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<blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 8679459" data-attributes="member: 53176">&quot;Optimizing the fun out of the game&quot; is not what's going on here.The principle driving this is a thing called Loss Aversion Bias:&nbsp; 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 &quot;feel right&quot;, 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 &quot;this feels good&quot; squarely into the &quot;this feels bad&quot; side of the equation. &nbsp;And yes, obviously not all people are as susceptible to Loss Aversion as others, which is why that 60% feels fine for them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Leatherhead, post: 8679459, member: 53176"] "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. [/QUOTE]

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