D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats

[Lanefan]

Yes, I agree that rolling gives imbalanced results and is necessarily for folks who hate balance. Yes, I agree that hating balance makes you literally a bad person who should be consigned to the inner circles of Hell and forced to play your most despised edition of D&D with clones of yourself who always roll better than you for all eternity.
But it's not inherently unfair, just irredeemably evil.

Except rolling is not Evil at all; though neither is it Good - and the same can also be said for point-buy and array.

What it is, by definition and unlike point-buy or array, is Chaotic. And without the chaos of random chance up and down the system the game would hold no appeal whatsoever.

Lanefan

 

[Satyrn]

2) Point out actual definition of 'fair' in the context of a game, and that what we're really talking about is imbalance... Let's try to speak the same language, Oofta.

So, when one of us says "this isn't fair" you know that what they mean is "this isn't balanced."

All you are doing is nitpicking word choice. whoopdedoo!

 

[Satyrn]

And without the chaos of random chance up and down the system the game would hold no appeal whatsoever.

I just buy the books for the pretty pictures.

 

[Oofta]

Except rolling is not Evil at all; though neither is it Good - and the same can also be said for point-buy and array.

What it is, by definition and unlike point-buy or array, is Chaotic. And without the chaos of random chance up and down the system the game would hold no appeal whatsoever.

Lanefan

I'm old school. Law and Chaos are the only two alignments, and Chaos is effectively the same as evil.

 

[Caliban]

Except rolling is not Evil at all; though neither is it Good - and the same can also be said for point-buy and array.

What it is, by definition and unlike point-buy or array, is Chaotic.

A fair assessment. And in that context, Point Buy/Standard Array would be varying degrees of Lawful.

And without the chaos of random chance up and down the system the game would hold no appeal whatsoever.

Correction: Would hold no appeal whatsoever for you and people with similar preferences to you. This is is by no means a universal or absolute preference.

Some people prefer to have total control over character creation and leave random chance to the dice during play. Other prefer to have the element of chance present from the very beginning (i.e. rolling up your stats). Even then, some people prefer to bias the dice rolls so they are less random (instead of 3d6 in order, it's now 4d6 drop the lowest-arrange as desired...or 4d6 drop the lowest, roll 10 sets of stats pick the one you want...or everyone rolls an array and the group decides which array to use for everyone...etc, etc, etc.)

There are even people who prefer not to have any chance involved - it's all just a joint discussion/story negotiated between the game master and the players. (Amber diceless, and probably other systems I'm not aware of.)

None of it is inherently better or worse. It's just a matter of personal preference and as Tony has said - tradition.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, when one of us says "this isn't fair" you know that what they mean is "this isn't balanced."

All you are doing is nitpicking word choice.

Guilty as charged. I'm sorry to have to do so, but I feel the distinction between fairness (a lower bar) and balance in the context of an RPG is too meaningful to ignore.

What word would you like to use for random generation to acknowledge that it gives everyone the same chance of rolling the OP, run-of-the-mill, or sub-par PC? You can insert that when I say that it's 'fair.'

Would that be ...ahem... fair?

 

[Satyrn]

Guilty as charged. I'm sorry to have to do so, but I feel the distinction between fairness (a lower bar) and balance in the context of an RPG is too meaningful to ignore.

What word would you like to use for random generation to acknowledge that it gives everyone the same chance of rolling the OP, run-of-the-mill, or sub-par PC? You can insert that when I say that it's 'fair.'

Would that be ...ahem... fair?

You know, I really don't care.

 

[Caliburn101]

Seriously? Again?

Everyone rolls the same dice, using the same method, that's fair.

The results may be radically imbalanced PCs, but the method is perfectly fair.

ASIs do even out an imbalance in primary stat over time - they shift it to secondary or tertiary stats, which are lower impact, so it's not erased, but it's reduced in significance.

View attachment 83177

Array is also clearly a player option in the standard rules. So you can't guarantee that someone won't be OP, but you can at least assure that you're not sub-par.

Everyone rolls the same dice just the once, and have to live with the results for the rest of the game.

I will answer each of your points in turn.

You make the point yourself, oddly. I suppose that it is because it is beyond obvious that it is the results of the method we are talking about here, not the equity of how many dice you roll. Stop deploying smoke and mirrors to defend the inherent unfairness in random stat generation. Maths is maths, no matter how much you might like stat rolling.

ASI's do not even out if Feats are used in the game - which I have already stated, but you didn't want to answer... Also, don't try and pretend Hit Points, Skills and Saves don't matter, which make any secondary stat allocation of great use to any class, especially in a Bounded Accuracy ruleset.

Your attachment makes my point very well - thanks for including it.

Only if your DM allows you to substitute the standard array AFTER failing to get a decent set of random stats.


I might as well say, "You are defending random stats, seriously!! AGAIN!!??" in answer to your first line. The game already has a great deal of randomness. But if you were to put it another way at the game table to people they wouldn't be happy.

If I were to have everyone with a point buy character then roll a 1d4 and minus 1 from the result, and have to give up the resulting number of stat boosts at the appropriate levels, most people would think that was unfair, and stupid. Similarly, you could allow non-fighters to use the Fighter stat boost advancement track if they rolled a 1d6 and got a 6. Or you could just have each person roll and give the highest roller an extra 5 points to spend on stats.

There are many ways to do random stats and simulate the consequences for a game. But you wouldn't get anyone to agree to those - they aren't 'tradition'.

If tradition and the fun of the initial randomness is more important than fairness, then the rules allow you to go that way.

I don't like forcing disadvantage on people, or allowing some to have baked-in edge over others for the full course of a game. Everyone should be equal at the start. It's CHOICE that should make a character, not the luck of the dice the first time you pick them up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You make the point yourself, oddly. I suppose that it is because it is beyond obvious that it is the results of the method we are talking about here, not the equity of how many dice you roll. Stop deploying smoke and mirrors to defend the inherent unfairness in random stat generation. Maths is maths, no matter how much you might like stat rolling.

I'm really not defending random, I'm clarifying the nature of a stand-out disadvantage of random generation: that it's potentially very imbalancing.

By calling 'imbalanced,' 'unfair,' you leave yourself open to endlessly-looping arguments in which exponents of random generation can argue, based on the definitions of 'fairness,' that you're wrong, and random is fair.

ASI's do not even out if Feats are used in the game - which I have already stated

Feats are opt-in optional. Also, ASI's don't even it out, they just reduce the imbalance by shifting it from high-impact primary stats to lower-impact secondary ones.

Your attachment makes my point very well - thanks for including it.

You're welcome.

Only if your DM allows you to substitute the standard array AFTER failing to get a decent set of random stats.

No, /that/ would be unfair! You take the array instead of rolling, you get something very close to the ranked average of random. Reasonably fair: You give up the chance of getting a character that breaks the game by being too powerful, in return you don't risk getting one that breaks the other way.

I might as well say, "You are defending random stats, seriously!! AGAIN!!??"

I might as well say "You're making me defend random stats again!" ;P

If I were to have everyone with a point buy character then roll a 1d4 and minus 1 from the result, and have to give up the resulting number of stat boosts at the appropriate levels, most people would think that was unfair, and stupid. Similarly, you could allow non-fighters to use the Fighter stat boost advancement track if they rolled a 1d6 and got a 6. Or you could just have each person roll and give the highest roller an extra 5 points to spend on stats.

I'd have to consider those variations on random generation, though I guess they're technically hybrids, they take on the positives and negatives of random.

If tradition and the fun of the initial randomness is more important than fairness, then the rules allow you to go that way.

Balance.

I don't like forcing disadvantage on people, or allowing some to have baked-in edge over others for the full course of a game. Everyone should be equal at the start.

I don't much care for imbalance, myself.

It's CHOICE that should make a character, not the luck of the dice the first time you pick them up.

Choice should make a character meaningfully different from other characters - without imbalancing the game, IMHO.

 

[Maxperson]

Rolling is inherently unfair to players.

Except that rolling is fair by the definition of fair. Unequal results do not mean that the method isn't fair. So long as all players are using the same method, the method itself is a fair one. Heck, a very large number of players aren't even bothered by the unequal results.

It was bad enough in 3rd edition where large progression numbers meant the early advantage given by these was ameliorated over level progression.

But in 5th Edition, with bounded accuracy, random imbalance in stats is massively unfair.

You have it bass ackwards there. In 3e stat progression was slow, and the unbounded nature meant that you would never be able to catch up with the game which moved ever higher. If you had a 10 in a stat you were likely to fail most things early on and it was impossible to succeed at many things later. Bounded accuracy and proficiency mean that even with a 10, you can still succeed at many/most things, even at high levels. Plus with a stat cap, you will gain ground on the guy who started high and hit his wall very early on. Gaining ground wasn't really something that happened in 3e. 5e is far more lax with stats than 3e ever was.

Why should ONE set of dice rolls made at the start of the game make nearly all of the subsequent ones easier or harder?

People that prefer dice rolling for stats and championing it are blind to this, and can come up with no better justification than that it is in the rules, and gives some 'interesting' variety.

It makes the game more enjoyable for us. That's the best reason there is. Why should we have less fun just because YOU think your one true way is the end all, be all? We aren't blind to your preference. We just don't care to have less fun by engaging in it.

People agonise over whether that +2 or a Feat is better. Well for a low-roller the +2 is a bad-luck tax, and for the high-roller those Feats are yet more gravy as far fewer stat boosts are required for maximum.

Those people are blind to 5e being a system where high stats just aren't necessary, though. For those of us who are not blind to that, we don't agonize over that at all.