Don't listen to advice in PHB on class ability scores

[Branduil]

From what I can tell, in the builds sections, the PHB often gives bad advice on what ability scores you should raise, particularly as it concerns your secondary abilities.

For instance, they recommend that an archery ranger take Str as their second highest score, but to me this is far from optimal. I would go with Dex first, Wis second, Con 3rd, followed by the others in whatever order you wanted.

Similarly, they recommend each Paladin build take either Str or Cha as their secondary ability scores, but I don't think a Protecting Paladin needs to worry about Str at all. In fact you'd probably be fine with Cha first, Wis second, and Con third.

 

[Tonester]

It depends if you want to use half the skills for your class awesomely and the other half like a 1-legged minion OR if you'd like to primarily use half of your skills well while also being able to dab in the other half.

The PHB tends to suggest players don't pigeonhole their characters into only half of a class' skills. I tend to agree.

 

[generalhenry]

I don't think a Protecting Paladin needs to worry about Str at all

OAs

 

[small pumpkin man]

Meh, they're decent enough for newbies, I've seen worse. Obviously if you really want to optimize you want to actually look at what the stats give you and listen to people who've played the class, not just read the basic "rangers need dex" stuff in the book.

 

[Branduil]

OAs

Good point, however, if you give yourself a Str score of 13, and a Dex score of 13, which is cheaper than buying a Str score of 15, you can take the OA feats which give you +3 total to OAs.

 

[keterys]

The builds are primarily intended for people who don't want to, or aren't able to, read through all of the powers, feats, options, and figure out the optimal mix of stuff for themselves. I imagine they're particularly suited for not being a one trick pony and not screwing yourself over, but less so for 'optimization'.

Which is fine.

 

[generalhenry]

Indeed they're safe picks rather than optimized picks

 

[MwaO]

From what I can tell, in the builds sections, the PHB often gives bad advice on what ability scores you should raise, particularly as it concerns your secondary abilities.

It depends on how you're doing your build. In many cases, you're going to want to follow their advice because you don't have to analyze every single choice at 1st level.

Yes, there are a lot of nice Charisma-based Paladin abilities, but having a high Str means you have a much wider range of Paladin attacks. The specials that let a Paladin mark multiple targets in particular seem to be Str-based. A Ranger who has a high Str and Dex can attack at range or up close.

It might not be the superoptimized option, but it isn't a bad one.