Return of the NADs: Common Fixes

[Tequila Sunrise]

I've finally decided that low NADs are a problem, but haven't decided what to do about them. So I came here; the forum where I've seen the most Fix the NADs! threads. Here's what I've come up with:

1. An extra +1 stat boost at each 4th and 8th level. This seems to be the most common fix, but doesn't work for all builds. (Which is a problem for me.) I could always make it two extra +1s.

2. Give everyone virtual stat bonuses, for the purpose of NADs. For example if your best Will stat is your 12 Charisma at 30th level (because you didn't put any optional boosts into it), your virtual Charisma is 18 for the purpose of your Will defense. This is likely the most balanced option, but requires extra bookkeeping from level 1.

3. NAD minimums, such as 10 + level. This is the simplest option, but the ugliest.

Any other ideas?

 

[FireLance]

One idea that I had looked at previously was an item-based solution: Heavy Armor for the Non-AC Defenses

The basic idea is to mimic the way that heavy armor gets around a similar problem when it comes to AC for characters who would otherwise not have a reason to increase Dexterity or Intelligence. Instead of granting a small bonus to AC on top of the bonus to AC granted by Dexterity or Intelligence, heavy armor grants a larger bonus to AC, but characters in heavy armor generally cannot add their Dexterity or Intelligence bonus to AC. Effectively, the bonus from a high ability score is factored into the overall bonus to AC granted by heavy armor.

So, I came up with the following three special materials which can be added to a magic item to allow it to grant a flat bonus to a non-AC defense in place of the normal ability score bonus. My initial inclination is to add the bonus for free (after all, it fixes what I consider to be a flaw in the base rules), but DMs who are not comfortable with that approach may either add a premium for magic items that have one of the following properties (e.g. increasing the cost of the magic to that of an item 1 or 2 levels higher) or by making it a 2nd+ or 3rd+ level magic item (effectively, adding it as a property to a +X magic armor or amulet of protection).

Guardsteel replaces the bonus to your Fortitude defense normally granted by Strength or Constitution with a bonus equal to the enhancement bonus of the item, or a +1 bonus for every 5 levels of the item, i.e. +1 for a 1st to 5th level item, +2 for a 6th to 10th level item, etc. If you do not wear or use an item made with swiftmetal or wardiron, the bonus to your Fortitude defense increases by 1. Guardsteel can be used in any item, but it is normally placed into a suit of armor, a neck slot item, or a waist slot item.

Swiftmetal replaces the bonus to your Reflex defense normally granted by Dexterity or Intelligence with a bonus equal to the enhancement bonus of the item, or a +1 bonus for every 5 levels of the item, i.e. +1 for a 1st to 5th level item, +2 for a 6th to 10th level item, etc. If you do not wear or use an item made with guardsteel or wardiron, the bonus to your Reflex defense increases by 1. Swiftmetal can be used in any item, but it is normally placed into a suit of armor, a neck slot item, an arms slot item, or a foot slot item.

Wardiron replaces the bonus to your Will defense normally granted by Wisdom or Charisma with a bonus equal to the enhancement bonus of the item, or a +1 bonus for every 5 levels of the item, i.e. +1 for a 1st to 5th level item, +2 for a 6th to 10th level item, etc. If you do not wear or use an item made with guardsteel or swiftmetal, the bonus to your Will defense increases by 1. Wardiron can be used in any item, but it is normally placed into a suit of armor, a neck slot item, or a head slot item.​

The additional one-point bonus if you do not wear or use an item made with one of the other materials is to give a small advantage to those who only need to boost one defense. If you need to boost two, you will be slightly worse off.

 

[Kingreaper]

A weird one I've been toying with:

Make the stat increases at 4th, 8th etc. point-buy.

ie. you get a certain number of points, and can split them as you will; except that you cannot boost any stat by more than 1 at a given level. People will be more inclined to boost tertiary stats etc. but can choose just to keep boosting up their main stats.

Haven't had a chance to try it out though.

 

[BruntFCA]

Isn't the whole point of the rules that you can't get *all* your defences good?

I mean why bother with different classes, with different defence specializations, and mosters that attack different stats if your just gonna perma buff the NADS (which do scale with level anyway).

If you want to min/max, there are still feats you can take to boost NADS, if you want to min/max and not take those feats, then thats your choice. YOu could house-rule that you can be a super power ranger min maxed and with super NADS as well if you want to; sounds like it would be a boring game though.

 

[Kingreaper]

The point is the same as it was in 3.5:

If the NADs become too far apart, a reasonable attacker Vs. one can become sillily effective Vs. another.

 

[Zinovia]

Isn't the whole point of the rules that you can't get *all* your defences good?

I mean why bother with different classes, with different defence specializations, and mosters that attack different stats if your just gonna perma buff the NADS (which do scale with level anyway).

The problem is that the NADS don't scale *enough* in relation to monster attack bonuses. This is only a problem at higher levels of play. The differences at character creation are just fine.

The math has been crunched elsewhere in more detail, but as a quick example, let's take two characters, a fighter and a fey warlock, and compare their fortitude - based on a 18 str for the fighter and a 12 con for the feylock.

Level 1:
Fighter - Fort 16
Warlock - Fort 11

A level 1 creature attacks with a 4 vs Fortitude, and hits the fighter on 12+, the warlock on 7+. Not unreasonable.

The fighter boosts his strength every time, along with wisdom or dex. The feylock boosts charisma every time, along with int. At level 11, all stats go up by 1. The fighter now has a str of 21, while the feylock has a con of 13. Lets say that having just reached paragon, they still have +2 neck items.

Level 11:
Fighter - Fort 24
Warlock - Fort 18

A level 11 creature will have increased its attack value by 10 during this interval (1/level), for a 14 vs Fort. It hits the fighter on a 10+ and the warlock on a 4+. Even with an instant upgrade to a +3 neck item, the monsters still hit more easily at this level than they did at 1st.

On the way to epic tier, the fighter continues to boost str every time and is up to 24. Let's say the warlock boosts int and con, for a total of 15 con. With +4 neck items at level 21 it looks like this:

Level 21:
Fighter - Fort 33
Warlock - Fort 26

The difference between them is up to 7 (starting at 5 at 1st level). The level 21 creature attacking with 24 vs. Fort will hit the fighter on a 9+ and the warlock on a 2+. Even with a +5 neck item, this is still not scaling evenly. There are items and feats to help make up for the monsters' increasing to hit bonuses, but let's focus on the difference between the characters for now.

So on to level 30, boosting the same stats as last time; fighter takes strength up again, while the warlock boosts con once and int once (along with charisma). This gives the fighter a 26 strength, and the warlock a 16 con. Assume +6 neck items, and no feats or NAD boosting items.

Level 30:
Fighter - Fort 41
Warlock - Fort 34

A level 30 creature attacks with 33 vs. Fort, hitting the fighter on 8+ and the warlock on a 2+. Even trying to boost con a couple times, and starting with a 12 CON didn't stop the warlock from being hit on a 2 in epic tier. By raising con, she managed to not drop further away from the fighter - but a character that didn't boost their Fort stat twice would have fallen to a difference of 8 at level 30 (vs 5 at level 1).

This is why there are many house rules regarding NADs and how to boost them. I ban the expertise feats and Paragon defenses, and instead grant all characters Math Expertise for free. It boosts attack rolls and NADs by 1 at levels 5, 15, and 25. Furthermore I also allow 3 stats to be raised at the 4/8 levels (4/8/14/18/24/28). This helps alleviate the discrepancies, and allows for some choice among the characters. They don't *have* to boost their weak NAD stat, but it makes it easier for them to do so.

No one is trying to make the warlock have the same Fort as the fighter; they just want it to scale more evenly, so that difference stays closer to what it started as, rather than getting worse and worse in relation.

 

[Bladesong]

Retracted

 

[eriktheguy]

Defenses should probably all be +/-5 of each other. That's more than enough range for characters to have significant weaknesses, and stay within the 'enemies need 7-12' range.
I've toyed with a million ideas.
Boost an extra ability at levels 4/8/14/18/24/28:
Works for characters that focus on three different ability categories.
Boost 4 (or all) abilities at levels 4/8/14/18/24/28:
Works for all characters, and helps skills to scale with level.
Some sort of static boost to the lowest NADs:
It can work, ugly, hard to define
DM Metagame:
I put all the players defenses on a whiteboard each session. It wouldn't be hard for me to observe which are the lowest, and make a mental note to 'buff those by 2'. When I roll to hit I can add the numbers without the players ever noticing.

I created an alternate rules set that included making NADs independent of ability scores. In theory it doesn't upset balance and helps avoid those ugly 18/10/16/10/16/11 ability score arrays. I could edit a copy of it and post in this thread. I also have a variant that doesn't add ability scores to attacks, but it doesn't cover any of the issues in this thread.

I personally hope that 5e decides to make attacks rolls and defenses independent of ability scores. Scaling with level is enough, and giving players more freedom of ability scores means that the players design the character instead of choosing one of the 3 builds that works with their class.

 

[Amaroq]

Bladesong, I don't think anybody's disputing that there ought to be a difference in the NADs, and that the Warlock should have a better Wil defense and the Fighter a better Fort defense.

The question is, why should those differences get larger as the characters level up?

Since the range of possible attack rolls (20 + C) never changes, it puts the DM in a bind when he decides he wants to attack a NAD.

If he scales a Fort attack to hit the Fighter reasonably well, it hits the Warlock all the time. If he scales it instead to hit the Warlock on a 7+, the Fighter is all but immune to it, and instead gets the "oh, look, they hit me, that's a critical" mechanic.

Same, flipped, for the Will attack.

 

[Kingreaper]

Let me start by taking a tangent bounce off of this post. The gaming style I like tends to lean this way.

Everyone being the same is boring...it would be in life, it is the same with everything else. One gender, one profession, everyone the same...BORING...and impossible...striving for this is foolish anyway. Souls are equal, but every other aspect is not.

Case in point...two 30 year old individuals...one a ditch digger and one a librarian, each with 10 years on their respective job (i.e. same "experience points" in life) asked to walk a hundred miles in a certain time frame. Likely the ditch digger would accomplish it in better shape. Ask the same two to take a million question test with a set time frame and the librarian is likely to accomplish it in better shape.

The thread has only shown one side of the equation(to use part of an example in the thread):

Level 21: Fighter-Fort 33 Warlock-Fort 26
Level 30: Fighter-Fort 41 Warlock-Fort 34

Is not the following likely to be the case for the same characters?:

Level 21: Fighter-Will 26 Warlock-Will 33
Level 30: Fighter-Will 34 Warlock-Will 41

Ummm, you missed the point.

The 33 goes up 8, to 41, fine.
The 26 goes up 7, to 33.

The gap has gotten larger.
That's the issue, not the existance of a gap at all.