D&D General How do you like your ASIs?

[Minigiant]

So what you are saying is "I don't want to develop a char from scratch, and watch that char grow in power and experience. I want to jump right to the point where I can project power."

Right, understood. Now who is the player that wants to RP again, and which one doesn't?

Who said that?

Tier 1, you save the town.
Tier 2, you save the capital or a kingdom.
Tier 3, you save the continent.
Tier 4, you save the whole plane.

You can RP any of that. The point is "gerenic dwarf miner with not real potential" and "random average Joe Human" never gets past Tier 1.

 

[Minigiant]

Low level, and one step away from death is not "novice". A wizards starts with a spell book with 6 spells in it, presumably a gift from a mentor. A Level 0 wizard with no spellbook, that is a "novice".
A fighter with no armour, no shield, just a wooden club they fashioned, or an axe they chopped wood with at home, that is a "novice".

That's not novice.
That's a rookie.

D&D never had rookie play in its base rules.

 

[Bill Zebub]

So what you are saying is "I don't want to develop a char from scratch, and watch that char grow in power and experience. I want to jump right to the point where I can project power."

Right, understood. Now who is the player that wants to RP again, and which one doesn't?

Ah, the True Scotsman argument, right on the heels of the Get Off My Lawn argument. Nice.

Optimization and powergaming may or may not be "bad", but badwrongfun-ism certainly is.

 

[Vince_Snetterton]

So you are fine with a 17STR halfling fighter in a party of wizards, just not in a party with another 17STR race that has a +STR ASI? Of can it not exist at all because of the theoretical +ASI 17STR character that isn't in the party?

Small creatures can't use Heavy Weapons without Disadvantage due to size.
So what is next? A Halfling with an 18 Str is allowed to wield a Great Sword just as well as a 12 Str Goliath?
Or are there scaled down Great Weapons made for little people, that do the same damage as the traditional weapon?

My Halfing Rogue fights occasionally fights two-handed with a Sword Sword and Dagger, because they both qualify as Light Weapons. That should be altered in the rules to only 2 Daggers, because a Short Sword for a Halfling would be the equivalent of a Medium Size creature wielding a Broadsword.

But such immersion into a char and the world the char lives in irritates those that think it is somehow ableist in the real world to impose such restrictions on a creature based on physical limitations in a fantasy world, powergamers hate that kind of thing, and RP'ers who are interested only in the narrative of a campaign can't be bothered with such minutiae.

Is Str done well in 5e? Of course not. We all know there is absolute strength and relative strength. Pound for pound, an ant is one of the strongest creatures on the planet, but it not about to dead lift 8 ounces.

The strongest Halfling in the history of Halflings is simply does not have absolute strength of the average Goliath. It just doesn't. And the only way that can be abstracted with the current rules is by hard species specific ASI's.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

In former case it indeed would be less of a problem. Though I still like these things to be fixed for world building reasons. As a GM I want rules to have concrete(ish) meaning. It helps me adjudicate NPC stats, DCs etc.

So in your game how do I model a scrawny orc wizard? You would say even a scrawny orc wizard has a 10STR. Then how do you model a scrawny orc wizard with a weakening curse placed on their family? Also a 10STR or maybe you just give someone the option of not using their STR bonus so they can start with an 8.

But then you have opened the door to there being a single orc in the world with an 8STR so we wrap back around to asking why they can't just build them with the 8STR and put the +2 somewhere else so their character can be balanced with the rest of the array using party?

I understand the idea for supporting world building by having orc always strong and elves always dexterous but I will never understand how you can't allow the few PCs that exist in the world to follow ever so slightly different rules to account for their spotlight.

Maybe this just boils down to how a table views it's PCs. I view mine as if they were the main characters if a book. I expect them to be movers and shakers (that's what the adventures are) and be exceptional in many ways. Even from level 1.

I do not view them as Orc#3728266 fresh off the assembly line so therefore you must be a carbon copy of all the other orcs. Those orcs are in the stat block of the monster manual. They all have the same 6 stats, the same skills and equipment and go by a number.

THe PC orc wizard can be whatever they want.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So what you are saying is "I don't want to develop a char from scratch, and watch that char grow in power and experience. I want to jump right to the point where I can project power."

Right, understood. Now who is the player that wants to RP again, and which one doesn't?

Bunk and hokum.

You can have character development and progression without starting with nothing. While there are a lot of stories that start at farmboy, there are a ton where we start with competence and still continue to improve and progress.

People are sick of starting at zero because so much stuff FORCES you to do it every time and it's gotten boring and played for them.

Play Exalted then. It's a good game. But in D&D I want to start as a relatively weak noob.

It's not all about what you personally want.

 

[Vince_Snetterton]

That's not novice.
That's a rookie.

D&D never had rookie play in its base rules.

That is the very point. D&D 5e has no "novice" nor "rookie" no whatever other term you wish to apply to a 0 level char (I do remember older versions have 0 level retainers though).

Level 1 is not "novice", no "rookie". Novice is handwaved in the Background chosen by the player, maybe in the backstory. So to suggest "I want to skip levels 1-2, because they are no fun, is well...I have a term for that. Hell, why not skip level 3 as well, given the first ASI is not until level 4?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Small creatures can't use Heavy Weapons without Disadvantage due to size.
So what is next? A Halfling with an 18 Str is allowed to wield a Great Sword just as well as a 12 Str Goliath?
Or are there scaled down Great Weapons made for little people, that do the same damage as the traditional weapon?

My Halfing Rogue fights occasionally fights two-handed with a Sword Sword and Dagger, because they both qualify as Light Weapons. That should be altered in the rules to only 2 Daggers, because a Short Sword for a Halfling would be the equivalent of a Medium Size creature wielding a Broadsword.

But such immersion into a char and the world the char lives in irritates those that think it is somehow ableist in the real world to impose such restrictions on a creature based on physical limitations in a fantasy world, powergamers hate that kind of thing, and RP'ers who are interested only in the narrative of a campaign can't be bothered with such minutiae.

Is Str done well in 5e? Of course not. We all know there is absolute strength and relative strength. Pound for pound, an ant is one of the strongest creatures on the planet, but it not about to dead lift 8 ounces.

The strongest Halfling in the history of Halflings is simply does not have absolute strength of the average Goliath. It just doesn't. And the only way that can be abstracted with the current rules is by hard species specific ASI's.

You literally just pointed out in your own post a major difference in ability between a halfling with 17STR and a Goliath with 17STR (one can't use heavy weapons, or by extension great weaoon fighting feat). Then you go on to double down and say how it's MANDATORY that only the Goliath have the 17STR because it's the only way to keep things right.

 

[Vince_Snetterton]

Bunk and hokum.

You can have character development and progression without starting with nothing. While there are a lot of stories that start at farmboy, there are a ton where we start with competence and still continue to improve and progress.

People are sick of starting at zero because so much stuff FORCES you to do it every time and it's gotten boring and played for them.

It's not all about what you personally want.

So when you comment and say "It is not about what you personally want", but the sentence before you state "people are sick......", you have been elected to speak for the majority of the D&D community?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Ironically again that's what 4e did.

4e gave every class either 2 primary ability score or 2-4 secondary ability scores.
Since every race bumped 2 scores, you could likely play any race with any class and have a primary or secondary bumped. And if not, there was a class of the same power source close enough to your first choice class.

4e was the only D&D edition with warriors, priests, and mages of every ability score.

There certainly were some viable babies in that 4e bathwater.