D&D 5E Divorce Abilty Modifiers from Attack Rolls

[ren1999]

Show us your 4E system for separating ability bonuses from to hits.

 

[Ferghis]

I suggest halving attack bonuses and rounding up so a +1 is still +1 but a +2 is +1 for combat and if you want a +2 you need to have an ability modifier of +3 or +4... The most an 18 <insert ability name> character will get is +3 for its attack and damage rolls.

I was headed in a similar direction. The full ability score bonus would apply to damage, but only part of it to the attack roll.

Nikosandros suggested a return to tables, so as to be able to stagger the to-hit bonus, the damage bonus, and perhaps some other bonus (ability checks?) a bit more gradually. That might even make it possible to grant a benefit to every single point above 10 or 11. It might go something like this:

Str Hit Dam Ability
 8  +0   -1    -1
 9  +0   +0    -1
10  +0   +0    +0
11  +0   +0    +1
12  +0   +1    +1
13  +1   +1    +1
14  +1   +1    +2
15  +1   +2    +2
16  +2   +2    +2
17  +2   +2    +3
18  +2   +3    +3
19  +3   +3    +3
20  +3   +3    +4

The main benefit is that this flattens all the benefits from an ability score, not just the attack roll. Ability checks and skill rolls would be the first to benefit from a higher ability score, but would also not be impacted quite as dramatically.

I might call the second bonus (the "damage" bonus) the "rider" bonus, so that when a power gives you an effect tied to an ability, that second bonus would be used to determine the impact. I'm less keen on this notion, however.