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

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Define high. I've seen plenty of 16/14's

Interesting. I've never seen a character who didn't dump one of the other. I've been 16 STR, 8 DEX and vice versa, but never a balance of the two.

 

[FrogReaver]

Interesting. I've never seen a character who didn't dump one of the other. I've been 16 STR, 8 DEX and vice versa, but never a balance of the two.

Must not have many medium armored melee PC's in your games?

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Must not have many medium armored melee PC's in your games?

I had a light cleric and moon druid, both of whom dropped DEX.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So Charisma, Int and Wisdom get a boost (favouring the Casters) while Str, Dex and Con get nerfed (punishing martials)?

How does Str get nerfed in that system?

I never get the 'strength is weak' arguments.

You can dump Dex to 8 and wear heavy armour and who cares? You can use Strength based ranged weapons which are reasonable, GWM to your hearts content and carry a lot; plus Athletics is far more useful that Acrobatics.

Dex saves are better than Strength saves, but few Dex saves impose status effects; they're just more HP damage, so its not a big deal (like in 3.5 - you wanted good Will and Fort, but Ref wasnt as important). Guess you also get a hit to initiative, but meh.

Im not seeing it. The only Dex builds I've seen in my games have been Rogues and Monks, and that's fair enough.

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.

 

[Olrox17]

Have you ever seen a high STR, high DEX character in 5e? I haven't, and I find that odd.

I have. It was a fighter with both sharpshooter and two handed weapon mastery. Also good at stealth and grappling. Kind of a niche build, admittedly.

 

[Don Durito]

As I've argued previously there's no point punishing people for dumping stats if you use a standard array.
They have to dump something. If you use point buy, then it makes a little more sense, but if you drive the ability scores too much toward the middle, then they start losing any real sense of purpose.

Of course ideally, you'd want them all to dump different stats. There really ought to be a ability score called "magic" so everyone who isn't a prmary caster can dump it and the game can recognise that non casters need better abilities because they have to make up for the lack of spells with better skill rolls (and the fact that many of them need to be in the frontline and so need a better range of abilities).

How to make Strength better? Make it contribute to AC. You add the lowest of your Str or Dex to AC in Light or Medium Armour.

Or

Have Strengh contribute to Maximum HP instead of Con (but keep Con for Hit dice)

 

[DEFCON 1]

The thing that always makes me look askance at these threads is always the same... as a DM why do you care what your player's stats are?

You aren't looking at their character sheets during the game, you're interacting with what numbers they are giving you after rolling dice and such. So what difference does it make what the isolated numbers are in the background, especially when the keep getting modified with up to 20 points coming from a d20 die?

Now I'm sure there are probably other reasons than what I'm going to put forth now (and if that's true for your table, then great)... but the impression I always seem to get from threads like these is that these DMs are bored with seeing the same characters with the same stat arrays all the time, and they want the numbers to work out differently so that their players play "new" things.

But here's the problem with that... if the characters always seem to be the same game after game after game... it's not because of the stats, it's because the players just aren't coming up with different or original characters. It's all on the players. They are roleplaying the same way over and over because that's what they do, regardless of whatever their stats happen to be. If Bob's been playing the same sort of fighter in every campaign... forcing him to play one with a 10 CON rather than a 15 CON because you changed stats around ain't going to magically make his next fighter shiny and new. It's still just going to be same old Bob PC (except that the PC's going to fall down more often.)

If you want new and original PCs and your players aren't coming up with them... change your players. Do that and you'll actually see results you want this time.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Err... no. Casters dont give a naughty word if they no longer get Str or Dex to hit and damage with weapons. They're still going to dump Strength (they dont carry anything anyway) have decent Con and Dex (they're only there for the HP, Concentration saves and AC bonus, which is still intact) and max out their Casting stat (Int, Wis or Cha) and get all the same bonuses for doing so, plus extra.

Rogues and Dex based fighters and Rangers now need Strength AND Dexterity to be viable.

You've basically made half the martials in your game MAD, while giving the casters a boost.

Umm. NO.. Again, you are white-room analyzing a system we've been using to great effect for months. We all like it, casters and non-casters alike. Maybe casters in your game don't give a naughty word about STR or DEX because you aren't making them important enough?

But I can tell you, casters who nerf STR or DEX in our games feel the pinch. Even without linking HP to CON now, no one wants a negative CON mod, so no one nerfs it either. DEX is still vital as a save, as in CON for saves (and concentration).

Rogues are hardly affected at all. Especially at higher levels their damage comes from their Sneak Attack, not the +3 to +5 Dex might give them once per round (ok, twice if they get an OA). The bonus they get by having good INT, WIS, and/or CHA more than makes up for it. I don't think Rogues in your games nerfed all three, do they?

DEX-based fighters admittedly might feel the "nerf" the most, but again that is only because DEX was already designed to be too strong. So, now when we level it out you say we are penalizing those characters. No, we are evening the field.

So, again, no one is saying you have to use it, but we have for a long time now and it makes all the ability scores important. We like it, it makes sense, and makes all the scores at least potentially useful to all the classes. Again, I encourage anyone who has interest to playtest it and try it before crying out against it.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Have you ever seen a high STR, high DEX character in 5e? I haven't, and I find that odd.

FWIW, in our game we have a half-orc Fighter/Rogue who has STR 19 and DEX 18. Boy, he is a beast to behold, let me tell you! LOL

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

The thing that always makes me look askance at these threads is always the same... as a DM why do you care what your player's stats are?

I care because the mechanics of the game incentivize certain types of characters that destabilize the legitimacy of the game world. If in a world, warriors are expected to be both strong and strategic (Intelligent), yet the mechanics incentivize a string of dumb brutes, the mechanics fight against the internal logic of the game world.

I also view creation and maintenance of the game world the most important job of the DM.