D&D 5E Rolled character stats higher than point buy?

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

http://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/

Warning- math.

In short, it's not exactly the "average array", but it's the approximate ordered averages of your Nth highest stats in order from highest to lowest. So that 16 is "average highest stat for 4d6d1", 14 is "average 2nd highest stat for 4d6d1", etc.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Celebrim]

You're focusing on something other than what I meant to draw your attention to. I actually highlighted the different scopes of play as the most important difference.

I think I've already made clear how unuseful I find the terminology and how muddled I find the thinking in that thread.

For purposes of this conversation, let's assume he really means it when he says "bees everywhere! With nasty poison!" I.e. take the number of bees that would be a fair fight by your standards, and multiply by twenty. That's when combat as war comes into play at my table.

First, there is absolutely nothing in my games that guarantees fights will be fair. This is just another example of you conflating ideas that are independent of one another. So lets just for the sake of argument say that a fair fight between giant bees and the current party was say 30 bees, and they find a hive of 600 giant bees. Now, I'm not sure where they are going to find that anywhere on the prime material plane, because I'm not sure that there is anywhere on the prime material where giant flowers occur in sufficient numbers to have a single colony of 600 giant bees. But for the sake of argument lets say such a place exists or the PC's have been victimized by a shrink ray or something of the sort.

Now, if it really is 600 giant bees, elaborate tricksy battle plans would be stupid. The PC's would be hard pressed to come up with any plan that was such a force multiplier that it would allow them to defeat that many bees and still get the honey. We're talking a hive that might be 1 million cubic feet in size, filled with enough bees to kill a small army. There might be decent stealth or diplomacy plans that they could try: "Invisibility to Vermin", "Speak with Vermin", or they could try contacting a Bee Spirit and negotiating a settlement with the Queen, or what not. Heck, Craft (Apiarist) might be the single most useful thing that they could have on the character sheet. (Well, next to Empathy (Vermin) or the Vermin Friend feat, which might not only make getting the honey trivial, but having them moving on with a small army of bees.) But forget any short term assymetric warfare. This is a hive big enough that its adding 4 or more new bees per day to replace loses. Perhaps if they had powerful magical options (cloudkill?), then they might have something. But then, if they had powerful magic options, they probably wouldn't need an overly elaborate plan.

And to be frank, if you are now stating that your game is normally played out with foes equivalent to 600 bees whom you carefully track during battle, I'm calling bollocks.

If the Sorceress at your table were to use her social skills and wealth to scare up an extra two dozen mercenaries to bring along on an adventure, would the DM consider that foul play?

Why the heck would I do or think that? The PC's are part owners of a warship, with like 120 mercenary pirates aboard it, and 20 siege engines. How do you think they got here? My game doesn't even have a 'Leadership' feat, because retainers, henchmen, and hirelings are expected to be acquired through play and RP - not allocation of game resources. If the PC's had wanted to bring 25 marines from the ship along, they probably could have done that. If they had the resources to manage that at 1st level, I'm fine with that. But to be frank, if they'd brought 25 marines along, they'd already have lost half of them, and they'd spend so many healing resources trying to keep the mooks alive, that it would have threatened their ability to protect themselves. And they'd not be able to rely on the cleric for food and water, so logistics might be worse. At some point, a character is enough levels below you that they cease to be an assistant and become a dependent.

(Though in practice they are actually more likely to try zany stuff or stealth than hiring mercs. And I play the zany stuff completely straight, which means that yeah, maybe the mud doesn't help AT ALL against the bees and they really would have been better off with missile weapons.)

So in other words you are fine with what doesn't actually happen in your campaign, but busy assuming that my play is not characterized by what actually does happen in my campaign. And you don't yet have the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance?

So when you say, "it's combat as something other than war," maybe it's just "combat by PCs who are sixty seconds away from finding out what war really is." Hence the DM's "ghoulish grin" and "what could possibly go wrong?"

Be honest here. When have you actually planned and placed on the map encounters with foes that are 12, 15, even 20 CR's above the players current level? My players are - and know they are by now - always just one ignored "sign" that says, "Danger: This Way" from a TPK. If they'd decided to go investigate the dragon's lair they passed a few game days ago, they'd all be dead now. And frankly, there isn't a nice neat plan that they have the resources to implement that lets them multiple their force to the point that's not true. One game assumption that I find holds up well, is that if there was an obvious clever plan for defeating an enemy, it would have been implemented by someone else years or decades ago and they'd now have the treasure. They want to kill a fully mature dragon, well they are just going to wait until they have the resources to make a plan feasible. As 4th level characters, they were down in a dungeon with multiple CR 20 encounter areas. One wrong opened door could have meant a TPK. (The correct way to navigate the dungeon was open no doors at all, and only go into the rooms where the doors were open following in the footsteps of the BBEG, which they figured out... then promptly opened a door when they got confused and lost half the party.) As 2nd level characters, they were in a Dungeon that had a dracolich in it. I told my players as the game began that they should not expect everything in the world to be things they could realistically defeat. Session #1 one of the campaign say the PC's put in a scenario where they were seaside and a 25' tidal wave inundated the city, where if they had been like, "I'm going to sit here and watch", we'd probably TPK'd in the first 10 minutes. Now be honest here, do you really do this and to this extent?

Do you understand now why your example demonstrating the value of Con 18 doesn't resonate with me?

Not in the freaking slightest. I haven't the foggiest idea. If that was really true, why bother leveling up? Why bother getting gear? Why bother even have rules, because before having 18 Con doesn't matter, every situation has to come down completely to "DM says that's the way things happen." For example, Sir Gorinthar decided to play the dumb hero and solo charge the BBEG - a 18th level Wizard - and the BBEG's minions at 8th level. He took a lightning bolt and a finger of death to the chest, and despite two saving throws (also ability score dependent) he took 86 damage, and then thought better of his plan. But had we even two less CON, he'd probably not survived that rash act. (The funny thing is, this act scared the BBEG down to his core. You could think of it as Voldemort throwing avadra kadavra at Harry Potter, and him not dying. Who is this guy that can survive magic of that potency? The BBEG does not know the level of his foes. Since we've accomplished our goal here, best beat a hasty retreat before he comes back.)

Ability scores matter, even in sand boxes. And "combat as war vs. combat as sport" isn't even a real thing.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In short, that's why there's a link. In related news, when your PC falls off a 300' cliff, your PC is not falling down a 300' cliff, instead, the mass of the PC and the mass of the planet are acting upon each other such the the PC and the planet are accelerating at each other - one more noticeably than the other. For 20d6 damage.

I know you know that, because you posted the link. I didn't see any harm in translating a summary for the sake of people who find "warning: math" intimidating and didn't click on the link. Did it bother you that I did that?

 

[Guest 6801328]

http://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/

Warning- math.

I didn't see any mathematics on that page, just a bunch of probabilities. (Which is really sort of ironic given the pedantic warning....)

Is anydice doing a monte carlo simulation or actually solving equations?

I think Hemlock's answer is the correct one: calling it an "average" array isn't technically correct.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

*snip a bunch of stuff on CAW* It's clear from the fact that you've degenerated to insults and accusations of bad faith ("be honest") that I shouldn't have even used the phrase "combat as war" around you. Apparently it's threatened your sense of identity. Suffice to say that yes, I really do what I've said I do. Early on last campaign, one memorable encounter found the three 3rd level PCs fighting something (11 umber hulks and a bunch of neogi including a wizard) which according to DMG guidelines would be an appropriate encounter for level 20 characters. That doesn't mean I required them to fight them in the same way level 20 characters do, but I cite that as one example among many of the fact that I really do offer the same challenges in my sandbox at low level as at high level, and that is why an extra +2 or +3 HP per level just doesn't really matter very often.

Frankly I was quite surprised they didn't just die; and that wasn't the last time. (Other times I was totally unsurprised at the TPK which did in fact occur exactly as I expected, but I have mechanisms in place to prevent that from killing the fun.)

Not in the freaking slightest. I haven't the foggiest idea. If that was really true, why bother leveling up? Why bother getting gear? Why bother even have rules, because before having 18 Con doesn't matter, every situation has to come down completely to "DM says that's the way things happen." For example, Sir Gorinthar decided to play the dumb hero and solo charge the BBEG - a 18th level Wizard - and the BBEG's minions at 8th level. He took a lightning bolt and a finger of death to the chest, and despite two saving throws (also ability score dependent) he took 86 damage, and then thought better of his plan. But had we even two less CON, he'd probably not survived that rash act. (The funny thing is, this act scared the BBEG down to his core. You could think of it as Voldemort throwing avadra kadavra at Harry Potter, and him not dying. Who is this guy that can survive magic of that potency? The BBEG does not know the level of his foes. Since we've accomplished our goal here, best beat a hasty retreat before he comes back.)

Ability scores matter, even in sand boxes. And "combat as war vs. combat as sport" isn't even a real thing.

Okay. I've done my best to answer your question. I'm sorry I wasn't able to do so in a way that you understood. We run very different games, not least because I run 5E and you run 3E. So it's probably not surprising that you have a different perspective on rolling stats than I do. I would feel differently about point buy in Shadowrun or GURPS than I do in 5E; and perhaps you'd feel differently about stat rolling in an OSR game or 5E run the way I run it. Or maybe you wouldn't, who knows?

 

[Celebrim]

*snip a bunch of stuff on CAW* It's clear from the fact that you've degenerated to insults and accusations of bad faith ("be honest") that I shouldn't have even used the phrase "combat as war" around you.

No, because I read the thread you linked to and I realized that "combat as sport" was basically one of those badwrongfun insults people throw around to assert superiority of their gaming style. So, yeah, you'd already "degenerated" to covert insults and innuendo, and you had all these hypothesis about how and why I didn't agree with you that basically came down badwrongfun. I tried to explain to my game as a way of showing you that you hadn't a clue about my "scope of play" actually was, but that didn't seem to work.

This was a thread about why rolled stats always appear to be above average. I still don't understand why you think stats don't impact play, and you've never given me remotely enough details about your own game to figure that out. Suffice to say that when I glanced through 5e, my impression of how much ability scores would impact play in 5e is very much different than yours apparently is, and I don't think I'm the only one. Nor do I think that bounded accuracy is a sufficient explanation for how 3rd level characters survived combat with 11 umber hulks and a bunch of neogi including a wizard. Changes in 5e mechanics make numerous low level foes more dangerous than in some past editions. Changes in the 5e mechanics don't explain how you survive combat with more numerous foes that are also more powerful than you.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Are you asking for more details about my style of play? I've offered before to provide breakdowns of some recent adventures and encounters, but I don't want to do so without an invitation because frankly hearing the details of other people's games tends to be boring.

But in order for that to work, you have to stop looking for opportunities to take offense at "covert insults" which aren't being offered.

What do you want?

Edit: incidentally, if you've read that whole thread I linked to, you've read way more of it than I have. I've read the first page, and the posts that I referred you to as important were #1 and #5, although IIRC I thought #9 had a good point about Ravenloft too. I have no idea why you felt compelled to read the whole thing when every page you read was apparently making your blood boil.