

"More Likely" and "Less Likely" is not the same as "intimidate is clearly the only thing that will work here". Maybe I particularly want to lessen the insecurity of the coward, to be confident going with my approach is the best option, I'll make it safer!

 

[Moving Pictures]

Alright, another multi-quote response.

IMO Constitution is the most overrated ability but players tend to want it over others in general and the talking heads online with the optimizer builds always stress it. On most players I've seen other than me it is typically the 2nd highest or 3rd highest stat.

I've tweaked the mechanics to make dexterity a key stat. I've also moved a lot of magic saves to be charisma based.

For me on point buy it is usually a 10, sometimes a 12. It is a 14 if I am playing a subclass or species that uses it.'

To answer your specific question though - no the combinations available with point buy are not all equivalent.

I will never go back to rolling dice.

This is not really true. For example, rolling for stats typically results in characters that are somewhat unbalanced. Sometimes they are pretty balanced, but on the other hand sometimes they are wildly unbalanced. In a campaing I am playing now I started at 1st level with a 20 Charisma and a 19 Dexterity on one of my PCs and another character in the party did not even have a single 15 at first level (after ASIs).

I had a player who created Glock. a double-spec axe-weilding dwarf. Had an 18 on strength, 18 on con. With racial tweaks, that was 19 on both. Had high dex, too. Utter monster. Created all sorts of imbalances.....

This is wildly unbalanced, but there is no "clear path forward" in terms of choices. The characters got what they got. The players need to make choices with the array they have and their choices do affect the outcome.

Which is why I like the point buy I have now, based off a fibbonaci sequence. Humans start at 11 across the board, different races have different starting stats.

The other thing I do is hand out ability purchase points at each level, which allows players to boost stats over time at their choice.