D&D 5E Please Cap the Ability Scores in 5E

[Kingreaper]

Soft caps are good. But you don't get a good soft cap by having lots of +1s all over the place. A good soft cap comes from things like point-buy stats, and having things that provide bonus points. Or items that only boost your strength if it's below a certain amount (ie. gloves of hercules, increase your strength by (10-your str mod). If your strength without them is 20, with them it's 25. If without them it's 10, with them it's 20. If without them it's 30, you get no effect)

 

[El Mahdi]

Whether the core rules include a cap or not, my games will continue to.

Of the options presented, I chose ̴ 20 because that's the option closest to what I want. I'd actually prefer 25, but not 25+.

Since Strength values are almost identical between 3E and 4E (I didn't check for earlier editions), I once compared Strength Values in D&D to real world equivalents. The highest documented real-world strength for a man was 23, and for a woman 21. For those that want a difference between Male & Female charcters, there's the real numbers (not a penalty, but a cap). However, I've found in my games that enforcing the difference between male & female characters is insignificant enough that it wasn't worth the problems that come with that. Could it be possible that in the distant past there was a man or woman that exceeded those numbers? Sure. Do I think it has ever happened? No.


But, from a play standpoint, I've found that the bonuses involved by even limiting to a Strength of 25 are extremely significant, even game changing.


In my games though, I don't have regular Ability increases based on level. One has to take a Feat for specific training to raise an Ability Score. It allows for really high scores if one wants them, but at a significant cost in Feats, which tends to limit such incredibly high scores to a rare occurance.


Maybe what Monte and Company might want to look at is changing the Strength score divisions themselves. Making the equivalent of a 25 Strength (in weight that can be lifted) to be the new 20 or 21, but with the same bonuses that 20 or 21 possessed.


But either way, as I said at the beginning of this post; whether Monte and Company install a cap or not, my games will continue to have a cap, and those who don't want one will likely just ignore them anyways.

 

[Lanefan]

I prefer an almost-hard cap at racial maximum for any stat.; almost-hard because the following ought to be able to bypass it:

- percentile increments (a la 1e Cavalier) - if a percentile grinds a stat up to and over a racial max. I'm cool with that, if only because it's very slow and can only go so far
- specific magic items e.g. Girdle of Giant Strength that only work when worn
- specific and rare magics that can permanently affect stats on a one-time basis e.g. a magic pool, a Tome of Learning, etc.

And the racial maximum for any stat should ideally be less than 20, if only to make the ability-check mechanism remain relevant (it's become useless in 3e-4e)

Lanefan

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'll repeat my preference from another thread:

Ability score range (modifier):

1 (+0)
2-3 (+1)
4-6 (+2)
7-10 (+3)
11-15 (+4)
16-21 (+5)
22-28 (+6)
...

Change the math so that the +3 at ability score 10 is roughly equal to the +0 at 10 in previous versions. Use point buy at the start (with optional rolling for stats methods), and point-buy is 1:1 from point:ability score. 10 score costs you 10 points. (Or less if you start people at 6 or 8 or whatever, but still clearly 1:1 from that base.)

Whatever "points" you allow for future stat boosts, if any, are effectively soft-capped in relation to each other, if nothing else, since each +1 mod costs more than the previous one. Very easy for sidebars to then put caps on these points for various power levels, or even hard caps on ability mods for stylistic reasons.

If encumbrance and a few other such reasonable things are based off of ability score instead of mod, you get much better scaling for things like giants and dragons. They can have a relatively huge Str score to represent their leverage, without sending their combat abilities through the roof. That actually makes ability score and modifier separately useful, since the former is linear but the latter is sharply compressed as it rises, relative to the score.

 

[dkyle]

I think, systematically, there have been meaningful alternatives to raising a single stat like strength ever since 3e came out. The main problem I see is that each player ultimately determines what's really meaningful for his style of play and his character. I don't see many ways for an RPG to get around that.

Naturally, every player will have their own priorities that will lead them to value certain options over others. That's not much of a "problem". The key is to understand what players are likely to be looking for, and ensure a wide variety of options are worth considering. And a it should be easy for a designer to predict that in a game like D&D, effectiveness in combat will be a common goal.

The problem in 3.5 was that a very common, and very broad priority ("I want to be good in melee combat") means that very little was worth giving up STR for.

 

[Kaodi]

I think part of the problem is that not all of the abilities are susceptible to the same sort of arguments for capping. It is easy enough to imagine and roleplay someone with insane strength, pretenatural reflexes, unbending endurance, and practically divine charisma. But what exactly supernaturally high levels of intelligence and wisdom mean for a character is not anywhere near as clear.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The biggest issue I have with uncapped ability scores, though, is the impact they have on other game mechanics. I'm not sure if it is the same in 4E, but in 3.x it is assumed that characters will spend all of their hard-earned gold on "buff" items and spells. If a 12th-level fighter isn't carrying around tens of thousands of goldpieces worth of gear, he isn't a "true" 12th level fighter (the challenge ratings, encounter levels, and so forth will become unbalanced.) Are you saving up to buy a castle? Do you give your gold to the poor? Want to raise an army? You had better hope your DM is generous, or merciful, or both.

It seems to me that you want to fix the problem of being able to buy magic items by placing a cap on attributes. Wouldn't a better fix be to not allow the PCs to purchase magic items?

If purchase is possible and magic items give useful benefits of some kind, as I'm certain they will, then the PCs will just spend their money on other kinds of useful items anyway, such as damage boosters, AC boosters, saving throw boosters, wands of CLW, spell scrolls or whatever.

 

[CleverNickName]

It seems to me that you want to fix the problem of being able to buy magic items by placing a cap on attributes. Wouldn't a better fix be to not allow the PCs to purchase magic items?

If purchase is possible and magic items give useful benefits of some kind, as I'm certain they will, then the PCs will just spend their money on other kinds of useful items anyway, such as damage boosters, AC boosters, saving throw boosters, wands of CLW, spell scrolls or whatever.

Yeah, don't get me started on wholesale magic items.

 

[Sunseeker]

Absolutely not.

You wanna cap it in your own game? Do so.

 

[Mattachine]

I like the soft cap: don't provide many ways for characters to get stat increases.

I am not, generally, in favor of ability-boost items. When the game includes them, they become the most important item for most characters to get--boost the main stat to make you the best at what you do. For my games, this meant that every character had the relevant stat boost item by mid-level (10-12th), and looked for ways to get an even better one. In 3e, this meant every character past a certain level had 2 or 3 stat boost items. If 5e features ability checks, such items will be even more important! GAH!

If you present the idea that there are only these one or two ways to have increased stats, the cap takes care of itself. Certainly, different play styles might introduce additional ways to raise stats; those "mods" would have to then take higher ability scores into account.