D&D General How do you like your ASIs?

[clearstream]

Ok. Dwarven wizard or sorcerer, +2 Intel, +2 con. With medium armor, it takes one more feat for the VHuman to get medium armor and the vhuman still needs to somehow get darkvision.

And the one I am thinking of, also took heavy armor as a feat. So yeah, there are things that can be better out there. If you think multiclassing, the half elf comes immediately to mind.

Bit I can contact them when I get some time off to see what they did.

I feel we need to clarify whether we are debating TCoE, or the more recent official take on floating ASIs? @Sabathius42 as you didn't mention TCoE, what was your intent?

 

[FrozenNorth]

But my point remains, and I think remains valid: a 20% or 25% difference adds up. A 90-point monster - the middle of your range above - is going to go down after 18 hits if you're doing 5 per hit but it'll take 23 hits (the last doing but 2 points to finish it off) at 4 per hit.

And in the time it takes to get those extra five hits in your PC - or someone else's - could die.

Except for the fact that you are part of a party, so the entire party is attacking the monster, not just you. So your contribution is about a quarter of that.

 

[Minigiant]

No, sorry, this is only for one type of game, there are many other ways to get experience or even ignore it entirely, for one, and the 6-8 encounters per day is total naughty word (it's only an example of how things can add up during a day), used only by people who read only that sentence out of the 200+ pages of the DMG to try and steer the game in only one direction.

You can't have it both ways.

You can't say you don't needed to follow the guidelines if you need it AND say that the guidelines don't require it so you don't need it

 

[Helldritch]

I feel we need to clarify whether we are debating TCoE, or the more recent official take on floating ASIs? @Sabathius42 as you didn't mention TCoE, what was your intent?

Deliberately left undescribed. Just from all aspects of character creation.

Right from the first page. You have your answer. Also, why limit yourself, or us, to only one book. I much prefer core books but ASI are from TCoE afterall. Why should we not use the source of all evil? (Joking here).

 

[Minigiant]

So a more refined definition of 'required' ability scores might be something like - 'these ability scores are required in order to escape the grindiness entailed by the PHB / DMG baseline for encounters'?

Yes. If you add "at mid and late levels"

 

[clearstream]

Right from the first page. You have your answer. Also, why limit yourself, or us, to only one book. I much prefer core books but ASI are from TCoE afterall. Why should we not use the source of all evil? (Joking here).

I didn't notice that post. I am in favour of floating ASIs, but not in favour of the TCoE rules for moving racial ASIs.

Oh well, going forward please understand that what I am arguing in support of are floating ASIs as found in the most recent official material. Concretely, separate from race, a choice of +2 on one ability score and +1 on another, or +1 on any three different ability scores.

Seeing as the OP was discussing what must become the final official version, that is the version that I am saying will become the final official version. By 5.5th, the experiment in TCoE will join the dusty archives of D&D splatbooks and be largely if not entirely forgotten.

 

[Lyxen]

You can't have it both ways.

I can totally, it's an open game by design.

You can't say you don't needed to follow the guidelines if you need it AND say that the guidelines don't require it so you don't need it

I'm just pointing out that there are actually more guidelines pointing out away from the grinding path that you describe than alongside it, so you don't even need to tweak to play without all these constraints, it's built in. And, on top of that, a DM can do whatever he wants to avoid the grind anyway.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I feel we need to clarify whether we are debating TCoE, or the more recent official take on floating ASIs? @Sabathius42 as you didn't mention TCoE, what was your intent?

I'm not referring to any particular rule, just concepts in general. My personal stance is that everything would get a floating +2/+1 in this discussion but thats just my interpretation.

 

[clearstream]

Yes. If you add "at mid and late levels"

So "required" means "these ability scores are required in order to escape the grindiness entailed by the PHB / DMG baseline for encounters at mid and late levels'?

That's quite interesting, it would seem to call for agreement that

1. there is such grindiness
2. it doesn't matter what might be required at early levels
3. and for the argument to hand, presumably that having 18 instead of 16 at mid-levels has no consequence on mitigating the grindiness
4. and likewise that having 20 instead of 18 at high-levels has no consequence on mitigating the grindiness
5. and notice that we are open to disagreement about consequence

But the more interesting question is, how do you measure grindiness? It cannot be simply game-minutes, rather it must be something about those minutes that makes them unsatisfactory. It cannot be minutes-to-level, because it might be better for some groups to take more rather than less time to level.

What is grindiness, to your mind? How is it measured?

 

[Bill Zebub]

You could hit 1000 HP at level 6 (with an inept DM).

The real issue is the semi bloated HP along with the 6-8 encounter per day game design.
A DM who uses a lot of high CR enemies has tons of HP. The DMG has you run through an expected 900-1200 HP a day if you follow the chart at level 6. If you fight 6 cyclopsi, you are burning through 828 HP. Even if you go with lower CR monsters and throw in trash, the HP per encounter goes from 75-150 HP 6 to 8 times.

Once you realize this as a play, it nudges your damage dealers to want as much damage as possible. And if your tanks rely on scores, it nudges them as well.

It isn't required. However after level 6 and 7, you might really feel the need to buff your primary if you didn't start with a 16 nor buff it by then.

It doesn't really matter how many HP or how many encounters. 20% more damage* means that, by yourself, you will on average kill a monster in 4 rounds instead of 5. Because of fenceposting that will happen against some monsters more frequently than others. Or, if you're fighting monsters that die twice as fast as that, 50% of the time you will deprive the monster of its last action.

The thing to remember is that it's not just the straight +1 damage; it's also the increased chance of hitting, which is computed as the relative change. That is, if you had a 50% chance to hit, and now you have a 55% chance, you hit 10% more often. Which means 1/10 attacks you get a full extra hit in. If you previously had a 25% chance to hit, you get an extra attack 1/5 times.

This effect does not only appear over large numbers. That's nonsense. It converges on the predicted value over large numbers. Which means that, over small numbers (say, one adventuring day) half of us will see a diminished effect, and half of us will see a greater effect. (Do you feel lucky, punk?)

Now, the value one places on that is subjective. Some people would rather have pointy ears, and that's cool. But that's the math.

*Again, this effect increases when the AC goes up If you're unlucky enough to encounter an AC 19 monster at level 1, the fighter with 16 strength does 35% more damage than the one with 15. If you also have disadvantage it's 60%. If the target also has partial cover it's 80%. Etc.