this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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[5e] Dice Mechanic with Point Buy RNG? (ttrpg.network)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hello everyone,

I thought it would be nice to have a dice mechanic for 5e’s character creation with an output more similar to the point buy system, since the default dice mechanic leads to overall higher stats. This could be a system with the same output range as point buy as well as one that still offers the possibility of rolling very high numbers (16-18) but with a higher probability to roll very low than 4d6 drop lowest.

Do you already know of such a dice mechanic? Or could you maybe provide a source for the probabilities of a stat having a certain number in the point buy system, so as to make it comparable to 4d6 drop lowest? The latter would give a starting point to play around with dice.run in order to create a system as desired.

Thank you all very much in advance!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do you happen to know of a source that depicts the different probabilities for stats in point buy? I couldn't find one, but I'd love to see which of your suggestions comes closest to that. They're all still comfortably simple, I like that. I assume that it would become quite complicated to take the higher costs of point buy's high end stats into account.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Point buy is completely deterministic, so I'm not sure what you mean by probabilities... Are you referring to statistics, like which stat is a certain value most of the time?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Exactly! (Not a native speaker, blame it on that.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, you'd probably have to have access to something like DndBeyond's data to compile such a chart (or use one they compiled). Problem is, there doesn't seem to be anything like that. The only published data visualisations are about races, classes and names.

So I don't think you can just search for it, the only other option I see is gathering that data (if from a smaller sample) yourself, by creating a poll asking for their ability spreads if they used point buy. You could try and advertise it in appropriate communities, and once you feel like your sample size is big enough, you can calculate the percentages.

I wish there was an easier way (and maybe there is and I just didn't look far enough), but from my chair, that's the only option.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Independently from common choices for point distribution, I was thinking more of how often certain stats end up with certain numbers out of all possible combinations how points could be spent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think I understand what you mean, might be because we're both ESL.

Are you saying you want a histogram or something about how points can be spent, instead of how players do spend them?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

That sounds right