D&D 5E What needs to be fixed in 5E?

[keterys]

The thing is, suppose you built your fighter with a 14 STR, and I built mine with an 18 STR, wouldn't I EXPECT to gain a benefit from that.

So, let's say you have 3 fighters...

1: 18 Str, 14 Con, 14 Dex
2: 14 Str, 18 Con, 14 Dex
3: 14 Str, 14 Con, 18 Dex

Let's say, then, that...
1) Deals more melee damage
2) Is tougher and harder to kill
3) Is faster and more acrobatic

None of those have anything to do with a bonus to attack rolls, and each gets a benefit from a different investment in a stat. That's just fine.

What doesn't make sense is now where you might choose between, say, a bonus to attack, damage, ac, ref, init, your best skills _and_ hp (with a handy background)... or a mild bonus to some secondary stuff (say fort, and a skill check you'll rarely make like endurance). Stats get too overloaded.

 

[Stalker0]

So, let's say you have 3 fighters...

1: 18 Str, 14 Con, 14 Dex
2: 14 Str, 18 Con, 14 Dex
3: 14 Str, 14 Con, 18 Dex

Let's say, then, that...
1) Deals more melee damage
2) Is tougher and harder to kill
3) Is faster and more acrobatic

None of those have anything to do with a bonus to attack rolls, and each gets a benefit from a different investment in a stat. That's just fine.

What doesn't make sense is now where you might choose between, say, a bonus to attack, damage, ac, ref, init, your best skills _and_ hp (with a handy background)... or a mild bonus to some secondary stuff (say fort, and a skill check you'll rarely make like endurance). Stats get too overloaded.

This is a better summary of what I was trying to argue earlier. The problem is not that a fighter needs strength to make his attack rolls, its that he has no other competing options.

In 3e, I played a few fighters that had a higher con than strength, just because of how powerful con was.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know that they're too overloaded. I think you most certainly have a lot of choices, but for any given reasonable stat distribution there are nice fighter builds. There are some very nice fighter builds that leverage CON, DEX, or WIS, and you can make interesting and effective CHA and INT builds too for that matter. Is every build exactly as good as every other? That's really both highly subjective and hard to say. I think 4e does pretty well here. You can argue it isn't perfect, but going all the way back to zero and doing it all a different way IMHO just guarantees you're going to make other mistakes. Why not take where the game is now and tweak things a little bit and definitely improve it?

That's one of the things I don't get with all the "lets change everything" POV. Realistically you're just going back to the bottom of the hill and starting over, when the existing system is 90% of the way to the best it can be.

 

[keterys]

And which valid fighter (weaponmaster) build has a 14 Str?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And which valid fighter (weaponmaster) build has a 14 Str?

How do you define "valid"?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And which valid fighter (weaponmaster) build has a 14 Str?

Nobody says you'll make a character with a 14 STR. You can build a character that emphasizes CON, WIS, or DEX without problems. You'll still want to be strong. That's kind of my point. I simply don't get the whole "I want to make a relatively weak fighter", IMHO said character isn't going to be depicted well using the fighter class, that's all. OTOH you can make a fighter with a high (higher than your STR if you care to) secondary stat. These are perfectly solid builds too (as basically every dwarf fighter before Essentials will attest to).

I don't think there's anything wrong with fiddling with uniform stat dependency, but I suspect that when you actually design a system it gets to be a real PITA right quick and 4e devs found that out.

 

[KidSnide]

I tend to think that stat-based bonuses are problematic because of how they distort the ability allocation. The to-hit bonus is so important that there are very few instances where an optimized character doesn't want to maximize that bonus at the cost of whatever other benefits are available.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'distorted' either. You're going to have good stats and not-so-good stats, that's just the nature of the game and always has been. Heroes are generally the best of the best, and a strong fighter or an agile fighter will be that. NPCs might be lesser warriors and not so strong, PCs are the most gifted and what they're gifted at is what benefits them at their archetype.

Distorted means that choosing the 18 Str is always the right choice. (This is even easier to see for a Wizard, where maximizing your intelligence is always the right decision -- unless you know the character will only be played for a few levels in which the 17 base start is just as good as the 18.)

As it's been pointed out, the 18 Str, 14 Con, 14 Dex fighter totally dominates the 14/18/14 and the 14/14/18. Even worse, the 18/14/14 fighter dominates the 16/16/16 fighter and the 14/18/18 fighter. It probably dominates the 14/20/20 fighter too. The prime attack stat is just too important. I don't think the 14/14/18 fighter needs to be just as good as the 18/14/14 fighter, but I wish you could play a 14/14/18 fighter without dragging down a party. I doubt that character would be as effective as an 18/14/14 fighter with the CB set to auto-generate.

-KS

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Distorted means that choosing the 18 Str is always the right choice. (This is even easier to see for a Wizard, where maximizing your intelligence is always the right decision -- unless you know the character will only be played for a few levels in which the 17 base start is just as good as the 18.)

As it's been pointed out, the 18 Str, 14 Con, 14 Dex fighter totally dominates the 14/18/14 and the 14/14/18. Even worse, the 18/14/14 fighter dominates the 16/16/16 fighter and the 14/18/18 fighter. It probably dominates the 14/20/20 fighter too. The prime attack stat is just too important. I don't think the 14/14/18 fighter needs to be just as good as the 18/14/14 fighter, but I wish you could play a 14/14/18 fighter without dragging down a party. I doubt that character would be as effective as an 18/14/14 fighter with the CB set to auto-generate.

-KS

I don't think it is as extreme as that though. A 16 STR is perfectly adequate and there are compensating factors. Because stat point buy is non-linear an 18 in one stat costs you a 16 in 2 others (almost). You get 18/12/12/10/10/10 vs 16/16/12/10/10/10. The later gives you a lot more flexibility in terms of meeting feat requirements and etc. From an absolute min/max perspective it SOMETIMES makes sense to buy the 18, but not often. Again, you look at the classic dwarf fighter your post-racials are going to be 16 STR and some combination of CON/WIS, and you can easily start with an 18 in either of those if you want, and it is not a bad idea at all.

Honestly I just still don't know why it is necessary to support lower prime reqs as near-optimal choices. The wizards that are going to move and shake the world clearly are the ones with extraordinary intellect, etc.

 

[keterys]

And none of that has to do anything with attack bonuses.

We've got lots of evidence in how monsters are handled to know they don't need to be tied together.

 

[KidSnide]

Honestly I just still don't know why it is necessary to support lower prime reqs as near-optimal choices. The wizards that are going to move and shake the world clearly are the ones with extraordinary intellect, etc.

It depends somewhat on the class. For wizards, it doesn't bother me that Int dominates, but for fighters it seems like a high con or dex build should be very effective alternatives. For warlords, it's even worse -- why can't you have an effective charismatic or intelligent warlord without making him brawny as all hell?

-KS