D&D 5E The tyranny of small numbers

[overgeeked]

There seems to me to be optimizing oneself to boredom in some cases.

Yeah. It’s just a thing some gamers do. Video games are designed around it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have had a few characters now that were a bit behind in their main stat in return for other things. Totally worth it. And highly effective.

Of course, they were also full-casters that weren't sorcerers. Char-op may not just be about a few stats.

Certainly. Some classes are better than others, e.g. Wizard is pretty much unequivocally stronger than Sorcerer even though both are fairly strong due to being full casters. Within a single class, some subclasses are better than others, e.g. Battle Master is better than Champion (not that that's a difficult bar to clear, but it's a ready-to-hand example.) Within a single subclass, some choices will succeed more often than others, e.g. a Barbarian with 16 Str is going to succeed a lot more often than a Barbarian with 8 Str, because the former will be rolling attacks with advantage, and getting bonus damage, whenever they Rage, while the latter will not. Even within a single subclass and stat array, some choices are better than others, e.g. there's no reason to use a short sword as a Dex-based melee attacker when you can instead use a rapier, since the two are equivalent in every possible way except damage dice, and you can always reflavor what your weapon looks like (e.g. perhaps you use a "leaf-blade gladius," which has the stats of a rapier but looks like a special variant of short sword.)

Back in 4e, these differences were even easier to demonstrate, because you had quite a bit more depth of choice. As a Paladin, I generally favored playing a Dragonborn (no one who has interacted with me on this forum should be surprised by this fact), which worked well as a so-called "Balanced Paladin," pushing both Strength and Charisma as opposed to only focusing on one side or the other. Such a character has free choice of any attack powers, since Strength and Charisma were the two options for attack and damage, but tends to have weaker secondary stats and thus weaker "rider" effects (e.g. some attacks give Wis mod temporary hit points or the like.)

Buuuut...you could totally still have solid secondary stats if you wanted, because there were lots of ways to mitigate the difference, and that was generally my personal preference. I would take 16 Str and Cha, essentially the equivalent of taking 14 Cha as a Sorcerer in 5e, because I knew that that choice wouldn't be a big deal on the grand scale: I could choose an accurate weapon (such as a longsword) to mitigate the reduced attack, and quickly pick up feats that gave mitigating bonuses; I would usually take an At-Will attack that gave a hit bonus equal to the number of adjacent enemies, further erasing any accuracy issues; and I would try to pick up a lot of powers targeting Fort/Ref/Will, since those defenses are generally a bit lower than AC is. In exchange, I'd get slightly higher secondary stats, allowing me to use stuff like Lay on Hands more often, or to get more oomph out of my Healing Surges (since Dragonborn add their Constitution modifier to their surge value.)

Unfortunately, 5e has chosen to flatten almost every mechanical aspect of the game. Feats are one of the few areas that haven't been flattened to hell and back. As a result, they're pretty much the last bastion of mechanics offering any form of depth whatsoever (them and multiclassing.) But since they ALSO made that depth actively compete with "get better at your basic stuff," we now have a dramatically worse situation than the "feat taxes" of 4e or even 3e, where you have essentially "ASI taxes." Don't do the interesting stuff feats offer, because interesting is less effective than the incredibly dull and boring +2 to your bread-and-butter actions.

In pursuing a simpler, more intuitive game (which is not a bad goal), they have instead produced a flatter, less-interesting game. Instead of making baseline competence guaranteed, so that people can choose to do whatever they like within the mechanical space without worrying about optimization, they have created systems which actively force a choice between "do the optimal thing" and "do the interesting thing." It would be like if 4e had allowed players to take the bitterly-disliked "Expertise" feats repeatedly--no one would ever take anything else because +1 to all the stuff you do regularly is Just Too Good. And these were issues people called out during the public playtest, almost a decade ago.

5e's design is significantly responsible for this problem. 5e COULD have been designed such that pursuing variety was rewarded, or so that basic competence was guaranteed, thus making any further choices purely a matter of what interests the player. But that's not what the designers chose to do, and now people complain that players follow the stuff the game's design rewards.

 

[Horwath]

it is optimal and by the number expected to have 16 in your primary stat at 1st level, 18 at 4th and 20 at 8th level.

However, it not mandatory.

But, you need to realize that your primary role will suffer from it in a measurable way.
You just need to know that, and for whatever reason your secondary/tertiary stat is higher because of it. Or you have taken feats instead of ASI's.
You need to compensate that with added utility. And most of the time, your secondary role will be enough to outweigh your smaller impact in your primary role.

 

[Minigiant]

Different classes use stats different.

Going from a 14 to 16 is bigger for a fighter or barbarian than a wizard or sorcerer as you roll ability checks and add ability modifiers a lot more as a warrior than a caster. Like 3-6 times as much.

Skill monkeys and priests are somewhere in the middle. Their rolls are big impact like spells or are spells. But they roll dice and add mods more often than pure casters.

 

[Leatherhead]

"Optimizing the fun out of the game" is not what's going on here.

The principle driving this is a thing called Loss Aversion Bias: People hate a loss about twice as much as they like a win. Meaning you have to win (in this case land a hit) about 67% of the time to feel like you are actually winning. And lo and behold, the 5e devs thought of this, if you dig into the DMG tables, a character with a starting 16 who pumps the main stat with ASIs will hit a generic monster 65% of the time, close enough to "feel right", even more so when you consider situational bonuses.

While you might not think a mere 5% loss in accuracy that stems from starting with a 14 instead of a 16 would matter, it is enough to change that 65% into a 60%, going from skirting the "this feels good" squarely into the "this feels bad" side of the equation.

And yes, obviously not all people are as susceptible to Loss Aversion as others, which is why that 60% feels fine for them.

 

[Minigiant]

"Optimizing the fun out of the game" is not what's going on here.

The principle driving this is a thing called Loss Aversion Bias: People hate a loss about twice as much as they like a win. Meaning you have to win (in this case land a hit) about 67% of the time to feel like you are actually winning. And lo and behold, the 5e devs thought of this, if you dig into the DMG tables, a character with a starting 16 who pumps the main stat with ASIs will hit a generic monster 65% of the time, close enough to "feel right", even more so when you consider situational bonuses.

While you might not think a mere 5% loss in accuracy that stems from starting with a 14 instead of a 16 would matter, it is enough to change that 65% into a 60%, going from skirting the "this feels good" squarely into the "this feels bad" side of the equation.

And yes, obviously not all people are as susceptible to Loss Aversion as others, which is why that 60% feels fine for them.

It's actually more that 5% of totally effectiveness as ability modifier as to damage.

So when you play a warrior character, that +1 can be added 1-9 times in turn. Rolling 6 once vs a 7 twice or a 5 three times.

So you can see Loss Aversion twice depending on how you make your PC.

 

[James Gasik]

Not to mention, would anyone consider someone who put their ASI's into their primary stat "optimizing" in a game without Feats? Where there literally is no other way to be better at your class?

Or would some people be saying "ugh, you raised Strength? You should take higher Charisma for +1 on social rolls!".

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Not to mention, would anyone consider someone who put their ASI's into their primary stat "optimizing" in a game without Feats? Where there literally is no other way to be better at your class?

Or would some people be saying "ugh, you raised Strength? You should take higher Charisma for +1 on social rolls!".

I would not think so.

And along with a few others, you seem to think this is a black and white issue. The issue is not making an effective character.

The issue is being so rigid in this pursuit that you don’t consider flavorful options that mean you have slightly lower stats in a particular area i.e. the differences are “small numbers.”

Very quickly this discussion went from have fun don’t be too rigid to “stop bashing the optimizers!”

And relatedly you will fail too much to have fun if you don’t. I think that is hyperbole. A fighter with no bonus to hit is not equivalent to the difference between a +3 and a +4.

I think we are limiting ourselves and noobs by saying otherwise. That’s all. If someone thinks otherwise and the push ti max their score at all costs, be my guest. If you are having fun, you’re doing it right.

If not, or the novelty is gone, I suggest a test of your assumptions in venue other than a white room.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

It really depends where a DM places success. Most tasks should be around dc 10 but DMs ramp up DCs to make things ‘interesting’. All this does is force players to boost numbers to succeed or use approaches that favour their apex stat.

For example, I’m playing a FATE game. In FATE, skills scale from 0 to 8. A high school educated character would have a +1 or +2 so most challenges should sit around 3 (professional level). most characters have their apex stat around +4.

In the game I’m playing, our best skills are +6. We are the best in the world at our areas of expertise. The problem is all challenges are 5+. Well beyond what an average mortal can do. It renders all out +1 to 3 skills useless. The result is you never use them and you are pigeonholed into using the same approach for every challenge. It also means you never feel heroic because, regardless of skill, the challenge is always scaling. Sometimes you should just succeed with style.

DMs forget that an average commoner has a 9 or 10 in all their stats. A 14 is an exceptional attribute. A 20 is the peak of mortal ability. It’s weird to have all these people with 20s in stats looking down their noses at people with ‘mere’ 16s

 

[Immoralkickass]

I was flat out told that if I don't have a 14 in Constitution then I don't know how to play the game.

Most likely they are right. I've heard plenty of DMs tell their players that you don't need to optimize your characters, then they throw CON saves at DC20+ out the wazoo. I am convinced anyone who tells you that you don't need to optimize and 'roleplay is more important' is just trying to sound like a nice guy. Saves at DC 21 is very common once you reach levels 11+, and i think the highest is like DC27 when you face the likes of Tiamat or something at the end game stuff.

The truth is, the crunch is important. You can't roleplay a dead character, so stay alive. There are no rules for RP, so you don't need an excuse (low/high stat) to RP a certain trait. People should be encouraged (not forced) to minmax, powergame, etc. Powerful characters can still be interesting.

Cool story: I had a friend that decided to put a 10 in CON as a melee Rogue. He had thought long and hard against it, but decided its probably fine since he had Uncanny Dodge/Evasion, and also that 'RP was more important' anyway.
One day he rolled a nat1 on his Dex Saves against Disintegrate, spent all his Inspiration to reroll, only to get another bunch of nat 2-3s, then got dusted because the amount of damage he took was just 1 more than his max hp. He said he regretted putting the 10 in CON so much.
Don't live with regret because you could have done better, DO better so that when your PC die, you know you have done your best.