Is an 18/19/20 an absolute must?

[mneme]

It's really simple -- if you're not getting enough out of high secondary stats to justify lowering your primary stat, you're better off bumping the primary (this is frequently the case). If you're getting -depressingly- little out of your secondary stats, you're usually better with the primary at 19 or 20.

In particular, characters who wear light armor and use dex/int as primary should frequently have a 20 int/dex. You're getting damage, AC, and to-hit out of your primary, so you'd better be getting a lot if you start with lower (that said, my genasi wizard went 17 str/19 Int, so I could start with a bump in wisdom and a respectable Str).

Characters that can get to-hit/damage from a secondary stat and otherwise get big bonuses from same should go for more balanced stats. Dwarven fighters are classic here -- and they're classic for a reason -- with the right feats, a dwarven fighter with 16/16/16 will hit more and do more damage on combat challenge and opportunity attacks (though not on normal attacks) than a fighter with a 20 in her main stat, due to a combination of +wis to hit and +2+con to damage, -and- get all the good dwarven stuff and very good defenses. And 18/18 dwarves can work well as well.

Taclords are another common upside down class, with a fair number of people doing a 18 or even a 20 Int and a lower strength. I'm not entirely down with this -- I think 18/18 is probably right (for, say, a Genasi taclord), but given the short length of most D&D fights given optimiszed characters, it's hard to justify lowering your ability to hit and damage with most of your encounters and dailies just to power up your at-wills (and -occasional- encounters). If and when you can build a taclord who only makes Str-based attacks on dailies, it might be worth finding a way to boost 2-3 attacks per day and going 16/20, though, saving the big boosts for daily attacks off Str, though.

So in sum, figure out what the minimum you need in secondary stats to be effective with those stats, then dump the rest into primary unless you've got a -very- good reason not to. With different class/race combinations having different ideas of what you need in secondary for being "effective".

 

[Nytmare]

The ones saying it's ok are lying.

If you don't hit, the game ain't fun. As simple as that.

You can get by with a 16 in your primary stat, but only if you choose a race who bumps this to an 18.

I've always thought that this falls onto the shoulders of the DM. If the players aren't hitting things, the DM should give them things that are easier to hit. If the players aren't optimized for level+3 fights, then don't give them level+3 fights.

The DM should be able to run the game that they want, but at the same time, the characters should be allowed to play the characters that they want. If the DM wants to run a game where you need an 18-20 in your main stat, and a player wants to run a character with a 14-16 in their prime stat, they need to find a compromise.

 

[Mengu]

Not to derail the thread, but am I the only one who thinks a dwarf fighter will do well starting with Str 18?

Having Wis 16 may be good for opportunity attacks, but wouldn't you take a -1 or -2 penalty there so you can have +1 on *all* your attacks (making your opportunity attacks effectively only 1 less at worst)? So 18/16/10/8/13/10 seems quite workable, and is only one point short on opportunity attacks than the 16/16/13/8/16/10 dwarf.

I know your other defenses suffer, so that's another bit of penalty, but it still seems very reasonable to play a dwarf with 18 strength. If you are worried about those defenses, 18/14/12/8/14/10 is another very reasonable array, you gain 1 point of fortitude and lose 1 point of will with this array.

So even in cases where sinking an 18 into a primary stat where the race doesn't get a bonus, the investment can be worthwhile, and you are not sacrificing that much in secondary/tertiary stats if your race gives you boosts there.

I'll re-iterate my earlier point, that regardless of how many points you have to sink into it, a starting 18 post racial is good for most anyone (and when you don't know what else to do this is the way to go). You can work with a post racial 16, if and only if you are aware of the consequences (pro or con) and take measures to deal with them (as in numerous examples given so far).

 

[Infiniti2000]

I've always thought that this falls onto the shoulders of the DM. If the players aren't hitting things, the DM should give them things that are easier to hit. If the players aren't optimized for level+3 fights, then don't give them level+3 fights.

The DM should be able to run the game that they want, but at the same time, the characters should be allowed to play the characters that they want. If the DM wants to run a game where you need an 18-20 in your main stat, and a player wants to run a character with a 14-16 in their prime stat, they need to find a compromise.

This is almost a good take on it, but you're not including one very critical aspect of it. If one PC has a 20 and everyone else has a 14, the one with the 20 will easily outshine the rest. How is it on the DM's shoulders to work the game to be as challenging for everyone involved? It's not entirely on his shoulders, it's also on the players to make sure that each of their characters are equally optimized or rounded. If everyone has a 14, then yes the DM should account for that when designing the encounters.

 

[sfedi]

If the master has to account for that, why are the players given a mockery of a choice?

The DM should strive for consistent and balanced rules, then the players should use them however they like.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Is that a 16 with or with the the racial modifier? 16 without the racial modifier is fine. A 16 with the racial modifier (i.e. 14 base) is not fine, IMO. In practice, I prefer a 17 base stat because it gives you a significant boost at 4th level.

All I can say is the dwarf greatweapon fighter in the main game I'm running now started with a 16 STR and the character works great. He's got enough WIS to make his OAs land pretty accurately and Potent Challenge adds a large chunk of damage to any CC attacks he makes. Overall he's pretty sticky. I haven't noticed that he has any problems hitting in general. Also by using Cleave and Reaping Strike as at-wills and taking Brute Strike as a level 1 daily he's not loosing so much by missing once in a while. Some people might claim the character is sub-optimal with that STR but its rare for monsters to get past him and with his huge CON he's only gone down in battle a few times. The player is certainly boosting STR at every stat boost and I suppose this choice might prove less desirable at really high levels, but up to the top of heroic tier I can say with total assurance that a properly designed fighter is perfectly effective at 16 STR.

Practically speaking there are any number of builds for which a 16 prime req after mods is a good and even optimal choice. Certain wizard builds can easily get away with 16 INT for instance. There may even be a few very specific builds that can get by with a 14, though I suspect it probably isn't the wisest choice and is likely to be problematic at higher tiers.

 

[Nifft]

Not to derail the thread, but am I the only one who thinks a dwarf fighter will do well starting with Str 18?

Nope, it's just that Dwarf Fighter is one of the rare, iconic cases where having a 16 Str works fine. I'm sure you can build a Dwarf Fighter with an 18 Str and have it work just fine too.

Cheers, -- N

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree, dwarf fighter may be the ultimate poster child for a starting 16, but its not the only case where it works OK. Realistically I think all but a few classes can get away with a 16 and for a lot of them there are compensating advantages. Qualifying for various feats can be worth a lot and while you won't miss out on a huge number of them with an 18 if you do things just right it will cause you to either miss out on some good ones or else force you to lower secondaries more than you would like to. Starting 20's though are rough. There are builds where it simply makes sense, like Archer Rangers, but in a lot of others its probably not worth the fact that you're losing out on most feats with prereqs and all your power riders are going to be miserable. On top of that you better not get into a situation where you need to depend on a roll vs anything but your primary ability score. You'll also find that 2 of your NADs are going to be serious weaknesses at high level.

 

[Ryujin]

If you can start with better than a 16 in your primary stat, do it. I've been facing a lot of over-leveled encounters and feel like I've never gotten out of the batter's box lately. It seems like published adventures do a lot of this so if an optimized character would need a 16 to hit, I need a 17. Without a Warlord in the party and with a Cleric who rarely hands out buffs, that translates to a lot of misses. If it weren't for Deathmark and the ability to be invisible to that target once per encounter, I'd be even worse off.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you can start with better than a 16 in your primary stat, do it. I've been facing a lot of over-leveled encounters and feel like I've never gotten out of the batter's box lately. It seems like published adventures do a lot of this so if an optimized character would need a 16 to hit, I need a 17. Without a Warlord in the party and with a Cleric who rarely hands out buffs, that translates to a lot of misses. If it weren't for Deathmark and the ability to be invisible to that target once per encounter, I'd be even worse off.

I'm not much of a fan of the encounter design in any of the published adventures I've looked at frankly. There are some pretty well designed encounters here and there, but there is also a lot of stuff that makes the most basic errors. There really should be some better resources than just the DMG/DMG2 encounter design guidelines. They leave out a lot, especially what things are pitfalls to avoid. 4e encounters are awesome when they're done right, but they can be really miserable when done wrong and it doesn't always take much to make one into the other.