D&D General House Rules ideas - Ability Score vs Modifier

[Xeviat]

How big of a change would it be to have ability modifiers be Score-10 instead of (Score-10)/2? It would create a bigger disparity between high and low stats, but it would make sure every +1 mattered. Or, the current modifier can remain for to hit, damage, and save DCs, but skills could use the new modifier. Oh, "Defenses" could even be your full ability score, and save DCs could be rolled by the attacker.

 

[GuardianLurker]

The big problem you'd run into is that the high value modifiers would really start to dominate the rolls. And avoiding that was one of the primary design goals for 5e. Also your stat modifiers would drown out every other kind of bonus/penalty.

If you do this I'd strongly suggest rolled stats (possibly even 3d6 instead of 4d6Drop1), as a point-buy character will be looking at a +5 in their primary ability.

If you're looking for a way to make every +1 matter, another approach is to get rid of the large variety of bonus types, reducing the stacking of bonuses.

 

[overgeeked]

This is a good idea and something I’ve been thinking of.

You’d want to convert old stats to the old bonus first, then convert to the new setup.

Old 18 +4 becomes +4, then becomes 14 as a passive or defense.

It solves more problems than it creates and smoothly reintroduces defenses, attacking a stat, as you mentioned. This also keeps things compatible with the minimum work.

A few things would need adjusting, but it’s mostly busy work. Nothing extraordinarily hard to do.

 

[Shardstone]

AC being bonus + your ability score is neat. If ability scores stay the same as now, people with have a +6 or +7 modifier, becoming 8-9 with Proficiency bonus, targeting probably between a 10-22 for the most part. So, armor becomes pretty useless; might be better to say your AC is a pool of points you can spend to reduce damage dice or something or have AC be flat damage reduction from the bonuses.

 

[mellored]

How big of a change would it be to have ability modifiers be Score-10 instead of (Score-10)/2? It would create a bigger disparity between high and low stats, but it would make sure every +1 mattered. Or, the current modifier can remain for to hit, damage, and save DCs, but skills could use the new modifier. Oh, "Defenses" could even be your full ability score, and save DCs could be rolled by the attacker.

I would remove the proficiency bonus if you did that.

And proficiency in a skill adds +1 a system instead, but cannot be your highest stat.

Then everything should still be in the right ballpark.

 

[Xeviat]

AC being bonus + your ability score is neat. If ability scores stay the same as now, people with have a +6 or +7 modifier, becoming 8-9 with Proficiency bonus, targeting probably between a 10-22 for the most part. So, armor becomes pretty useless; might be better to say your AC is a pool of points you can spend to reduce damage dice or something or have AC be flat damage reduction from the bonuses.

Oooh.

AC and HP are a difficult system to adjust. We've tried damage reduction for armor before, but adding a 3rd variable makes things really complicated.

Having Armor as hit mitigation, though, could be interesting. An armor's armor bonus could be how many hits you can block before having to repair it during a short rest.

 

[Xeviat]

This is a good idea and something I’ve been thinking of.

You’d want to convert old stats to the old bonus first, then convert to the new setup.

Old 18 +4 becomes +4, then becomes 14 as a passive or defense.

It solves more problems than it creates and smoothly reintroduces defenses, attacking a stat, as you mentioned. This also keeps things compatible with the minimum work.

A few things would need adjusting, but it’s mostly busy work. Nothing extraordinarily hard to do.

Oh, that would be interesting.

 

[Xeviat]

I would remove the proficiency bonus if you did that.

And proficiency in a skill adds +1 a system instead, but cannot be your highest stat.

Then everything should still be in the right ballpark.

Removing proficiency is an interesting thought. As it stands, characters primary bonus goes from +5 to +11 from ability and proficiency. Going from 15 to 20 would be in the same ballpark. Could work well for a simplified system that didn't have skills. Reminds me of the old "roll under" function. Skills could be ranked and give you things to do (and maybe set your minimum bonus from rank so training makes you better regardless of ability).

 

[Shardstone]

Oooh.

AC and HP are a difficult system to adjust. We've tried damage reduction for armor before, but adding a 3rd variable makes things really complicated.

Having Armor as hit mitigation, though, could be interesting. An armor's armor bonus could be how many hits you can block before having to repair it during a short rest.

It works as a hack because then you just tally up the armor bonuses and say that's the amount of hits you can negate. You can then modify this a bit; maybe higher CR creatures eat 2 hits instead of one, and a critical hit can't be avoided but you can spend a point to turn its damage into a normal hit.

I'd probably say you can spend 10 minutes regaining all your armor points, just for consistency. Martials with heavy armor would have a lot of points, but these points can't be used on saving throws, and you can still chew through them with multiattacks. IMO it would be a pretty fun experiment to play out.

 

[Shardstone]

Also in this model, I would have there still be a to-hit roll, but again its against Dexterity. So you try to hit the target Dexterity, and they can spend guard to deflect it. Maybe guard reduces a number of damage dice equal to half your PB rounded down. So 1, 2, and then 3 damage dice for 1 "AC/Guard" point spent. This makes it so strong things still hit the character and that they are reducing the damage that way.