D&D 5E So the DM Let me roll stats ...

[Oofta]

I would argue part of the problem here is system. 5e strongly,  strongly encourages pushing for the highest stats possible, because they're vitally important to the mechanics of play. They effect virtually every roll you make, and the bonuses go up too fast IMO. TSR's shallower curve made it more reasonable to play with lower stats.

I think people believe the highest stat possible is all important, not sure I agree. Slightly lower stats aren't going to be notice. Significantly different stats that you are likely to get in a group with true roll 4d6 drop lowest does have an impact. In a group of 6, odds are 1 person will win the dice lottery and 1 will lose out. I did some random generation a while p back with a program and threw the results into cage matches - the average low lasted 1/2 the rounds of the average high. Some people may like that kind of disparity, I don't.

To each there own. I think if everyone in the group starts out roughly equal it all works out fairly well. The very first 5E game we played, we used 3.5's heroic point buy. It was an interesting experiment, but we all felt OP and I have no plans on doing that again.

 

[Cruentus]

Cool story (sincerely), but how often do you see that happen? Mathematically, it should happen often. But IME everyone who "rolls" for stats has some method or another for throwing out any really bad ones, and therefore the "randomness" becomes lost for "higher" stats.

Though, I suspect that part of the fun of modern OSR play, in particular in that whaddayacall thing where you make a whole bunch of characters and then most of them die in your first session called? Anyway, I suspect that you'll see more poorly-rolled characters in that, and in OSR overall than you actually did back in the day, or in other D&D-style play.

LoL. Exactly. I think I'm the only one in the group willing to play a "sub-par" character. And the bar for what is considered "unplayable" varies widely in our group (who have been playing together on and off for 40 years). And yes, especially in 1e (when we really got our teeth into DnD), we had the 4d6 x6, two columns, and even if those weren't enough, roll another one, or another set, until you got what you wanted. Or the Unearthed Arcana buckets of dice options for stat generation, etc.

Which was also why we had this splinter B/X group start up. Some of us wanted that roll and play (3d6 down the line and pick class and race) and had our characters up and running in 10 minutes, regardless of what the stats looked like. It became a point of pride to survive. I do give credit to others in our group who had to "suffer" with a 16, or only one or two stats with any kind of bonus at all, but those folks also didn't hang around. Not enough power, even though the DM was like Santa with items and XP.

I mean, we don't do funnels, or whatever, but do encourage henchmen, and the low Hp nature of the game means you have to be careful anyway, but its all different strokes. We just wanted, ultimately, something quick to create and quick to run, which B/X provided us.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Funnel! That's what it's called. It had slipped my mind.

 

[Oofta]

LoL. Exactly. I think I'm the only one in the group willing to play a "sub-par" character. And the bar for what is considered "unplayable" varies widely in our group (who have been playing together on and off for 40 years). And yes, especially in 1e (when we really got our teeth into DnD), we had the 4d6 x6, two columns, and even if those weren't enough, roll another one, or another set, until you got what you wanted. Or the Unearthed Arcana buckets of dice options for stat generation, etc.

Which was also why we had this splinter B/X group start up. Some of us wanted that roll and play (3d6 down the line and pick class and race) and had our characters up and running in 10 minutes, regardless of what the stats looked like. It became a point of pride to survive. I do give credit to others in our group who had to "suffer" with a 16, or only one or two stats with any kind of bonus at all, but those folks also didn't hang around. Not enough power, even though the DM was like Santa with items and XP.

I mean, we don't do funnels, or whatever, but do encourage henchmen, and the low Hp nature of the game means you have to be careful anyway, but its all different strokes. We just wanted, ultimately, something quick to create and quick to run, which B/X provided us.

Were all your campaigns short run or long? I wonder about this sometimes - I tend to run campaigns where the same group is around for years. A campaign that lasted a few months? I probably wouldn't care as much. Something I hope to play for a year or more? Nope.

That and the structure of B/X was simply different depending on how your group decided to play.

 

[Maxperson]

I would argue part of the problem here is system. 5e strongly,  strongly encourages pushing for the highest stats possible, because they're vitally important to the mechanics of play. They effect virtually every roll you make, and the bonuses go up too fast IMO. TSR's shallower curve made it more reasonable to play with lower stats.

It's the opposite. Bounded accuracy means that on the DM side of things, DCs are low and ACs are low. You only really need a 14 in your prime state to do well and 16+ to do very well. After your prime stat, the others stats provide a bit of a bonus, but you don't need great stats to play the easy street game that is 5e. 5e is the least stat necessary game that they've made.

3e on the other hand made stats vitally important because you were on a treadmill of rising DCs and ACs, and those DCs included a lot of save or suck/die headed your way.

 

[Cruentus]

Were all your campaigns short run or long? I wonder about this sometimes - I tend to run campaigns where the same group is around for years. A campaign that lasted a few months? I probably wouldn't care as much. Something I hope to play for a year or more? Nope.

That and the structure of B/X was simply different depending on how your group decided to play.

I think all of our campaigns start out aiming for the long run (multiple years). We did one 5e for 2.5 years, when it reached a conclusion. A follow-up campaign ran for over a year, and I ended it (as DM) due to conflict between 5e and the lower magic premise of the setting. B/X was supposed to be a longer term effort, but was short-circuited by a couple players dropping out after a couple months (they didn't like the one action per round, lower "power" nature of the game, etc.).

I agree that I'll play anything if its a short campaign or a one-shot, because it likely won't be a character I have any investment in. I prefer longer campaigns, and am slowly trying to get in a mindset where my investment is less at chargen, and more tied to how long I play the character, and what the character accomplishes in-game (emergent story, rather than backstory). Though in this short-run campaign, my investment was in showing that a lower stat character could be just as effective (and he was, as B/X doesn't swing ability scores as far with higher/lower scores).

Our "new to DMing" DM had a very ambitious set up starting in and firmly rooted in an elven island kingdom that was steeped in fey everything. B/X was definitely a challenge considering everything we faced, from pixies, to brownies, to sprites, to elves to whatever he cooked up, was way more powerful than us, even running out to L5. That, and I think he was hesitant to drop a hammer on us when appropriate, because... I'm not really sure. I think it came down to trying to meet everyone's expectations which ranged from "hardcore B/X gritty" to "always survive and win and never be threatened while becoming a demi-god asap." Which is where the curve was at the table. (and we've gamed together for 40 years or so, and it hasn't shifted much).

 

[cbwjm]

In our recent campaign, where one of our players who had never Dm'd in 40 years wanted to DM B/X (after several years of playing in 5e), I rolled up a Fighter - S: 12, Int: 9, Wis: 9, Dex:10, Con: 10, Cha: 11. It was 3d6 x6, two columns, but I think he allowed us to assign. This was my "better" column. Not a single bonus to be seen.

He made it to 5th level with his +1 Sword before the campaign stopped.

I know that stats and bonuses nowadays are inflated from B/X, but I had a blast playing a bog-standard fighter who wasn't going to bash his way out of much, so I had to get creative.

That was the good thing about pre-3e, you didn't need any bonuses to have a workable PC, t get can be nice to have but they aren't required.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's the opposite. Bounded accuracy means that on the DM side of things, DCs are low and ACs are low. You only really need a 14 in your prime state to do well and 16+ to do very well. After your prime stat, the others stats provide a bit of a bonus, but you don't need great stats to play the easy street game that is 5e. 5e is the least stat necessary game that they've made.

3e on the other hand made stats vitally important because you were on a treadmill of rising DCs and ACs, and those DCs included a lot of save or suck/die headed your way.

You don't need higher stats to be playable, but the advantages you get from maximizing them outweighs just about everything else.

 

[Zardnaar]

So our last player rolled stats and got 18, 14, 12 after racials 18, 14, 14 iirc.

Very similar stats to the rogue he's playing a rune knight.

My Cleric got the best stats followed by the Divine soul.

Compared to default array + 1 spell design etc, +1 hit point and fort saves

Big outlier is strength at 16 which is +1 AC over my plans with default. Heavy armor vs medium AC 18 vs 17.

Pretty much everyone got what they wanted except the divine soul she's the biggestmin/maker in the group planning on adding a level of cleric.

Traditional cleric basically ducks with default array along with Monk and most gish types although hexblade splash exists now.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't need higher stats to be playable, but the advantages you get from maximizing them outweighs just about everything else.

I completely disagree. Going from say a 16 to 18 in strength will give a level 4 fighter 1 extra hit every 20 attacks, or 5 combats since combats average around 4 rounds. 1 extra hit every 5 combats isn't even noticeable. And the 1 extra point of damage a hit, let's say 2 hits per combat(50% is high at low level though) is just 2 points of damage, which given the hit point bloat of 5e also isn't going to be noticeable. Even if you go from 16 to 20, you're now hitting once extra per 2.5 combats, and doing 4 points spread out over a lot of hit points.

The increases in 5e on the player side are mathematically there, but largely unnoticeable given their minor benefit.