Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Einlanzer0" data-source="post: 6943600" data-attributes="member: 6788934">This is not my first thread on ability scores, but I'm in the middle of a weeks-long brainstorming session and want to gather as much thought and feedback as possible. I think one of the few things WotC really dropped the ball on for 5e was in not putting a big emphasis on making sure the ability scores were designed well in terms of strategic offerings and balance. This has the effect of emphasizing dump stats, making characters less diverse, and building generally less interesting than it could be. I see several major issues:1. Str and Dex have no synergy and instead just render each other obsolete3. No other score is competitive with Con as a secondary, pretty much ever4. Int in particular is almost completely irrelevant outside wizard spellcasting...and a host of smaller ones. The thing is, these wouldn't really have been that hard to address properly. I have some ideas I want to playtest, some of which I've talked a little about in other threads. First, I do not believe Finesse weapons (and Longbows) should get dex mod to damage, only to attack rolls. Anyone who fights in melee should benefit from both Str and Dex to some extent. Removing this doesn't affect Strength-based classes at all, but does nerf dex-based builds to varying degrees, based mostly on how damage is dealt. The effect on rogues, for example, is smaller than the effect on fighters.So, what's the compensation? First, I don't think it needs to be perfect. It's my opinion that Dex is a bit too generous in the core rules, and that Dex builds compete too well with Str builds in terms of both damage and defense for the versatility and utility they provide, especially at lower levels. So, something that results in a very slight nerf overall is acceptable to me, while a 3.5 level nerf is not acceptable, because it makes Dex builds completely unattractive. My proposal is that Dex should modify your critical hit range. Instead of being a fixed 20, it goes down modestly with your Dex, say to 17 with a Dex of 20 (this would stack with the Champion's feature). Additionally, when you score a critical hit, you add both your Str and Dex modifiers to the damage. I think I would apply this to spellcasting as well as melee and ranged attacks. I this this makes both Str and Dex more tactically interesting as well as more "realistic". One of them (for any physical attacker) will be your primary, and the other one becomes an attractive potential secondary the same way Con is. This also translates into a more significant advantage, again, based on how the class deals damage. Rogues in particular would benefit, which I feel is appropriate. For Con, there's nothing really that make sense to change. Rather, I think the solution is to provide a bit of extra utility to all three mental scores, in particular Int, which I strongly feel was made too irrelevant in 5e, that help those scores compete better with getting more HP. For intelligence, I recommend using older editions' benefit of adding additional proficiency in skills, tools, and languages based on Int (though not on a strictly 1:1 basis, because that would be too generous in 5e). Additionally, I'm working on rules to replace Hero Points with Tactical Points, which work similarly but are renewable and Int based, rather than being static and level based, which sucks. Wisdom doesn't really need any major expansions, but it's helped significantly in my campaigns by its use in sanity and madness rules (it has a new skill, Composure, and Medicine has been moved to Int). For Charisma, I like the idea of using it in the faction rules to give it more mechanically hard benefits. In addition, I'm playtesting using it in the Inspiration rules to make Inspiration recursive.</blockquote>

Verification