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

[Lanefan]

Realistically, day-to-day living should cause XP loss, proportional to the amount of total earned XP, representing the natural erosion of the edge life-or-death experiences give.

Training and practice can ameliorate this decline, but not arrest it.

Agreed, and as in my eyes this has always been a rather big hole in the game system, a year or two back I finally got around to designing a system to handle exactly this.

It's here if you're interested:

Blue Book - Part 9 - Development

 

[ECMO3]

That 20 strength barbarian will be doing almost double damage on average

It is possible the 20 strength Barbarian does double the damage of the 14 strength Barbarian during a session, it is also possible the 20 Strength Barbarian does less damage than the 14 Strength Barbarian during a session and it is possible they will be within 25% of one another over the course of a session or be "balanced" within this tolerance despite the difference in ability scores.

More importantly this is still all true even in they both have a 20 strength ... or if they both have a 14 strength.

 

[AlViking]

It is possible the 20 strength Barbarian does double the damage of the 14 strength Barbarian during a session, it is also possible the 20 Strength Barbarian does less damage than the 14 Strength Barbarian during a session and it is possible they will be within 25% of one another over the course of a session or be "balanced" within this tolerance despite the difference in ability scores.

More importantly this is still all true even in they both have a 20 strength ... or if they both have a 14 strength.

Averages matter. Once-in-a-blue moon doesn't to me.

 

[ECMO3]

Averages matter. Once-in-a-blue moon doesn't to me.

Yeah exactly.

A 1st level raging Barbarian with a 16 strength swinging a Greataxe against a 16 AC foe has mean damage of 6.1 with a standard deviation of 6.7! An "average" session is probably between 3 and 12 rounds of combat depending on the table.

So two characters with the same strength and same mean output per attack will vary wildly in an "average" session. Once in a blue moon you will have a balanced session.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Yeah exactly.

A 1st level raging Barbarian with a 16 strength swinging a Greataxe against a 16 AC foe has mean damage of 6.1 with a standard deviation of 6.7! An "average" session is probably between 3 and 12 rounds of combat depending on the table.

So two characters with the same strength and same mean output per attack will vary wildly in an "average" session. Once in a blue moon you will have a balanced session.

From my limited understanding of statistics, a Standard Deviation of 6.7 here is gigantic! I imagine the bell curve would be rather hard to see.

 

[AlViking]

Yeah exactly.

A 1st level raging Barbarian with a 16 strength swinging a Greataxe against a 16 AC foe has mean damage of 6.1 with a standard deviation of 6.7! An "average" session is probably between 3 and 12 rounds of combat depending on the table.

So two characters with the same strength and same mean output per attack will vary wildly in an "average" session. Once in a blue moon you will have a balanced session.

Over the course of a single attack you may not notice, you're likely to notice over the course of a session. But over an entire combat, session, or over multiple? It will be noticeable. Looking at actual DPR which includes chance to hit and the damage done. The PC with a 20 is doing almost double damage every single round.

You can tell a lot of stories with how you represent the results. You can also ignore that if one barbarian starts with a 20 in their strength the can take feats or add to other ability scores - in my example the barbarian with the better stats had significantly better AC, initiative, attack and damage with bows as well as higher HP. But don't let actual results get in your way when you can make it look insignificant with statistics.

Ability scores matter. If they didn't we would just ignore them.

 

[ECMO3]

Over the course of a single attack you may not notice, you're likely to notice over the course of a session.

This is not true. The exact chance is highlly dependant on monster AC, hit points, weapons, how many rolls you are having, what you are wielding and what you consider "balanced".

But over an entire combat, session, or over multiple? It will be noticeable.

This is not true.

You have to make a bunch of assumptions to actually calculate this and those assumptions will heavily drive this metric.

Looking at actual DPR which includes chance to hit and the damage done. The PC with a 20 is doing almost double damage every single round.

This is not true either, it is not almost double "every single round". The average you are talking about is a mean. It is the sum of all possible damages multiplied by the chance of occurrence for each one. The mean damage does not happen "every single round" or even many rounds.

What is most likely to happen "every single round" is dependent on the most common occurrence (i.e. the mode), not on the mean damage.

To illustrate this with an extreme example; lets assume one 1st level PC has a strength of 30, the other has a strength of 3. They are fighting a monster with a 32 AC. If wielding Mauls the 30 strength character has an average damage of 1.2 DPR. The 3 strength character has an average damage of 0.0275 DPR.

In this example the average (mean) DPR for the 30 strength character is 43 times more than the 3 strength character. However almost 95% of rounds they both do 0 damage, so they actually do the same damage almost "every single round".

Now this is a ridiculous example you will never see in play, but it illustrates how far off you are with statements like "every single round", and the same principle applies in much less dramatically when we use more reasonable numbers, but for any reasonable number with a 14 Strength and a 20 strength the most common result will still be they do the same damage (0). Comparing all possible results in a round, that is what will happen most often.

You can tell a lot of stories with how you represent the results. You can also ignore that if one barbarian starts with a 20 in their strength the can take feats or add to other ability scores - in my example the barbarian with the better stats had significantly better AC, initiative, attack and damage with bows as well as higher HP.

Either of them can take feats or ability score increases

But don't let actual results get in your way when you can make it look insignificant with statistics.

Ok, why don't we do this - post some actual results from play and see how balanced they are in a session.

I tell you what, I will try to record total damage numbers for the 5 PCs we have in a game Monday, and Wednesday and the 4 PCs in my Tuesday game and post them here. Two of those games are point buy games, one is not, but I am confident none of them will be balanced in terms of damage. I am confident this will not be balanced, even with players of the same class who used point buy.

This is going to be difficult to do, but I will try to come back here Thursday with data from all three games at three different tables with three different DMs and three different groups of players. One of those games even has 2 single-classed Barbarians in it!

Ability scores matter. If they didn't we would just ignore them.

They matter a TON, they just won't make your game balanced just because they are equal.

 

[AlViking]

This is not true. The exact chance is highlly dependant on monster AC, hit points, weapons, what you are wielding and what you consider "balanced".

LOL. The chance to hit and the damage done on a hit being affected by the ability score is "not true". When you can just ignore simple math I'm done. Have a good one.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah exactly.

A 1st level raging Barbarian with a 16 strength swinging a Greataxe against a 16 AC foe has mean damage of 6.1 with a standard deviation of 6.7! An "average" session is probably between 3 and 12 rounds of combat depending on the table.

So two characters with the same strength and same mean output per attack will vary wildly in an "average" session. Once in a blue moon you will have a balanced session.

You don't figure out an average in one session, or even 5 sessions. You look at the average over the entire campaign, which for some tables is 1 to 20 with regard to level.

 

[Maxperson]

Over the course of a single attack you may not notice, you're likely to notice over the course of a session. But over an entire combat, session, or over multiple? It will be noticeable. Looking at actual DPR which includes chance to hit and the damage done. The PC with a 20 is doing almost double damage every single round.

You can tell a lot of stories with how you represent the results. You can also ignore that if one barbarian starts with a 20 in their strength the can take feats or add to other ability scores - in my example the barbarian with the better stats had significantly better AC, initiative, attack and damage with bows as well as higher HP. But don't let actual results get in your way when you can make it look insignificant with statistics.

Ability scores matter. If they didn't we would just ignore them.

They matter once you get to +3 or +4 difference between the two characters. +1 is virtually unnoticeable and +2 will not be noticed often.

Stats matter, but far less than in prior editions.