D&D 5E Point Buy vs Rolling for Stats

[Tony Vargas]

Wow, 49 pages of hostility. It's amazing how much pointless bickering over minutia people can engage in in this community.

Why stop now: /Is/ it really so amazing? Not after 15 years, no. You'll get used to it.

Also: what is it with all the 'Captains?' Did a lot of lieutenants get promoted recently? Have a lot of new ships been launched? ;P

If you want roughly equal PCs, use point buy. It's more balanced that way.

Balanced, yes, equal, no. A 16 STR fighter is in no way 'equal' to a 16 INT wizard, even if they're stats have the same point-buy value.

If you want the world to have a bit more verisimilitude, rolls make for more organic players.

If the PCs are drawn from the upper percentiles of a hypothetically randomly distributed population, they'll all be exceptional. Whether you model that with a weighted random method, an array, or a buy system doesn't really matter to the verisimilitude of the world, as long as the total population is still consistent with a plausible distribution.

Er...if you're a 4th-level fighter Dwarf that got separated from the party and run into a

Funny coincidence, a number of years back, our Dwarf fighter - Barg - got separated from the rest of the party by a one-way-door style trap, and solo'd the next encounter for several rounds while we got the damn thing open. And, I think he may have been around 4th level at the time (maybe 6th? IDK, I can't remember what spells I used in that fight, other than Color Spray, which isn't much of a clue to our level at the time...)

 

[Jacob Marley]

I then took a few examples of my "average different characters for a group of 6". Where I took the numbers from the lowest in the party, the highest in the party and then made the following assumptions

• Dwarven fighters because it's one of the better options for a low(er) stat character
• Dex is a dump stat
• AC 20 (plate + shield)
• Dueling fighting style (+2 damage)
• Level 4, max out Strength and Con instead of taking a feat

Snipped for brevity.

My conclusion? If you're a 4th level fighter that got separated from the party and run into a hell hound, run.

When running these analyses, are you looking strictly at the mathematical chances character A has versus character B straight up in an unremarkable environment? That is, hell hound and character stand toe-to-toe, each hitting the other until one of them falls?

By contrast, in an environment with remarkable features, do you think players would make different tactical decisions based their character's ability scores? That is, would a character with high ability scores be more willing to fight toe-to-toe whereas a character with low ability scores be more willing to use their environment to gain some type of advantage?

To be clear, I'm not trying to convince you that rolling is right; I'm interested in learning about your method, reasoning, and thought process. I think that sometimes in these threads honest questioning can be taken as an argument as opposed to an inquiry.

 

[Lanefan]

Also: what is it with all the 'Captains?' Did a lot of lieutenants get promoted recently? Have a lot of new ships been launched? ;P

Has anyone used Captain Obvious yet?

And it gets worse once all these Captains start getting further promoted, as this leads to Major Catastrophe followed by General Disorder....

 

[Oofta]

When running these analyses, are you looking strictly at the mathematical chances character A has versus character B straight up in an unremarkable environment? That is, hell hound and character stand toe-to-toe, each hitting the other until one of them falls?

By contrast, in an environment with remarkable features, do you think players would make different tactical decisions based their character's ability scores? That is, would a character with high ability scores be more willing to fight toe-to-toe whereas a character with low ability scores be more willing to use their environment to gain some type of advantage?

To be clear, I'm not trying to convince you that rolling is right; I'm interested in learning about your method, reasoning, and thought process. I think that sometimes in these threads honest questioning can be taken as an argument as opposed to an inquiry.

My hypothesis is simple. Ability scores matter, and there can be a fairly significant difference between the most powerful and least powerful member of a party if you use straight 4d6 drop lowest.

So to try to add some proof to this other than anecdotal evidence, I wrote some code. What the code does is roll up a group of 6 characters, find the "best" and "worst" of the group and does a straight up face off with a Hell Hound. I picked a hell hound because at CR 3, it's a creature they could be expected to fight (admittedly normally not solo, but happens).

Tactics, environment don't really matter for the basic hypothesis. This doesn't speak to whether one player (Tom) might have better strategy than another player (Joe). If the claim is that "Tom may do better than Joe even with a lower score character" then Joe will have even worse if he rolls up the character with lower scores. Individual player ability does not affect the basic math.

This also has nothing to do with which system is "better". Better is in the eye of the beholder, I'm just comparing the person with the highest overall ability scores to the person with the lowest overall ability scores to get a concrete measure of effectiveness in battle.

So, after way too much time coding, and somewhere around a million simulated fights ...

Assumptions

• Dwarven fighters because it's one of the better options for a low(er) stat character
• Strength gets highest roll, Con gets next best
• Dex is assigned the lowest roll available
• AC 20 (plate + shield)
• Dueling fighting style (+2 damage)
• Level 4, add to Strength and Con instead of taking a feat (adding 1 to strength and con if strength is odd, limit 20 of course)
• No other limitations, if the low roll was a 3 it was assigned to dex, if highest was an 18 the dwarf had a 20.

Results
It's been a tough fight. Lorne and Max, dwarven comrade in arms are separated from their party when they see two pairs of red glowing eyes in the darkness. With no chance to run, each faces off against their foe. Who will win?

Lorne, who was low man on the ability score results for the group wins the fight 20% of the time.
Max, who was high man on the ability score results for the group wins the fight 42% of the time.

Conclusion
Twice as likely to survive the deadly fight is a significant difference IMHO.

[EDIT] Just to be clear I wrote up 100 groups of 6, and the two poor dwarves each fought their hell hound 10,000 times.

 

[Hussar]

My hypothesis is simple. Ability scores matter, and there can be a fairly significant difference between the most powerful and least powerful member of a party if you use straight 4d6 drop lowest.

So to try to add some proof to this other than anecdotal evidence, I wrote some code. What the code does is roll up a group of 6 characters, find the "best" and "worst" of the group and does a straight up face off with a Hell Hound. I picked a hell hound because at CR 3, it's a creature they could be expected to fight (admittedly normally not solo, but happens).

Tactics, environment don't really matter for the basic hypothesis. This doesn't speak to whether one player (Tom) might have better strategy than another player (Joe). If the claim is that "Tom may do better than Joe even with a lower score character" then Joe will have even worse if he rolls up the character with lower scores. Individual player ability does not affect the basic math.

This also has nothing to do with which system is "better". Better is in the eye of the beholder, I'm just comparing the person with the highest overall ability scores to the person with the lowest overall ability scores to get a concrete measure of effectiveness in battle.

So, after way too much time coding, and somewhere around a million simulated fights ...

Assumptions

• Dwarven fighters because it's one of the better options for a low(er) stat character
• Strength gets highest roll, Con gets next best
• Dex is assigned the lowest roll available
• AC 20 (plate + shield)
• Dueling fighting style (+2 damage)
• Level 4, add to Strength and Con instead of taking a feat (adding 1 to strength and con if strength is odd, limit 20 of course)
• No other limitations, if the low roll was a 3 it was assigned to dex, if highest was an 18 the dwarf had a 20.

Results
It's been a tough fight. Lorne and Max, dwarven comrade in arms are separated from their party when they see two pairs of red glowing eyes in the darkness. With no chance to run, each faces off against their foe. Who will win?

Lorne, who was low man on the ability score results for the group wins the fight 20% of the time.
Max, who was high man on the ability score results for the group wins the fight 42% of the time.

Conclusion
Twice as likely to survive the deadly fight is a significant difference IMHO.

[EDIT] Just to be clear I wrote up 100 groups of 6, and the two poor dwarves each fought their hell hound 10,000 times.

Dude, you got WAYYY too much time on your hands.

 

[Maxperson]

Dude, you got WAYYY too much time on your hands.

Seems like wasted time to me. In the vast majority of instances where you have two sets of stats like that, they are not only not both going to be dwarven fighters, they are going to be two different classes with much different combat abilities. Hell, even in those very few instances where they are dwarven fighters, one will likely be a battle master and the other a champion or eldritch knight. People tend not to pick the same exact class and race combo.

I'm sure it was a fun exercise, but it's pure white room and not really indicative of how things would play out in a real campaign. I'm also curious why [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] is against fair rolling which results in "unfair" stat results, but is okay with fair going into a dungeon together as a party, but isn't against "unfair" result of encountering a group encounter solo, and is probably okay with the a fair encounter resulting in the "unfair" result of only one PC dying.

 

[Oofta]

Dude, you got WAYYY too much time on your hands.

Meh, I'm a programmer who hasn't had much of a chance to do much real coding lately. I get the itch to do something a little complex now and then.

 

[Oofta]

Seems like wasted time to me. In the vast majority of instances where you have two sets of stats like that, they are not only not both going to be dwarven fighters, they are going to be two different classes with much different combat abilities. Hell, even in those very few instances where they are dwarven fighters, one will likely be a battle master and the other a champion or eldritch knight. People tend not to pick the same exact class and race combo.

I'm sure it was a fun exercise, but it's pure white room and not really indicative of how things would play out in a real campaign. I'm also curious why @Oofta is against fair rolling which results in "unfair" stat results, but is okay with fair going into a dungeon together as a party, but isn't against "unfair" result of encountering a group encounter solo, and is probably okay with the a fair encounter resulting in the "unfair" result of only one PC dying.

LOL. Yet more excuses why ability scores don't matter.

Don't compare apples to apples ... er dwarven fighter to dwarven fighter. Obviously in my example "Max" has a lot more options at what they do, while "Lorne" is limited. But whichever class they chose Max would always be better at that class than Lorne from a numbers perspective. It's just a matter how much. This tests shows that the answer it "by a significant amount".

It's just a difference of +1 which doesn't matter. Nope. It's a lot more than that and obviously it does matter to how well they can fulfill their roll as a front line tank.

Not indicative. Huh? A 4th level fighter will never have to fight a hell hound? I've boiled this down to something simple that can be tested. The tests reveal a consistent pattern and a significant difference in combat effectiveness because of the randomness of character generation. By looping through the fights the randomness of winning initiative, breath weapon recharges, hits and misses will even out.

But seriously? It's "unfair"? WTF? You know I didn't force this combat on real dwarves, right? Also, this is not "white room" simulation. There have been many, many times when a character has to face down a foe solo, at least for a short period of time.

But hey, stick to your guns no matter what analysis of the numbers and results say.

[EDIT] The main reason I did this was because I was bored/hadn't coded anything fun in a while. But the secondary reason was that you kept harping on how my example was "unrealistic". Now that I've compared fights for a hundred realistic results it still doesn't count? I'm assuming that's because if you accepted the result your hypothesis that ability scores don't matter (from a combat effectiveness standpoint) falls apart.

 

[Maxperson]

LOL. Yet more excuses why ability scores don't matter.

Excuses? You're comparing white room nonsense.

Don't compare apples to apples ... er dwarven fighter to dwarven fighter. Obviously in my example "Max" has a lot more options at what they do, while "Lorne" is limited. But whichever class they chose Max would always be better at that class than Lorne from a numbers perspective. It's just a matter how much. This tests shows that the answer it "by a significant amount".

Compare them all you want, but they won't be representative of what happens in a game. Games generally don't have two apples in a party. They have an apple, an orange, some grapes, a grapefruit and some strawberries.

Not indicative. Huh? A 4th level fighter will never have to fight a hell hound? I've boiled this down to something simple that can be tested. The tests reveal a consistent pattern and a significant difference in combat effectiveness because of the randomness of character generation. By looping through the fights the randomness of winning initiative, breath weapon recharges, hits and misses will even out.

Maybe one will. So what. That doesn't say whether he will be the high or low stat fighter, or whether the other guy will be a cleric, bard, barbarian, elf, halfling, or boulder.

But seriously? It's "unfair"? WTF? You know I didn't force this combat on real dwarves, right? Also, this is not "white room" simulation. There have been many, many times when a character has to face down a foe solo, at least for a short period of time.

Ooooookay. Continue to compare something that will almost never happen in a game.


You going to respond about why the "unfair" results of a solo encounter against a group creature or a the "unfair" single PC death are okay, but the "unfair" results of rolling isn't?

 

[Oofta]

Excuses? You're comparing white room nonsense.



Compare them all you want, but they won't be representative of what happens in a game. Games generally don't have two apples in a party. They have an apple, an orange, some grapes, a grapefruit and some strawberries.



Maybe one will. So what. That doesn't say whether he will be the high or low stat fighter, or whether the other guy will be a cleric, bard, barbarian, elf, halfling, or boulder.



Ooooookay. Continue to compare something that will almost never happen in a game.


You going to respond about why the "unfair" results of a solo encounter against a group creature or a the "unfair" single PC death are okay, but the "unfair" results of rolling isn't?

Dude, you've done nothing but attack and troll. It's fine that you like rolling for stats.

You wanted real world scenarios showing effectiveness because you stated that in real world scenarios it doesn't make much of a difference. So I wrote some code to mimic real world scenarios. I think it's clear they proved how much of a difference ability scores will make at most tables.

I even added a bit of code to see what happens when it's 5th level PCs because you were so concerned. Results were similar - Lorne wins 78%, Max wins 95%.

Of course these are just concrete facts based on average party statistics instead of opinion so obviously they don't matter.

P.S. I just love the fact that 4th level PCs will never fight a hell hound is one of your main beefs. Or that it's "unrealistic" that I simulate a fight against level appropriate monsters to get an idea of how effective they'd be at their roles. Too, too funny.