Highest total bonus at level one to a d20 roll

[sheadunne]

No plus should ever exceed the die type rolled. What's the point of rolling dice if they don't add anything meaningful to the roll (this is especially true for damage).

 

[Gryph]

Without magic gear, I think it should be +4.

+3 for abilities (I really want to see the ability bonuses scaled back down some) and +1 for training.

I honestly don't understand why skill rank bonuses scale so differently from attack bonuses in 3e/4e.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

No plus should ever exceed the die type rolled. What's the point of rolling dice if they don't add anything meaningful to the roll (this is especially true for damage).

This is a common misconception. When aiming for a target DC, it does not matter how high your bonus is compared to the dice roll. You may have +100 and aim for DC 110, or +0 and aim for DC 10, the results are the same.

For damage, though, you are correct, because damage chips away at a total, thus static bonuses multiply over several hits.

Anyway, my preference is that no two characters should have more than a +10 disparity between them, unless one deliberately mismanages or super-optimises. At 1st level, I'd expect a character to be at +5 to +8 above a lowly commoner, though for DC 10 I would rather nudge the commoner down to a penalty of -2 for being untrained, making a trained, well-statted, optimised character at +6.

 

[AeroDm]

Standard ranges, I'd put +5 at 1st level and +15 at 20th. Those are the bonuses for someone who is reasonably good at said action. An especially focused character might be +7 at 1st and +20 at 20th and then, of course, someone untrained might be more like +0 or +1 at 1st and +10ish at 20th.

The reason I like that range is that it makes the d20 relevant across all levels of play. A first level character should be able to attempt pretty much any mortal action with a chance of success (even if they have to roll a 20 to succeed). When you start having die mods of +30, you create gulfs between characters (high level vs low, specialized vs non-specialized) which might make some narrative sense, but they just serve to separate the human beings at the table.

The math should be built so everyone can conceivably participate at all times, or at least believe they can participate so they feel invested.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

At 1st level, highest should be +5.

Agreed. And I wouldn't like to see that grow to more than +15 over the entire game.

 

[Grazzt]

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

In 1e, I believe it was +4 at 1st level (+3 for 18/00 Str, +1 for attack) assuming said 1st-level PC was a fighter.

 

[Hassassin]

For something general like attacks +5 should be the maximum. For more specific things like skills or favored enemies the range could be larger.

However, the commoner is likely to have a penalty on some of the things adventurers attempt, due to e.g. non-proficiency or poorly suited ability (commoners have on average two negative modifiers using 3e/4e), so the actual range may be larger.

 

[AeroDm]

Agreed. And I wouldn't like to see that grow to more than +15 over the entire game.

This is in mostly due to our near simultaneous post of identical thoughts, but if you really like that game design philosophy perhaps you should check out my "shelved until we see what 5e holds" project over here. With a direct link to the PDF here. The entire thing was basically built on the premise that everyone should be able to feel included at all times and then trying to find math that supported that goal.

 

[Minigiant]

For those who say +5 or lower, what would you consider an average DC for a level 1 challenge?

 

[delericho]

[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.

I was working on the assumption that it didn't matter where the bonus came from, only the final value was really important.

In the model I would adopt, attribute mods would be capped at +3, and Fighters would get a +2 to all attacks, giving the +5.

Additionally, they would get a +1 per 2 levels, as in 4e, and would also get their first feat at 2nd level, which could give them a further +2 at that point.

I could, potentially, see characters getting a masterwork weapon or a racial modifier giving a further +1 here or there... Mostly, though, I'd prefer any bonuses higher than that to be situational - a "precise attack" power, or a buff spell, or flanking, or whatever.

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

See, I disagree. On a d20 system, there's a sweet spot for modifiers at about +10. That's the point where your total result is roughly equally split between 'luck' and 'skill'. (Mathematically, it makes no difference - d20+10 vs DC 20 is the same as d20+50 vs DC 60, but the former feels better.)

The problem is that if you allow your 1st level character to hit that sweet spot immediately (and on all attacks, without any sort of "clever play bonus"), there really isn't anywhere for the character to grow to. Far better to start the character at a point where they are reasonably competent but only showing potential (rather than being the finished article), then fairly quickly grow them to the sweet spot.

The other consideration is the role of specialisation in the system. Both 3e and 4e gave players a huge range of options for advancing their characters, and I wouldn't bet against 5e eventually offering the same. But with all those options, as the game progresses the gap between the specialist and the non-specialist will grow. And if it grows too large, it can become a real issue, ultimately breaking the math in the game (as Andy Collins discussed at length in the "Epic Level Handbook" - a book that was widely slated, but which has the core advancement mechanic that was later adopted in 4e).

Far better to limit specialisation at the outset, and allow characters to grow reasonably specialised as they go. Unless you were thinking of having +10 for the ultra-specialist, +8 for the 'common' Fighter, +6 for 'everyone else', and +4 for the weakling mage. But then, I see absolutely no benefit in not reducing all those numbers by at least 4 across the board, and since people do better adding smaller numbers than bigger ones, I can see at least one advantage.

The other advantage of not allowing excessive specialisation at the outset is that if the campaign goes in a different direction from that expected, the non-specialist can adapt; the specialist is stuck. That's not good for anyone - either the player now has to not play the character he wanted, or the player has to play a character that doesn't suit the campaign, or the DM and other players are constrained to not take the game in that unexpected (and potentially interesting) direction.