D&D 5E I’d be glad for MAD

[Horwath]

Or keep Con, and remove its influence on HP.
Require melee attacks to be made with str or dex (for applicable weapons), ranged attacks to use dex.

I woulde agreed with the Fort/Ref/Will, but a5e did a good job of spreading out saves between stats.

OK, but what is then left for CON?
if you spread out saves equally, only thing that it got is having 1/6 of the saves.

everyone will just dump it as they do with all other stats that are not important for their class, and CON is outside HP and saves really not important anywhere.
Barbarian AC? Just use armor,
sure, runeknight might suffer, but you can just ignore that subclass.

basing all combat on prof bonus only will be better for balance and it will give players more freedom in roleplaying.

want a smart and charming fighter(16+ score), sure go ahead, combat will not care that your STR and DEX and WIS are at 8.
Sure, you will fail at exploration, Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Survival, Perception will be in the toilet.

 

[Ancalagon]

This idea of more than one stats affecting attack rolls etc has been around a long time.

For example, from a system published in the 80s, Dragon Warriors (those books are full of great ideas, I've plundered them extensively). There were 5 stats (strength, reflex, intelligence, psychic power, looks), with the usual 3d6 spread.

I won't post every way the stats interacted with the system, but as an example, you can see from this chart that strength, reflex and intelligence all affected your attack and defense to various degrees.

 

[Distracted DM]

OK, but what is then left for CON?
if you spread out saves equally, only thing that it got is having 1/6 of the saves.

everyone will just dump it as they do with all other stats that are not important for their class, and CON is outside HP and saves really not important anywhere.
Barbarian AC? Just use armor,
sure, runeknight might suffer, but you can just ignore that subclass.

basing all combat on prof bonus only will be better for balance and it will give players more freedom in roleplaying.

want a smart and charming fighter(16+ score), sure go ahead, combat will not care that your STR and DEX and WIS are at 8.
Sure, you will fail at exploration, Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Survival, Perception will be in the toilet.

Loads of saves use Con- very important saves. Skill checks less often. Possibly link death saves to Con in some fashion- a5e has massive damage insta-death use a DC15 Con save.

Dump Con at your peril! Or have it grants half the bonus in HP or somethin'

 

[aco175]

You could make encumbrance tied to STR and CON. Maybe make it 5 pounds per point of each so a 10STR 10CON commoner gets 100 pounds of gear to carry. Still a bit heavy to walk around all day with, but ok. Problem is actually using it and tracking it.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

You could make encumbrance tied to STR and CON. Maybe make it 5 pounds per point of each so a 10STR 10CON commoner gets 100 pounds of gear to carry. Still a bit heavy to walk around all day with, but ok. Problem is actually using it and tracking it.

I think we have gotten used to ignoring it, largely.

I do think it makes sense to track ammo and encumbrance from a game play/balance/puzzle/challenge standpoint; but many people don’t seem to favor the work involved. Frankly I don’t like the work!

(Ammo excepted. It’s too easy to make hash marked).

I guess if folks had an automated excel sheet on their phone/tablet…

Oh well to wish

 

[tetrasodium]

While SAD is a definite thing, in that there are many classes with only one Primary ability score, secondary scores are also important.
Everyone wants DEX: Dex checks are one of the most important and common in the game, whether you're a heavy armour-wearing martial or a spellcaster. Having a decent Con score is also good, particularly for front-liners, but never bad for anyone.
Even Rogues, with their Primary score being Dex will often want decent scores in Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma for skill usage.

Paladins are a strong enough class that even being MAD with non-Dex, non-Con primary scores they still do fine. Monks are the other MAD class, but it has plenty of issues outside of that as well.

While true, outside of certain very edge case multiclass builds, those secondary attributes are rarely a thing that needs to be raised to a level that presents even a mild inconvenience thanks to bounded accuracy and a math expectation of (deliberately) poorly built PCs with no feats and no magic items. Add on no longer needing to eat the -2 with all of that and abserd is perfectly functional if not above curve

 

[tetrasodium]

You could make encumbrance tied to STR and CON. Maybe make it 5 pounds per point of each so a 10STR 10CON commoner gets 100 pounds of gear to carry. Still a bit heavy to walk around all day with, but ok. Problem is actually using it and tracking it.

This kind of linear scaling for encumbrance ensures that it is either entirely pointless or punishingly restrictive. Encumbrance worked in past editions to enhance relevant gameplay because the robe wearing PCs who didn't need to carry much of anything really looked at each pound like their lives could depend on it while the beefy high strength PCs had what might feel like it was within sight of bottomless pit but also needed to carry a bunch of heavy stuff like armor heavy weapons and the big bulky adventuring gear the party thought was really important. That meant hypotheticals like finding a 50 pound statue a question of who could carry it, the robe wearer might be able to if they got rid of things like potions scrolls and rations/water that would impact the group negatively while the beefy PCs could probably do one or maybe two but would start eating penalties when they started finding other valuables and magic items.

"But some people don't think it's fun to track that" is a sentiment that has no place in the discussion because going wayyy back to early editions bags of holding and handy haversacks have been a thing for tables who feel that way to trivially stop tracking it

 

[Warpiglet-7]

This kind of linear scaling for encumbrance ensures that it is either entirely pointless or punishingly restrictive. Encumbrance worked in past editions to enhance relevant gameplay because the robe wearing PCs who didn't need to carry much of anything really looked at each pound like their lives could depend on it while the beefy high strength PCs had what might feel like it was within sight of bottomless pit but also needed to carry a bunch of heavy stuff like armor heavy weapons and the big bulky adventuring gear the party thought was really important. That meant hypotheticals like finding a 50 pound statue a question of who could carry it, the robe wearer might be able to if they got rid of things like potions scrolls and rations/water that would impact the group negatively while the beefy PCs could probably do one or maybe two but would start eating penalties when they started finding other valuables and magic items.

"But some people don't think it's fun to track that" is a sentiment that has no place in the discussion because going wayyy back to early editions bags of holding and handy haversacks have been a thing for tables who feel that way to trivially stop tracking it

The DM does not have to hand out bags of holding.

Secondly, this is an example of abilities being needed in adventuring. Substitute another scenario if you prefer.

And then if you can’t find one, advocate for or create one that makes abilities matter in adventuring or combat! I am all for discussing it.

 

[Stormonu]

If you take out DEX and CON:

Barbarian: Str
Bard: Cha
Cleric: Str, Wis
Druid: Wis
Fighter: Str
Monk: Wis
Paladin: Str, Cha
Ranger: Str (if you dont' go DEX), Wis
Rogue: without DEX... nada.
Sorcerer: Cha
Warlock: Cha
Wizard: Int

So, Paladins and maybe Rangers (if you aren't DEX-based) are then the only "MAD" classes?

If you remove the DEX/CON addition, pretty much every class is already SAD -- and none are MAD -- in which case there is no really issue, is there???

Since you can technically do a DEX-based Paladin, also...

Heavy Armor martials aren't dependent on Dex. That includes for initiative as it is only relevant the first turn and there are very few opponents who can drop a character in a single round (by design). Con however, benefits anyone and everyone.

 

[tetrasodium]

The DM does not have to hand out bags of holding.

I agree. Those were mentioned because a table who feels encumbrance and inventory management is bad can just turn off all or part of it without needing to design them in a self nullifying way like 5e did. My overall point was that nonlinear capacity scaling like we saw in past editions was much better than the 1: 1 linear version 5e has where bumping strength from 2 to 4 gives the same capacity increase as bumping it from 18 to 20. The nonlinear capacity back then was a big factor in making it hard to dump strength as dramatically as so many 5e builds do by default

Secondly, this is an example of abilities being needed in adventuring. Substitute another scenario if you prefer.

And then if you can’t find one, advocate for or create one that makes abilities matter in adventuring or combat! I am all for discussing it.

I think you might have thought I was saying bags of holding were needed or something instead of "but it's not fun[to 31% of survey responders]" not being relevant to the way encumbrance & inventory management should be designed.