D&D 5E Ability Scores

[ExploderWizard]

So what can you do about it? Well, in my campaign people can buy heavier weight bows (or modify magic bows) that require N strength to pull. So if you buy a bow reinforced to a +2, you have to have a 14 or better strength to pull and add +2 to attack and damage. This makes sense to me, the heavier the pull the more the arrow will penetrate. If you don't have a high enough strength, you have disadvantage on attacks but still add your strength mod to the damage.

How does this fix anything. The high DEX character still gets to add DEX modifier to bow & finesse weapon damage. STR still isn't needed.

One way to make STR and DEX equally important:

1) ONLY DEX modifies to hit rolls. Period.

2) ONLY STR modifies damage rolls. Period.

3) Remove the max DEX limitation on heavier armors.

4) Increase the STR requirements and make the penalties for having too low a STR for heavy armors harsher.

Now fighters will need a measure of both DEX and STR to be all around better combatants. No one will be penalized for wearing the heaviest armor that they can bear by losing DEX bonus, and a decent STR will be required to wear the best armors and gain a damage bonus.

 

[Prism]

I'm not really. Unless you are or have a DM that particularly emphasizes the social and exploration pillars, that ranking will hold across all game play. However, with that said, combat is disproportionately important, because that's generally the only way you die. The story tends to bend itself around what PCs can and can't accomplish outside of combat.

Well Con certainly doesn't hold true in the other pillars, except for the odd undetected trap or certain types of endurance. Whereas combat is typically the only way you die I wouldn't say its the only way of measuring success or failure.

Anyway, that's all group related and you are trying to fix a problem you perceive in your experience. In relation to that, don't you feel that if you emphasis Str and Dex (plus Con) then all of the weapon users will gravitate to those stats and dump the mental stats even harder? Surely you will end up with very similar characters that all have some variant of Str, Dex and Con a few points different from each other. I see the ability to dump either Str or Dex so you can pick up a decent non combat stat as a benefit not a problem. I am playing a high Int fighter and don't feel out like I'm losing anything in combat terms. I'm not sure I would play such a character if I was to use your system.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Well Con certainly doesn't hold true in the other pillars, except for the odd undetected trap or certain types of endurance. Whereas combat is typically the only way you die I wouldn't say its the only way of measuring success or failure.

Anyway, that's all group related and you are trying to fix a problem you perceive in your experience. In relation to that, don't you feel that if you emphasis Str and Dex (plus Con) then all of the weapon users will gravitate to those stats and dump the mental stats even harder? Surely you will end up with very similar characters that all have some variant of Str, Dex and Con a few points different from each other. I see the ability to dump either Str or Dex so you can pick up a decent non combat stat as a benefit not a problem. I am playing a high Int fighter and don't feel out like I'm losing anything in combat terms. I'm not sure I would play such a character if I was to use your system.

If I was only making the changes to Str and Dex, then the answer to your question would be yes. However, my proposal also includes significant expansions to Int, Wis and Cha that both give them extra combat utility and emphasize their roles outside of combat. Wis gets a new Composure skill to replace Medicine, which moves to Int. Apart from being a useful social skill, it also is used in sanity and madness contests, which are fairly common in my campaigns. Charisma is utilized in Reknown, and is used to provide recursion to the Inspiration mechanic (PCs can inspire other PCs, which is a mechanic that leverages their Charisma score). Int will grant bonus skills/tools/languages on the same scale as Dex, and will also affect a re-flavored variant of Hero Points (called Tactical Points) that I use.

 

[Oofta]

How does this fix anything. The high DEX character still gets to add DEX modifier to bow & finesse weapon damage. STR still isn't needed.

One way to make STR and DEX equally important:

1) ONLY DEX modifies to hit rolls. Period.

2) ONLY STR modifies damage rolls. Period.

3) Remove the max DEX limitation on heavier armors.

4) Increase the STR requirements and make the penalties for having too low a STR for heavy armors harsher.

Now fighters will need a measure of both DEX and STR to be all around better combatants. No one will be penalized for wearing the heaviest armor that they can bear by losing DEX bonus, and a decent STR will be required to wear the best armors and gain a damage bonus.

I don't want to penalize dex based characters, I simply want to make sure that strength based characters have the option to be the same well-rounded build as everyone else.


Right now, a dex based fighter can excel at melee and ranged combat while receiving only a very minor penalty to AC. A strength based character may have a slightly higher AC but very limited range attacks. For most people, a strength based character's only option is to go toe-to-toe.


Which is fine until you start throwing flying creatures or monsters attacking from more than 20-30 ft away, then strength based characters are SOL.


Meanwhile the dex based character can use a bow and get 5 times the range, and when it comes to melee they pull out the rapier and do the same damage as the guy with the longsword.


I understand the desire to combine dex and strength somehow. I'd love a system that makes more sense - a gymnast has to have a good dex and a reasonable strength for example. The best mountain climbers are not bodybuilders. I just don't know how to do that. Since we don't have a perfect system, at least we can level the playing field a little bit.

As far as effectively requiring both dex and strength, I disagree with that as well. The big/strong but clumsy guy going up against the lithe/dextrous guy is a pretty common trope, and one that should be supported.

 

[Bacon Bits]

1. Con
2. Wis
3. Dex
4. Cha
5. Str (with standard encumbrance rule)
6. Int

I wouldn't rank Con that high because it doesn't do anything in the majority of circumstances. If you're level 10 and never drop below 11 hp, then having a 14 Con instead of a 12 Con was irrelevant. Additionally, Con saves aren't that common, aren't as deadly as they were, and unless you hit the DC on the nose having a 14 instead of a 12 is irrelevant so it only matters in 5% of saves. At low level I'd also rank Dex higher than Wis because it can completely replace Str, has several skills that are more useful, and Dex saves are much more common than Wis saves. At high level, Wis saves get much more important and so does Perception. I'd rank Cha higher simply because it's the spellcasting attribute.

I'd rank them:

1. Dex/Wis (tie)
3. Con/Cha (tie)
5. Str
6. Int

Dex has, pretty consistently, been too good throughout all of D&D history. Str was only too good as long as percentile strength was included. Since that has been dropped, it's basically been mediocre in and of itself at the levels PCs are capable of.

IMO, the reason Con exists separately from Str is so the game can make small or tiny monsters that aren't automatically frail, and can also make durable monsters that don't automatically hit like a truck. In other words: the problem is that HP is tied to an attribute, and you need those separate on some level to build interesting monsters.

I think the only reason Wis exists separately from Int is so the game has an excuse for Wizards to use a different attribute than Clerics. And I think Charisma remains a stat that's almost entirely superfluous. Indeed, I think it was put in the game in part for players to use as a dump stat. In whatever attempt game designers have made to make Cha not be useless, they've continually expanded what it means while simultaneously restricting Wis and especially Int. So now they've put lots of things into it that just really don't belong there. Persuasion could be Wis or Int. Deception could be Int (it's out-smarting someone, after all). Even Performance could be Dex or Int depending on it's nature. It's not a good design for Bard, Sorcerer, and Warlock (and Paladin) to all use Cha. Beyond historic reasons, there's no reason to have six attributes over, say, Str, Dex, Con, and Mind, or Str, Dex, Con, Int, and Wis. Even then physical stats are all easily understood. The three mental stats are a cause of confusion and argument. How is will (Wis) different than force of personality (Cha)? You can make that distinction, but it's contrived. There are many nonsense assignments of Int/Wis/Cha. You can describe a character with those attributes, but often it's narrow with only one possible character personality. Attributes shouldn't be doing that. Charisma is particularly guilty of this, because it's so closely tied to personality.

5e's six save system is a clunky way to introduce Strength saves into the game (let's be honest, that's all that was really missing from Fort, Ref, and Will). I'd rather see five saves: Brawn (Str), Reflex (Dex), Fortitude (Con), Will (Int/Wis/Cha). Or maybe Will (Wis) and Reason (Int). But I don't see any reason for Cha to be a save. The unbalanced part here is that there are three stats in the game to represent two characteristics: knowledge/reasoning and social awareness.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Sorry, but no. If there's a systemic problem, it's on WotC..

OK, let me try again. It's only a systemic problem at your table based on your preference of playstyle. Others have already mentioned that the problems you're encountering is not an issue at their tables. It certainly isn't at mine. So that clearly shows that the driving factor here is preference of playstyle, and not the rules themselves. At my table, we using things like INT checks very often. We've even had an entire session where there was no combat at all.

Exploration and social pillars are much lighter and softer rulesets with a lot more narrative flexibility.

Only because you play them that way. There are rules for interaction and exploration. Just because you choose to apply more of a narrative approach to those two pillars doesn't mean you can't do the same for combat. Any of the three pillars can have narrative flexibility if you want, and all of the three pillars have a rules structure on how to resolve things if you don't use narrative flexibility.

 

[Einlanzer0]

OK, let me try again. It's only a systemic problem at your table based on your preference of playstyle. Others have already mentioned that the problems you're encountering is not an issue at their tables. It certainly isn't at mine. So that clearly shows that the driving factor here is preference of playstyle, and not the rules themselves. At my table, we using things like INT checks very often. We've even had an entire session where there was no combat at all.

Only because you play them that way. There are rules for interaction and exploration. Just because you choose to apply more of a narrative approach to those two pillars doesn't mean you can't do the same for combat. Any of the three pillars can have narrative flexibility if you want, and all of the three pillars have a rules structure on how to resolve things if you don't use narrative flexibility.

Look, I'm not going to sit here and argue about this all day long with you, but just...no. I do use the exploration and social rules, and, even so, it could not be more obvious that the actual ruleset emphasizes combat over the other two pillars, regardless of what WotC actually says about the intent. After all, it originated as a wargame, not a world simulator. And today's D&D ruleset still heavily reflects that origin. If it didn't, the game would be very, very different. I.e. we'd have actual social and exploration based classes, as opposed to combat-based classes that may or may not have one or two design elements nodding to the other two pillars. It's not that social and exploration encounters are not encouraged to be part of the game - they very much are, they are just handled in a much softer way.

 

[ccs]

If the rogue can't climb or swim, then that puts them in the same boat with the wizard and cleric, who can also do neither. If the mission at hand requires everyone in the party to do those things, then the rogue isn't exactly holding things back.

Having a moderately high stat is only useful if everyone has a moderately high (or higher) stat. It doesn't matter if you're rolling at +0 for Stealth, because the paladin is rolling at -1 with disadvantage and it only takes one loud person to spoil surprise for everyone.

The rogue doesn't need to break down doors, though, because the fighter or barbarian can do that. Likewise, the fighter doesn't need to pick locks, because the rogue is there to do that. And everyone except the bard can safely dump Charisma, because that's the only one character who needs to make Charisma-based checks.

Only in a poorly run game in my xp.

 

[marcelvdpol]

I agree that some abilities are in general more useful than others.

str vs dex: there are very few ways in which strength will trump dexterity. dexterity saves come up pretty often and a high initiative is most of the time better than a low initiative. only class that comes to mind is the Barbarian as it has abilities which specifically key of strength.

intelligence vs Wisdom. again, wisdom saves come up much more often compared to intelligence and wisdom has several very important skills attached to it such as perception and possibly survival.

one thing thas couldbe done is to make initiative depend on another ability, possibly depending on class. For example, the Barbarian initiative uses Charisma while the Fighter uses intelligence. Another is to force more saves of another type, but this is rather dm dependent at the moment and there are simply far more low level spells that target dex or wid saves.

I would definitely like a bit more balance in this; I liked 4th edition approach that defenses keyed off the "best" of a pair of abilities; so you could use strength in place of dexterity for a dexterity save and intelligence instead of wisdom for a wisdom save.

However, there isno getting around it: some abilities are in general more useful than others.

 

[ccs]

I don't want to penalize dex based characters, I simply want to make sure that strength based characters have the option to be the same well-rounded build as everyone else.


Right now, a dex based fighter can excel at melee and ranged combat while receiving only a very minor penalty to AC. A strength based character may have a slightly higher AC but very limited range attacks. For most people, a strength based character's only option is to go toe-to-toe.


Which is fine until you start throwing flying creatures or monsters attacking from more than 20-30 ft away, then strength based characters are SOL.


Meanwhile the dex based character can use a bow and get 5 times the range, and when it comes to melee they pull out the rapier and do the same damage as the guy with the longsword.

By character, do you mean fighter?