D&D General DMing Theory #2: Strong and Fast

[Dessert Nomad]

I was talking about the names of the abilities, not the process of generating the scores.

I suspect that if you decouple the ability scores names from what they do in game, you'd alienate a lot of the new players who really like rolling for stats. It's weird to me since I would be fine abstracting stats to a very high degree, but I strongly suspect the people that love rolling are attached to rolling for the ability scores by their name and that if you decouple them very much they will reject the changes. And the 'fans of rolling' are definitely not just old players.

 

[Charlaquin]

I suspect that if you decouple the ability scores names from what they do in game, you'd alienate a lot of the new players who really like rolling for stats. It's weird to me since I would be fine abstracting stats to a very high degree, but I strongly suspect the people that love rolling are attached to rolling for the ability scores by their name and that if you decouple them very much they will reject the changes. And the 'fans of rolling' are definitely not just old players.

I don’t see any connection between enjoying rolling and being attached to the specific names of the abilities. Lots of other RPGs have different stats, many of which are rolled for, and the rolling for stats fans don’t seem to have any problem with them not being named Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.

 

[Tigris]

Just a quick note - breastplate doesn't impose a stealth penalty, it's what my barbarian used until he could afford mitral half plate. For that matter mithral full plate doesn't have a stealth penalty either.

And instead of mithral you could get another armor so you lose +1 armor or no crit armor most of the time doing that.

Also not with every GM you can buy magic items as you want. So your build depends on a specific magic item else the stealth is bad, so wasted stats. Dnd 5.5 officially still does not require any magical items.

As far as 4e, I don't see how any of that is relevant since this is a 5e discussion.

You asked what other editions did better and said that you dont know 4e so I explained why 4e did this so much better.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don’t see any connection between enjoying rolling and being attached to the specific names of the abilities. Lots of other RPGs have different stats, many of which are rolled for, and the rolling for stats fans don’t seem to have any problem with them not being named Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.

And all of those RPGs combined add up to maybe 25% of D&Ds market share.

Theyre niche for a reason.

D&Ds become its on thing. Its an RPG blankeie for the masses.

 

[AlViking]

Well, the reason the abilities have those names is that D&D is a very old game, and a lot of people who have played it for a long time have developed strong emotional attachments to certain aesthetic elements of the game and would complain that it doesn’t “feel like D&D” without them. The names of the abilities is one of these aesthetic elements. If you changed what they were called, the grognards would complain and probably quit playing.

The ability scores need to represent something and for me the abilities that they have are decent. There's no way you could have enough numbers to accurately describe every individual even if you could come up with a scale, but what we have is good enough. We all know or have seen people that are strong, we all know what an intelligent person is like and the absent minded professor type (high intelligence, low wisdom) is a common trope while some people just never seem to get sick and others have a magnetic personality that could convince a person in the desert they need a boat.

I see no good reason to replace the ability scores we have, they mean something, we can relate to them and they make sense. It's not broken - even if there are numerous other options - so there's no need to change it. Whether we need the detailed numbers is a different issue but people are weird about putting negative numbers on their character. Have an 8 dexterity? Sure, my character is a little below average. A -1 dexterity? That starts to feel like a penalty.

 

[Charlaquin]

And all of those RPGs combined add up to maybe 25% of D&Ds market share.

Theyre niche for a reason.

And you think that reason is the stats being named Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma…?

 

[AlViking]

And you think that reason is the stats being named Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma…?

You could name them different things, but why? Why not use commonly understood terms? I admit to being a grognard, I just don't see why anyone think they should be changed. They could be changed or a different set of descriptors could be chosen of course but what would be the reasoning behind it?

 

[bsss]

And you think that reason is the stats being named Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma…?

I think D&D is pretty good, overall, and I have no interest in changing the ability names, and nevertheless I roll my eyes every time something in D&D is defended with "well I don't know if you heard but I'm here to enlighten you, D&D is very popular". At this point I wouldn't be surprised if there are people out there that think D&D is the platonic ideal TTRPG and this has directly translated into sales and popularity.

That said, I don't think D&D would really change for better or worse if classes were disconnected from primary abilities. They do express something as they are right now and I don't think it needs to be fiddled with, and that expression is at least useful to people playing it.

 

[Zardnaar]

And you think that reason is the stats being named Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma…?

Not because of it no. Inertia is a powerful thing though and the 6 stats are big sacred cows imho.

Its like a popular food. People like it for a reason. Changing the recipe....

 

[Charlaquin]

You could name them different things, but why? Why not use commonly understood terms? I admit to being a grognard, I just don't see why anyone think they should be changed. They could be changed or a different set of descriptors could be chosen of course but what would be the reasoning behind it?

Have you not been following the conversation? It went:

A: Teaching my daughter the game made me realize how restrictive the classes and ability scores of D&D actually are.

B: That’s why I decouple the ability scores from the character’s personal traits.

C: It’s cool that that works for you, but if you do that, why are the scores named that way?

B: Because that’s what they were named when the game was first created and people have an emotional attachment to those specific names.

Why would you change the names? Because you find them to be inflexible. That’s literally what we’ve been discussing.