+1 to 4 ability scores at 8th, 18th, 28th

[FireLance]

The potential disparity between a character's primary and secondary ability scores and the third and fourth ranked ability score at high levels seems a little large to me, so I'm considering a house to allow characters to add +1 to four ability scores at 8th, 18th and 28th levels.

The obvious result of this would be that characters can now add +8 to two ability scores over the course of 30 levels, +5 to another two and +2 to the last two.

How significant would be the game effect of another (net) +3 to two ability scores? Which characters would benefit the most from this change? Is there anything which is potentially broken?

Thanks in advance.

 

[keterys]

Seems fine to me.

 

[deleteme123456]

Helps the most:
Paladins (crazy MAD to begin with)
TW Rangers (see Paladins)
Tempest Fighters (can keep STR, WIS, DEX, and CON all reasonably high)
Starlocks

Classes with primary and secondary in the same defense (But overall this really just lets them get their other defenses up by +1 each, maybe that's not too powerful).
Wand Wizards
WIS clerics
CON barbarians
etc.

Not helped much (get their third defense up, no real benefit to any class feature otherwise):
Orb/Staff Wizards, unless they take a 2nd implement feat at Paragon
Archer rangers
Rogues




I am concerned with things like the tempest fighter (ok it has problems anyway). Let's look at this. Important goals: Dex 17 by start of epic for heavy blade mastery (if allowing double sword, else maybe dex 19 for flail mastery). Dex 15 by start of paragon for chain mastery. Str 18 to start and keep going from there. Wis as high as possible for Kensai and/or Marked Scourge. Con as high as other stats allow.

We'll take a warforged as the only widely-available PC race with +2 to STR and any of those other stats, and warforged are crazy good anyway. We know we need Dex 15 at 11, since that will get us to Dex 17 at 21. So backing up, we need Dex 13 to start, since it will go up by 2 before 11th.

STR 18
CON 16
DEX 13
INT 8
WIS 14
CHA 10

Compare this to the guy with the same DEX goals, but who has to start with Dex 14 (and use the level 18 stat bump to push dex one more, but this is OK because there's an odd point floating around anyway).

CON 15
DEX 14

Not a huge difference, but it is HP, surges, etc. How about the guy who wants Dex 19 at epic? If he's getting +1 to 4, then Dex 15 at Paragon only takes him to 17, so he can use the Level 14 bumps and start with Dex 14 instead. This works just like the above guy, CON 15 and DEX 14, and he's no worse off long-term because he has an extra odd point anyway.

But if you want DEX 19 and only get +1 to 2, then you have to give up advancing WIS and/or CON or start much much higher.

I'm not clear that's it's too powerful, but it definitely helps some classes a lot more than others.