D&D 5E Hate ASI's ?

[The Crimson Binome]

The rolling of ability scores or the use of point buy assumes that the person is exceptional or heroic to begin with. Your average commoner is exactly that, average in most things with perhaps one ability that is higher or lower. That helps define who they are. Do you really think that one out of every 216 people has the strength of Conan? If so, then that is a greater disconnect with statistical probability than was insinuated about me.

We know for a fact that NPCs use the same method of ability generation as PCs do, because it's in the rulebook. The specifics vary by edition, but there's never been an edition (that I know of) where their base distribution was worse than 3d6. When you see an NPC with 10s and 11s across the board, that is the average of 3d6, just without the variance.

I'm not necessarily talking about commoners, though. Your average commoner isn't equally likely to have Strength 3 or Strength 18. Your average farmer or blacksmith probably has a 16, while your average seamstress or scribe might have a 5. If you're talented enough to have an 18, then you probably have a job where it matters; Strength 18 would make an excellent blacksmith or guard captain. It's only the population as a whole which conforms to the 3d6 distribution.

And even then, that lucky blacksmith with Strength 18 isn't as strong as the legendary Conan, because Conan never has just Strength 18. In AD&D, he had 18/00. In 3E, he started with an 18, and raised that to at least 22 over the course of building his legend. In 5E, he quite possibly has a 24. (In 5E, the reason that legendary barbarians can break the 20 cap is likely because Conan is so mighty.)

The main thing that I have read from those that disagree with my premise is that abilities have so little meaning that they can hardly recall their stats. Let me help you, your primary was a 20. What this means to me is that there are too many feat/ASI bonuses and using them to max out your primary stat has basically become a feat tax. That doesn't sound like fun to me.

Welcome to Bounded Accuracy. With a hard limit of +5 in most cases, which is easy to reach and nearly-impossible to exceed, stats really aren't that meaningful in most case. In the game I'm currently playing, my character is a halfling rogue with Strength 10, and he single-handedly knocks down mighty orcs and dragon-people in the process of setting up a sneak attack, because his class features completely overwhelm the normal range of ability modifiers. If you want a game where stats really feel meaningful, then 5E isn't it; even AD&D was better about it, since at least then you had to roll under your stat in order to do something, and rolling under 18 was significantly easier than rolling under 10.

 

[ccs]

The main thing that I have read from those that disagree with my premise is that abilities have so little meaning that they can hardly recall their stats. Let me help you, your primary was a 20. What this means to me is that there are too many feat/ASI bonuses and using them to max out your primary stat has basically become a feat tax. That doesn't sound like fun to me.

Yes... This would clearly explain my advancement choices for my 1/2ling warlock up there in post #21.
I'm sooo driven to get to that magical 20 that I took a feat & will likely take another. And then at lv16 increase my Wisdom of all things - assuming the game doesn't fizzle out before then. Lv19?

 

[Oofta]

The main thing that I have read from those that disagree with my premise is that abilities have so little meaning that they can hardly recall their stats. Let me help you, your primary was a 20. What this means to me is that there are too many feat/ASI bonuses and using them to max out your primary stat has basically become a feat tax. That doesn't sound like fun to me.

Nope. My current character has a 16 in his main stat (he's a fighter/rogue). Of course, he's only level 18 so I guess there's still time. Some of my characters max out their stats, others don't.

If I understand your basic concept, I think the basic idea of limiting stats to 18 or even 16 has some merit. I may even try that in my next campaign if my players agree to it. I know one guy (the min/maxer of the group) will hate it but if everyone likes it he'll tow the line.

 

[Satyrn]

Does anybody else dislike Ability Score Increases? My main problem with ASI's is that so many characters end up with the exact same stats, especially combined with the standard array of scores, and the opportunity to put multiple ASI's into improving one ability. It irks me that every Wizard ends up with 20 Intelligence, and every Barbarian has 20 Strength, or Fighters that always have a 20 in either Strength or Dexterity, etc.

I am thinking that limiting each ability to a max of +2 points of ASI, combined with my preferred method of random ability generation, might be a good idea. My method to get starting abilities is to roll 3d6 and replace any one of those dice with a 4. This generates abilities between 6 - 16, with a curve that is slightly above average, but still allowing for max abilities to be uncommon and very low scores to be rare.

Racial adjustments could allow for an 18, plus one ASI could still allow for a 20, but it would be less automatic. Even standard Humans with a 16 +1 for race could eventually get a 20 with +2 from ASI and +1 more from a feat.

However, the benefit I see to this is that not every character will roll a 16 amongst their starting stats, so not every hero will end up being the "optimized" powerhouse we tend to see now. There could potentially be a difference between high level builds without that difference being crippling. Not every Barbarian should be as strong as Conan, after all. Some Wizards should be smarter than others even when 20th level.

What do you think?

First thing that leapt to mind was that you ought to set the cap at +3 to encourage feats that grant +1 and odd starting scores for point buy.

Perhaps limit the ASIs to only giving +2 (not the +1 to two scores) to further encourage those half feats.

Then I read on and realized that the +1 from feats doesn't really count as an ASI and so I say the +2 cap sounds good.

 

[ccs]

Having started in 1980 I grew up expecting every character to be different, and all players understood that not everybody needed to be exactly equal. Back then you didn't get ASI's. What you rolled is what you played with for your whole career, barring magic items. Abilities also didn't give uniform bonuses at even numbers. Hell, 18 Strength wasn't even that good. A Fighter needed a good percentage roll on top of that.

I don't agree that having fun playing a character requires you to be the absolute best the system allows you to be. I was speaking in generalities, not about specific characters or a specific group. I wasn't comparing having multiple characters in the same group having the same stats. Whether the one Wizard in a group has a 16, an 18 or a 20 Intelligence doesn't change the fact that he is the best Wizard in the group. What having something other than 20 does mean is that there is more room for the DM to create challenging scenes without needing to overcompensate for PC's that are over-powered by default.

When I think of abilities I see them this way: a +1 bonus is above average, +2 is exceptional, +3 is heroic, +4 is the best a normal human can achieve, and +5 is legendary or super-human. Maybe it is a generational difference that I don't think that everybody has the potential to be legendary. Maybe it is a generational difference that I find succeeding against less than the best odds to be more satisfying than having the deck stacked in my favor. Most of the people I grew up playing with never felt they needed an 18 in a stat for the character to be fun to play, but these days everybody seems to feel entitled to claim to be the absolute best it is possible to be.

I posted this idea to guage how others felt. It seems I am in the minority, which is fine. We each can choose to enjoy this hobby the way we have the most fun.

Have you considered just using the 1e charts for ability scores?
Personally, as 1e is my favorite edition, I think the + modifiers start too low on the current chart.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Have you considered just using the 1e charts for ability scores?
Personally, as 1e is my favorite edition, I think the + modifiers start too low on the current chart.

Personally, I like not having to look at a chart to know the modifier.

 

[Oofta]

Personally, I like not having to look at a chart to know the modifier.

::shudder:: Just had flashbacks to looking up stuff on charts ... trying to figure out what kind of armor we were hitting and what weapon was I using ... size of the target ... weapon speed ... do I want a high number or low ... the target AC is -1 so I add no wait subtract ...

 

[billd91]

Back when nobody increased their stats over time, and a 15 didn't give you anything anyway, it didn't really matter what you rolled. You didn't need to start with an 18 to be competitive, because nobody else had one either, and the benefit of having one was negligible for most classes.

Blame 3E for this, with its universal ability bonus. As soon as you had a stat that governed whether or not you hit, even with spells, and that bonus increased evenly along its distribution instead of being limited to extreme cases, it quickly became the case that you needed to max out your score in order to be seen as competent. This is a good reason to dislike 3E.

I don't blame for adding the universal ability bonus - I credit 3e for it because it freed players from having to have astronomical rolls (or cheat at their rolls) to get them and made them far more consistent. This is a good reason to like 3e.

 

[Uchawi]

Players will game the system, I gave up on the arms race as a DM. There is enough randomness in the game to keep players on their toes, regardless of the ability scores. However, I do appreciate the effort to make characters more random in their makeup as a realistic representation of the average Joe.

I let the players decide their motivations, including being weak in certain areas. I can even provide incentives as part of the decision making process.

If I was going to change anything in 5E it would be a wider range of bonuses, including specialized equipment, components, etc. In regards to bounded accuracy, everything is too monotone.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't blame for adding the universal ability bonus - I credit 3e for it because it freed players from having to have astronomical rolls (or cheat at their rolls) to get them and made them far more consistent. This is a good reason to like 3e.

Fair enough. It really depends on your group. If you actually did play AD&D with average stats, because your DM was strict about that sort of thing (or whatever), then the change to your stats suddenly mattering may have felt like an unnecessary burden. If you were already cheating to get high stats in AD&D, or your DM let you roll thirty times because you felt like you needed to have high stats, then changing to a point buy system with incremental progression might have felt liberating.

You could make a similar point about feats, or crafting magic items. As the player gained more and more control over their character, it raised the expectations about what a character should be able to do, but it also gave you the tools such that you always could meet those expectations. Whether you consider that to be a net gain is going to depend on a lot of variables, such as how much effort you want to spend on out-of-game character optimization.