Calibrating Expectations

[elmo_iscariot]

Philmo shares an article by Justin Alexander from 2007 that shows me I've been thinking about D&D all wrong for a very long time:

D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations

There’s a common fallacy when it comes to D&D, and it goes something like: Einstein was a 20th level physicist. So, in D&D, Einstein - that little old man - has something like a

Comments

[theweaselking]

Except that the D20 rules necessarily mean that

[elmo_iscariot]

Sure, you COULD model him as a "worst possible HP and stat rolls" character, but why should you have to?

Note that my ellipsis cut off Alexander's full statement:

This 5th level Einstein can also be modeled with as few as 5 hit points - 1 per hit die. Even if he rolled an average number of hit points on each hit die (3 each), as an old man his average Constitution of 10 will have dropped two points. With the resulting Constitution penalty, he still only has 10 hit points. This is the other reason why the hit point argument holds no water.That's only for hit points. I don't have a position in general on... ah, combat for non-combatants in D20. My games tend to be very, very light on combat, and my NPCs are almost never full builds with levels (they only rarely have all six ability scores). They just have the handful of skills or stats I think they'll need, since I can wing the rest. The way I use it, D20 meets my needs across genres; I don't doubt that there are better systems for other styles of gaming. My takeaway from