Highest total bonus at level one to a d20 roll

[Minigiant]

If an assumption is made that a Difficulty Class of 10 is used for an action where a talentless commoner has roughly a 50% chance of success...

what would be the highest total bonus/chance to this same action that a first level player character should be able to reach in your opinion (using class, race, skill, feat, and basic equipment only)?

One of the most important aspects of the game, to me anyway, is the gap between the skilled, the talented, and the untrained. So I'd like to see what others prefer to see be the upper limit of a heroic character at the very start of their journey.

My answer is if everything lines up and the character rolls an 18 for the ability, the highest base bonus at level 1 would be +10.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

About +10--with the caveat that getting that high might very well eat substantially into future possible mods. That is, I'd like the total to top out around +20, at the highest level. So someone going for max stat, max skill, equipment, etc. has picked up all the easy options for getting to that +20, and will progress slowly from then on.

 

[delericho]

At 1st level, a reasonably-optimised Fighter attacking with his weapon of choice should have about +4 or +5 to his attack rolls. I can see an argument for a super-optimised Fighter going a little beyond that (+6 or maybe +7), but not much. Of course, situational mods should then be able to push this higher, rewarding clever play.

At maximum level (whether this is 20th or 30th), that same reasonably-optimised Fighter should have about +20 to his attack rolls. The super-optimised Fighter shouldn't be able to go above +25. And, again, situational mods should apply, again rewarding clever play.

 

[Grazzt]

At 1st level, highest should be +5.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

+3.

 

[Minigiant]

[MENTION=29358]Crazy_Jerome[/mention]: Your range is pretty close to mine.

[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION]: Your range doesn't seem to has the maximum I'd prefer to see. It is close but I'd expect to see max ability mod plus the maximum class/skill modifier to be higher than +7. Then that doesn't count for feat bonus (bleh), size bonus, assorted nonability race bonus (halflings and slings), etc.

[MENTION=7]Grazzt[/MENTION] +5 seems entirely too low for a max bonus to any common d20 roll for a powergamed 1st level character.

 

[Sunseeker]

Assuming an 18 in strength, +2 from some sort of racial bonus, probably another +1 from some kind of buff, maybe if I'm being generous and let the player start with a magic item, another +1.

So, we're looking at +7. Reasonably there's probably some way to get one or two more in here. So I'd say the ABSOLUTE maximum would be +10, but that's gonna take some seriously hardcore optimization. If a player really wants to do that, I'm pretty flexible.

But I don't think there really should be maximums, putting hard-caps on players abilities just seems like Wizzards telling me how to run my game.

 

[MortalPlague]

I'm curious; for comparison, what are the maximum bonuses for previous editions?

At level 1 in 4th Edition, I could get +5 from a stat, +2 from race, +2 from background, +5 from skill training, +2 from equipment, and +3 from a focus feat...

That would be +19. And I feel like I'm leaving bonuses on the table somewhere.

By comparison, if you could only get +10 at maximum, I'd be pretty happy with the lack of bonus bloat.

 

[Tilenas]

Taking into account a hopefully flattened ability bonus progression, 4e style level bonuses (+1/2 levels) and lower bonuses from skills, I can see max attack/defense/initiative/etc. hang at +5 (+3/+4 from 19 ability, +1 from class bump) and skills at +10 (ability, +2/+3 "ranks", +2/+3 feat).

 

[JohnSnow]

Well, it's pretty easy to get to about +10 in 4e without getting into ridiculous stacking. For example:

Skill Bonus = Primary Stat (+4) + Trained (+5) + Feat Bonus (+2) = +11.

Atk Bonus = Stat (+4) + Proficient (+3) + Class Bonus (+1) + Feat Bonus (+1) = +9.

My personal preference would be to cap the 1st-level max at 10, and have more realistic "gifted" results come in at +7 or so. If you want to specialize, and devote all your resources to something, I don't see the problem with you getting a +10 bonus.

However, I don't think there should be numerical bonuses from things like background, race, stats, and training that all stack indefinitely. Some kind of diminishing returns from specialization should set in. If you're an elf ranger with high wisdom, who's trained in perception, and have the alertness feat, should it really matter if you have birdwatching as a background theme?