Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Love of Character

Let's take a moment and talk about 3d6 in order.  This was the procedure that began with writing down the character's six stats, usually in the order of Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con and Chr.  (I don't play this order, because early in my gaming it became clear that by separating the two stats that began with 'C,' new players were able to distinguish them more easily).

Then, the player roll 3d6 and wrote the number down next to strength.  The next roll was written next to intelligence, and so on down the list.  Thus the player was subject to a very rigid system in determining realistically what class could be played ... and commonly, with classes that had high stat requirements, like the paladin, a player had to be very, very lucky to get a set of results that enabled that class to be taken.

I have never used this method.  I have never had a player ask me to play this method, or express any disappointment at this method not being used.  But let me explain my position, nonetheless, because I know that 3d6 was a thing, and may still be a thing, with some people.

Three six-sided dice will produce 216 possible combinations.  If we imagine the dice lined up next to each other, then it needs to be understood that 3-6-4, 6-3-4 and 4-6-3 are all different combinations, even if they all add up to 13.  There are, in total, 21 combinations that add up to 13.  There are 25 that will produce a 12, 27 that will produce either an 11 or a 10, 25 that will produce a 9 and 21 that will produce an 8.  Altogether, there are 146 combinations out of 216 that produce a number between 8 and 13.  That's 68%.

In traditional, Old D&D, the numbers 8 to 13 next to a stat mean next to nothing.  There were no ability checks in the game rules, the range won't give you a bonus to your "to hit" or your damage, it won't give you a wisdom bonus against charm spells, it won't add to your hit points.  If you're a mage in AD&D, the range makes some difference in your spells list, but not an especially significant one.  In any case, if a number less than 12 showed up next to your intelligence, you'd have been a bad player to decide being a mage was a good idea anyway.

In truth, you need a 15 or better in AD&D to have any stat make a significant difference to your character.  The total number of combinations in 3d6 that will produce a 15 or better is 20 of 216.  9.3%.  Not even 1 in 10.

Thus, your chance that any stat you roll in six 3d6 rolls being above 15 is only 56%.  Slightly better than 1 in 2.  Stick a pin in this.

Because 3d6 are being rolled, the chances of you getting a number less than 7 is precisely the same as you getting one above 14.  This means that for every meaningful character stat, one that could make an actual positive difference to game play, there's an equal possibility of a stat that provides a negative penalty against game play.  It's true that this sounds like balance ... but it's not a balance when there is a 56% chance of your character having one stat less than 7, AND a very good possibility of having one negative stat, and NO positive stats at all.  The reverse of this situation is eagerly anticipated, while the converse is, well ... shit.

It's often said that players who roll bad characters will suicide by monster, which is sometimes presented as a "fix" for the 3d6 system and sometimes shamed as "bad play."  I consider the argument immaterial.  The bad characters are not the real problem.  The real problem can be found in the good characters.

Using the 3d6 system, there is a 1 in 216 chance (0.46%) of rolling an 18 ... three sixes.  When this is done, the character having succeeded is awarded by vastly overpowered benefits in the case of strength, and moderately improved benefits in dexterity and constitution.  NO significant powered benefit in Old D&D is given to an 18 that occurs with intelligence, wisdom or charisma.  This means, even IF you roll an 18, you have a 50% chance of that 18 being wasted on a stat it doesn't help.  But if you roll that 18 on strength, then you have the benefit of being three times more powered as a fighter and combatant than a character with a 17.

A player with a charisma of 17 is very nearly as charismatic as one with 18.  As far as needing to be a paladin, either a 17 or an 18 will get you the ticket that lets you BE a paladin ... but the 18 is really wasted.  It might as well be a 17, for all the good it does.

The problem is that whomever rolls an 18 in a set of players, who happens to roll it next to strength, wins a bullshit lottery that puts to shame every other character round the table.  Since most of the stats that everyone rolls are essentially useless, and everything between a 7 and a 14 provides NO meaningful survival benefits (81% of stats), the 3d6 method demonstrates only that the original ability statistics design was a shitty, shitty rule set.  They only work now because we've found ways in the last 40 years to lend additional meaning to stats of every amount ... but that meaning did not originate with the arrival of AD&D in 1979.

Now, 4d6.

By rolling 4d6 and discarding the lowest die, we produce 1296 possible combinations.  The chance of rolling a 3, which can only occur by rolling four 1s, is 1 in 1296.  But the chances of producing an 18 by this method, where the lowest die might be a 3, a 5 or a 2, is 21 in 1296.  That's a 1.62% chance that any given throw will be an 18.  That's almost four times the chance of rolling an 18 over the 3d6 method, with 9.72% of all characters rolled at the table having at least one 18.

Using the same Old D&D rules regarding adjustments produced by ability stats, this increases the chance of a character having at least one stat of 15 or better.  There is a 300 in 1296 chance of doing so ... or 23.1% of any stat doing so.  This makes 15 or better stats far more common throughout the collection of player characters ... importantly reducing the excessive value bestowed upon a very unlikely but inevitably occurring 18 in the 3d6 method.  Because more characters have more 15s, 16s and 17s, the 18 is devalued.  That makes it LESS a game breaker when it occurs ... especially when there's a fair chance that two players at the table will have one.

Now, getting rid of the roll-in-order expectation.

IF the players can choose where to put their 15s, 16s, 17s and 18s, this diminishes the special importance of the character who happens to roll an 18 with their first roll.  He or she feels no special responsibility to be a fighter and make use of that 18 where FATE dictates, and can instead be the character class he or she wishes to be.  This means that any fighter with an 18 can be looked at by another player with the thought, "I could have put my 18 there if I'd wanted, but I'd rather be a mage."  Or a paladin, or whatever.  Less resentment, therefore; a greater personal sense of connection with the character; happier players all around.  AND the essentially broken ability stats system as it existed originally is smoothed out considerably at a time when other fixes were not yet conceived.

I have made the point repeatedly with my character background generator that a player ought not to be able to choose a character's birthplace, parentage, social status and class, or skill-sets that the player learns as a childMy only exception in this is that I allow the player to choose the character's sex.  That is because, realistically, it would be stupidly obtuse in this day and age not to recognise that many people will never be comfortable or encouraged to play a sex that they do not feel able to play.  I'm not stupidly obtuse, so I don't insist on this.

That said, a character's class IS something that the character LOGICALLY should be able to choose.  Before the character can become that class, he or she must raise the money for the necessary training, and then as a fully-functioning teenager and afterwards an adult (as some classes require more than a decade of training), that person must WANT to work and train and pass tests and overcome shortcomings in order to be that class.  If the character didn't want it, then the character would never have excelled in the trainer's expectations ... and thus, would never have been that character class.

Thus, it's reasonable to ask the player to suffer not having parents, or having been raised as a poor street urchin in a whorehouse, or accept that when they were 5, they accidentally got a limb caught in a mill-wheel and had it torn off ... because the character's intelligence isn't that high and hell, the character was only five.  But it is stupidly obtuse to tell the player that his or her character became a fighter because there was no chance of spending years studying books to raise his or her wisdom, or years in the wilderness learning about plants and animals, or years cheating and killing people on the street while increasing his or her reaction time.

See, here's the thing.  That baby there might someday have an 18 strength, but when it's a baby, it's strength is 1.  And the argument exists, does the adult have the 18 strength because the baby was destined to have one, or is it because the baby slowly gained a point of strength every other year until it was 11, and then it began training as a fighter.  Because I think it's the training the baby, later the child, got ... and not the bones or the blood or the speed the baby had as a baby.  Maybe those things helped.  But without the training, there's zero chance that whatever the baby starts with is going to become an 18.  18s are not born.  Like with Olympic athletes, 18s are made.  Just as my intelligence was made with conversations I had with my father, who continually challenged my logic until I went out and found smarter people than my father.  Just as my wisdom was built with books and experience and not my mother's womb.  Just as my charisma was born from my empathy and not my wavy black thick hair (which is now salt-and-pepper).  We are not designed by our attributes!  Our attributes start off as little stubs, that have ever possibility of remaining stubs if they're not fed practice, direction and effort.

Thus, I let players be the characters they want.  Thus I let players organise their ability scores.  And thus I further insist that if the player does not roll at least one 15 AND one 16, or otherwise at least one 17, then all the rolls are scrapped and the player starts again.  As many times as it takes.  Because a player deserves more than a character who "happens" to be what it is.

A player deserves a character that can be fallen in love with.

10 comments:

  1. Since you've opened the door to the player's side, I have a problem that's been troubling me as a player, if you’ll permit me a sort of “Dear Abby” comment. I'm playing in a Traveller campaign that's been running for a year and a half and is in a setting that I've played other characters in with this same referee for 8 years. As a result of this long play and the manner in which we play the setting has developed a lot of depth and character decisions are made with a huge volume of information. What's troubling me is that often the character has a lot more time than the player to noodle things out. Typically a couple weeks of game time go by in a 3 - 4 hour session. I want to slow the action down enough that the character's actions are as well considered as they ought to be, but instead I find myself often playing blitz chess instead of a more careful game.
    From the player’s side, do you have any advice for remedying this? From the DM’s side, how can this be balanced with keeping the game “moving forward?”

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  2. I'm sorry, I don't follow. Is the DM screaming in your face to make decisions?

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  3. Politely, yes, and your question makes the answer obvious.

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  4. Make the point that if the character has a day to make a decision, then you're entitled to at least five or ten minutes. Explain that football players are allowed to stop the clock and go into a huddle. That there's such a thing as a 7th inning stretch. That cricket players pause for tea. Momentum is one thing, but that doesn't entitle harrassment.

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  5. I plugged the 3d6 vs 4d6 into Excel a while ago and generated some sets of 1000 and 10000 character scores (in order) as I was curious to see what would come out. Even doing it in order, the chances of rolling up a potential paladin were two orders of magnitude higher with 4d6 as with 3d6.
    Using the 1st Ed PHB rules as a basis, it was interesting to observe the relative possible class populations, e.g. that 89% of the population was a 'potential' cleric (i.e. had the min Wis of 9) (4d6) vs 75 % with 3d6. The populations sub-classes were most strongly affected, i.e. they would hardly be present in a population, typically 1-4 % of the number of the parent class.
    Useful? I have no idea, although I did then extrapolate it to the population of the country where the campaign is based. Fun? Yes. I am such a nerd.

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  6. Nigli,

    I proposed some years ago that the general population of non-levelled persons ought to have character stats in the 2-12 range; I've reconsidered and feel now it ought to be 3-12. If the average stat for an untrained, unenlightened, slave-serf commoner is 7-8, this sensibly fits in with the view of a game world where levelled characters were SUBSTANTIALLY of greater skill and combat ability than non-levelled.

    Consider. The average baby starts at birth with ability stats that are all effectively zero. As the baby matures into being a physical adult, call it age 14, it has to accumulate an average of 22.5 point stats in constitution, dexterity and strength, or about 1 pt., on average, every 7.47 months. Some gain faster, and thus gain more points, some gain slower, and thus less points. By 14, the character has its BASE physical stats, 3d4 each.

    At the same time, the character gathers it's mental stats, in charisma, intelligence and wisdom; they gain slow at first, then faster and faster, until the character reaches their full naturally-acquired mental cognisance by the age of 18-20.

    Now, here's the point: we are talking NATURAL acquisition; stats accumulating in the character even though the character gets no training of any kind. Character class training, then, provides TRAINED stat acquisition. Say, an addition 2d6, averaged, that's added to the original 3-12 natural points.

    Thus, a trainer sees a boy of 10 who hasn't quite matured and already has a strength of 8 compared with a full-grown adult. He has four more years of accumulated natural growth, but it's just the sort of person we want when giving an additional 5 years of levelled fighter class training. By 14, the kid has reached 11 or 12 points through natural abilities; and another 4-6 points through TRAINED acquisition. End result? A fighter with a 16-18 strength, far beyond what any non-trained fighter (minimum strength of 9, minimum constitution of 7) can reach.

    The general population, then, has a 20 in 64 chance of producing a fighter using purely 3d4 and NO formal training (they reached fighter skills on their own, always a possibility). On top of that, we might imagine the inclusion of some minor training, such as soldier training, guard training, outrider training, bounty hunter training and so on, that gives a +1 to strength, or possibly constitution or dexterity.

    I'm a nerd too.

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  7. I dont disagree with any of the conclusions and statistics of you argument as far as the base assumptions go. However if I ever were to be one of your players I would definitely be the one who asked to roll 3d6 in order and see where the dice lay. At this point I've played so many characters I just don't care that much about the how good or bad my pc is and would prefer to fit into a role than come to the table with my own prefabricated concepts. There have been times where I've randomized my class choice and equipment selection. For me the choices are presented while playing the game, not before especially because I've made every one of those pregame choices hundreds of times and would rather be surprised by a result I would never choose(I'm naturally a bit of a min-maxer) than feel like I'm just playing the same character with a different name again. And like you say it's more about how the tool is used than anything...

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  8. A few things, Lance.

    Because my character background generator provides much more density to the make of a character, it's easy enough to find other things to guide your "role" than forcing yourself to accept garbage die rolls.

    Additionally, unlike AD&D, I've found many, many things on which to hinge the ability score results upon that don't exist in other games. You'll want those scores to be sufficient to meet those necessities.

    I've had a handful, literally five or more players, who scoffed at the importance of ability stats when they started my game, only to discover how important these things because after two year of a steady campaign, especially as those aforementioned necessities began to sink their grip into the player's designs and goals. I'm guessing that because you've made "hundreds" of pre-game choices, you've never actually run in a very dense campaign that stretched into 8 years and more than 250 runnings, equalling some 1350 hours. So, chances are your "fit into a role" approach has come out of knowing that you'll be fitting into some other role pretty soon with some other character in some other game.

    My game is different.

    SO, I would disallow you to roll 3d6 as you suggest, because with regards to the game I run and which you joined, I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU what you'll want and need years from now. Since I know the consequences of running players who are used to the short term and have little appreciate for what a long-term game requires from ALL the character's attributes, skills and level benefits.

    In any case, so long as you roll the 4d6 minus lowest die, you get to pick the order ... so you can slot your ability stats in the order you rolled them. That's your privilege and I have no problem with that.

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  9. Alexis, Delta posted an analysis about "3d6 in order" likelihoods of qualifying for the various OD&D classes. There were a lot of "gut-feeling" sorts of comments and very little objective, supported analysis. Delta used an off-beat method to find the likelihoods and, while I think I was the only one who admonished him for not just doing the straight calculation to get the exact answer instead of how he chose to derive it, there were a number of people asserting different odds or expressing surprise without supporting evidence.

    Sorry to pick on you Tardigrade. I was already so fed up with those fuzzy answers that I felt compelled to call yours out.

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  10. I also greatly enjoy rolling in order and seeing what I get since I truly have no preference regarding which class I play, but I find that 4d6 gives that much more reasonable stat distribution for making characters playable. I have also taken to using your high stat minimums for players I run. When I have a player who does want to play a given class I allow them to swap any two of their scores so that they can make their stats better fit what they want while still preserving some of the interesting results that rolling in order provides.

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