House rule: Maximised chance to hit

[Wightbred]

I'm looking to implement this house rule at my table and I am keen for some constructive criticism and objective consideration of loopholes.

The rule:
"When you create your character choose one of the key abilities of your class which is at least 14. That ability is considered to be 20 for the purpose of calculating your attack bonus for an attack power or basic attack that uses that ability. Use the standard ability score for all other purposes, including calculating damage, skills and defences. When you increase the base ability the 20 value also increases by the same amount.

"For example you are playing a 1st level Ranger and you chose Dexterity (normally 16). You can make a ranged basic attack at +5 instead of +3, but you only +3 to damage and reflex defence and +3 to initiative and Stealth. By 8th level you have raised your Dexterity to 18, so you use 22 to determine your attack bonus for Dexterity linked attacks."

Why this rule?

This rule fits the needs of my game. In particular I am trying to:

• reduce (but not necessarily eliminate) MAD;
• facilitate playing against type ("races without a +2 to Strength don't make good Fighters because they miss more often"); and
• reduce one-dimensional assigning of abilities ("I must max my attack ability") and make sure my players aren't frustrated by missing because they didn't do this.

(I came up with this rule after seeing a similar idea on this forum, but I can't find the link to attach. Happy for someone to add this if they can find it.)

Cheers,
Wightbred

 

[fissionessence]

You didn't mention a minimum requirement for the stat you make a 20. You assume it would be a 16. What if I built a fighter, gave him an 8 Strength (so I could spend the rest of my point-buy points on enhancing other abilities), then said I wanted his Strength to be counted as a 20. I'd get -1 damage, and my Athletics would stink, but that disparity would allow my other ability scores to make up for that.

So yeah, make the characters spend their point-buy points on a 16 for them to be able to select it as their 20.

~

 

[Alex319]

Well, the biggest thing I can think of is that it makes the primary ability score a LOT less important. I would guess an archer ranger with 10 DEX might even be viable, since he can still get max chance to hit, and if he is using Twin Strike he wouldn't get his dex bonus to add to damage anyway, so an Archer Ranger using Twin Strike with 10 (or even 8) DEX would be just as good as one with 20 DEX.

I can think of some very good combinations with this. For example a Brutal Scoundrel rogue with relatively low DEX but max STR could have very good AOs and maxed sneak attack damage while still being able to use most of his powers to the best of his ability. And given that damage bonuses aren't that hard to get especially at high levels, I could easily imagine someone taking a 10 to one attack stat and 20 to another, then using your ability to boost the first attack stat to 20, and they would essentially have two maxed attack stats with the only cost being the damage bonus on one of them.

The suggestion I would make is to require that the "boosted" ability be the highest abilility score (or one of the highest, if the character has two ability scores that are the same).

 

[Wightbred]

Thanks for the input - much appreciated. This seems like a critical loophole (particularly twin strike). I don't particularly mind if the chosen stat is not their highest (eg: happy for a charismatic rogue to actually be more charismatic than dexterious). I think I'll edit the OP to fix this.

 

[fissionessence]

I don't particularly mind if the chosen stat is not their highest (eg: happy for a charismatic rogue to actually be more charismatic than dexterious). I think I'll edit the OP to fix this.

In this case, I'd recommend you instead allow the charismatic rogue to just use Charisma for his attack score, replacing other instances of Charisma with Dexterity or something else (essientailly swapping the two). It's weird to think of the rogue attacking with his dagger using Charisma, but I think it's better than giving out free to-hit bonuses.

~

 

[Omnifarious Grey]

I think the idea is decent here. However, you may just want to go with a static bonus to hit rather than mucking around with theoretical scores. For example, what if you gave an inherent +2 or +3 to hit for a specific score?

 

[Wightbred]

In this case, I'd recommend you instead allow the charismatic rogue to just use Charisma for his attack score, replacing other instances of Charisma with Dexterity or something else (essientailly swapping the two). It's weird to think of the rogue attacking with his dagger using Charisma, but I think it's better than giving out free to-hit bonuses.

~

fissionessence
This is a good idea, and one I would normally use where a player had a concept that didn't quite fit the rules. However, one of the things I'm trying to achieve with this rule is to make players not feel like they need to spend all their points getting a 20 in their key attack ability to be useful.
Cheers,
Wightbred

 

[Wightbred]

I think the idea is decent here. However, you may just want to go with a static bonus to hit rather than mucking around with theoretical scores. For example, what if you gave an inherent +2 or +3 to hit for a specific score?

Omnifarious Grey,
A static bonus on top of a ability score would probably make players even more keen to boost their key attack ability. I also tried a static hit bonus of +5 + 1/2 level as has been posted elsewhere, but this seemed more complicated than my current method when I tried to include rules for ability score increases at 4, 8, 10 etc.
Many of my players are Shadowrun veterans, so a parallel ability score which only applies selectively is natural for them. Of course YMMV.
Cheers,
Wightbred

 

[fissionessence]

If you're sure you want to use the 'upgrade to 20' rule, I would require the players to have a 16 in that ability, and not allow any other scores to be higher than 16. They can increase the '20' score above 16 if they want more damage and better skill checks, but they can't dump that stat since its to-hit will be upgraded anyway . . . and they can't use their extra points to min/max another one of their stats.

Otherwise, just watch individually what your players do with this rule, and don't restrict them as long as they don't do anything silly.

~

 

[Garthanos]

How about giving all the adversaries and supporting cast 2 points lower on defense...Its reasonable to assume heros all have a measure heroic luck on their side

NOTE on the implications... Improving an attacks precision only becomes really useful (in comparison to buffing its power) when it becomes "hard to hit." So your rule change will have an impact of making "hard to hit" a rarer thing.
so...
Certain powers/abilities are based on making things less hard to hit are already way too nerfy and become even more so with any of the variants of your change