+1 ability per level?

MarauderX

Explorer
Some system ideas I thought I would throw out for the next campaign I would run, and please stop me if you have seen it before and was a disaster.

Is there a system where 1st level PCs start with all 11's for stats then gain 1 ability point per level? It seems like it would work well for all levels as long as the adventures matched, and the PCs would be regular schmoes until they get past the low levels.

Would +2 per level be a bit much? That way PCs would automatically gain a +1 in whatever ability they wanted after gaining a level, after starting out with 10's. Skills, hit points and other changes as a result of increased abilities would not be affected retroactively. The PCs could be power houses much earlier if they sank everything into one stat, but the weaknesses they would face because of it would matter much more. A 10th level barbarian might have a Str=30, but his Con and other stats would be weak.

Overall the game would have to have lighter challenges in the lower levels and powerhouse challenges towards epic, but I think it might work...
 

log in or register to remove this ad

an interesting idea, but you might want to consider how this will effect feats (or more specificly the aquisition of feats) as well as spell casters.
 

Ibram said:
an interesting idea, but you might want to consider how this will effect feats (or more specificly the aquisition of feats) as well as spell casters.

Thanks. For 1st level I think they would need to start out with a +2 to keep it easy and for casters to have availability to spells and such. Feats would be rougher though, and might have to be houseruled to bypass ability prerequisites for the 'standard' beginning feats.
 

Straight 11s with +21 over 20 levels (assuming that folds in the +5 bonus, 26 if not) ? I'm inclined to say it's probably going to lead to a very dead medium level group it will take them 16 levels to get to the point of the standard array (assuming the +5 bonus isn't folded), if it is it will take even longer.
 
Last edited:

Doing things that way would create a lot of challenges right off the bat:

Magic:
1. First level spellcasters would be even weaker than usual. In ordinary 3.x, a wizard or sorceror (and to a lesser degree, a cleric or druid), can cast between two (generalist wizard and four (sorceror) spells before having to go cower behind a rock. By eliminating the possibility of bonus spells for stats, you reduce this to one (generalist wizard) to three (sorceror).

2. By reducing the DC of most spells to 11, you would ensure that the one or two spells would stand a good chance of doing nothing if they have a save, thus skewing the spell choice of low level characters towards spells like Enlarge Person, etc that don't have saves.

3. By ensuring that non-healing domain clerics can only cast one CLW per day, you would make sure that the party has to spend several days to recover from any battle where multiple PCs are knocked unconscious.

Skills:
By eliminating the possibility of first level bonus skill points for high int, you hurt wizards a lot. You also limit the variety of rogues and clerics that are possible in your game and ensure that fighters will never have ANY skills (one of the small boons given to fighters who start with a 12-14 int is that they can actually get some decent skills by buying them cross-class). You also magnify the significance of the human bonus skill point/level because that is the only way any character can start off with more than the minimum amount of skills.

Combat:
1. You really hurt fighters and paladins (and barbarians to a lesser degree). At first level the usual difference between a fighter/barbarian/paladin and a cleric or rogue in terms of combat ability is primarily generated by their stats. A fighter who starts with a 16 strength will attack at +4 (+5 with weapon focus) and deal 1d8+3 damage with his longsword. The cleric might start with a 14 strength and thereby attack at +2 for 1d8+2 damage. A wizard would probably start with a 10 strength and attack at +0 for 1d6 damage. Starting all stats at 10 or 11 flattens this out. The fighter attacks at +1 (+2 with weapon focus) for 1d8 points of damage. The cleric attacks at +0 (+1 w/ War domain) for 1d8 points of damage. The wizard attacks at +0 for 1d6 points of damage. So with this, rule, at first level, the fighter would not be nearly as much better at fighting as he usually is.

2. Barbarians would be hurt the same way all fighter types are--with one exception. When they raged, they would not just be 1.5 times as effective in combat, they'be be closer to 2 or 3 times as effective. The difference between attacking at +1 for 1d8 points of damage and attacking at +3 for 1d8+2 points of damage is huge.

3. Paladins are denied use of their (admittedly weak at low levels) smite ability. Ordinarily they smite evil for something like +2 or +3 to hit and +1 damage at first level. Under this system, they'd smite at +0 for +1 damage. That's not much of an ability.

4. Rogues would be screwed at low levels by this change. Typically, a first level rogue has a similar or better AC than the first level fighter. The rogue might have a 16 dex and wear leather armor for AC 15 or he might be a halfling with an 18 dex and a chain shirt for AC 19. In the same way, the fighter might wear splint mail for AC 16 or wear chain mail, carry a heavy shield, and have a +2 dex bonus for AC 19. Under this system, the rogue would have AC 12 while the fighter still has an AC between 16 (splint mail/scale mail+shield) to 19 (chain mail and tower shield). That rogue had better stay out of combat--especially if the cleric only has one cure spell per day (that he might have already used for something else if he cast bless for instance)).

At high levels, you would see problems in different directions. It would be very very difficult to make an effective paladin or monk since they depend on having multiple ability scores at decent levels. The 8th level monk could have an 18 wisdom, 10 strength (so he won't hit and when he does it won't hurt his foes), 10 dex (so his AC is still poor and he doesn't qualify for very many feats), 10 constitution (so he can't take hits either), etc. A 12th level paladin could have a 16 strength and charisma but only at the cost of a 10 constitution (so he has few hit points) and 10 wisdom (so he can't cast spells). Not until very high levels would balanced characters be possible.

Conversely, spellcasters could achieve hideous things if they somehow managed to survive until high levels. The base int of a 20th level wizard would be 31 before his +6 headband and +5 tome were taken into account. with an int of 42, such a character would have a base save DC of 26+spell level, making the DC of a 9th level spell 35. (37 with greater spell focus). That's significantly higher than most high level wizards have.

I'd advise you to toss out the idea and come up with something else. It disrupts the D&D system at so many levels, that you'll have to redesign nearly everything to make it work.
 

I like the idea but as has been pointed out there are major problems with it heres how I propose a fix:
I'd make the game start as a 15 point buy allowing one to purcahse 3 11s and 3 10s or do something different by sacrificing all abilities.

lvl Ability Points........Max Ability Score (unracially/magically moded)
1........+2.......................18
2........+2
3........+2
4........+2.......................19
5........+2
6........+1
7........+1
8........+1.......................20
9.........0
10......+1
11....... 0
12......+1.......................21
13......+0
14......+0
15......+0
16......+1.......................22
17......+0
18......+0
19......+0
20......+1.......................23

This way your cahracters start out realitivley weak, pretty much average people, but by 5th level can acheive the default array. The max abilty prevents people from having more in an ability than a normal PC could have by that level. This chart proably needs some tinkering but I think it could work.
 
Last edited:

There was something before about each level gaining some extra point buy points to gain more stats.

Give them a low point buy to begin with, so that they can get a few initial things (personally i wouldnt go any lower than 20 point buy to start with myself.. that puts them just above the peasants, but not terribly so) and then each level the character gets a number of point buy points as the level they just gained. These can, of course, be saved up if necissary.

Also, picking a certain maximum is generally good. Possibly something like 18 + 1/3 of the current level (so 24 at level 20).

This tends to work out pretty well actually, although some have tweaked it a little each way.

Limiting int to 11 at first level really kills people who want skill points, because of how changes to int work. If you wish to go by the 11 starting stats then I would suggest making int more retroactive, as int increases go back and refigure old skill points at each level.

Also, I would also suggest getting 2 +1's at certain levels. The really hard part is that some classes need more diverse, and more, stats than others. Dont let anyone go above a certain point (ie, no stacking everything into one stat to make it uber), set some sort of reasonable limit. I'd say that there should be at least 30 stat points gained over the twenty levels, a good portion of which at lower levels.
 

Going to +2

Thanks for the great input so far, it's got me thinking.

Hmm... the more I think about it the more I like the idea of starting at all 10's and giving +2 per level, starting at 1st. So a typical 1st level party would have each thrown the +2 in their prime stat. Sure the beginning levels would be tougher, but the players would realize that they are barely above typical peasants and shouldn't go around thinking they are already statted to be gladiators at 1st level.

The skills are already set to reflect the higher needs at 1st level per class, as are hit points. Skills would begin to grow more quickly with their stat changes to compliment their skill ranks.

As far as damage potential I am not worried about the different classes being nearly equivalent as they are proficient with different weapons and the bonuses will be applied soon enough. Clerics will (probably) focus on jumping up their wisdom for the first few levels while the melee types go for strength. This will lead to a wide discrepancy in attack and damage scores early and can stay that way in higher levels.

Wizards and the other casters will get bonus spells once their stats are up there, but at 1st level they will be casting weaklings. I don't care if it takes a group longer in 'game time' to heal up to full at lower levels, as they do that anyway.

For ability scores, the PCs would catch up to a typical 32 point-buy stat totals at around 6-9th level. At 6th level a fighter could have easily gotten his abilities up for any feats he would have wanted and taken them. He would have enough skill points for PrCs that he was interested in and had the chance to upgrade his other stats to suite his character. The 6th level wiz/sorc has had a chance to increase stats to get extra spells as well as increase the 'low' spell DCs. Clerics, rogues, monks, paladins and bards or any other class could have raised up several stats to compliment the character they have decided to go for, allowing them to meld around what other party members or for their current adventuring plans.

For the higher levels the stats would have to be challenged constantly by the DM. The game would have to rely heavily on the DM realizing how high their stats are compared to the challenges they face. A limiting cap might be necessary, but taking advantage of the PC's or party's weaknesses as normal could be easier. Let each player let their PC abilities shine when they can, reinforcing the stat choices they made or hammer their weak spots or roleplay (Diplomacy) the combat kings to near-death.

I'm not afraid of the players having too much power once they are higher up, and wouldn't want to quell it by slowing down the stat progression. Epic level feel would seem to come much sooner as the stats started to get up there, and eliminating or limiting stat-boosting items could be an option if the DM wasn't as comfortable with the higher powered PCs. Eventually the PCs' stats would become 'god-like' as would be their reputation in a campaign I would run.

Thanks again for the great input, keep it coming.
 

That still leaves the problem of a massive amount of skill points being left behind though, at that point a psuedo retroactive skill point system needs to be enabled. The loss in skill points can be incredibly damaging to certain builds.
 

Interesting idea.

As a dm, I think it wouldn't be too much fun to have to pull my punches even more than I already do vs. a low-level party.

As a player, I'd hate to play a totally average pc at low levels.

My advice is to talk about this with your group first. You may find that everyone really digs the idea, but you may find that everyone loaths it. "I want to play a wizard, but I can't without a decent intelligence!"

This system basically encourages pcs to build barbarians, rangers or fighters only. Everyone else loses too much. Who wants to go back to the four-hp, one-shot wonder wizard from 2e?? There's a reason for all those bonus spells these days.

Keep in mind that, according to the ph, a character who rolled the stats you're proposing starting the group with would be considered a 'hopeless' character.
 

Remove ads

Top