D&D General How do you like your ASIs?

[Lyxen]

Didn't say the character is fine.

He actually did: "I had a 5e half-orc wizard. He was phenomenal. Maybe my favorite character to date for 5e. "

Just because a rule exist and people play the game doesn't mean the rule is good.

The simple spear and the martial trident deal the same damage.
Many fans play 5e AND think some of the official rules are bad.

After 7 years, the rule has not been changed.

Again you missed my point.

I would take 5e having a better STR and INT score over the +1.
I don't want the 16 INT orc wizard. I want the 15 STR orc wizard to have something worthwhile IMHO to do with their STR.

Then do, make him an athlete, given him athletics, and present and play him that way. Who is stopping you ? This is what Scott did.

However in 5e

• Wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks don't get the one STR skill. I think clerics and druids don't get it too.

Then take it, you have so many ways of acquiring skills, background, feats, etc.

• The casters have cantrips to attack with that are based on their casting stat
• There are fewer few STR save spells
• Casters have bad weapon selection
• No one really tracks encumbrance

What is a goliath wizard or warlock really to do with his 15 STR?

See above, roleplay with it as with any stat, specialise yourself in it, intimidate people with it, why should it be a problem ?

It's only a problem because you want tangible technical benefits out of it without further investment away from the precious "build" => Powergaming.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Didn't say the character is fine.


Just because a rule exist and people play the game doesn't mean the rule is good.

The simple spear and the martial trident deal the same damage.
Many fans play 5e AND think some of the official rules are bad.


Again you missed my point.

I would take 5e having a better STR and INT score over the +1.
I don't want the 16 INT orc wizard. I want the 15 STR orc wizard to have something worthwhile IMHO to do with their STR.

However in 5e

• Wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks don't get the one STR skill. I think clerics and druids don't get it too.
• The casters have cantrips to attack with that are based on their casting stat
• There are fewer few STR save spells
• Casters have bad weapon selection
• No one really tracks encumbrance

What is a goliath wizard or warlock really to do with his 15 STR?

All fair points, though I'd like to point out that you get skills from background and older style of races. So you can still pretty easily get int skills on your fighter if you want them to be a warrior-scholar etc.

But yeah, I totally agree with you that the various stats should be generally more useful regardless of your class. I think in current paradigm subclasses would be way to patch this. Like how swashbuckler rogue benefits from CHA (I think.) Similarly there could be a battlemage that was decent at fighting with a greatsword or something like that.

 

[Minigiant]

And I am saying that is incorrect. I just gave you an example. It has little payoff for you because you need a 16 in intelligence to break a trope for some reason. Many players do not.

And I'm saying that the advantages given are minor or nonexistent due to many parts of 5e design. Shocking grasp is better than Quaterstafff. Intimidate and Athletics are single skills easy to pick up.

Basically a human wizard can be a better orc wizard than an orc wizard.

He actually did: "I had a 5e half-orc wizard. He was phenomenal. Maybe my favorite character to date for 5e. "

I didn't say the character wasn't fine.

You can play the orc wizard. It can be fun. Doesn't remove the fact that 5e removed most of incentives of running an orc wizard.

See above, roleplay with it as with any stat, specialise yourself in it, intimidate people with it, why should it be a problem ?

It's only a problem because you want tangible technical benefits out of it without further investment away from the precious "build" => Powergaming

You intimidate with CHA in 5e.

Fans play D&D for the rules. If you want to FFRP, you can FFRP.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I am saying that the orc wizard has little payoff for paying it because the Ability Scores are in imbalance and tropes are too enforced.

To me, that is a completely different question from ASIs. I agree that 6e should probably nerf Dex and boost Str. That doesn’t mean I am against ASIs.

Or in direct terms:
If 5e wasn't so simplified, unbalanced, and pushed to tropes, floated ASIs would not be as needed because there would be an advantage to being good in any score for any class.

Being simplified is also a boon to all of us who don’t have time for a more complex system, new players and those recruiting new players, and those with players who after 3 years playing D&D (and 8 sessions as a warlock) still don’t understand that casting spells generally takes your action.

But...
Str is near useless for pure casters
Int is near useless for pure warriors
Dex is an ultimate score
Con, Wis, and Cha are good for everyone.

Str is only near useless for casters is the DM doesn’t regularly require Athletics checks, or throw Webs or other effects that rely on Str against them.

Worlds are dynamic. It will adapt to adventurers dumping Str and Int (probably with multiple Phantasmal forces).

 

[Maxperson]

38.7% players want race to be a determinant of ability scores. 50.6% don't. 10.8% could fall in either or neither camp.

@Yaarel is calling the case where you ability scores are determined by something other than race, 'cultural'. Perhaps that is too broad: it captures the sense of nature versus nurture, but doesn't leave space for a player who decides to put their floating +2 on Dex because (in their take on the game world) elves are dextrous as a race and their character is no exception.

It's striking for me that more people here now prefer not to lock characters into racial stereotypes.

You're reading too much into the "no" camp. I've seen a number of people in this thread say that they just plain don't like bonuses and prefer to cap things at 18, not that they don't want ASIs because of racial stereotypes. Even a lot of the floating ASI people are just saying that they want to be able to place stats for class, and use other racial ability to set the stereotype of say dexterous elves. We don't know at all that a majority do not want to lock characters into racial stereotypes.

 

[Lyxen]

You intimidate with CHA in 5e.

It's as much a variant/option as playing on grids, using feats, using multiclass, using standard array or point-buy and even using Tasha's Powergaming ASIs. Why discriminate ?

Fans play D&D for the rules. If you want to FFRP, you can FFRP.

All the above are as much a rule as another one, why do you insist on one rather than others ?

 

[Minigiant]

To me, that is a completely different question from ASIs. I agree that 6e should probably nerf Dex and boost Str. That doesn’t mean I am against ASIs.

It's a related question.
If the ability scores were near equal in use for every class, there would be a lot less need for floating ASI. It would be for biological anti-tropes and fixing MAD classes only.

 

[Minigiant]

It's as much a variant/option as playing on grids, using feats, using multiclass, using standard array or point-buy and even using Tasha's Powergaming ASIs. Why discriminate ?



All the above are as much a rule as another one, why do you insist on one rather than others ?

Well that's a bit hypocritical.

You can'tsay "Those are the rules. Variants are for powergamers. You just want powergame" for one thing and "The rules are bad. I want a variant but I'm no powergamer" for another

 

[Maxperson]

The Ultraconservativism is wanting each race tofollow a stereotype even though D&D is supposed to support thousands of worlds and settings.
MM LOTR style Orcs or MM Minotaurs might not make sense in a Greco-Roman setting or a setting built of Post-Han China.
High elves might not make sense in a Post Apoc setting like Dark Sun.

Correct, which is why Ultraconservatism is pretty much as mythological as minotaurs. Dragonlance had different minotaurs. Eberron had different orcs. Dark Sun had different elves. For the entire history of the game different settings have had embraced different forms of the MM defaults.

So now where they once was a niche for them, there is none for the orc wizard/sorcerer/cleric/warlock. Any complaints where chased away with "Well orcs are supposed to be melee. You just want the +2 INT for power gaming."

Orcs with no mental bonus can be any of those classes and be very effective at them. They can start as high as 18 at first level and hit 20 by 4th. There is no "orcs are supposed to be melee." There is, "Melee is a little bit easier for orcs, though."

 

[Vince_Snetterton]

There is another thread floating around talking about Tradition. Well, what that thread and this thread are talking about is the same thing:

There is a huge influx of new players to the game that find rules "boring and hard". These people want 5e to be more "free form" aka easier to play. There are those of use who recognize the roots of the game are based on a brutal game. Chars died often. Failure was omnipresent.

But that kind of game does not fly with the new players, who watch Critical Role, which has zero in common with the older D&D. And Hasbro/WOTC, like any corporation, has decided to go where the money is, which means making the game far far easier. I can cite any number any number of instances in Tashas, be they outright gifts to classes, the wildly OP subclasses, even before getting to this new stat distribution system. Sorry folks, "balancing" does not mean always buffing to the highest value.

And yeah, even though WOTC has sprayed the word "optional" throughout that book and subsequent releases, we all know where this is headed.