D&D 5E Old Vexed Question: All too Important Dexterity Stat and Finesse Weapons, namely the Rapier

[iserith]

I don't remember who it was but someone said they had a group where the highest str was 10. It was in this forum in an earlier thread on the same subject.

Could have been Hussar or maybe Harzel.

Due to using player pools and multiple characters per player, I have seen some instances of parties having all 8 Strength. It wasn't a problem for me as DM. That's a player-side problem of not being well-equipped to deal with certain kinds of challenges.

 

[lluewhyn]

4E attempted to solve this by allowing two or more stats to provide similar effects. Int was available for both AC and Initiative, for example and Fort AC could key off Str or Con and the ever objectionable damage being dealt by Charisma for paladins! It certainly moved the game towards making more classes SAD, but it dramatically reduced the necessity for people to pump dex.

And had the unfortunate side effect of encouraging all Rogues to be dumb as bricks. My first 3.0 character was a Mastermind-type Rogue, and I looked at how 4.0 set things up and realized that would be one character I could never convert....

 

[Mrodron]

Did not go through the whole thread so I am not sure if this was already suggested: What if d8 finesse melee weapons had the same strength 13 requirement the long bow has? This would at least stop the most obnoxious str 8 dual wielding rapier builds. I guess it would make some sense conceptually: while rapiers are used as if they were light weapons, they are not light. Therefore they require strength as well.

 

[Immortal Sun]

And had the unfortunate side effect of encouraging all Rogues to be dumb as bricks. My first 3.0 character was a Mastermind-type Rogue, and I looked at how 4.0 set things up and realized that would be one character I could never convert....

That wasn't a result of the two-or-more stats thing. That was a result of removing stats from skills and removing skill points. The latter there 5E has retained.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This would at least stop the most obnoxious str 8 dual wielding rapier builds.

What's wrong with it? The game is designed to support different kinds of fighters. The party will still need a strong character for dungeoneering, but there is no reason it shouldn't be the cleric, for example.

 

[5ekyu]

Did not go through the whole thread so I am not sure if this was already suggested: What if d8 finesse melee weapons had the same strength 13 requirement the long bow has? This would at least stop the most obnoxious str 8 dual wielding rapier builds. I guess it would make some sense conceptually: while rapiers are used as if they were light weapons, they are not light. Therefore they require strength as well.

What Str 13 longbow requirement?

 

[Mrodron]

What's wrong with it? The game is designed to support different kinds of fighters. The party will still need a strong character for dungeoneering, but there is no reason it shouldn't be the cleric, for example.

The person who started this thread found rapier's dex damage an issue, so I gave him a suggestion (based on a mistake, see below). The person is not alone: quite a few have observed that not only the game supports "different kinds of fighters", some find the different kind of fighters favourable over the regular type of fighters. We don't see many threads about the superiority of the strength-based fighters and suggestions to use more rust monsters or fireballs to target dex-saves more often to tame them.

 

[Mrodron]

What Str 13 longbow requirement?

I was completely under the impression that longbows required strength of 13! Maybe they (and rapiers) should, but I was wrong about this one.

 

[ad_hoc]

The person who started this thread found rapier's dex damage an issue, so I gave him a suggestion (based on a mistake, see below). The person is not alone: quite a few have observed that not only the game supports "different kinds of fighters", some find the different kind of fighters favourable over the regular type of fighters. We don't see many threads about the superiority of the strength-based fighters and suggestions to use more rust monsters or fireballs to target dex-saves more often to tame them.

Just because 'quite a few' people raise an issue doesn't mean that issue has merit.

Perhaps this few should read why many others don't have the same issues in their game. Maybe the problem isn't that rapiers do d8 damage and is instead somewhere else in their games.

 

[5ekyu]

The person who started this thread found rapier's dex damage an issue, so I gave him a suggestion (based on a mistake, see below). The person is not alone: quite a few have observed that not only the game supports "different kinds of fighters", some find the different kind of fighters favourable over the regular type of fighters. We don't see many threads about the superiority of the strength-based fighters and suggestions to use more rust monsters or fireballs to target dex-saves more often to tame them.

uhh... uhh... uhh...

"We don't see many threads about the superiority of the strength-based fighters "

Have you missed the tons of GWM heavy weapon fighters threads, PAM threads, Glaive-reach-sentinel threads...

As others have stated and asked - because it doesn't seem to actually yield solid excesses in play - the rapier thing often seems more to be a "this bugs me" theorycraft thing than it is an actual in-play excess of outcome issue.

thats why you get multiple folks asking "is this in play and if so what were the circumstances and problems experienced."

Historical aside...

Honestly, one of the most fun games i was in as a player was back in 1e and we had a party of like two mages, a thief, a cleric/thief and a monk maybe - and as such it was a pretty dex heavy group without a lot of high power bash and stand and take it power...

so we chose tactics to fit that - lots of hit and run - lots of sneak - etc. Was a great summer game.

Through edition after edition and game system after game system - we saw lots of changes in parties from one campaign to another and never saw it as a "problem" that we did not have a perfect balance of styles in each group in each game - but instead saw it as opporunities to play differently and try for different solutions to different challenges.

right now my group of players chose a pair of bards, a ranger, a barbarian and a druid. The last group was a pair of clerics, a paladin, and a sorcerer. One before that was a pick-up semi-campaign with some turn-over at the FLGS table but the core start was three rogues, one cleric, one sorc, one bard.

needless to say those groups played way differently as far as Ac. HP, strengths and weaknesses and had very different levels of "dex vs str" focus. But none of them were noticably skewed in terms of performance by "what ability score is top" more than anything seen in play driven by player choices.