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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6615980" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!Nope. Why? Ability score increases are not OPTIONAL, like Feats are.I've said this in other threads and whatnot back when we were still playtesting 5e. My contention was that I didn't want Feats to have the "...but this one goes to 11..." mentality that most of the Feats from previous versions of the game had. Yes, there were a lot of feats that didn't just grant "bonuses", and those were ones that nobody took...and if you did, chances were that someone you play with or might play with would get all pissy because of "stupid choices for feats...now you suck and my character has to pull up the slack!...grumble-grumble". It's easy to find examples of people verbally attacking other players for "stupid feat choices" all over the place.How Feats should have worked was a LOT less "+1's", and a lot more "here's something cool you can do, or reduce, or ignore". For example, GWM should drop the -5/+10 and replace it with something "non-pluss'y"...say, give the GWM Reach with it. Or, as I said in my other post, each Feat should have a drawback to using it. So in stead of the -5/+10 as is, leave it in, but add Attacking like this can cause you to lower your defenses, so any attacks against you that round from an opponent in melee with you gets Advantage. But just flat out numbers adjustments? Bad idea...really bad. It encourages min/maxing power-building as players try to give their character every bonus they can via any means they can just to offset that -5. If/when they succeed, it's basically a free +10 to damage. Terrible design if you ask me.If you use 4d6-L? You do realize that is the default character stat creation method, right? Just checking. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> And yes, that is how we do it...most of the time.It wasn't about adjusting strategies. It was a lot more than that. It was a character personality change. Like, up until level 4, the cleric was all about RP'ing that violence should be the last resort, or that a plan of attack should be agreed upon so as to minimize party casualties/damage, etc. But as soon as he got that magical -3 to damage taken...it was all Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! when fighting *anything* that was likely to only do small'ish damage (re: 1d4+1 or 2d4, or 1d6+2, etc). Yes, the tactics could have changed with him offering to go in first to draw attacks, or maybe positioning better so he could take on more than one at a time while protecting the wizard, etc. But it didn't pan out that way. It's like he was a new character. And before you think of this as an isolated incident...no, it's not. As I said, I saw this phenomenon happen time and time again (usually not *quite* as extreme, but easily noticeable) with my group. Conferring with other DM's here in town and on the net showed me that I wasn't alone in seeing this. Feats are also an either/or thing, despite how the designers wanted it to be. If one player chooses Feats for his character, ALL characters need to start taking Feats or they risk being "one upped" by the guy with the Feats.^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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