D&D 5E Ability Score Increases (I've changed my mind.)

[Bill Zebub]

Powergaming isn't the intent of the game.

But gaining power is.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This thread is very long.

What are everyone's thoughts on this kind of thing:

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For clarity, I'm not asking about this specific unessecarily compiclated ruleset. But I really like the idea of designing races such that every one has advantages and disadvantages. That, to me, is far more important than whether or not those (dis)advantages are coded in an ability increase/decrease or somewhere else.

I don't trust rule sets that try and give too many disadvantages, because they always want to formalize something that is a character trait (like greed or wrath) and then force me to play the worst version of that trait. So, you end up with only a very narrow set of "flaws".

There is also the very realy chance that they will list various neurological divergences as "cons" or "flaws" and that never goes well either.

Players will play with flaws, you don't need to force them on them. Not like this.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But the best aspect of all this is that she confirms to all expectations we have about dwarves!

And what if I don't want to confirm your expectations of Dwarves?

With floating ASI and generic lineage, you will not see these kind of characters as it would be considered gimping a character with a deliberate suboptimal built

If given the choice, a player will always optimize, unless reasons like character concept and even then, a DM's approval would be required.

Read these two sentence again. With floating ASIs you won't see these character concepts, because players will always optimize... unless they have a character concept that doesn't require optimizing...

You contradict yourself.

With floating ASI, no need to work around. You just do not have to do it. It simply becomes which racial powers suit your character's class concept the most. There are already guides about which raced to with floating ASI are best suited for such and such classes.

So? Again, who cares what advice the guides are giving? If all the guides started saying that Whips are the most powerful weapon either would everyone rush to ban them, because the guides are speaking?

Yeah, they are giving advice. Take it or leave it, no problem either way. I don't see how this is even a talking point. Yes, optimizers are giving optimization advice, for new rules. That doesn't make the new rules bad.

 

[clearstream]

With floating ASI, no need to work around. You just do not have to do it. It simply becomes which racial powers suit your character's class concept the most.

If it is true that certain racial traits suit certain concepts, then that is true even if ASIs are floating.

Do you mean that what you want in race design are contrary traits so that players can't find a perfect fit, and have to find a best fit?

 

[ReshiIRE]

If it is true that certain racial traits suit certain concepts, then that is true even if ASIs are floating.

Do you mean that what you want in race design are contrary traits so that players can't find a perfect fit, and have to find a best fit?

Some races are already like this.

Consider the Lizarfolk. Without Floating ASI they have a +2 to Con and a +1 to Wisdom. But they benefit from having high Dex thanks to Natural Armour, but they also benefit from having a high Strength and Constitution to benefit from Bite and Hungry Jaws.

They make pretty good close-range / tank Clerics thanks to their ASIs and can operate well without armour (since Natural Armor works with Shields...), but they would actually be really fascinating Barbarians or Monks without floating ASIs to try to work most of their features together (unfortunately Bite doesn't work with Rages for Barbarians, I'm not sure how it'd interact with for Clerics, and Hungry Jaws can only be used once per short or long rest - really wish that was a profiency based feature!)

The point I would make though, with Lizardborn, is that it's pretty difficult to use all their features together, and one feature (Natural Armour) is so worth investing in (with the features I've not mentioned here being not based on any ability scores).

I already love Lizardborn because... I love lizards and lizard people, and I have a DM with great lore for them... but seeing their features in 5e makes them pretty exciting.

 

[Malmuria]

With floating ASI and generic lineage, you will not see these kind of characters as it would be considered gimping a character with a deliberate suboptimal built. Having the choice and being forced to work around a problem is not the same. Optimizing has always been an integral part of gaming (power gaming is its own thing and not something I wish to discuss). If given the choice, a player will always optimize, unless reasons like character concepts and even then, a DM's approval would be required.

But didn't your player create a "suboptimal" character by choosing dwarf to begin with? That's the reason, or at least a reason, that her character is against type? Your player could create the exact same character with floating ASI (with the lower starting intelligence).

 

[Helldritch]

And what if I don't want to confirm your expectations of Dwarves?

Then don't. Built around the fixed ASI as she did. Prove the world that dwarves can be great wizard. But work with their limitations.

Read these two sentence again. With floating ASIs you won't see these character concepts, because players will always optimize... unless they have a character concept that doesn't require optimizing..

You contradict yourself.

Which would be quite surprising and would require gimping a character. So one in a thousand characters? Maybe even more? Because why use floating ASI if it is not to use them optimally? You see the full contradiction that floating ASI bring here. Not my contradiction. But the ones the floating ASI bring.

Again, take the quote in its context, not out of it. With fixed ASI, you have to work around a race weaknesses to make a good character. With floating ASI, not so. So not using floating ASI optimaly would essentially be gimping a character. This might be a concept, but it would minimally require my approval at my table (as you are putting the characters of the other players at risks) and I might not accept it. If you would insist on bringing such a character without approval, bye bye. The possibility that someone might eventually in an hypothetical situation propose such a gimped character does not invalidate the premise that ASI are solely for optimizing.

So? Again, who cares what advice the guides are giving? If all the guides started saying that Whips are the most powerful weapon either would everyone rush to ban them, because the guides are speaking?

Yeah, they are giving advice. Take it or leave it, no problem either way. I don't see how this is even a talking point. Yes, optimizers are giving optimization advice, for new rules. That doesn't make the new rules bad.

The guides are there nonetheless. When everyone comes to the same conclusion that such and such are the absolute best and that this absolute best goes against lore, expectations, tradition and logic, then the rule is a bad one.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The combos aren't relevant to my issue. My issue is that they have the same 6 numbers.

That is even more nonsensical, there are only 16 numbers it is possible to get by rolling, and your special rolling method limits this even further. Having the same numbers is meaningless. Especially since a character with 15 strength and 8 Cha is very different than one with 15 Int and 8 Dex.

My bad. I misspoke. It should have been pretty clear that an infant isn't born with the numbers in the array. It's pretty disingenuous to go down that road when you knew I was talking about PCs and the array.

Words have meaning Max, and you constantly tell me that, and that you are careful with your words. So, no, it isn't disengenious to take you at your word. That is what you constantly tell me to do, respond to your exact words, not what I interpret.

16 for each stat is much different than the same 6 over and over and over.

No, it isn't. And it is only those same six if every player always takes the array. And since I've never seen that once, I think you are overblowing it.

And yet they don't all come out the same.

Identical? No. Close enough for an abstraction? Sure.

I mean, it is equally unrealistic that every Ogre has 19 strength and 6 INT, but that's what basically every ogre run at tables has. As well as about 60 hp.

You do know that fighters aren't all trained at some school, right? There are no minimum standards. If you don't believe me, go read the PHB and see what the minimum strength or dexterity to be a fighter is. Is it 15? Is it 17? Or is it 3?

Oh, right. It's 3. Your prime stat to qualify to be a fighter ranges from 3-20. That's some minimum standard.

Have you ever seen a strength based fighter with a 3 strength as their starting point?

Obviously not all fighters train at the same school, but it isn't unreasonable that a lot of them are going to end up in about the same place. Your claim that having a 15 in any stat is unrealistic because everyone ends up with something as a 15 is mind-blowing. That isn't how this works. (And yes, I know it is a 15, then a 14, then a 13, then a 12 then a 10, then an 8. Point stands. Your objection makes no sense)

Pretty sure it's +4.

Ha, hah, haha. No, answer the actual question. If they started with an 18 before training, why did training not make them stronger?

At some point you stop getting stronger through exercise. If you didn't, every fighter would just train to 20 at 1st level and then go adventuring.

And then at level 4 they choose to be stronger, because they can just do that.

It's not going to change. All the people who ran out to make good drow ranger loners after Drizzt didn't make that the new drow archetype.

Yes, they absolutely did. To the point that at least two different webcomic artists made a joke about it, without even needing to provide context. Driz'zt is an archetype for Drow now, and he wasn't before.

Nah. You assume people are going to play gamist, rather than make a character to roleplay. It's not hard to get medium armor proficiency(cough mountain dwarf cough) with a feat or something, and many will just plain want a charisma bonus, because talking/preaching is a cleric thing to do. And while yes there will be some exceptional dwarves that are as graceful as the average elf, exceptional elves will still be more graceful.

1) You realize every cleric has medium armor proficiency right? Going dwarf or getting a feat is a waste of time. My point was since half have medium armor (the other half have heavy) that they are going to want dex.

2) Can get Charisma by dropping strength, they don't need it if they don't want to do melee

3) Maybe. But I'm not talking about exceptional elves, I'm talking about average elves. Because, this is the flaw. If I make an elf that is exceptional... they don't need to conform to the average. So, if we except all PCs are exceptional, then it doesn't matter what the average version of their race is, they aren't average they are exceptions.

Because the average elven PC will be more dexterous than the average dwarven PC, because race.

Unless the elf is rolling a heavily armored cleric and dumps dex, and the dwarf is rolling a thief and bumps it. But then, those aren't "average" to you. And we end up back where we started. You just declaring that certain things make sense and are true for all game worlds, because that is what you are used to.

Who has argued that?

Many people, including Lanefan on another thread. It comes up all the time.

 

[Helldritch]

If it is true that certain racial traits suit certain concepts, then that is true even if ASIs are floating.

Do you mean that what you want in race design are contrary traits so that players can't find a perfect fit, and have to find a best fit?

Yep. And being the underdog can be fun. There are work around so that an "against type" character will prove the world wrong. A halfling barbarian is against type. Yet, we have had one and it was a terror to behold.

 

[Maxperson]

And what if I don't want to confirm your expectations of Dwarves?

Use Tasha's.