And if racial bonuses didn't matter?

[Stumblewyk]

Despite my lack of "love" for the monstrous PC races...I have a terrible, terrible itch to play a Goring Charge-blast guys away Minotaur Wizard. But it's so functionally incompetent as to be useless in play.

Edit: after reading the posts above regarding "hitting" not being tied to primary scores, and only basing add damage and rider numbers off of scores, I'm heavily considering a flat level-based (with magical weapon modifications) modifier to To-Hit rolls.

...

*ponders...heavily*

 

[Herschel]

as I said elsewhere

I would kill stat bonus and give another racial power to the various races....

and if it would be possible (w/out going full 5th ed) I would try to lessen the importance of stats (if I HAVE to get 20 in my best stat that's not fun), stat should give a little bonus/malus but not be central to character conception and design

There's no reason to need a 20 in your top stat though. You can get by with a 16 just fine if you build a decent character, especially with proper feat support.

16 Strength for a fighter?

Choose a +3 proficiency weapon.

But I want to play a dwarf?

Expertise a Dwarven Weapon Training is made of win.

Sure, it would be nice if Storm or Chaos Sorcerer were better for Genasi, for example, but they still work okay. (even though Cosmic and Dragon work better stats-wise).

 

[ourchair]

As others have said, you don't need a perfect racial match (or even a primary score match) to work fine. We have a dragonborn assassin in my party who works it perfectly well, for example.

However there are certainly iconic combos that don't work as well as they probably should. There is also the pleasure of making a weird against-type combo that can be pretty fun (e.g. a dwarf cleric).

Assuming you're basing stuff off of archetypal combos in fiction, I go for the No-Prize reasoning, which is that "iconic matches" aren't necessarily optimized ones. Sure, a dwarf's CON/WIS bonuses don't map accurately to artificer attribute dependencies, but who says the famous dwarven artificers necessarily put their 18s and 16s where they "ought" to.

Now if a famous archetype say, Awesome Drow Cleric # 42 seems to be performing better in areas that his racial bonuses don't go with, then perhaps he's just rolling really really well.

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

There's no reason to need a 20 in your top stat though. You can get by with a 16 just fine if you build a decent character, especially with proper feat support.

yes... but there is no real reason to not get 20 or 18 in your principal stat

 

[AngryMojo]

yes... but there is no real reason to not get 20 or 18 in your principal stat

Not necessary by any means. I've seen characters with a 16 in their principal stat, and they do fine.

Like it's been said before, a single +1 to hit and damage really doesn't get noticed in the long run.

 

[Herschel]

yes... but there is no real reason to not get 20 or 18 in your principal stat

There are actually quite a few reasons not to boost a single stat above a 16 pre-racial. The biggest may be because if you do, you'll suck at anything but attacking, and in many case you'll end up sucking at that too because you'll be conditioned, don't qualify for feats or dead. Unless your DM runs the game like a video game, the only classes that can maybe get away with a post-racial 20 in their primary attack stat are some rogues, wizards, archer rangers and maybe certain swordmages.

Defenses, skills, riders and feats are also vital to a character. I'll give you an example: a Githzerai Fighter, build him for LFR. One feat gets you a Fullblade w/ +2 damage, sweet. You have a Wis/Dex bonus to work with.

Buy an 18 in Strength. That's what, 16 of your 22 points to buy? That leaves you six points to spread around. Leave dex at 10 (12) and go with scale. Boost Wisdom to 14 (16). Throw the "extra" point in Con to grab an "extra" surge at level 8 finally.

Your attack bonus/damage and Fort will rock. With Impiltur background your starting HP, will, atletics checks (armor penalty) and perception/insight will be decent. Your speed will be 5 and your surges and everything else will suck. Your reflex defense will be dwarf bad. You really become one-dimensional. And you almost feat lock in to toughness and durable for your first two levels.

Now, take the same character with a 16 Strength, 13 Con, 16 (14) Dex and 16 (14) Wis. The fighter weapon talent and +3 proficiency weapons mean you'll be hitting plenty, the single racial feat also makes up for the +1 damage with a +2, you have an extra surge (and still get another at level 8) and you have a choice of being in position for more feats. And you don't have an entire "dump" defense.

And you have flexibility to still do some things. Want to keep speed 6? drop the Wis to 14 (12), up the Dex to 18 (16), keep the "extra" surge and wear light armor without all the nasty armor penalties to skills too. Go tempest or great weapon or sword & board, it's all good.

 

[The Human Target]

To-Hit should really be disjoined from attributes. The one thing that sucks in D&D more than anything (short a sadistic DM) is not being able to hit something. I can understand attributes affecting damage, rider abilities and even feat choices. But telling someone they're going to spend most of the time watching others have fun if they can't hit, and they can't hit without a good primary attribute score, is lame.

this is exactly my idea

I think that the to hit bonus has grown in importance with each edition

even a 18(00) fighter of AD&D 1st had at most a +3 to hit, the greatest capacity to hit come from class and level

I would just get rid of the stat dependency and say your to hit is based on level... that's it

maybe I should give it a try next campaign....

fixed to hit bonus for everyone (+4 or +5, or even better +4 improving with level up to +12 to include item bonus and growing stat....) and back to lesser bonus from stats....

I like both of your styles and totally agree with you.

My ideas is roll ability scores and skills together into one thing, and then separately have your to hit and class abilities that aren't tied much if at all to those Skill/ability scores.

Oh also if anyone is interested, we houseruled my current campaign so that every PC got weapon or implement expertise for free. It helps out the race/class combos with no ability score synergy.

 

[Theroc]

Oh also if anyone is interested, we houseruled my current campaign so that every PC got weapon or implement expertise for free. It helps out the race/class combos with no ability score synergy.

Wouldn't this equally help race/class combos WITH ability score synergy?

 

[The Human Target]

Wouldn't this equally help race/class combos WITH ability score synergy?

For sure, but since I don't make the monsters any tougher it still lets the off build PCs sort of hit average/above average.

We added the houserule to make the game go a little faster, and this was an unintended consequence.

 

[Zaran]

I always thought that either the 4e designers were truly clever or just had alot of dumb luck when the designed the racial stats. Because even though they do not have a -2 to a stat they really do have a disadvantage when compared to other races. A half-orc fighter will almost always be better than an elf fighter in Strength . But even so you can still have an elf with a 16 Str and they would do just fine. They are basically dealing with the slight disadvantage of their frames and working around it.