Hard Stat Cap of 18?

[Hassassin]

Suppose there is no divine ascension end game?

Or suppose there is, and once you reach said point, then your scores can go above the maximum...but until that time, they cannot without magical aid.

This. Let the cap lift at 21st level. I prefer no superheroes or demigods before that.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Hmm. I want to clarify. I don't think there is a "hard cap" after character creation.

I think it will work like this:

Ability Scores:
Roll 4d6 drop lowest place where you want, maybe reroll hopeless
or Point buy.

Scores will be between 3 and 18.

Then you add class and race mods, but they cannot increase your score above 18.

Later stuff might let you increase your scores further, but the baseline is 18 maximum.


***Sorry, dicerolling does not work as I thought.**

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Suppose there is no divine ascension end game?

That would be strike two.

Or suppose there is, and once you reach said point, then your scores can go above the maximum...but until that time, they cannot without magical aid.

That seems strangely arbitrary. And I don't like 18 as "peak human potential" anyway.

 

[Deadboy]

Yeah, taking out the divine ascension endgame would be a strange and bad choice; it's been in the game since D&D basic.

Allowing characters to slowly improve their potential, attribute-wise, towards that divine ascension over their career has been in D&D since at least 2e (not positive if it was in 1e and don't have my rulebooks here at work) through Wishes and various Tomes; 3e hard coded part of it and created stat boosting items, and 4e (wisely, I think) dispensed with the tomes, Wishes and stat boosting and hard-coded all of it into advancement.

I think the whole thing is too much part of D&D to go to hard caps, and making it part of the hero's journey rather than "cause magic" is the best way to handle it. I hate having to have magic be the only way for people to become special and above normal.

 

[Glade Riven]

The problem of not having a cap is you get one Kullan Longbeard (3e) - Con 27 or 28 at level 16, barbarian with lucky HP rolls with nothing less than a 10 each level (nope, no cheating involved - we watched). Other players had to munchkin/power build just to keep up. The DM considered even ruling that one Con bonus magical item didn't effect him because of how naturally constitute he is. Creating challenges for a character like this has been tricky for the DM.

Having seen what happens without a cap, I'm fine with adding one to 5e.

 

[kitsune9]

I would agree with the premise that if the math is scale downward, then having a hard stat cap at 18 would be helpful.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, taking out the divine ascension endgame would be a strange and bad choice; it's been in the game since D&D basic.

You know that divine ascension in Basic wasn't part of the build track, right? It was something you could only BEGIN to try at 36th level, and Basic had a hard cap of 20 on scores. Period. Of course, when you were 36th level and couldn't miss with your to-hit, had 9 slots of each spell level, or thief skills over 150%, who cared about the +3 or +4 your scores could give?

Maybe we should divorce the idea that every hero has a Herculean Destiny from the XP track as well...

 

[Deadboy]

You know that divine ascension in Basic wasn't part of the build track, right? It was something you could only BEGIN to try at 36th level, and Basic had a hard cap of 20 on scores. Period. Of course, when you were 36th level and couldn't miss with your to-hit, had 9 slots of each spell level, or thief skills over 150%, who cared about the +3 or +4 your scores could give?

Maybe we should divorce the idea that every hero has a Herculean Destiny from the XP track as well...

I haven't looked at the Immortals set in something like 25 years, so no, I really don't remember the specifics. And my point still stands - divine ascension has been part of the game, whether it was the basic build track or not, since Basic.

 

[Sammael]

Ability score deflation is a good thing in my book. However, stat caps is not the way I'd do it.

Drop the silly stat-boosting items and spells and there you have it. Gauntlets of Ogre Power could (and should!) be so much more than Str +2, or Str 19, or whatever. Cat's Grace could allow you to do cool cat-like stuff (squeeze through tight spaces, fall on your feet unharmed, walk on ledges, make really high jumps without a running start, etc).

 

[Remathilis]

I haven't looked at the Immortals set in something like 25 years, so no, I really don't remember the specifics. And my point still stands - divine ascension has been part of the game, whether it was the basic build track or not, since Basic.

I got no problem with it either, but I think it belongs in the "optional" rules area rather than the "assumed in the progress" part.