D&D General Alternate "Ability Scores"

And with 6 intelligence, on a single intelligence check contest, you still have a faire chance against a character with 18 intelligence. Fantasy ape are really smart.
Reminds me of a 3.5 Living Greyhawk PC. My 5 charisma dwarf (lowest was normally a 6 but he had been beaten with the ugly stick/curse) and the party bard (very, very high charisma) entered a performance contest. My PC was only really there as muscle for the bard, but on a whim decided to join.

We rolled our performance check, my dwarf rolled a 20. The bard rolled a 1. From that point on my dwarf was convinced he had a future in showbiz since he had just outperformed the most charismatic bard he knew and won the contest. :P
 

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I think a lot of people here would do well to read up on GNS theory: GNS theory - Wikipedia

I see a lot of people in this thread who want to move D&D really far in the narrative direction. That's great if it's what you want, but its simply not appealing to anyone like me who enjoys the gamist or simulationist aspects of D&D. FWIW, I agree that D&D has been moving in a narrative direction.
 

As much as I would love to jettison the D&D ability scores, they’re as central to D&D’s identity as the 9 alignments - maybe even more central. So I don’t think they’ll ever be cut from the official game. House ruling them away is an option, but I imagine doing so would require such extensive changes that you’d be better off going with another rules system.

I think the best we can hope for is that the abilities get phased out of relevance, just like alignment did. They can become purely descriptive, while the things they used to modify (attacks, checks, saves, certain derived traits like HP) could become purely factors of class, proficiencies, and level.
I agree it'll never be an official option, but at least for 5e if you increase proficiency bonuses to a 5-11 scale and use half proficiency for stuff that uses ability mods but not proficiency, you can run the game just fine (and even use the MM as written.)

Saves would be very swingy with just those changes, but everything else should work well enough.
 
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Spinning out of the "Immersion" thread:

I think D&D's six ability scores have outlived their usefulness. I think we need a different way to quantify competence in specific areas that don't "force" certain role-playing requirements on players (especially in the case of the "mental" ability scores).

The easiest thing to do would be to eliminate them entirely and then pare down the skill list to reflect what people actually do while adventuring. You could probably get away with maybe 6 or 8 broad skills (Athletics, Awareness, Interaction, Knowledge, Survival/Woodcraft/something, Thievery) plus two saves (Physical and Mental) and a level bonus (the true measure of competence in D&D). Use feats to provide specialties ("Trapsmith: advantage when using Thievery to disarm Traps"; "Strong: +2 on Athletics rolls to lift and for grappling). Oh, and get ride of the worst element of 5E design: the tool proficiency.

No more "You 6 int barbarian wouldn't think of that plan!"
In original D&D, ability scores had very little mechanical effect. Their biggest impact was probably in giving bonus XP if the prime requisite for your class was high enough. But with 3d6 straight down, most stats were 9-12 and did nothing. You could drop them and not lose much.

Nowadays, I think there's even less need for them, at least if the game is tweaked (5e) or designed (6e) with that in mind. Characters can be defined and differentiated so many other ways: more races than before, A LOT more classes than before, skills, feats, spells, equipment, etc.

The assumption could be that characters are average, except where they're exceptional. If you want to play a strong character, you could select a martial class and/or pick skills and feats that reinforce being strong. A fighter without any such skills or feats is one who relies on more than brawn to succeed, but is still reasonably strong. A wizard WITH such skills or feats might actually be stronger than that fighter, but would still lose to him in a swordfight, and do worse on physical saving throws.

Clearly it would be a surprise for D&D to move away from such an iconic part of its identity, but were it to happen, this would still be as much of a fantasy adventure roleplaying game as ever. Roles would still be well-defined, yet customization options would still abound.

In my experience, one of the barriers to entry for D&D is just how many "levers" there are. You have ability scores, as well as ability score modifiers. Then races with adjustments to those scores. Then classes with no adjustments to those scores, but which depend on specific scores (making it hard to break from archetype anyway). Then class abilities, then skills, then feats, etc.

I think ability scores would be much more important in a game with fewer levers. But with so many robust levers now, there's simply less need. I get why so many people are fond of them, I just wish they were more modular at least.

My ideal version of D&D would strip away ability scores, rolling for hit points, and alignment, and would roll all 3 core rulebooks into one. But that's another topic for another day!
 

I was thinking that you could probably use the Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saving throws of 3e, maybe rename them but they would essentially be the same. Maybe Body, Reflexes, and Mind. Body would be strength and constitution, reflexes would be dexterity, Mind would be intelligence, wisdom, and I guess charisma.
In a game where the vast majority of non-punching activity is real people talking to one another while pretending to be not real people, Charisma as a stat isn't just useless,it's counterproductive. At least back when it determined the number of henchman you could have it modeled some quality of your character.
 

I think a lot of people here would do well to read up on GNS theory: GNS theory - Wikipedia

I see a lot of people in this thread who want to move D&D really far in the narrative direction. That's great if it's what you want, but its simply not appealing to anyone like me who enjoys the gamist or simulationist aspects of D&D. FWIW, I agree that D&D has been moving in a narrative direction.
Boo! GNS theory is nonsense quackery.
 

Reminds me of a 3.5 Living Greyhawk PC. My 5 charisma dwarf (lowest was normally a 6 but he had been beaten with the ugly stick/curse) and the party bard (very, very high charisma) entered a performance contest. My PC was only really there as muscle for the bard, but on a whim decided to join.

We rolled our performance check, my dwarf rolled a 20. The bard rolled a 1. From that point on my dwarf was convinced he had a future in showbiz since he had just outperformed the most charismatic bard he knew and won the contest. :P
That's another reason to jettison Ability Scores as a mechanical element. The size of the d20 compared to ability score modifiers creates the potential for lots of weird situations like that. Better to have some other, descriptive mechanism by which to compare the barbarian's strength or wizard's smarts to the other party members.
 

Ok, during the last couple hours while doing other stuff I've been thinking about this topic, partly in the context of @TwoSix's comment upthread about absurdity. The arguments I'm seeing appear so absurd to me that I must not be understanding something. And, at the same time, I'm probably not properly conveying my own position.

So let's talk about some specifics

1. Solving Puzzles
To use an example I used upthread (or maybe in the other thread on this topic), let's say the PCs find a word written somewhere, and if they realize it's an anagram for another word they can advance in the plot. One of the players figures it out. Should the character's Intelligence score play any role in this?

My take: not in terms of whether or not the player should provide the answer. If the player can think of a way to narrate providing the solution so that it's done in a way evocative for that character then I'm all for it, but that's not necessary.

The way I see it, if you want the players to have to use their ability scores, then make the puzzle abstract so that they HAVE to roll for it. An actual puzzle, with a real solution, is an invitation for the players to solve it with their own brains. To then ask them to solve that real puzzle using the attributes of their character would be like saying, "In order to break down the door in game, you are going to have to break down the actual door to my garage over there, which I locked. But you have to use the Strength score of your character, not your own."

And even then the analogy breaks down, because the connection between "Intelligence" and solving problems like this is not as direct as "how much can you life with a given strength score". It may very well be that the player who is perceived as the least intelligent solves these things before the player who is, by traditional metrics, the most intelligent. Thus the same thing can be true for characters.

2. Known Monster Weaknesses
This one has been hashed over a million times, and whether it's trolls and fire or werewolves and silver, it's the same thing. The player knows something about the game. Can they use that knowledge?

My Take: As I've expressed before, my basic position is that if something is a truth in the game world, then it's possible a character would know the answer, even a character with really low mental stats. In my mind it is better roleplaying...in the sense of building out your character...to justify why your character might know this fact, rather than to just say "I'm dumb, therefore I don't know."

Furthermore, where the DM feels it's important for the players to not know things...just change them. This is like the Puzzle example in that the way to prevent players from acting in ways you don't want it's simple enough to change the information to something they can't know. This applies to monster identification, too: if you don't want your players to know it's Entry XXX from the Monster Manual, just change the physical description. How hard is that? Why wouldn't the DM do that, if secrets are so important?

And when you the DM does do this, this scenario becomes an....

4. Unknown Monster Weakness
In this case the players (not their characters) are genuinely uncertain about monster capabilities. That might be because it's a new monster they've never seen, or because they are sure they remember correctly what it is and what it's abilities are, or because they know you (you sneaky devil you) sometimes change things.

My Take: This is an excellent opportunity to use your attribute. Declare an action in which you attempt to "recall lore" or otherwise glean information about your enemy. The character with the higher attribute will succeed more often.

5. Portraying a Character
Let me add that of course I roleplay a high Int, low Strength character differently then I roleplay a low Int, high Strength character. With the first character I will try solve problems through using Arcana or Investigation, or casting spells. With the latter character I will try to solve problems through Athletics, Intimidation (if the DM let's me roll that using Strength), or hitting it with a sharp object.

But that's different from how I portray them. Do I narrate them differently? I might, if "smart" or "dumb" (or "strong" or "weak") are important parts of the character's description. Let's say my concept is that my character wanted to be a Paladin, and really is a shining example of everything a (1e) paladin represents....brave, selfless, honest, etc....but he was never accepted to any of the good orders because (at least in his mind) of his facial deformities and speech impediments. So instead of a paladin he became a regular old fighter (maybe a Cavalier...that seems appropriate), and he's still bitter and angry about that.

So I'm going to put a lot of points into Str and Con because he's a fighter, and I'll probably not put a lot of points in Int. I might even leave that at 8. But no part of my character concept...the character I want to play...says "Strong!" or "Dumb!" I'm just assigning attributes to build an effective character.

In actual play, I'm going to look for opportunities to roleplay this character's personality: his sense of right and wrong, and desire to help others, but also his insecurities about his appearance, and his deep anger at the kind of people who rejected him. While I'm playing him I will probably build his character out in other directions, as situations suggest fun new twists and turns to his personality.

But his Strength and his Intelligence? Neither of those are notable or unique. He has 16 Strength just like everybody else with 16 Strength, and he has 8 Int just like everybody else with 8 Int.



Genuinely interested in reactions.
 

A corollary to this is players (very foolishly, IMO) marrying themselves to character concepts before actually rolling up the characters. You're going in having already decided to play a genius and then the dice give you Int 7. Bzzzzzt! Next concept, please.

Stats first, then build the character's personality and characterization around those.

Wait...people still roll stats? How...quaint.

Just kidding. Sometimes I still do that. And, yes, when I do then I roll first before I start figuring out who this person is. But usually we use Point Buy or Standard Array, which means I have a bunch of character concepts just waiting for the right campaign.
 

Even if I am rolling, it's normally all easy enough to place then against the stats to realise the concept I have for a character. The only time where I let the stats determine the character is when I have no idea what I want to play so I roll in order.
 

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