D&D 5E Ability Score Balance: through the eyes of fresh players

[Ruin Explorer]

You can always put a cap of 18 as starting stats after race. If vhuman you can decide if feats effect this cap, at most you'd stat with a 19.

I was thinking with Focus and Foible to just maybe ditch racial ability score modifiers entirely except for +1 to three stats for humans, and -1 one to one stat for VHumans. Not really seeing any huge downside, but maybe I'm missing something.

 

[dave2008]

I play my 12 wisdom gnome rogue with no wisdom skills trained as very impulsive, lacking insight into people, habitually lost in thought, etc.

Sorry to jump in mid stream, but why would you play a higher than average wisdom character with less than average wisdom? IMO, being: "...very impulsive, lacking insight into people..." sounds closer 8 than 12.

 

[Ogre Mage]

In my experience Strength OR Intelligence is the biggest dump stat. Some characters might need one but I've never seen a PC who needs both. Even Eldritch Knight types tend to take spells which don't involve saving throws. This is a shift from 3.X, when I thought that Charisma was the biggest dump stat.

I am okay with this. In spite of the relative less usefulness of Str and Int, I still see plenty of wizards and a solid number of strength-based paladins and fighters. More importantly, most of them have been effective characters. Str and Int do get dump statted pretty often but, well, you gotta stick your 8 somewhere. I play a lot of casters and I have seen Str 8 on my character sheet more times than I can remember.

Charisma is considerably more powerful than it used to be because so many (powerful) classes run off of it. But if you are not playing one of those, it is also a viable dump stat.

As for Dexterity, Constitution and Wisdom, I would not dump them. But unless they are your prime stat you do not need them to be super high.

 

[billd91]

No.

(Aside from the tedious bookkeeping it probably won’t work. It‘s not sufficient to stop them dumping strength it’s just a way of punishing them for doing that.)

Punishing? No, it’s making them live with their decisions. The attitude that it’s “punishment” is pernicious. At that point, why have them deal with a -1 for having a stat of 8?

The bookkeeping doesn’t even have to be that tedious. Just have them calculate the weight of their regular gear and don’t sweat minor changes as they adventure. If they start out encumbered with the initial gear they want, fine. If they decide to have less gear so they don’t start encumbered, then you’ve got them making choices because they dumped their strength and that’s where you want them.

 

[Flamestrike]

Outside of two handed weapon wielders, Dex is a better combat stat and non-combat stat.
Starting out, Dex is as good in melee, and much better for ranged. Strength based ranged weapons all have short ranges of 30ft or less. If you want to attack someone further than a standard move away, you're at disadvantage.
Dex also covers initiative, which is a fairly major combat stat.

I agree that Athletics is probably more generally useful than Acrobatics. However it is nowhere near as useful as Acrobatics and Stealth and Sleight of Hand together.

Yet with the standard array (as a PC proficient in heavy armor), I can dump Dex, Intelligence and Charisma, and have a good Strength and Con and a reasonable Wisdom.

Heavy armor and Dex 8 gives me a better AC than even a PC with a Dex of 20, and all from a lower level.

Polearms and Great weapons (two very popular fighting styles rely on Strength) cant use Dex at all. Shield master - which is the cornerstone of any S+B build - relies on an Athletics check (so again, strength is go-to). Grappling, shoving etc all rely on Athletics (as do most of the optional combat manouvers as well).

Barbarians are forced into Strength builds as well; as is any Paladin MC combo (requiring at least a 13 Strength).

I just cant see it as the no-brainer so many people make it out to be.

 

[Flamestrike]

If the DM steps in, how is that voluntary?

It's voluntary the insant the PC decided to handicap his PC by assigning a stat as a dump stat.

That choice has consequences.

 

[Don Durito]

Punishing? No, it’s making them live with their decisions. The attitude that it’s “punishment” is pernicious. At that point, why have them deal with a -1 for having a stat of 8?

The bookkeeping doesn’t even have to be that tedious. Just have them calculate the weight of their regular gear and don’t sweat minor changes as they adventure. If they start out encumbered with the initial gear they want, fine. If they decide to have less gear so they don’t start encumbered, then you’ve got them making choices because they dumped their strength and that’s where you want them.

But they're still dumping Strength. If you don't like the word "punishing" then whatever. Fine. I've got better things to do then discuss semantics.

But what's the actual goal here? As I said, if you want to stop players dumping Strength then you need to do more. That was my main point, which you haven't actually given any reason to dispute.

I'm never sure in these threads what people genuinely want to achieve.

 

[Don Durito]

It's voluntary the insant the PC decided to handicap his PC by assigning a stat as a dump stat.

That choice has consequences.

This only makes sense if you're using point-buy. Otherwise with the standard array some stat has to be an 8. If you're rolling and get a low score it's got to go somewhere. And if you're using point buy what is the goal? Is it for every player to feel they should go with 13,13,13,12,12,12.

If you're playing a Paladin the rational place to put your lowest score is in Intelligence. That's the way the system works. Making it suck more to have a low intelligence is not exactly going to change that fact.

 

[Don Durito]

Yet with the standard array (as a PC proficient in heavy armor), I can dump Dex, Intelligence and Charisma, and have a good Strength and Con and a reasonable Wisdom.

Heavy armor and Dex 8 gives me a better AC than even a PC with a Dex of 20, and all from a lower level.

Polearms and Great weapons (two very popular fighting styles rely on Strength) cant use Dex at all. Shield master - which is the cornerstone of any S+B build - relies on an Athletics check (so again, strength is go-to). Grappling, shoving etc all rely on Athletics (as do most of the optional combat manouvers as well).

Barbarians are forced into Strength builds as well; as is any Paladin MC combo (requiring at least a 13 Strength).

I just cant see it as the no-brainer so many people make it out to be.

Strength is a really good stat - for certain characters.

And is largely worthless for others. That's the thing that these threads always miss. What ability scores do intrinsically is the least important part of how they get distributed. Therefore, changing what they do instrinsically is not going to lead to change in the behaviour of distribution unless they're friggin huge changes.

What abilty scores do for a class is what really matters. Intelligence is not a particular good ability score intrinsically - but it's everything for a wizard. I've never seen a wizard that dumps intelligence.

If you want to change the benefits and drawbacks of ability scores you really need to focus on how they interact with classes - which is why it's hard.

 

[billd91]

Strength is a really good stat - for certain characters.

And is largely worthless for others. That's the thing that these threads always miss. What ability scores do intrinsically is the least important part of how they get distributed. Therefore, changing what they do instrinsically is not going to lead to change in the behaviour of distribution unless they're friggin huge changes.

What abilty scores do for a class is what really matters. Intelligence is not a particular good ability score intrinsically - but it's everything for a wizard. I've never seen a wizard that dumps intelligence.

If you want to change the benefits and drawbacks of ability scores you really need to focus on how they interact with classes - which is why it's hard.

No you don't. Or at least you don't really need to make up anything special for classes. A low strength means they can't carry as much - try to carry all the kits, rope, tools, and rations you want with a strength of 8. That can affect all classes, not just the warriors.

Intelligence - dump that and you won't be doing well with knowledge skills or investigate - which may be able to compensated for by having friends who are smarter than you are. And that's fine - that's part of what D&D's about. But the character will (or should) notice it when those friends aren't available.

That said, I do think 5e could balance the skills a bit more and one good way to do that is make them all more equally relevant for saving throws. Strength is already useful against monster that grab and push characters around. But more should be done to boost intelligence and charisma compared to con, dex, and wis.