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One of my least favorite features of 5e is the interchangeability of Strength and Dexterity as a primary attack attribute. I understand the rationale: you want Strength and Dexterity builds to be equally viable. But it’s boring. Why even bother to have two attributes? Why not just call it “Body” and be done with it? Because of saving throws, AC, and jumping distance?
Besides being boring, it results in “dump stats”. And while that is very intentional I disagree with the decision. Although a fighter in plate with a great sword still has uses for Dex (saving throws, initiative) those uses are so minor compared to the need for Str and Con that it’s safe to just park a 10 in Dex and be done with it.
How ridiculous is it that Str is effectively useless for Dex-based combatants, and vice versa?
So my goal is to find a system in which Dex and Str both contribute more-or-less equally to damage, but in different ways that are synergistic. Here’s what I came up with:
- Pick whichever is higher, Str or Dex, for your attack roll.
- Your damage is increased (or decreased) by your Str mod, for mainhand only
- Your critical strike threshold is decreased by your Dex mod. (But a negative mod wouldn't increase it above 20.)
- There are no “finesse” weapons. Use whatever weapon you want, even versatile or 2H weapons. (Yay! No Rapiers needed!)
- With any 1H weapon a "light" weapon can be wielded in the offhand (they don't both have to be light).
When I ran some (well, millions*) of numbers using this, I confirmed that:
- The advantage shifts to Str for weaker weapons (smaller die size) and to Dex for larger weapons (larger die size). (Ignoring dual wielding)
- The greater the differential between the two scores (Dex and Str) the more the advantage shifts to Str. I.e., high Str helps a Dex build more than high Dex helps a Str build.
- Advantage helps Dex more, because of the (potentially dramatically) increased Crit chance. The above scenarios with Advantage makes it about 78% and 90%.
- Higher armor classes benefit Dex (because increasingly likely that any hit is a crit), which means higher Proficiency benefits Str.
- Dex builds benefit relatively more from offhand attack, because it can benefit from crit but not from damage modifier. NOTE: I realized that this benefit disappears with multi-attack. The solution (getting rid of bonus actions; allowing one offhand for each mainhand attack) starts to become a rewrite of 5e.
I don’t want to start spouting too many numbers, but here is a range:
1d8 weapon, die roll of 8 - proficiency needed to hit, no offhand, no advantage: with an 18 and a 10 for attributes, the Dex build does about 72% of the damage that a Str build does. With an 18 and a 14 that increases to 87%.
1d8 weapon, die roll of 18 - proficiency needed to hit, d6 offhand, Advantage, those numbers become 103% and 105%.
In general, with a d8 weapon and a d4 offhand, the Dex build comes within 90% of the Str build. Which I think is ok, given that Dex has so many other nice benefits.
Two things to note:
High crit rates would have too much synergy with Sneak Attack (and Divine Smite, although to a lesser degree). So there would have to be some other adjustments.
Since ranged attackers don’t get an offhand attack, this leaves ranged attackers in a bit of pickle. But ranged needs to be reined in anyway. I’d propose something along the lines of:
- All ranged attacks are made with Dex, with all damage getting a bonus from Str. (This implies custom bows/crossbows, but that can be handwaved in the way that armor sizing usually is.)
- The range for all ranged weapons is a multiplier times strength. E.g., “10 feet times strength score, double for max range”
- Give dedicated archer classes/subclasses/builds some extra candy to bring their damage up, if necessary. (Personally I’m fine with them doing less dpr given all the advantages of fighting from range.)
That’s it for now. Bring it on.
*My code is in a jupyter notebook running locally, but if this is a topic of interest I might port it to js and post a web app for folks to play with.
Besides being boring, it results in “dump stats”. And while that is very intentional I disagree with the decision. Although a fighter in plate with a great sword still has uses for Dex (saving throws, initiative) those uses are so minor compared to the need for Str and Con that it’s safe to just park a 10 in Dex and be done with it.
How ridiculous is it that Str is effectively useless for Dex-based combatants, and vice versa?
So my goal is to find a system in which Dex and Str both contribute more-or-less equally to damage, but in different ways that are synergistic. Here’s what I came up with:
- Pick whichever is higher, Str or Dex, for your attack roll.
- Your damage is increased (or decreased) by your Str mod, for mainhand only
- Your critical strike threshold is decreased by your Dex mod. (But a negative mod wouldn't increase it above 20.)
- There are no “finesse” weapons. Use whatever weapon you want, even versatile or 2H weapons. (Yay! No Rapiers needed!)
- With any 1H weapon a "light" weapon can be wielded in the offhand (they don't both have to be light).
When I ran some (well, millions*) of numbers using this, I confirmed that:
- The advantage shifts to Str for weaker weapons (smaller die size) and to Dex for larger weapons (larger die size). (Ignoring dual wielding)
- The greater the differential between the two scores (Dex and Str) the more the advantage shifts to Str. I.e., high Str helps a Dex build more than high Dex helps a Str build.
- Advantage helps Dex more, because of the (potentially dramatically) increased Crit chance. The above scenarios with Advantage makes it about 78% and 90%.
- Higher armor classes benefit Dex (because increasingly likely that any hit is a crit), which means higher Proficiency benefits Str.
- Dex builds benefit relatively more from offhand attack, because it can benefit from crit but not from damage modifier. NOTE: I realized that this benefit disappears with multi-attack. The solution (getting rid of bonus actions; allowing one offhand for each mainhand attack) starts to become a rewrite of 5e.
I don’t want to start spouting too many numbers, but here is a range:
1d8 weapon, die roll of 8 - proficiency needed to hit, no offhand, no advantage: with an 18 and a 10 for attributes, the Dex build does about 72% of the damage that a Str build does. With an 18 and a 14 that increases to 87%.
1d8 weapon, die roll of 18 - proficiency needed to hit, d6 offhand, Advantage, those numbers become 103% and 105%.
In general, with a d8 weapon and a d4 offhand, the Dex build comes within 90% of the Str build. Which I think is ok, given that Dex has so many other nice benefits.
Two things to note:
High crit rates would have too much synergy with Sneak Attack (and Divine Smite, although to a lesser degree). So there would have to be some other adjustments.
Since ranged attackers don’t get an offhand attack, this leaves ranged attackers in a bit of pickle. But ranged needs to be reined in anyway. I’d propose something along the lines of:
- All ranged attacks are made with Dex, with all damage getting a bonus from Str. (This implies custom bows/crossbows, but that can be handwaved in the way that armor sizing usually is.)
- The range for all ranged weapons is a multiplier times strength. E.g., “10 feet times strength score, double for max range”
- Give dedicated archer classes/subclasses/builds some extra candy to bring their damage up, if necessary. (Personally I’m fine with them doing less dpr given all the advantages of fighting from range.)
That’s it for now. Bring it on.
*My code is in a jupyter notebook running locally, but if this is a topic of interest I might port it to js and post a web app for folks to play with.
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(Maybe give it to valor bards too?)
