D&D 5E Hate ASI's ?

[ccs]

I have to disagree with the premise. Although many pcs go for optimization, not all do. My gnome wizard has an Int 15 at level 6, for instance, and there are a number of level 10+ pcs in my game with non-maxed out prime stats. So, it's just a matter of playstyle.

Agree. My 1/2ling warlock is lv.6 & I took the Magic Initiate feat. It's very in-character as her patron is teaching her additional ways to use magic.
And at 8th lv? I'm actually considering taking the Healer feat as the dice have indicated that she's apparently a gifted medic. She'll dash over to a fallen comrade, try a medicine check, & more oft than not roll a 20! It's happened enough times that it's an ongoing joke at the table that she's a better healer than the cleric. :/
I think I'll use her 12th lv ASI to bump her Wis up as by that point she'll have a good bit of adventuring experience.

But just because I don't plan on maxing out a stat on this particular character until lv16+, I don't begrudge others from trying to do so ASAP.

 

[Caliban]

Does anybody else dislike Ability Score Increases?

Nope. I love ABI's and point buy.

Means that my decisions about my character are more important than whatever the dice dictated before I even started playing the game.

 

[Wulffolk]

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.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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?

I do hate ASIs for the same reason as you do, but I haven't seen a need to change the rules. Just make sure feats are available, and hew to bounded accuracy in your adventure design so that an Int 16 wizard remains a viable choice. It may turn out to be a Fighter 1/Enchanter 19 Lucky Skulker Tough Heavy Armor Master Int 16 wizard, but that's still very different from an Int 20 Enchanter 20.

And of course, some players will choose to max out their ASIs every time. That's fine, as long as you have a game which is giving them other viable options. Some people just plain have different preferences than you or I do.

 

[discosoc]

With 5E, I basically never care about ability scores. They aren't interesting and don't really help shape a character anymore (other than mechanical bonuses). I'll never forget my 2E fighter that rolled 18/93 for strength, but I can't even remember what my last character's primary stat was when we stopped playing; I'm sure it was an 18 or 20, but ultimately not very important.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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.

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.

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.

There has never been an edition where this was the case. Earlier editions didn't have a +1 to +5 scale, and later editions have always allowed scores higher than 18 without magic. And even if you did use 3d6 for stats, you'd still roll an 18 a little less than 0.5% of the time; there's nothing impressive in being the seventh-strongest person in the village. If you think that +3 is heroic and +5 is legendary, than that's just you not intuiting probability distributions accurately.

Maybe it is a generational difference that I don't think that everybody has the potential to be legendary.

Not everyone has the potential to reach high levels. Most people don't have the right mindset to throw themselves into danger like that. But given that you're only talking about a tiny minority of people who ever get to high levels anyway, why shouldn't those people have the potential to reach the peak of natural ability?

 

[BookBarbarian]

The only thing I dislike is that on ASI each stat has the same "cost" whereas on Point Buy Character creation, the cost doubles after 13. It would be better if ASI just means "You get 4 more stat points you can distribute" and then maybe make the last increase from 19 to 20 actually cost 3 points.

I actually like this. I can start with 13,13,13,12,12,12 or 13,13,13,13,13,10 and still max out my main stat and grab a feat or two. It's like a small reward for not mix-maxing out of the box.

It also encourages playing a non-Variant Human and I like encouraging things that are typically considered "Weak" or "Non-optimal".

 

[Wulffolk]

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.

A player character has multiple abilities that are either exceptional or heroic, which means that the only time they are the 7th strongest person in the village is if strength was not a priority to them.

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.

 

[iserith]

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.

A player character has multiple abilities that are either exceptional or heroic, which means that the only time they are the 7th strongest person in the village is if strength was not a priority to them.

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.

I think what is likely occurring is that some posters think there should be X number of fictitious people with certain scores in a given fantasy population and other posters who don't care about such considerations.

 

[BookBarbarian]

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.

Nope. My Primary was often not a 20.

I've played Barbarians that never had higher than an 18 or 16 in strength. Spending my low level ASIs on things like Great Weapon Master, and Polearm Master were more important for me when my character was all about increasing damage. And Shield Master or Tavern Brawler when my character was more about Locking a monsters down with shoves or grapples. And since the game never made it to high levels I never got it to a 20, even though my party mates had maxed there primary ability score.

Leaving Strength at 16 and increasing Con and then Dex when I wanted to play an Unarmored barbarian was way more fun than maxing the Primary.

I've played two handed weapon Rangers with only a 14 or 16 in Strength and only a 14 in Dex and Wisdom. I never came close to having a 20.

I did not have to have a 20 in the primary stat to have a fun time. My group did not require me to have a 20 either, even though some of them had 20 themselves.

But just because Maxing my main stat wasn't important to me for those characters doesn't mean I want to limit everyone else to have fun my way. To some increasing their Attack and Damage as they level up is an important part of the game. It's even sometimes important to me on other characters.