FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Most players don't view their PC as a subordinate whom they're giving orders to.
Most players don't have multiple PCs under their command in the same campaign.
And most players don't play adventures where their PC is not present and an active participant. (I don't even know what that would look like.)
You added a bunch of extra constraints here, so clearly you know what I'm talking about, and are pretending not to know.
D&D has always, since the very beginning, had the notion of a player with a stable of multiple PCs, from which the player selects a suitable PC for any given adventure.
You may not use this model personally but it's disingenuous for you to pretend not to know it exists and has similarities to your Sgt. Molly scenario.
The game of D&D pretty strongly assumes a persistent one-to-one identity of player to character.
Depending on what you mean by "persistent." It only has to last for a single adventure.
Even in the old-school high-mortality dungeon-crawl style of play, I can't recall ever seeing a group where the players bring teams of expendable adventurers -- each player is still one guy, even if that guy isn't expected to live for very long. That's a pretty fundamental difference in the dynamic between D&D and X-COM.
But not a fundamental difference between D&D and the scenario you described with Sgt. Molly.
Great! Only point-buy is just a variety of make-up-your-stats with constraints to keep everybody on the same page. And the standard array is just point-buy with stricter constraints.
I'm not stopping you from using point-buy or standard array. I allow my players to choose any of the PHB methods to generate their stats.
Do you allow yours the same freedom?