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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6862474" data-attributes="member: 4937">First, players in the long run won't compare themselves to 'most people'.  They will compare themselves to other PC's.  Secondly, in practice it's a rare DM that manages to make most NPC's that the players actually interact with have stat arrays that reflect most people.  In theory, there are lots of NPC's in the world were their every ability score is 10 or less.  But most of those NPC's' are drinking buddies of Sir Not Appearing in this Story.  The vast majority of NPC's that PCs will actually meet, will have above average stats because for the most part NPCs with uniformly bad stats serve no good role at the table - they aren't good foils, they aren't good villains, they aren't good allies, they aren't good mentors, and after 1st level or so they aren't even good mooks.   They aren't even good dependents, though I've rarely seen dependents used as a concept in D&D.  So theoretical demographics are irrelevant to play experience or a player's perception of the NPC.A funny example of this is a group I was in (not as the DM) had adopted the dice rolling method from UA meant to generate high level NPC's as a PC generation method - you know, the one that had as much as 9d6 take 3 on the table.  And with a small amount of cheating (or so I assume), this generated stats for most PC's that were 16+, with 3-5 18's per player, depending on their tolerance for being below average or resistance to cheating.  And the DM simply responded by making all important NPC's have 18's in all important abilities at well, in order to keep up the challenge against such demigods.  Average had come to mean '18'.  And right off the bat, I'm telling you this is too short of an experimental period.  You've not had time for the situation to evolve.  You probably have only had a handful of PC deaths during that period.  There have been comparatively few replacement characters.  There has been very little time for players to start comparing their characters to other characters.  So of course I wouldn't expect to see much evolution yet.  The cycle I'm discussing took like 10 years to fully develop, with about 3 year intervals in between chargen methods.  Talk to me in 3-5 years.So you are in the first stage, as PC's that are below average are slowly winnowed out of play, leading to higher and higher expectations over time.  Dissatisfaction sets in as players replace characters and feel that their luck is still bad, leading you to either allowing more and more rerolls (or retired characters) or else developing dice rituals intended to prevent the need for rerolls.  But either is functionally the same thing, since 'ad hoc rerolls' may be mentally rewritten off, but are in practice typically a big part of the actual chargen method.Out of curiousity, how often to players create replacement characters or retire characters?  Your comment about characters not getting much screen time is suggestive.No, of course not.  Because, first you don't have to play that character, and be this isn't the second or third time you've been saddled with a character like that while 'Bob' is playing that shiny character with two 18's the whole time.   And if not you, maybe you are exceptionally lacking in jealousy and pride, then some other player.</blockquote>

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