The harder thing is when someone rolls an 18 (or more than one) and someone else doesn't. But then that goes back to the difference not mattering that much.
@goodguy5 I"ve been amazed at how quickly the jealousies end once you're just into playing. No one is watching the sheets as much. It's also partly why I like the proficiency die. It swings your stats.
And I've though about the proficiency dice, but generally don't play with people who roll efficiently in the first place. So I try not to add another layer of "okay let me roll and add this other die"
@goodguy5 My players have a hard enough time just rolling a d20 and telling me what they got without adding anything, adding another die would slow it down a lot.
This one guy I play with is a hunter ranger and he's always struggling with hunters mark and giant killer and his off hand attack (AND THE PALADIN IS ALWAYS BLESSING HIM)
I've decided as of last session that I'm not baby sitting him anymore.
he can remember his own mechanics or be less effective
(Doctor Who joke. The main character, the Doctor, is an alien who "regenerates" their body and personality every time the TV show changes main actors. Colin Baker was the sixth actor to play the Doctor, for 1984 to 86, meaning the character had regenerated five times.)
At some point, I'm gonna try to start a blog for this stuff. Partly because I want to show off, but partly because I want my process documented somewhere so someone can figure out how I'm getting it wrong.
@ColinGross It is code. Written in both Java and C++. I wrote a few subroutines to export into a CSV format that Excel can pick up, along with a LaTEX format for Stack Exchange.
(I have two complete versions of the code, one in C++, one in Java. I prototype in Java and then refine it in C++)
This question comes out of a discussion of the following question:
Should we add 'designers intent' questions to the “don't ask” questions list on the tour?
In Dopplgreener's answer he states
'...designer reasons only demonstrably failed for D&D and similar. There's some history for desig...
@Xirema The default roll is your roll six numbers, 4d6 drop 1, and then assign those numbers to stats. If the player assigns a -4 score to Con, sit down with them and explain the issue. Or don't, and let the PC die young.
@KorvinStarmast Truly, Con should never be a dump stat. Which leads to the question: Why do we even roll for Con? It shouldn't even be a thing, PCs should get based on their class alone, and we should roll with 5 Ability Scores.
I don't know--I don't worry that much about CON. HP... I've played plenty of 5e characters that rarely even get below half HP once they're into their archetype. The saves are more the thing for me in 5e....
But heck, I'm still thinking back to my very first character which was a 1-hp fighter.
Took months to get to level 2 and roll another precious hit die =)
It may have something to do with a paradigm shift in the way the game thinks about low-level characters.
Up into 3.5 there was a strong sense that low-level characters were not yet heroes, that the first few levels were about finding out whether they would survive long enough to become powerful adventurers.
And part of the "is this one going to survive long enough to find glory" equation was a psuedo-Darwinian notion that some folks are just naturally more suited to adventuring than others--and rolling for stats was a major way to determine that.
In the last decade D&D has been more interested in assuming your PC is a hero, or will be a hero, rather than in testing to find out whether they will be a hero.
But 5e's striving to evoke "tradition" D&Dness means they threw out 4e's mostly-standardized hp and went back to the previous mechanics without necessarily understanding that they've shifted away from the ethos those mechanics embodied.
(in 4e, your starting HP was your con score --not modifier-- plus a number determined by your class, and it increased by a flat number determined by your class every level.)
This question comes out of a discussion of the following question:
Should we add 'designers intent' questions to the “don't ask” questions list on the tour?
In Dopplgreener's answer he states
'...designer reasons only demonstrably failed for D&D and similar. There's some history for desig...
