Ability Score Rebalancing

Xeviat said:

Pointing out checking on who will benefit from added abilities is a good way to make sure it isn't powering up the wrong characters.

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It's also a good way to introduce the general principle that increasing the benefit of any single attribute buffs any class that naturally increases that ability score anyways and to a much greater degree than the characters that dump the stat will feel any such changes you make (unless you just explicitly target the negative modifiers, but then getting the stat to 10 instead of 8 is the new stat dump...)

But, the big point is to make it so characters feel having a low stat, and to carefully consider which stat they dump.

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Why though? D&D is a class based game where each class is primarily defined by a small subset of ability scores. Any ability score that isn't one of your primary 3 (or 2 for some classes) is always going to be worse for a given class than one of it's primary ability scores. I mean - Even the "god-stat" dexterity gets dumped on strength based characters with heavy armor. When's the last time you seen the plate wearing PC sporting more than 8 dexterity (10 at the most)? I don't think I've ever seen that happen and dex is arguably the best combat stat in the game.

So getting back to the question - why do you have a problem with a non-int based PC dumping INT? Do you also have a problem with a plate wearing strength character dumping dexterity? Do you also have a problem with the wizard dumping strength?

Intelligence feels like the stat that is easiest to dump because the skills it is associated with are very active and they're very party wide. You only need one person to make that investigation or arcana check.

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Or maybe, just maybe - The biggest reasons you see intelligence dumped more are because
1) There's almost no useful multiclass combinations for it - which is one of the biggest drivers for people to take cha, dex, str or wis to 13 (which would be considered not dumping.
2) Your players find cha skills, dex skills and wisdom skills more fun.


I guess my biggest piece of advice, when it comes to avoiding ability scores dumping (if you still find it a worthy goal after some self reflection):
1. Change how you DM skills related to the stat in game
2. Change how characters are created - possibly change to rolling - try lowering character creation ability score maximums - for example you want smarter fighters then make 14 the new starting out 16 - that means 13 is your pre racial stat cap - try adjusting point buy such that buying 14's and 15's costs more than it currently does.

FrogReaver said:

I would say that’s exactly what it is - that such a person can't keep track of social events



now you are just explaining why they can’t do those things.



yes, that’s why we call them absent minded. That’s why they can’t keep track of social events or fashions.

More importantly though, absent minded isn’t so much about not keeping track of fashion or social events. Absent minded is a marked distractedness from what is currently going on around you. Typically because you are very focused on something you find more important or interesting. That’s absent minded. Such a character is inherently not perceptive - not aware of their surroundings.



That’s not true in the case of their perception - which is what my comment about the absent minded professor was actually about - someone proposed changing perception to be an int skill and I was explaining why that doesn’t make sense

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If someone is autistic, then that is something different. It is more like a flaw, a skill disadvantage, a penalty, or a disease, depending on the variety.



Normal distractedness − such as missing the exit off a highway because of being engrossed in a conversation − is precisely because the mind is ‘elsewhere’. People CAN pay attention to an upcoming exit. But they chose not to by doing something else.

Paying attention requires paying attention. Paying more attention to one thing comes at a cost of paying less attention to an other thing.



The six abilities fail anyway because Wisdom falsely correlates heightened senses and willpower.

Yaarel said:

If someone is autistic, then that is something different. It is more like a flaw, or a disease. Something like disadvantage on perception checks.

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The six abilities fail anyway because Wisdom falsely correlates sensory attention and willpower.

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There's no perfect ability score number. There's always something that will be left out. There's always something that will have to get mapped somewhere that isn't quite correct. For example your desire to have perception linked to intelligence undermines the whole absent minded professor concept. Wisdom is a much better place for int than that skill even though neither are perfectly in tune with it.

IMO, I would change wisdom to perception if I were to change it.

Paying attention has more to do with concentration mechanic. Somethings require concentration, and really that might mean disadvantage in whatever one isnt paying attention to.

Yaarel said:

Paying attention has more to do with concentration mechanic.

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No. You are confusing the name of the mechanic with what it does. If the concentration mechanic intended you to concentrate on the spell to the detriment of your senses then such a thing would have been spelled out in the rules.

Somethings require concentration, and really that might mean disadvantage in whatever one isnt paying attention to.

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Sure. But I'm not talking about someone who was distracted just this once and then is fine. That's not absent mindedness. Absent mindedness is when that state is typical for an individual, not an exception that happens occasionally.

If you want to model temporary concentration impacting senses then disadvantage works good. So does not allowing a skill check in the first place. Neither of those mechanically model absent mindedness if intelligence measures perception of your surroundings.

Absentmindedness is a reallife neurological phenomenon that D&D lacks a way to accurately represent.

With regard to REALLIFE absentedminded professors, they really dont care about the things that the majority of people care about.

The absentedminded person would RATHER spend their time thinking about math problems in their head (or whatever problem they find interested), without any attention to what shoes people are wearing or whose birthday it is. They just dont care. In their ideal world, everyone else would also care about the math that they are doing, so they could talk about it socially, and solve problems together.

Yaarel said:

With regard to REALLIFE absentedminded professors, they really dont care about the things that the majority of people care about.

The absentedminded person would RATHER spend their time thinking about math problems in their head (or whatever problem they find interested), without any attention to what shoes people are wearing or whose birthday it is. They just dont care. In their ideal world, everyone else would also care about the math that they are doing, so they could talk about it socially, and solve problems together.

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...and that makes them very unaware of their surroundings - ie extremely low perception all the time.

Yaarel said:

Absentmindedness is a reallife neurological phenomenon that D&D lacks a way to accurately represent.

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low perception and low attribute associate with perception. Now you can play absentminded and have the mechanics back you up.

-That is, you have created a mechanical reality and you are using the fluff of absentmindedness to explain the mechanics.

Focus is something that any human can normally do.

Whether it is focusing on hitting a baseball with a bat, or solving a math problem, or concentrating on watching a movie. While focusing, the rest of the world shuts out.

To mechanically represent focus, it something like an action that allows a skill check with advantage, while all other unrelated skill checks are at a disadvantage. Probably, focus should additionally require the concentration mechanic, in the sense that it is possible to interrupt someones focus.

Something like that. Focus is normal and routine. At least for humans.