D&D 5E Ability Scores Are Different Now?

[gyor]

Great Weapon Master fighter isn't a subclass anymore, the fighter subclasses are Champion, Battlemaster, and Eldrich Knight.

And doing the math without looking at the effect of possible feats that one could take in place of stat bump will distort results.

Example Shield Master feat allows you to knock an enemy prone with your shield with bonus action granting you advanatage for your next attack, which boost accuracy (reroll).

Then you have the Paladin, which is the primary stat, Strength or Charisma.

 

[doctorhook]

I agree and I love it. I think a 16 will do for your whole adventuring career thanks to bounded accuracy and the availability of advantage and bless. I despised the 4e stat treadmill. Unmaxed stats working just fine is one of the best thing about 5e imo.

This!

 

[Marshall]

I agree and I love it. I think a 16 will do for your whole adventuring career thanks to bounded accuracy and the availability of advantage and bless. I despised the 4e stat treadmill. Unmaxed stats working just fine is one of the best thing about 5e imo.

I know Its en vogue to hate on 4e here, but 4e doesn't have a stat treadmill. You get 8 points of prime stat increases over 30 levels or 10 with a good ED with 3 and 5(ED) of those coming in Epic. Thats EXACTLY the same number that 5e hands out in its 20 levels., and 5e hands them out faster....

 

[MoonSong]

If you build a character with less than a 16 in primary ability score you are hurting not only yourself but your whole team of fellow players. Your character has a job to do and if they can't hold their own, why in the world would the rest of the characters take you along on adventures. Now your job might not be damage dealing, but whatever it is it still uses one key ability score to be effective.

This has been true in all the past editions for the most part, and will always stay true. In 5e honestly with the feats we have seen so far it will almost always be the most optimal choice to increase your primary ability score up to 20 as fast as you can.

If your character doesn't hit, or if the monster resists your spell, you pretty much wasted your round. As always accuracy is key, and so are high spell save DC's. One of the reasons I like damage on miss effects or half effect spells is at least something happens.

I don't think that a maxed/high key stat is as important as you make it to be, I haven't fought yet with my low wis cleric, but so far her effectiveness as a cleric hasn't been affected, not everybody is as focussed in combat and it happens fairly quickly, moreover I think thisedition hasn't been balanced around everybody causing damage all the times otherwise anything other than a party of five fighters would be suboptimal and not picking a fighter and optimizing it for maximum precission and damage will hinder your party. And by that logic anything beyond two-handed wielding fighter is a trap choice and is a waste of space. I also think that bards warlocks and sorcerers will be even less reliant on a high score than clerics given they don't prepare spells, and that an utility focussed wizard and a completely balanced (not dex oriented) rogue can also be effective. Maybe the wizard will suffer from restricted choices, but only so much.

 

[jrowland]

...but it will be a high priority for all PCs attempting to be at or near the top of the efficiency curve to get that maxed score (or scores).

I see "efficiency" differently. (Really a semantic nitpick...I apologize for my OCD response in advance)

If I am a fighter with a 20 str at 1st level...that +7 to hit (str + prof) is ineffecient when fighting Zombies (ac 10), for example. A lot of bonus to hit where it isn't needed. Efficient would be just the right bonus to hit. You need a benchmark, say 66% to hit or better, or roughly a 7 on a d20 to hit an average AC for a given level (you could pick 50% to hit or a 10 on d20...as long as you're consistent. I assume in this discussion 50/50 chances are not good enough for most people).

I imagine AC 12 will be average for 1st level so 7 roll +2 prof + 3 stat to hit AC 12, therefore for 1st level a +5 bonus would be efficient with a 16 in primary stat. A primary of 18 or 20 will often be overkill at 1st level - you'll hit with "excess" points more often than you would have missed had you had a 16 stat, in other words, inefficient.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think the idea I'm working with isn't that the high score isn't desirable, it's just not as valuable.

I'm going to disagree with you here and say that maximising your attack stat is more essential in D&D Next than in both 3.X and 4e.

Take Strength for a fighter.

At first level in 5e you are generally making weapon attacks using Strength Bonus + Proficiency vs ACs in the region of about 13. This is exactly the same as in 4e, and the two systems both have bounded accuracy (in 4e's it's slightly obfuscated but comes out in the wash).

So your chance of hitting ultimately has exactly the same effect in 4e as 5e.

In 3e your to hit score actually becomes less necessary at higher levels because BAB massively outstrips AC.

As for damage? Your damage, unless you are a rogue, doesn't change that much by outside factors. Magic items are not assumed. With both 3e and 4e the small bonus from strength gets swamped by enhancement bonusses, item bonusses, elemental weapons, feats, powers, and the kitchen sink.

You are more dependent on your strength in next than in any previous WotC edition.

I agree with KM: ability scores have changed since 4E, and for the better. I do not buy into the argument that an unmaxed primary stat is the sign of a crippled character in 5E.

It wasn't in 4e. Your point?

 

[SkidAce]

If you build a character with less than a 16 in primary ability score you are hurting not only yourself but your whole team of fellow players. Your character has a job to do and if they can't hold their own, why in the world would the rest of the characters take you along on adventures. Now your job might not be damage dealing, but whatever it is it still uses one key ability score to be effective.

This has been true in all the past editions for the most part, and will always stay true. In 5e honestly with the feats we have seen so far it will almost always be the most optimal choice to increase your primary ability score up to 20 as fast as you can.

If your character doesn't hit, or if the monster resists your spell, you pretty much wasted your round. As always accuracy is key, and so are high spell save DC's. One of the reasons I like damage on miss effects or half effect spells is at least something happens.

With a certain playstyle...yes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The bulk of the difference comes from being able to hit more often, not from the 2 (or 4) more points of damage each hit. A 4 point difference in Strength has always, in every past WOTC-produced edition, accounted for a 10% greater chance of hitting.

Since the OP's point was that the 'need' for a high primary stat was /less/, not the same, that's pretty relevant.

The issue here is how these differences in Strength stack up to past editions.

Well, in 3.5, 4e, & 4e, a 20 STR adds +5 to damage. In 3.5 it added +7 if you used a two-handed weapon. And, in 3.5, that static bonus is multiplied when you get iterative attacks, making it that much more important, while in 4e, at-will multiple attacks that stacked up your primary stat damage bonus against a single target were virtually unheard of (the notorious Twin Strike, for instance, did not add damage from STR or DEX). 5e, which features multiple attacks and bonus-action attacks that use full attack bonus, would actually multiple static bonuses, like STR to damage, /more/ than other modern editions, meaning high stat like STR is actually much /more/ impactful in 5e than in 3.5 or 4e.

High caster stats are similarly critical in 3e and 5e for maximizing save DCs.

4e certainly expects players to boost their prime stat at every level-up opportunity, but again, starting with a 20 is by no means necessary. Given that the standard array's high score is 16, I consider it the 4e minimum. But then, I had one player go lower still, so even that's subject to interpretation.

Of course, with an array, you /couldn't/ start with a 20, and with point-buy it was a pretty inefficient choice (your build had better be decidedly SAD and you're going to have two pretty bad nACDs).

 

[billd91]

I know Its en vogue to hate on 4e here, but 4e doesn't have a stat treadmill. You get 8 points of prime stat increases over 30 levels or 10 with a good ED with 3 and 5(ED) of those coming in Epic. Thats EXACTLY the same number that 5e hands out in its 20 levels., and 5e hands them out faster....

The reason 4e is viewed as a treadmill (at least the reason I see it as one) is that you move but never get anywhere. Your advancement in the math is matched by opposition advances in math. That may have been designed to extended the "sweet spot" in play, but it also means you're not really getting anywhere relative to what you're expected to encounter. It just keeps going as long as you keep going.

You may advance in 5e, perhaps doing so even faster, but there's an end to the race - a goal you reach, enabling (or forcing) you to take on a different goal.

 

[Ashkelon]

So for those who want to see the math broken out of how staying at 16 in your primary stat severely reduces your combat effectiveness, look no further.

Let us say we have two great weapon fighter (champions), both are identical except one has a 20 Strength and a 12 Charisma, the other a 16 Strength and 16 Charisma. (The 16 Strength fighter wanted to be pretty so he put his two ability bumps into Charisma, ok...) They are both level 11 and both use the great weapon fighting style, and have the great weapon master feat (roll weapon dice twice and add Strength twice to damage for -5 to hit). Each has a +1 greatsword. They are fighting an enemy with a 16 AC.

20 Strength Fighter Damage Per Attack
=0.5*(27.67)+0.1*(16.67)=15.5

16 Strength Fighter Damage Per Attack
=0.4*(23.67)+0.1*(16.67)=11.13

The 20 Strength fighter does on average 39% more damage per attack.