- variability of the total/average stats between different characters in the same party. This one seems to be the most contentious as some see it as leading to or directly causing imbalance within the party. This is probably of greater concern to those who like to fine-tune the party numbers to the nth degree to squeeze out every possible advantage, to those who play in a mechanics-first style, or to those who play in no-death and-or no-retirement games where one is stuck with one's initial character throughout; and for these point-buy or similar might be the better - though dull - option.
Lanefan
No. Just no. The reason I don't like variability in party members is not because of all the mildly insulting reasons you list. I'm trying to "squeeze out every possible advantage", "play in a mechanics-first style", and so on.
I do have to laugh at the "is stuck with" their character. Seriously? I'm "stuck with" a character I really enjoy playing? Oh heavens to Betsy how will I ever survive!
If you look at the people playing on a professional (American) football team, you have different skills. The quarterback is going to have different skills from the linebacker or a running back. But they are all going to be professionals. They are all going to be better than the average person in their chosen field. If you roll for stats you can get Tom Brady and "Bob", the guy that was a second string on his team in high school.
It's about letting every player pretend to be someone who is just a little better than average, that they can all contribute to the team on even footing. That there's no reason to force someone to play a character who has the stats of a commoner.
It's about playing the character I want to play. About player empowerment to build to a vision, not having that vision forced on them by a random result.
If I wanted random, I'd write up some arrays and roll for which array to use.
If I wanted a "power group" (which can be fun) I'd use the old 3.5 rules that let you buy up to an 18 and use the high power array of 32 points. I don't because I think the math of 5E works seems to work better with a 27 point buy.
I will say that if you deviate from the roll 4d6 drop lowest to give people characters they want to play you are "upping" the average value for most groups. Not all groups of course. I know some people love it when their highest stat is a 12.
As always, I don't get why people keep insisting that there is only "one true way" to play D&D. That as one person stated "rolling for stats is a good way of weeding out bad players" because bad players want to use point buy. Like to roll? Great! I just don't think it's inherently or numerically superior to the other system.
Anyway, [MENTION=6683613]TheCosmicKid[/MENTION], thanks for the analysis. I make no attempt to try to divine intent of the people who wrote the rule or came up with the numbers, I always assumed they did the math.