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

[Raduin711]

How is a DM enforcing a flaw, 'antagonistic'?

''No, Throkk; you're an Outlander Barbarian from the Wildlands with an Intelligence of 8; you dont have a clue about the History of these parts, what spell the Wizard is casting, or even what the local religions are; dont bother to roll Intelligence'.

And so forth.

"You aren't roleplaying your character dumb enough" is a pretty vague criticism. My idea of "8" and your idea of "8" aren't necessarily always going to be the same. Leveraging mechanical penalties against your players when they aren't roleplaying to your liking strikes me as an antagonistic approach. I think this leads to arguments and resentment.

Further, even Int 8 outlander barbarians know things, even about history, religion, and magic. This is already mechanically reflected by their -1 penalty. No need to gild the lily. They are entitled to make Int checks like any other character.

If I felt that a character was acting in a way that was out of sync with their stats, rather than find a ruler to rap their knuckles with, I would start by either making an observation "The outlander seems very astute today..." or ask a question. "Where might you have come across information like this?" This gives the player a chance to do a course-correction or fill in the gaps with a little more role-playing.

 

[Lanefan]

If you're playing a Paladin the rational place to put your lowest score is in Intelligence.

Which if nothing else answers the question of why Lawful Stupid is the most common Paladinic alignment...

 

[Don Durito]

"You aren't roleplaying your character dumb enough" is a pretty vague criticism. My idea of "8" and your idea of "8" aren't necessarily always going to be the same. Leveraging mechanical penalties against your players when they aren't roleplaying to your liking strikes me as an antagonistic approach. I think this leads to arguments and resentment.

Further, even Int 8 outlander barbarians know things, even about history, religion, and magic. This is already mechanically reflected by their -1 penalty. No need to gild the lily. They are entitled to make Int checks like any other character.

If I felt that a character was acting in a way that was out of sync with their stats, rather than find a ruler to rap their knuckles with, I would start by either making an observation "The outlander seems very astute today..." or ask a question. "Where might you have come across information like this?" This gives the player a chance to do a course-correction or fill in the gaps with a little more role-playing.

Ever since 4E I've pretty much interpreted Intelligence as being about education, not smarts. It fits largely everything the ability score covers except for Investigate, and explains why wizards with years of schooling are the only pcs with 18 Int. I don't know why we should we so strict about Intelligence when just about everyone these days is pretty relaxed about how they interpret Strength.

It also discourages the "my character is comically stupid" school of characterisation. (Or at least removes the encouragement.)

If you're rolling the ability scores and assigning them in the order they're rolled than that's perhaps a different story.

 

[Lanefan]

"You aren't roleplaying your character dumb enough" is a pretty vague criticism. My idea of "8" and your idea of "8" aren't necessarily always going to be the same. Leveraging mechanical penalties against your players when they aren't roleplaying to your liking strikes me as an antagonistic approach. I think this leads to arguments and resentment.

If you don't play in good faith, don't expect me to DM in good faith.

Further, even Int 8 outlander barbarians know things, even about history, religion, and magic. This is already mechanically reflected by their -1 penalty. No need to gild the lily. They are entitled to make Int checks like any other character.

If I felt that a character was acting in a way that was out of sync with their stats, rather than find a ruler to rap their knuckles with, I would start by either making an observation "The outlander seems very astute today..." or ask a question. "Where might you have come across information like this?" This gives the player a chance to do a course-correction or fill in the gaps with a little more role-playing.

I'm not as nice as that.

If the player of a low-Int character insists on making Int checks, once in a while I'd be sorely tempted to - on what seems a successful roll - give information that later proves to be outright wrong: the PC has accurately remembered some complete BS it heard somewhere along the line.

That said, unless I'm playing a Cleric I'll dump Wisdom over Intelligence all day long.

I want my characters to be smart regardless of class. I don't care if they're wise about it.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Hitting an opponent with a bow for a couple of attacks is superior to having to wait a round or so not doing much.

No; it's not.

How so?

A Barbarian and Paladins damage output in melee is far superior to anything they could spit out using Dexterity based ranged attacks (baseline). Move and Dash is better off in virtually every single case where you can reach them in a round or two.

An 11th level Paladin makes 2 shots with his bow, with no archery F/S, unable to smite or improved divine smite or much else of note. Even IF both attacks hit, he's dealing 2d8+(dex2).

Compare that to the hell he can unleash up close.

Oh, I'm not suggesting that they can probably do better in melee, but in situations where melee isn't an option (flying or hard to reach opponents) or inadvisable (breaking formation to run into a mob alone), your bow is still better than calling names. Its better than many other classes' at-will damage over most of their adventuring career.

If you're a Paladin (or a Barbarian) and you're pulling out a bow, your enemy has already won.

They've won if they force a retreat or stand over our corpses. Not before.

If I'm a Vengaladin Im moving, dashing, and Misty stepping to cover 90' in a round, instead of hanging back with a Bow. In 99 percent of combats, Im threatening the target now and he has to disengage or cop a smite to the face via an AoO.

OK.

 

[Raduin711]

If you don't play in good faith, don't expect me to DM in good faith.

If they aren't role playing in good faith, that strikes me as a table problem, and not a problem to be fixed with mechanics. If I don't trust my PC's to role play their characters, then what are we doing at this table together?

If the player of a low-Int character insists on making Int checks, once in a while I'd be sorely tempted to - on what seems a successful roll - give information that later proves to be outright wrong: the PC has accurately remembered some complete BS it heard somewhere along the line.

I don't see low-Int characters making Int checks as a problem. However, giving players bad information for failed rolls isn't an inherently bad, provided it isn't a vehicle for your role playing grievances.

 

[DEFCON 1]

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.

Because the stats themselves are actually pretty useless in "defining" what a character is. And that's why all this talk about "dump stats" is kind of stupid too in my opinion.

The problem is that all of you are just looking at the stats themselves and using those as definition of what a character is... when it truth, when you stop looking at a character sheet and only concern yourself with what occurs at the table... the difference between an 8 WIS and a 12 WIS character is 2 POINTS DIFFERENCE in all the rolls that occur. That's it! An 8 WIS character is only just 10% less wise than a 12 WIS character. The 8 who makes a Wisdom check will be receiving numbers between -1 and 19, while the 12 will get numbers between 1 and 21. Where exactly does this illustrate the 8 WIS is somehow all this less wise than the 12 WIS character? That supposedly unwise 8 WIS character will be making moderate DC 15 checks a full quarter of the time.

THIS is why I say it's ridiculous for any DM to look at their players character sheets and become bothered by the numbers scribbled down, as though those are what the characters are. Because they aren't. What the characters are is what happens to them at the table. The way the characters are roleplayed and then what occurs to them defines the character, NOT the character sheet. When the 8 STR character makes the 3 Athletics checks in a row you asked of them... it sure doesn't seem at that point at the table they've "dumped STR" now, does it? And if you had never looked at the character sheet to begin with, you'd probably never guess that the player had "dumped STR".

Worry about how your players actually roleplay their characters and take THAT as your cue for the kind of person they are and have your NPCs react accordingly-- not the stereotypical vision of what they should be based on the numbers you remembered seeing written down on their sheet.

 

[Lanefan]

Because the stats themselves are actually pretty useless in "defining" what a character is. And that's why all this talk about "dump stats" is kind of stupid too in my opinion.

The problem is that all of you are just looking at the stats themselves and using those as definition of what a character is... when it truth, when you stop looking at a character sheet and only concern yourself with what occurs at the table... the difference between an 8 WIS and a 12 WIS character is 2 POINTS DIFFERENCE in all the rolls that occur. That's it! An 8 WIS character is only just 10% less wise than a 12 WIS character. The 8 who makes a Wisdom check will be receiving numbers between -1 and 19, while the 12 will get numbers between 1 and 21. Where exactly does this illustrate the 8 WIS is somehow all this less wise than the 12 WIS character? That supposedly unwise 8 WIS character will be making moderate DC 15 checks a full quarter of the time.

This is actually a problem with the mechanics of having bonuses be linear where the stats are on a bell curve.

The peak of the bell curve, for Humans, is 10.5, meaning 8 and 13 are actually the mirrors, not 8 and 12; and also meaning that by the time you get down to 8 or up to 13 you're a long way down or up the chart of the population's percentile...because it's a bell curve. Almost half the population fits in the 9-12 range.

Which means that saying an 8-Wis character is only 10% less wise than a 12-Wis character is very misleading for roleplay purposes.

THIS is why I say it's ridiculous for any DM to look at their players character sheets and become bothered by the numbers scribbled down, as though those are what the characters are. Because they aren't.

If the stats don't inform the roleplaying then what's the point?

What the characters are is what happens to them at the table. The way the characters are roleplayed and then what occurs to them defines the character, NOT the character sheet.

I my view, if your character sheet says you've Int 8 and you roleplay your character as if it had Int 16 (particularly if you're in a game where the DM doesn't use checks and instead relies on the players to think things out) then you're not playing in good faith, end of story.

When the 8 STR character makes the 3 Athletics checks in a row you asked of them... it sure doesn't seem at that point at the table they've "dumped STR" now, does it? And if you had never looked at the character sheet to begin with, you'd probably never guess that the player had "dumped STR".

That's just sheer luck, which happens, and the PC might be justifiably proud of itself for pulling this off while the rest of the party cheer him on.

But that doesn't mean the PC just turned into Adonis and can suddenly start going around flexing its mighty biceps and bodybuilder physique! It's still a weakling.

Worry about how your players actually roleplay their characters and take THAT as your cue for the kind of person they are and have your NPCs react accordingly-- not the stereotypical vision of what they should be based on the numbers you remembered seeing written down on their sheet.

I'm going to be informed by both.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So, a few things I would like to mention:

1. One of the issues is that the default array and that is includes the 8. That forces the dump which seems to bother so many because it is usually in predictable places and lacks the impact they feel it should have. The array could be 14, 14, 13, 12, 10, 10. Now, no dump stat.

2. Point-buy can be changed to make 10 the base and allocate fewer points, I think 15 would be all. Point cost would be modified to: 10: 0, 11: 1, 12: 2, 13: 3, 14: 5, 15: 7. Sure, no more 15, 15, 15, -8, -8, -8, but that is the point.

3. Rolling stats is fine, but do it in order if you want to keep 4d6k3. If you want to arrange to taste, use a system where 10 is the lowest. Examples are d6 + d4 + 8 if you want the full 10-18 range, or just 2d4 + 8 if you want a lower cap of 16 like I prefer myself. Whatever range you want, you can come up with a way do it it.

In any of these ways, no dump stat anymore. If someone wants to role-play a lower score, they can still do so with suffering a mechanical penalty.

Anyway, the real issue with dump stats as I see it is that those PCs who dump can boost a primary and be better with it that a PC who chooses not to. If there is a not a real cost that is enforced for that benefit, that PC is benefiting from a flaw in the system.

 

[dave2008]

Because the stats themselves are actually pretty useless in "defining" what a character is. And that's why all this talk about "dump stats" is kind of stupid too in my opinion.

The problem is that all of you are just looking...

Let me stop you right there. I noted in my post that I was jumping in about the specific point. I have no idea what the rest of the argument was, please don't lump me in with other people as I had no greater argument or question.