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

[DinoInDisguise]

Ok you have the either-or wrong. I am talking about balance here.

We can have a party A - with two average barbarians and party B - with one kick ass Barbarian and one pathetic Barbarian.

It is extremely unlikely either set of barbarians will be balanced in play and the Barbarians in party A are NOT going to be more balanced in play than the Babarians in party B just because they have identical abilities.

To put it another way - one of the identical Barbarians in party A WILL do better than the other Barbarian in party A even though they have identical abilities. Likewise one of the Barbarians in party B WILL do better than the other Barbarian in party B. Neither group will be more balanced than the other in play because of their ability scores

I don't understand. You define balance as "do both players sometimes succeed and sometimes fail." That's a pretty wild assertion, as under that logic, a level 1 PC and a level 10 PC are "balanced." That definition makes the word "balance" meaningless.

In Party A, both barbarians have the same probability curve. In Party B, one barbarian has a consistently higher chance of success across all relevant rolls. That is a systemic imbalance, regardless of whether luck sometimes masks it.

Your statement that it has “almost no effect” is mathematically false. A +4 vs −1 is a 25% swing on a d20. That applies to attacks, saves, skill checks, some damage riders, and some class features. That’s not “almost no effect.” That’s the difference between: usually succeeds and usually fails. Even at smaller deltas between modifiers, you get substantial differences percentage wise.

Changing the definition of balance doesn't remove the issue. The player with significantly lower modifiers will experience more frequent failure across core mechanics, and that repeated disparity is exactly what creates imbalance in play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not in arrangement.

But it kind of does in terms of the "dump stat" question. If there's an attribute that most characters don't care about, it'll often be a useful place to toss the low attribute, and if there's one almost everyone wants, it almost never be, and therefor limits the distribution in practice.

The 54,264 possibilities are combinations of six scores from 3-18. With arrangement it becomes billions i think. maybe hundreds of millions. Maybe with Point Buy things look diverse because there are 720 ways to arrange each of the 65 arrays -- 46,800!

I was referring to the array options and which ones were considered usable.

Constitutin seems to be important to everybody. I was told you need at least a 14 in constitution.

It'd worked that way in 3e and 4e but I didn't want to make assumptions about 5e.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes I do believe doing more damage is indeed doing more damage. But it's not just damage, it's HP, for the barbarian AC and for both out of combat along with options for different builds.

All true, to a point. That said, it only really applies at very low level; after which magic item accumulation, feats, and class abilities begin to have their say thus rendering stats less and less important.

The options for different builds bit, though, I'll ignore out of hand, as I'm fairly solidly in the "play the hand you're dealt" camp and also very much like the idea of gating uncommon classes behind better rolls in order to enforce their lack of commonality.

 

[Lanefan]

Just a side note - I double checked 2e and there was no guidance on what numbers were too low to play. The guidance was basically "Suck it up Buttercup and play what you got." Which seems to be the answer for anyone on the rolling for scores side of things. If that works for you, great. I don't see the point.

Did you check the 2e DMG, or just the PH?

I ask because in 1e that guidance, such as it was, was buried in the DMG where it said (paraphrased) that PCs were best served by having at least two 15+ scores to start. There was no guidance in the 1e PH.

 

[AlViking]

Ok you have the either-or wrong. I am talking about balance here.

We can have a party A - with two average barbarians and party B - with one kick ass Barbarian and one pathetic Barbarian.

It is extremely unlikely either set of barbarians will be balanced in play and the Barbarians in party A are NOT going to be more balanced in play than the Babarians in party B just because they have identical abilities.

To put it another way - one of the identical Barbarians in party A WILL do better than the other Barbarian in party A even though they have identical abilities. Likewise one of the Barbarians in party B WILL do better than the other Barbarian in party B. Neither group will be more balanced than the other in play because of their ability scores



YOU are the one ignoring the impact. It has a large impact on mean effectiveness, it has almost NO impact on balance.



+1/-1 or +4/-4 Almost no effect on balance in play.

There are lots of reasons equivalent ability arrays might improve your game, but balance is not one of them.

Balance as far as I am concerned only matters from one character to the next at the same table.

The two barbarians have dramatically different capabilities from damage per turn to HP to AC to initiative to weapon options. If you don't care you don't.

I just don't see any way to justify saying those two options as balanced in comparison to each other. It's like flipping a coin and giving one person a Porsche 911 and the other a Honda Civic and saying it's balanced race.

 

[AlViking]

Did you check the 2e DMG, or just the PH?

I ask because in 1e that guidance, such as it was, was buried in the DMG where it said (paraphrased) that PCs were best served by having at least two 15+ scores to start. There was no guidance in the 1e PH.

The DMG since generation of ability scores is in the DMG. I found nothing in there about the minimum - in fact the line I was thinking of under "Hopeless Characters" was if someone has a 6 or less for an ability score and is saying the character is hopeless "... it isn't true! Just as exceptionally high scores make a character unique, so do very low scores. In the hands of good role-players, such characters are tremendous fun. Encourage the player to be daring and creative."

So if you have really crappy rolls you can compensate by being a good role-player. For a one shot or short term game for me it wouldn't really matter. But for a long term game? We never played those characters. I guess according to Gygax we just weren't good enough role-players.

 

[ECMO3]

I don't understand. You define balance as "do both players sometimes succeed and sometimes fail." That's a pretty wild assertion, as under that logic, a level 1 PC and a level 10 PC are "balanced."

Balance means balanced results for two players. If one player swings a sword and does 9 damage and another player swings a sword and does 7 damage that is not balanced.

If one has an 8 strength and one has a 20 it is not balanced

If both of them have a 16 strength it still is not balanced.

Giving them equal strength does not make it significantly more likely they will balanced in play.

In Party A, both barbarians have the same probability curve. In Party B, one barbarian has a consistently higher chance of success across all relevant rolls. That is a systemic imbalance, regardless of whether luck sometimes masks it.

The same mean or probabilty does not mean the same or a balanced outcome. It means the same average failure rate or the same mean damage.

In party A one player will do better than the other even though they both have the same abilities. They will not be balanced once they pick up the dice and start rolling.

Your statement that it has “almost no effect” is mathematically false. A +4 vs −1 is a 25% swing on a d20. That applies to attacks, saves, skill checks, some damage riders, and some class features. That’s not “almost no effect.” That’s the difference between: usually succeeds and usually fails.

It has almost no effect on the chance the two players are balanced in play.

What I am saying is if you make their abilities the same and in fact if you make every single thing about them the same (class, race etc) they will still be unbalanced in play.

The only way to balance a game involving dice is to stop rolling. You are not going to have a balanced game if you are rolling dice for outcomes.

The player with significantly lower modifiers will experience more frequent failure across core mechanics, and that repeated disparity is exactly what creates imbalance in play.

Sure if qualitative factors are eliminated, this is extremely likely to be true.

If you are going to do this though, I will point out that you need to consider the distribution associated with the ability score rolls to begin with. There are 6 abilities, you are comparing the chance of one character having an 8 and another character having an 18 at that index. The chance of 1 PC rolling an 18 as their best score is 9% (using 4d6d1). The chance of someone rolling an 8 or lower as their best score is 0.00013 or roughly one in 1 million.

Assuming both are barbarians and both put strength as their highest stat, the chance the one with the lower 8 in strength will outperform the one with a higher strength in combat during a session is substantially higher than the chance of getting this disparity to begin with.

When you say "will experience more frequent failures" you are discounting extremely unlikely outcomes. This is fine, but it works both ways - if you want to make a statement like this, then the counter would be that condition (one PC with 8 the other with 18) won't exist.

 

[ECMO3]

Balance as far as I am concerned only matters from one character to the next at the same table.

Right and giving them

The two barbarians have dramatically different capabilities from damage per turn to HP to AC to initiative to weapon options. If you don't care you don't.

Giving them equal ability scores will not give them equal initiative rolls, an equal number of hits, equal damage done by them and it will not result in them taking the same damage.

They will still be unbalanced at the table.

You mention initiative - For example, if you and I both have a 14 Dexterity and I roll a 15 on initiative and you roll a 6. I have a higher initiative than you, we are not balanced even though our dexterity is the same. If another player with an 8 Dexterity rolls a 9 initiative, he has a higher initiative than you too. This sort of disparity will exist on every d20 roll you make. You can not eliminate it or reduce it significantly by giving them all equal ability scores. As a matter of fact in this example the ONLY way the imbalance would be eliminated is if you had a 20 Dex, I had a 3 Dex and the other PC had a 16-17. Any other combination of Dexterity scores and it will remain unbalanced. This is an arbitrary and trivial case which is only true for when one PC rolls a 15, one rolls a 6 and one rolls a 9, but this sort of variation will exist on every roll.

I just don't see any way to justify saying those two options as balanced in comparison to each other. It's like flipping a coin and giving one person a Porsche 911 and the other a Honda Civic and saying it's balanced race.

Flipping a coin is a far smaller distribution than the dice we deal with in 5E. If we flipped a coin (1d2) and added that to our stats, you would have a point, but most rolls are a d20 and rolls of other dice where ability bonuses are applied are usually behind or after a d20, giving them an even larger distribution.

A better analogy would be if you roll a 20 on a d20 you get $100,000, if I roll a 20 I get $10. The average amount you gain by rolling is $5k, the average I get is 50 cents.

However, the chance of a balanced outcome is 90.25%

If you change it so we both get $100,000 on a 20 the chance of a balanced outcome is 90.5% or very close to what it was beforehand.

 

[Maxperson]

Balance means balanced results for two players. If one player swings a sword and does 9 damage and another player swings a sword and does 7 damage that is not balanced.

If one has an 8 strength and one has a 20 it is not balanced

If both of them have a 16 strength it still is not balanced.

Giving them equal strength does not make it significantly more likely they will balanced in play.



The same mean or probabilty does not mean the same or a balanced outcome. It means the same average failure rate or the same mean damage.

In party A one player will do better than the other even though they both have the same abilities. They will not be balanced once they pick up the dice and start rolling.





It has almost no effect on the chance the two players are balanced in play.

What I am saying is if you make their abilities the same and in fact if you make every single thing about them the same (class, race etc) they will still be unbalanced in play.

The only way to balance a game involving dice is to stop rolling. You are not going to have a balanced game if you are rolling dice for outcomes.




Sure if qualitative factors are eliminated, this is extremely likely to be true.

If you are going to do this though, I will point out that you need to consider the distribution associated with the ability score rolls to begin with. There are 6 abilities, you are comparing the chance of one character having an 8 and another character having an 18 at that index. The chance of 1 PC rolling an 18 as their best score is 9% (using 4d6d1). The chance of someone rolling an 8 or lower as their best score is 0.00013 or roughly one in 1 million.

Assuming both are barbarians and both put strength as their highest stat, the chance the one with the lower 8 in strength will outperform the one with a higher strength in combat during a session is substantially higher than the chance of getting this disparity to begin with.

When you say "will experience more frequent failures" you are discounting extremely unlikely outcomes. This is fine, but it works both ways - if you want to make a statement like this, then the counter would be that condition (one PC with 8 the other with 18) won't exist.

The random d20 is included in the game's balance. As are all the other dice such as damage dice. If you have two identical characters using the exact same stuff, they are balanced even if their rolls differ.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I stopped following this thread about 20 page ago, but I just had some thoughts on the Intimidation sub-discussion.

Typically, we think of Intimidation in terms of fear, but what if, instead, it was reframed in terms of dominance? I was thinking about the Ghosts of Saltmarsh ship officer rules, where the First Mate uses Intimidation to get the crew to do stuff. Now, sure, you can interpret that as a pirate threatening bodily harm (and have a reputation for dealing it out), but the rules could work just as well for any sort of military commands, and I think the latter is the intent. Barking orders is Intimidation. Not (necessarily) due to fear, but due to exerting dominance to get someone to take action.

You might get along swimmingly with your commanding officer, and he might value and respect his subordinates. But in the heat of battle, when commands need to be followed immediately, it's how well you can present your dominance to those subordinates that matters more than whether you can sit down over tea and come to an agreement (Persuasion).

And the great thing, is this already works well with the all the current assumptions of fear-based Intimidation also. They use a form of dominance, and my idea is just to expand it to other forms of dominance, and make it the "giving orders" skill (amongst other things).