D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?

[billd91]

Its funny these conversations are coming in to play now as I have been looking at breaking down the abilities in our 5e game into the subcategories of the 2e Player's Option: Skills and Powers. Not that the system represented there was perfect, but it was more defined than it currently is.

More defined, sure. But having tried it, I'd say it was pretty terrible.

 

[Sadras]

More defined, sure. But having tried it, I'd say it was pretty terrible.

I'm curious, how was it terrible?

 

[Celebrim]

More than anything else, that just speaks of the inability of the D&D mechanical language to describe things that aren't humans.

I don't know that it is unable to do so, but rarely that it typically has been considered too much of an edge case to spend actual rules on, leaving it up to the DM to rule on the fly if, for example, a PC thief polymorphed into an ape wants to try picking a lock with a set of thieves tools.

It's a mostly-reasonable abstraction to link manual dexterity with agility when you're talking about mostly-athletic mostly-human adventurers - they types of adventurers who have great manual dexterity are also the types who are likely to have great agility. It doesn't make as much sense to link manual dexterity with agility when you're talking about a cat or ape.

Or an elderly woman, who might have better manual dexterity than the adventurers, but also have difficulty walking. But yes, each of the six standard ability scores bundles together concepts that are not identical and sometimes have questionable relation to each other. You could easily break each ability score into three different concepts and have a system with 18 ability scores. But then, this wouldn't be perfectly realistic either, plenty of characteristics like speed and agility are actually not independent. Agility is not solely dependent on your strength to weight ratio, but is limited by it. Strength is not solely dependent on mass, but is limited by it, and certain applications of strength - punching power for example - are additive with mass, while effective punching power is also limited by technique which is again limited by agility.

You have to balance realism with playability, and recognize further that the more complicated your system is, the harder it is to play test, and the more likely it is that it in some way breaks when stressed. Simple systems may never give truly 'correct' answers, but by being abstract they tend to give usable answers and are easier to balance.

And in the actual context of this discussion, they avoid purity for reality aesthetics that force you into awkward conversations about the combat ability of human females prior to the gender liberating invention of the firearm, or the societal importance of military hierarchies prior to the same invention.

Abstraction is your friend in a lot of ways. Don't knock it too much. It only seems like it has a big disadvantage on describing things compared to reification when you have actually tried hard to use reification. I have tried going the other way before - look up GULLIVER for GURPS - and in the context of GURPS, it's theoretically easy to separate out a gibbon or caracal's agility from its ability to hold and manipulate objects. But the trouble is, to accurately represent animals requires massive stat blocks that rarely have to do with anything important enough the game that you'd actually roll the dice to represent it. And if it's not important enough to test with fortune, then it's really not important enough to care about mechanically.

Still, if you really care about these body plan issues and sense of realism, my advice would be to compile a list of Disadvantages (anti-Feats) which describe body plan limitations - blind, lame, no-manipulative digits, quadruped, serpentine body, one-handed, one-eyed, deaf, no depth perception, limited fine motor control, and so on and so forth. In addition to helping you describe animals in those rare cases where it matters, many of these Disadvantages can help you describe a critical hit system if you are into that sort of thing. Virtually any wound can be described abstractly (there is that word again) as a combination of ability score damage and/or disadvantage infliction.

 

[Igwilly]

There's something that I want to say about all this:
Realism is a wierd beast. Each player/DM has different sensibilities, which are often contradictory.
For example: me!
I'm fine with modern guns having the same overall power as medieval weapons, but I'm not fine with super-strong halflings or a dagger dealing the same damage dice as an arming sword.
I'm fine with people on airships with no problem to breathe, but may God forgive me if one can stay so long periods underwater.
I'm completely ok with all sorts of arbitrary rules for magic, but Arcane magic does *not* heal. Period.
It's not even a case of being hypocritical: we rarely choose which things will bother us. It's just instinctive. In the end, there's no use of telling "But you are fine with X! Why not with Y?"
Things don't work like that.

 

[Arilyn]

There's something that I want to say about all this:
Realism is a wierd beast. Each player/DM has different sensibilities, which are often contradictory.
For example: me!
I'm fine with modern guns having the same overall power as medieval weapons, but I'm not fine with super-strong halflings or a dagger dealing the same damage dice as an arming sword.
I'm fine with people on airships with no problem to breathe, but may God forgive me if one can stay so long periods underwater.
I'm completely ok with all sorts of arbitrary rules for magic, but Arcane magic does *not* heal. Period.
It's not even a case of being hypocritical: we rarely choose which things will bother us. It's just instinctive. In the end, there's no use of telling "But you are fine with X! Why not with Y?"
Things don't work like that.

I agree completely. Then we take the things that really bug us, come on the forums and argue endlessly with fellow gamers who feel differently. When it's something that we feel is an abstraction or should be hand waved, we feel the need to come on and ask what all the fuss is about.

Ah well, at least we don't have to type up long letters and mail them physically across a country, and then wait a month or two to get the inevitable angry reply anymore. Progress!

 

[Coroc]

*shrug* You could point it out, but you'd be wrong. Goliaths are the 5e equivalent of half giants. Far less munchkin than the DS half giant, anyway.

Nay do not get me wrong, my opinion is that if someone play a giantish character then go to the real thing, which is the halfgiant. Occupying more space on the battlefield, needing to crouch in confined surroundings eventually, needing more food and more water, and not a human 7 feet tall with enhanced scores for str and con aka goliath.

 

[Celebrim]

I agree completely. Then we take the things that really bug us, come on the forums and argue endlessly with fellow gamers who feel differently. When it's something that we feel is an abstraction or should be hand waved, we feel the need to come on and ask what all the fuss is about.

Everyone is different.

For example, I simply cannot stand it that elves are the only creature in D&D with a constitution penalty and that far from +0 being average, the vast majority of creatures have a CON bonus. The vast majority of creatures in D&D that are not elves have vastly inflated constitution. A good example is an ordinary rat. An ordinary rat should have a constitution of between 4 and 7. Yet, when you say that, people are like, "Look how much stamina it has! Look how much disease resistance it (presumably) has!" Sure, but Constitution itself measure multiple things, and nothing with low body mass should have high constitution. Look how small of a dose of poison is necessary to kill a low body mass animal. Look how fragile that they are. If you want to have a high endurance, disease resistant low mass creature, just give it a racial bonus against disease and to acts of endurance. (In 3.X there is even a feat for that.). Don't bump up the entire stat of Constitution to unrealistic levels. A house cat weighs like 10lbs and has a CON of 10! You probably wouldn't need 1/2 HD much of the time if you just gave small creatures realistic CON. Don't bump Constitution just because you are trying to make a monster a higher challenge rating and need to give it hit points. Again, if it for some reason can absorb damage, unless all of its attributes indicate a high constitution, just give it racial bonus hit points (as an ooze for example).

Does all this matter? Probably not. But it bugs me to the extent that I'm usually willing to rewrite the stat block of a monster whenever I use one. It just annoys the heck out of me that having low mass is not reflected realistically in the rules. It bugs me beyond my capacity to endure if the farmer has no advantages relative to this cat. I'm perfectly ok with you laughing at me about that as silly.

Conversely, I often reduce the arbitrarily high DEX of massive creatures assigned apparently only to reach some target AC monsters of this CR 'needed'.

(Clearly I'm biased against little people, right? That sizist; discriminating against people with growth disorders. There is no other possible explanation for such a disproportionate insistence on realistic mechanics for size.)

And yet there are limits where I throw up my hands and just leave it be, knowing that it is incoherent, but knowing that a 'fix' would probably have its own problems and add complexity to the game. How do bow hunters take large game in D&D? *shrug* Hit points are game abstractions; they don't have to be realistic. I see the hypocrisy of that statement quite clearly, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to have a 10 CON house cat in my game with no magic involved! 'Realistically' cats have a CON of no more than about 4! It's obvious I tell you!

 

[Caliban]

Nay do not get me wrong, my opinion is that if someone play a giantish character then go to the real thing, which is the halfgiant. Occupying more space on the battlefield, needing to crouch in confined surroundings eventually, needing more food and more water, and not a human 7 feet tall with enhanced scores for str and con aka goliath.

I think the 5e designers made a deliberate choice to avoid "Large" player characters and to avoid the "Large/Huge" weapon shenanigans that you could do in 3e. Extended reach + Large/Huge weapons was a bit much. The downsides to being large were really negligible in comparison, although the food thing was a bigger disadvantage in Darksun than in other campaigns.

If Goliath's aren't acceptable that's fine. I just think the actual "Half Giant" is far more of a "munchkin" choice than a Goliath.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I think the 5e designers made a deliberate choice to avoid "Large" player characters and to avoid the "Large/Huge" weapon shenanigans that you could do in 3e.

Although you may have noticed that Large and Huge weapons do a lot more damage in 5E than they did in 3E. You don't increase the die size; you just add more dice.

 

[Caliban]

Although you may have noticed that Large and Huge weapons do a lot more damage in 5E than they did in 3E. You don't increase the die size; you just add more dice.

Can player characters wield them?