Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 7135581" data-attributes="member: 6801845">The problem with rolling (using the rules from the book with no home rule adjustment) is that it does nothing to guarantee your goal that characters are roughly equal.&nbsp; Truly random rolling effectively guarantees that some characters will be above average while others will be below.&nbsp; Will 1 character at the table have 1 or more 16s?&nbsp; Probably.&nbsp; Will 1 character at the table have a high score of 14 or less?&nbsp; Quite likely.I suspect many people associate rolling with more powerful characters for two main reasons.&nbsp; First is optimism bias. They assume their character will be the guy with 1 or more 16s or higher.&nbsp; In addition, in many cases the DM will allow rerolls or have other house rules to assure decent characters.IMHO the best way to assure even footing is to use point buy.&nbsp; Don't like the point buy from the book?&nbsp; Think it's too restrictive?&nbsp; Give people more points.&nbsp; Allow a greater spread of numbers.&nbsp; Use the 3.5 point buy system which goes up to 20.&nbsp; Make your own point buy system to allow some other variation.To me it doesn't matter if the high stat a character can have is 17 or 20.&nbsp; As long as people have the same options.&nbsp; In my experience the math of 5E seems to work better if you don't have characters with super high stats at first level.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Oofta, post: 7135581, member: 6801845"] The problem with rolling (using the rules from the book with no home rule adjustment) is that it does nothing to guarantee your goal that characters are roughly equal. Truly random rolling effectively guarantees that some characters will be above average while others will be below. Will 1 character at the table have 1 or more 16s? Probably. Will 1 character at the table have a high score of 14 or less? Quite likely. I suspect many people associate rolling with more powerful characters for two main reasons. First is optimism bias. They assume their character will be the guy with 1 or more 16s or higher. In addition, in many cases the DM will allow rerolls or have other house rules to assure decent characters. IMHO the best way to assure even footing is to use point buy. Don't like the point buy from the book? Think it's too restrictive? Give people more points. Allow a greater spread of numbers. Use the 3.5 point buy system which goes up to 20. Make your own point buy system to allow some other variation. To me it doesn't matter if the high stat a character can have is 17 or 20. As long as people have the same options. In my experience the math of 5E seems to work better if you don't have characters with super high stats at first level. [/QUOTE]

Verification