Abilities Capped at 20 Won't Work

[Wiseblood]

If you care about a level playing field, you'd presumably use a point-buy system for ability scores in the first place, which this type of item would break. The 16 Str guy had to give up other scores in order to be ahead of the 12 Str guy, and this item would make that tradeoff meaningless.

^This is a strawman. Also this tradeoff would be meaningless only if he knew he would eventually see an item, in the campaign, that made said decision superfluous. Otherwise he made his decision for either gain or to hedge his bets.

I got the impression that trancejeremy was operating from the standpoint of rolling for abilities, by your post you did too.

 

[Lwaxy]

My issue with it is that this isn't backwards compatible, so I could not convert my campaigns to 5e if we wanted. It would confuse or destroy too many things. So, personally I'd rule the cap out of my games.

My players don't like it much but I would probably use the cap for any new 5e games. The reasoning why it is there makes sense to me.

 

[ren1999]

We shouldn't have to constantly refer to any table, that is why we should have a formula for modifiers.

The 1d20 with only a maximum modifier of +5 means that randomness means too much.

I'm saying that a maximum roll on anything should be 1d20+10. The +10 comes from ability30(ability modifier +10)

That bonus of +10 includes racial bonus, class bonus, level-up, magic items, spell effects and feat effects.

Take that ability modifier and apply it to skills, toHit, and damage.

Let the dexterity modifier and better armor improve the AC.

Capping at 20 is too low when you can roll an 18 for an ability. Capping at 30 will allow you to stack feats, items, effects and level-up into the ability.

For those of you who say that no ability should improve when leveling-up, I think you're in the minority. You're all agreeing with each other here but others don't.

If you still want a cap at 20, tell me how you would have leveling-up and magic items stack up in a bonus.

 

[enigma5915]

I have to disagree with abilities going up with leveling. I agree that race is a primary factor and maybe class is a possible secondary factor. Flat math is awesome sauce!

Though as a side note on races as a primary factor to abilities I have to point out the ogre in the room. In my most humble opinion there is no way a human should naturaly ever be near as strong as an ogre (ever) Though magic can of course affect this. Furthermore a halfling's potential maximum should be nowhere near as strong as a human's potential maximum. just saying....food for thought.

 

[Hautamaki]

As a 3e-turned-4e DM, I intensely dislike uncapped player character ability scores. I would rather have characters bump up against the cap and then get the opportunity to broaden their horizons by boosting lesser-used stats.

I also think that if stat-boosting items are to return, they should have diminishing returns. For example gauntlets of ogre power could provide a +6 to characters with strength 13 or lower, +4 if 14-17, or +2 if 18+.

I use a system for skill ranks that could be applicable here. Similar to point-buy systems.

Basically, anything that gives you a +X bonus to an ability score works only up until you get to 18. After 18, you need a total of +2 bonus to Strength to get to 19. In order to get to 20, you need a total of +5, and to get to 21 you need a total of +9.

The formula is destination score - 17 = total bonus required to reach. 19-17=2 (you need +2). 20-17=3 (you need +2 to get to 19 and then another +3 to go from 19 to 20). 21-17=4 (you need 2 + 3 + 4) and so on.

 

[Li Shenron]

e.g., I could imagine a flat +1 to all ability scores every few levels or so, just as a means for a very limited all-around levelling power gain. That might feel suitably epic eventually. But not too much, and certainly not selectively.

But this IMO would still be not so useful for the game, and it still requires a lot of work to update everything on your character sheet which depends on those bonuses.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Not only would I keep the ability score cap at 20, I would go two steps further.

Step One: I would apply racial modifiers to the limit of 20. Humans, having no racial modifiers, would max out all skills scores at 20. Dwarves, having a +2 racial bonus to Constitution and a -2 racial penalty to Charisma*, would max out at 22 Con and 18 Cha. That way, even the sweetest and most charming maxed-out super-dwarf will still be less charismatic than the sweetest and most charming maxed-out super-human.

I got the impression they had chosen 20 because it's a round number, and also happens to be the highest you could get by the rules at the moment: you roll or buy an 18 in your stat, get +1 from race, +1 from class and BAM 20.

So you might want to make the maximum stat 18 and then adjust by race/class. Or just stick with 20 as it's the max achievable anyway. I guess it depends if you get later ability increases.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

We shouldn't have to constantly refer to any table, that is why we should have a formula for modifiers.

The 1d20 with only a maximum modifier of +5 means that randomness means too much.

I'm saying that a maximum roll on anything should be 1d20+10. The +10 comes from ability30(ability modifier +10)

That bonus of +10 includes racial bonus, class bonus, level-up, magic items, spell effects and feat effects.

Take that ability modifier and apply it to skills, toHit, and damage.

Let the dexterity modifier and better armor improve the AC.

Capping at 20 is too low when you can roll an 18 for an ability. Capping at 30 will allow you to stack feats, items, effects and level-up into the ability.

For those of you who say that no ability should improve when leveling-up, I think you're in the minority. You're all agreeing with each other here but others don't.

If you still want a cap at 20, tell me how you would have leveling-up and magic items stack up in a bonus.

You seem to have a very particular and fixed vision of how characters will advance as they level up. We have *no idea* right now what will increase and when, and we have no idea how difficult high level hazards and monsters will be to overcome and hit respectively.

I will address your comment about 'randomness' though. A +5 modifier cannot be compared to the variance of the die roll in any meaningful way. You can only compare the *spread* of modifiers across several characters/levels/situations to the variance of the die roll. For instance, if the largest difference in attack roll modifiers we see is 5, this is less than the standard deviation of a d20 (5.77). In practice, it would feel like the better character wasn't that special, because the die roll is swingier than the difference between the characters. If the largest difference in modifiers we saw was +15, then it would feel like the better character was genuinely superior than the worse.

There is a tricky balance to be found between making the differences between characters seem meaningful, without producing situations in which a party cannot function in parallel. At high level in 3E there were huge differences between characters' save, skill and attack bonuses such that a DM would find it difficult to create an encounter in which everyone had a fair chance. Now I don't mind this with different skills, so different characters can shine, but it's not good when only some characters can hit or resist an effect, but others can't. 4E realised this, and took action to reduce differences across different characters as best it could. There were still fairly big differences in skills (acceptable), defenses (due to feats, less acceptable), but almost no difference in attacks (I don't remember a larger difference within a party of more than 2), which was maybe overcompensating for 3E.

The differences in 5E are on the same scale as differences in ability modifiers (-1 to +5, nominally), with another +-2 on attacks from class-specific features, +-2 on AC from shields (assuming they fix armour a bit) and +-3 on skills. Provided (god I hope) they don't introduce feats or abilities that allow any greater differences, we should be in good shape for functional, but diverse characters. They even have some design space to modify specific saving throws. I hope that the flatter math will keep differences <10!

 

[Minigiant]

And that is fine, as long as they are willing to settle for lackluster stats in other ability scores. Tanking all of your stats to get an 18 should be possible...but it's a risky proposition, now that skills AND save throws are keyed to every single ability score.

Actually might enocurage 18/12/10.... builds and 14/14/14/14/14/14 builds

 

[Ahnehnois]

Limiting ability scores to 20 means you can't have superhuman characters. This is kind of a problem for some people and styles.

It also means you have to explain to a player of a character with a 20 Wis why he can't get any wiser. He's already become the wisest person possible with a mere 2 points above the maximum starting score. Incidentally, there has always been a cap of some sort on starting abilities, which is different from a flat cap overall.

What's the argument for it? Balance? Anything else? I don't see anything convincing here.