Ability damage

[Blackwarder]

But it won't be common damage, I figured it will be more the purview of traps and nature mischief only way for monsters to dish ability damage should be rare and require a crit IMO.

Warder

 

[Blackwarder]

You forgot the feats that requires stat mins and turns off if your stat is reduced below the min, and IIRC PrCs that turns off if you don't meet your feat requirements. In 3e, there's a lot of cascading.

As for dealing out penalties to attacks, ACs, skill checks etc. why not just call them penalties to whatever instead of ability damage if you're not going to actually impact the stat and everything that the stat influences.

If the math will be as flat as it been suggested there shouldn't be tons of cascading and if temporary ability damage get in game than it shouldn't effect feats requirement so that shouldn't be a problem during play.

And I agree about the point of penalties to attack, ACs and other stuff being a bad idea, instead of keeping track of six main numbers it might become a nightmare of bookkeeping.

Warder

 

[KidSnide]

I like ability damage for the ability to have a form of damage that can reflect unique forms of attacks and can be harder to heal. I hate it for the recalculation aspect.

I think ability damage should be limited to ability checks and whatever checks are immediately based on ability checks in 5e, but shouldn't extend to recalculating combat modifiers. In essence, it should be like smaller, less aggressive versions of negative levels. The question to me is whether the system should be changed so the number of damage points correspond directly to the penalty (like negative levels), rather than having to handle the strangeness of odd (1, 3, 5, 7) amounts of ability damage affect characters differently depending on whether the character has an even or odd value in the ability.

-KS

 

[Rhenny]

I kind of like the idea of ability damage, but I agree with those who say it imposes too much recalculation (especially for cascading effects). I think the reason why people like them is because they tend to represent an added danger that hit points alone do not. It gives the chance to be "stunned" (str or dex = 0), to be "reduced to a drooling moron" (int = below 3), to be "dominated" or mindless (wis = 0), or to be killed outright (con=0), etc.

These conditions should be imposed by specific monster attacks, so the draining does not need to be linked to ability.

What if a creature could attack you and first hit...."Weaken you".....2nd hit "Exhaust you"...third hit "Sap all your strength dropping you into a barely quivering mass." Then, we'd have what felt like drain over time, but we wouldn't need to recalculate.

In a way, the draining attacks could work more like diseases or afflictions from 4e. That could be interesting.