Adding both stats to Defenses

[Stalker0]

I'm a big fan of 4e allowing you to draw from one of two stats when adding to your defenses (instead of just 1 in 3e).

However, I do find it gives a lot of incentive to ignore your other stat.

Furthermore, there is a lot of talk about how PC defenses don't scale up as well as monster attacks as levels go up.

So the idea:

Players add Str and Con to FORT
DEX and INT to REF
WIS and CHA to WILL


Now I've seen this idea tossed around before, and I was generally dismissive. But lately I've been thinking about it again, and I think it could have some decent benefit. Just for fun I checked my CB for my 11th level characters to see what change teh effect would have. Interestingly enough, I generally gained a +1 to one defense overall (+2 to one defense, -1 to another, +0 to the third).

This gives a small bump to defenses at high level, increases the utility in creating a person with "balanced" stats, and allows a person to specialize more in a defense if they want to.

 

[keterys]

Could be pretty odd for rageblood barbarians, battlerage fighters, and charisma paladins, who might actually see something like a +4 to +8 in their particular defense.

 

[FireLance]

Sounds like an interesting idea. To address balance concerns, why not impose a graduated tier cap, e.g. add your second ability score to a maximum of +2 at Heroic tier, a maximum of +4 at Paragon tier, and without cap at Epic tier?

 

[King Nate]

Furthermore, there is a lot of talk about how PC defenses don't scale up as well as monster attacks as levels go up.

Actually I think you got this backwards. The talk is that the PC's attacks don't scale up with the monsters defenses. Hence the stealth errata feats that give player's bonuses to attacks and the "suggestions" to lower monster defenses.

 

[Starfox]

In my experience, its the NADs that need help, and this could be just they way to do it. On the other hand, the characters having the most NAD trouble are those who started with an attribute at 20, and they'll likely not profit from this at all.

Serves them right? Not so sure. When a creature can hit my players Fort on a roll of -2 on d20, there is an issue with NAD.

 

[CapnZapp]

What the game needs is that the feats that gives bonuses to F/R/W should not stack with the bonuses from your ability score.

In other words, a mechanic that makes players shore up their worst defenses, instead of a mechanic that encourages players to reinforce their highest defenses.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually I think you got this backwards. The talk is that the PC's attacks don't scale up with the monsters defenses. Hence the stealth errata feats that give player's bonuses to attacks and the "suggestions" to lower monster defenses.

I think it's both. Defenses scale the same ways as attacks, basically. At least your "good" defenses, those that are also linked to your primary and secondary ability scores. The others lag behind.
AC might be the only one without this problem thanks to masterwork armor. But for the other defenses, you basically need to pick some of the few items that do in fact boost them, and also a few feats.

I suppose if this change was to be introduced, such items and feats need to be reduced or weakened.

But I wonder how much difference it would actually make on "secondary" defenses?
I mean, a Fighter will certainly have a kick-ass Fort defense soon. But will his Will defense really improve all that notably? Or his Reflex defense?

One of the best benefits might it might make more sense to spread out ability scores more this way, and not always picking a 16 or 18 in your primary stat (before racial modifiers).

 

[Garthanos]

A related house rule... that allows the off defenses to have an impact...

Secondary Defense (Combat Advantage modification)
"It is generally true that the hero will exploit his abilities to their maximum but when that very advantage has been taken from him, he may find his ability to adapt fails and even the greatest of armor may seem to be just so much weight holding him back".

Next to each of your defenses on your sheet write down a defense for when your adversary has combat advantage against you, it is calculated based on your secondary attribute in the associated defense category (If your intelligence is the higher reflex attribute then your secondary reflex defense will be based on Dexterity). For those in heavy armor your AC defense is as per your best reflex defense. This replaces the normal +2 benefit of Combat Advantage.
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My players tend to build balanced characters anyway...

 

[Sadrik]

A while back, I had a long thread with many solutions to the stat poarity problem. Just search "stat polarity" and you should find it. In that thread this one of the solutions, I think it is a very good one. If you use all of your stat points in one area you should be good at that defense becasue you certainly will not be that good in the other areas...

 

[eriktheguy]

Yeah your solution would work in many cases. In my experience monsters attacks against NADs tend to hit almost always, so I don't see the problem with buffing the chars a bit in this area. The only problem is that all the PCs who take an 8 (every optimized build) get a -1, but thats probably a good thing in many DMs eyes. No more taking 8s without any penalty.
As mentioned above (and obviously the OP realized this when he posted) it is strange for some builds such as ragebloods.
But its probably a reasonable solution. I can't see any other solution for the problem short of redesigning the entire ability score system.