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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eriktheguy" data-source="post: 5102590" data-attributes="member: 83662">I'm going to answer a lot of questions at once, so tap me on the shoulder if I misinterpret your post.Stalker0: I thought your post implied it would be good/cool if players could have higher secondary scores than primary scores. Others here seem to think you interpreted it as a bad thing. Could you clarify?Why wouldn't a Wizard max out Wis and drop Int?Their damage would suffer. My system still applies primary ability scores to damage. I don't see a balance issue with thunder-wave specifically. Also wizards are hitting many targets, so damage bonuses multiply and are very important. Some RAW wizard builds can thunder-wave for 'push 4' every turn anyways.There is a bit more of an issue with the orb wizards. They could max Wis and keep a lower Int score, but wizards are already capable of builds with 18 Int and 18 Wis by RAW. The worst my system could do is make the '20 Wis' build viable, which is hardly much different. I think that the problem here is orb wizards (a scaling saving throw penalty versus a static saving throw target number!?). My system only barely exasperates this problem.I do endorse DMs that find orb wizards troublesome and use a house rule.A more valid issue is leaders that do not focus on damage. Many leader classes have 'trigger on hit' effects on their attacks but don't care about damage. They could boost secondary effects of their attacks by dumping their main ability.Again, I don't think this is a huge problem. Leaders are hardly the balance breakers of 4e. The most powerful builds tend to be strikers (I'm looking at you rangers) and I don't see a problem with buffing a leaders abilities by 1 or 2 occasionally. Warlords are probably the worst offenders with their + Int to attack roll abilities, but again, this is not on the 'bloodclaw reckless' level of game breaking.Remember that leaders still attack almost most every turn. A much lower damage score is a serious detriment not to be underestimated. Those numbers really add up after awhile.Speak up if you really think that leaders with huge secondaries are a problem or if you have more good examples like the artificer one mentioned by Flip.Making builds with higher secondaries than primaries optimal is not a problem for me. In fact it is part of the intention of this system. I don't think that primary ability scores are in the dust, builds that focus on primaries are still optimal. I think that under my system, builds that focus on primaries or secondaries have the potential to be optimal. I wanted to encourage this.Re: Fanaelialae's suggestion for armorI also experimented with reducing the Def value for all armors to match the lowered attack and NAD values. I decided not to go this route because it didn't balance out well (ex. characters in hide would have +1 AC relative to plate with your numbers, whereas they have 1 less than plate under RAW assuming +4 Dex or Int mod).I think I am going to follow the advice of some in this thread and apply bonuses to characters rather than alter monsters. I'm going to use a static bonus to attack (equal for all players) and a static bonus to NADs (depending on class/race perhaps).</blockquote>

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