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

[Maxperson]

My personal experience tells me different. It takes surprisingly little attacks to figure out a monster's likely AC, one guy misses, the next has just 3 more and its a hit. The DM doesn't need to reveal DCs or ACs for that to become obvious.

Pathfinder 2E is always about that little +1 that turned your attack into a hit (or crit). It works the same there, even though the game gives plenty of bonuses to all your rolls, with the ability modifier being rather small compared to to the rest.

It absolutely does matter, every little +1 counts, even in D&D 5. And don't make the mistake of thinking "but it's just 5 % difference on a d20 roll!". If you need a 10 to hit, but got a +1 bonus from somewhere, your hit rate might raise from 50 to 55 %, a 5 % absolute difference, but relatively, you hit 10 % more often. (This goes higher if the die you need to roll is less, and lower if the die you need to roll is more. For attacks, you often need less than a 10).
And the difference in modifiers in 4d6 ranges from -4 to +4, in point buy from -1 to +2.

I mean, I am not going to argue how you feel about it, but I can tell you, my feeling a +1 or +2 difference at the game table will matter, especially on stuff everyone in the party will roll often - which is attacks. For skill checks, often the GM won't require or allow the players to have multiple characters do roll on the same skill, so the second and third-best values won't come up anywhere as often.

I'm looking at the game as a whole. In my experience, as many or more rolls happen out of combat as in combat. Out of combat rolls, though, are for many, many, many different things with many different DCs. When you have 4 people rolling to see if they know what a statuette in an alcove might mean(historical, arcane, religeous, etc.), you're not going to be able to divine the DC number from success or failure unless the DM tells you, or you happen to have two players roll within one of each other and have one succeed and the other fail.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

The problem is I'm not just interested in the average here, but the variance. That's always where the problems with most systems with random gen land.



I dunno. If you have placement choice, I'd still call assigning the low stat to the one that matters to you least fits the definition of "dump stat" I've always seen. Its not a tradeoff per se, but its still taking advantage of the lack of impact of that particular attribute on you to dispose of a low value.

One way you can achieve lower variance is to roll more dice. I pushed this as far as I could get it with an absurd 15d2-12 method. I call it the Coin Flip method.

 

[TwoSix]

I wonder what it would be like to play a 5E D&D game where everyone starts with a 10 in every stat (plus racial bonuses), and you got an ASI at every level.

I think it would be balanced, and I think it would be a true "zero-to-hero" experience...but would it be fun?

Nah. Almost everyone thinking at least a little strategically will raise their main stat to somewhere between 16-20, then Con to a comfortable level (probably 14), and then usually Dex to at least 14 (unless they wear heavy armor), pretty much in that order.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm looking at the game as a whole. In my experience, as many or more rolls happen out of combat as in combat. Out of combat rolls, though, are for many, many, many different things with many different DCs. When you have 4 people rolling to see if they know what a statuette in an alcove might mean(historical, arcane, religeous, etc.), you're not going to be able to divine the DC number from success or failure unless the DM tells you, or you happen to have two players roll within one of each other and have one succeed and the other fail.

The "trick" is that the impact on balance is however felt the most in combat. Because it still is a signifcant part of the game, and it can kill the character if the party is bad at it.

Your correct if all characters can roll for a single check, you can easily have the situation that the guy with the worst modifier rolls best and the one with the best rolls worst, so the guy worst at the task is the one succeeding. (And IMO, that is kinda an issue with the d20. Even though you're presumably good at it you might fail an easy task someone untrained and clueless beats because they rolled better. But that's a topic for a different conversation, I think).

But in combat, it matters a lot, and people will choose their best stats and their dump stats accordingly - make sure this isn't going to hinder me in combat. Sure, it might be nice to have also a high wisdom on your Rogue, and you really want to find those traps, but your combat outcome is likely to be affected by the statistical long view, while your trap finding could fail even with a better bonus because you rolled a 2.

 

[AlViking]

That's your fatal flaw. Monsters don't all have an AC of 16, which is why these sorts of simulations fail.

The AC is irrelevant. What is relevant is that a 16 is +1 more likely to hit across ALL armor classes than a 14 is. That's one extra hit every 20 attacks on average, which isn't really going to be relevant in the overwhelming majority of instances, because encounters are generally multiple big bags of hit points.

You have to have a baseline for analysis and the average AC is probably somewhere in the 14-18 range. But unless you get to the point where the monster AC is so low you only miss on a 1 it doesn't change the average damage per turn much. The average damage per turn is simply average damage times percentage chance to hit. But we're also not talking about the difference between a 16 and a 16, it's a 15 to a 20. It's also not just damage, it's also HP, feats, ranged attacks (bow vs javelin range) out-of-combat effectiveness.

So lets look at the details and don't round the damages. Both are using longsword for 1d8 (avg 4.5 dmg) but A is 8.5 per hit, B is 11.5. The +2 from the starting feat is helping quite a bit for damage here..

So if change AC to 14 from 16, the percentage increase in damage is a small difference of 57% instead of 54%. If I lower the target AC all the way down to 8, the percentage increase is 62% because B only misses on a 1.

Now, you can argue that you don't think it matters, but I think it will be pretty obvious immediately because it's such a big difference. Which then you will just argue that it's never really seen because nobody does this and round and round.

 

[CleverNickName]

Nah. Almost everyone thinking at least a little strategically will raise their main stat to somewhere between 16-20, then Con to a comfortable level (probably 14), and then usually Dex to at least 14 (unless they wear heavy armor), pretty much in that order.

Not necessarily...a lot can happen to a character in the 5-6 levels it would take to get those stats. They might find Gauntlets of Strength, or a really nice flaming greatsword, and decide to build their character around it instead of Yet Another Rapier, for example. But yes, they could still end up with the same stats that they always have, they'd just get there more organically.

I dunno, I'm just thinking out loud. Feel free to ignore me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My personal experience tells me different. It takes surprisingly little attacks to figure out a monster's likely AC, one guy misses, the next has just 3 more and its a hit. The DM doesn't need to reveal DCs or ACs for that to become obvious.

You do understand I was talking about OD&D in that line, right? The game where there were some pretty huge ranges where no mechanical impact at all applied? And some attributes that only did anything for some classes?

 

[Thomas Shey]

One way you can achieve lower variance is to roll more dice. I pushed this as far as I could get it with an absurd 15d2-12 method. I call it the Coin Flip method.

Quite true. But at that point you could just produce the same result most of the time by not having the die range produce much range in the first place. The question comes in when 1. you want a fair range to exist and be reachable and 2. those ranges actually have meaningful impact.

 

[TwoSix]

Not necessarily...a lot can happen to a character in the 5-6 levels it would take to get those stats. They might find Gauntlets of Strength, or a really nice flaming greatsword, and decide to build their character around it instead of Yet Another Rapier, for example. But yes, they could still end up with the same stats that they always have, they'd just get there more organically.

I dunno, I'm just thinking out loud. Feel free to ignore me.

I'm not saying it can't work. I'm just saying I'm not sure what in-game actions could happen that could cause people to make a deviation from their obvious path.

If a flametongue greatsword drops at ,say, level 3, I'm sure somebody is going to use it. But realistically, the party will give it to the guy who already raised Strength to 14; and if no one has raised Strength, they'll give it someone who at least has proficiency so they can be alright with melee attacks. But no one is going to say "Well, I was playing a cleric, but I'll pivot to Strength for the next 3 levels and eventually become decent with melee attacks."

Where you could make it interesting is by giving items or boons that let people pivot to another class or role with a stat they don't normally use. Or items that benefit from multiple stats at once. A sword that lets you add your Int modifier to attack rolls, on top of Dex or Str. A cloak that increases your spell damage by your Strength mod. That sort of thing.

Basically, you need things that make having, for example, a Str 14 and Wis 14, have a stronger synergy for some function that either a Str 18 or Wis 18, so that's there a motivation to pivot your stat increases. You can design it, but it doesn't really exist within the confines of core 5e rules.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The "trick" is that the impact on balance is however felt the most in combat. Because it still is a signifcant part of the game, and it can kill the character if the party is bad at it.

Your correct if all characters can roll for a single check, you can easily have the situation that the guy with the worst modifier rolls best and the one with the best rolls worst, so the guy worst at the task is the one succeeding. (And IMO, that is kinda an issue with the d20. Even though you're presumably good at it you might fail an easy task someone untrained and clueless beats because they rolled better. But that's a topic for a different conversation, I think).

But in combat, it matters a lot, and people will choose their best stats and their dump stats accordingly - make sure this isn't going to hinder me in combat. Sure, it might be nice to have also a high wisdom on your Rogue, and you really want to find those traps, but your combat outcome is likely to be affected by the statistical long view, while your trap finding could fail even with a better bonus because you rolled a 2.

This is largely an artifact of the fact most games engage with combat in fair to great detail, and usually with relatively slow pace-of-resolution, but there's rarely other areas that get the same treatment. In cases where another area has gotten some serious love, the tendency for single die rolls to overwhelm at least halfway subtle differences in capability of characters (especially with D20 or D100 rolls) tends to be flattened the same way it is in combat.