D&D 5E (2014) Is Point Buy Balanced?

Genuine question for someone who’s better at maths than me please? What approximate percentage of 4d6k3 results are costed higher than its possible to achieve with point buy? Though I recognise this may be a bit of a rabbithole mathematically

Edit: PB and standard array are fairly close in value aren’t they maybe calculate what % rolls exceed that instead, that’d be simpler.
 

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I don't have a problem continuing it, I'm just having trouble understanding how you can't understand the difference.
Let's try it this way.

A player shows up with two characters, with identical stats. One of them was made with point-buy (and therefore is balanced, by your definition) and the other was rolled (and therefore not balanced, by your definition). The player won't tell you which one was which; only that one set was generated randomly and the other was selected. How will you know which character is balanced and which one isn't?

I imagine your response will be something like "that would never happen because because because," and skip the problem itself: there are two identical sets of numbers that were generated in two different ways. To me, this suggests its not the ability scores themselves that are unbalanced, as it sounds like you're saying, but it's actually your perception of their creation that feels unbalanced.
 

Let's try it this way.

A player shows up with two characters, with identical stats. One of them was made with point-buy (and therefore is balanced, by your definition) and the other was rolled (and therefore not balanced, by your definition).

Here's part of the disconnect.

Individual stat sets are not balanced or unbalanced per se.

They might be badly distributed, depending on how they were assigned, but that's not a balance issue per se.

The lack of balance with rolled stats is in contrast to other stat sets (usually possessed by characters of other players). Its because they can be wildly off from others. One person can end up with all 14-18s, where another ends up with one 14 and whatever the minimal the rolling system allows for. These are unbalanced with each other, and can leave some characters as, effectively, spear carriers for others.

Now some people don't care about that. Nothing suggests to me that's a majority of players.

In addition, the range can throw off how encounters end up going, because there's a non-trivial difference in capability level between them.


I imagine your response will be something like "that would never happen because because because," and skip the problem itself: there are two identical sets of numbers that were generated in two different ways. To me, this suggests its not the ability scores themselves that are unbalanced, as it sounds like you're saying, but it's actually your perception of their creation that feels unbalanced.

No, the problem is you're missing we're talking about stat sets in the context of multiple characters.
 


Let's try it this way.

A player shows up with two characters, with identical stats. One of them was made with point-buy (and therefore is balanced, by your definition) and the other was rolled (and therefore not balanced, by your definition). The player won't tell you which one was which; only that one set was generated randomly and the other was selected. How will you know which character is balanced and which one isn't?
you're missing the actual issue, the problem is not 'a player shows up with two identical stat arrays, generated by different methods' the problem is, well there's actually two variations on it, the first is: 'two players generate their stat arrays by different methods, one ends up with an array that is far stronger than the other's, and potentially higher than they even ever had a possibility of achieving' and the second variation is 'two players generate their stat arrays by the same method of imbalanced stat generation, one player ends up with with an array that is far stronger than the other's'
 
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Let's try it this way.

A player shows up with two characters, with identical stats. One of them was made with point-buy (and therefore is balanced, by your definition) and the other was rolled (and therefore not balanced, by your definition). The player won't tell you which one was which; only that one set was generated randomly and the other was selected. How will you know which character is balanced and which one isn't?

I imagine your response will be something like "that would never happen because because because," and skip the problem itself: there are two identical sets of numbers that were generated in two different ways. To me, this suggests its not the ability scores themselves that are unbalanced, as it sounds like you're saying, but it's actually your perception of their creation that feels unbalanced.
@CreamCloud0 already covered this, but I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring too.

Your premise is flawed, by way of a fallacy of equivocation.

We can talk about the balance of a method, which will need to take into account the spread of possible results. A single character cannot, even in principle, have a "spread of possible results". They have the results they have. Hence, the sense of "balance" which applies to a generation method cannot be 1:1 identical to the sense of "balance" which applies to a generated result.

We can talk about the balance of a stat array, which will need to take into account its relative strength in context. A method--which does not have a singular result, other than Standard Array--cannot, even in principle, have a "relative strength in context" because it is of its very nature decontextualized. That's what makes it a method and not a result. Hence, the sense of "balance" which applies to a specific result cannot be 1:1 identical to the sense of "balance" which applies to a generated result.

Two characters which coincidentally have the same stats, despite generating them via different methods, will have identical balance-in-context, even though the methods are not identically balanced. Similarly, two different methods may or may not be balanced against one another, but I would presume that method A at least possibly generating results that method B would generate is a necessary prerequisite for the two methods to be balanced with one another.

Or, for a perhaps silly but hopefully illustrative example, consider the "All 18s method" vs "3d6 strict method". Technically speaking, both methods can produce the same result. It's nearly impossible for the latter to do this, e.g. odds worse than 1 in 101 trillion, but it is technically possible. Would you say that the two characters, the results, are balanced, given the results are identical? Would you say "all 18s" is balanced, as a method, when compared to "3d6 strict"? As I said, this is intentionally extreme to prove a point: two methods can be wildly out of balance with one another, despite the fact that each method might (regardless of probability) potentially produce the same result.
 

Here's part of the disconnect.

Individual stat sets are not balanced or unbalanced per se.

They might be badly distributed, depending on how they were assigned, but that's not a balance issue per se.
Yep, that was the disconnect. When I read the statement "Balanced means there's no randomness," I interpreted it as random results are not balanced, as in the six actual numbers on the character sheet. So I kept bringing up three specific results, and others kept pushing it back to process and methods.

No, the problem is you're missing we're talking about stat sets in the context of multiple characters.
I wasn't "missing" the context of stat sets across multiple characters; that had already been discussed (and modeled, and graphed.) I was trying to talk about a specific case involving identical results that were acquired by different methods. It was just a thought exercise: does knowing how a set of stats got generated affect your perception of how balanced they are?
 
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Yep, that was the disconnect. When I read the statement "Balanced means there's no randomness," I interpreted it as random results are not balanced, as in the six actual numbers on the character sheet. So I kept bringing up three specific results, and others kept pushing it back to process and methods.


I wasn't "missing" the context of stat sets across multiple characters; that had already been discussed (and modeled, and graphed.) I was trying to talk about a specific case involving identical results that were acquired by different methods. It was just a thought exercise: does knowing how a set of stats got generated affect your perception of how balanced they are?

Randomness effectively guarantees different results so your hypothetical doesn't really add anything to the discussion as far as I can see.
 

Yep, that was the disconnect. When I read the statement "Balanced means there's no randomness," I interpreted it as random results are not balanced, as in the six actual numbers on the character sheet. So I kept bringing up three specific results, and others kept pushing it back to process and methods.

Well, I suspect that's because the three specific results situation seemed to be missing the point.

I wasn't "missing" the context of stat sets across multiple characters; that had already been discussed (and modeled, and graphed.) I was trying to talk about a specific case involving identical results that were acquired by different methods. It was just a thought exercise: does knowing how a set of stats got generated affect your perception of how balanced they are?

Other than assuming the process in the point distribution and array methods may have been at least somewhat thought through (though how well can be debated in any specific case)? Not really.
 


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