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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9826769" data-attributes="member: 6790260">No. It "should" not be any specific thing. It is a design choice. You are conflating "this is how 1e does it" with "this is how all games should do it". Both are valid. They're just different.None of which actually addresses my core point. You are asserting that characters should have very high variability. I'm telling you they should not have high variability. They should in fact actually be mostly similar! Because, as it turns out, most people really are mostly similar. Comes with being a species and all. Your very foundational principle--the idea that characters should be highly variable--is inherently unrealistic. Anti-realistic, even. It is there solely to produce an actively un-realistic aesthetic that you personally prefer. Hence, an argument for it which claims to be based on realism is presumptively wrongheaded (since the alternative is to assume bad intent).Don't you think a system which can produce outrightly unplayable characters has a clear hole that should be fixed? That sounds like a pretty serious flaw. Folks love to crack jokes (or rarely, actually criticize) Traveller for being able to die in character creation. I should think "you can do character creation and be literally unplayable after the second step" is something needing fixing.Doubly so when, y'know, we don't do assign-in-order.I should think someone with Str 3 should never even think about delving into a murder-hole for fame and fortune. Mostly because, y'know, they're likely to die?Why bother?Seriously, why bother? That's such a blatantly unrealistic, rules-forward way of altering player behavior, when we could just...not. Like we could literally just say that characters already did their training....since that's literally what the books already say. A level 1 Fighter is not simply some random town guard or peasant with a pitchfork. They're an actual warrior, with fairly extensive combat training, whether or not they have actually seen their first battle (but the text strongly implies most Fighters already have real combat exposure before level 1.)Uh...you're the one who brought that up. I did not mention that number at any point in my post. I simply spoke of "low extremes", which in this context would be anything 7 or lower (at least as far as I'm concerned). Someone who is two standard deviations below the mean--meaning 97.5% of people are stronger than they are--absolutely should not be even attempting strength-based challenges, both because they will be objectively terrible at it and because, presuming at least a modicum of rationality, they won't want to do things they know they're really, really bad at.Perhaps. You have advocated score requirements with no physical representation, character creation rules that can create truly unplayable characters as in the rules forbid you from playing them, and variability which does not actually capture what most people really are. Even under 3d6 strict, you get +2 and even +3 modifiers much too often.Ooooor...we could just recognize that people already did get better at it...by recognizing that their ability scores at first level represent a mixture of both innate predisposition AND developed skill/intuition/ability. Which is much, much more realistic than the outrightly anti-realistic notion that the entirety of your strength or intelligence is innate and unchanging.I was told Cha was THE god-stat of early-edition D&D because it controlled reaction rolls and the ability to recruit followers, which could utterly transform the experience of fighting through a dungeon--because you could recruit your opponents, bolstering your own forces while weaking the dungeon's guardians.But yes, Dex, Wis, and Con are varying degrees of too powerful, while Strength and Intelligence are weak in 5e, especially the latter. Charisma is more or less balanced as it has clear uses, but is not useful everywhere, and some things contextually make it more useful (like Blade Pact Warlock). 4e did quite a lot of work to address this:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Constitution only increases your HP at first level in 4e. Technically, each point of Con mod also gives you another Healing Surge, but it doesn't change how much value you get out of them (unless you're a Dragonborn.) Hence, Con is MUCH less powerful in 4e--and this is partially compensated by giving it a skill, Endurance, which gives Con value in exploration and logistical challenges.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dexterity, while still very powerful, is less so because your Reflex defense (=Reflex save from 3e, just reformatted so attacker rolls), and light-armor AC, can come from either Dex or Int, whichever is higher--making Int more valuable. More could have been done, but it's not a bad start. Or if either of them also worked for Initiative, it'd work just fine.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wisdom is still a god stat and, of course, could be brought down a peg. (Personally, I think Perception should be divorced from Wis just as Initiative should be from Dex.) It doesn't need massive nerfs, though. Just pulling out Perception would probably be enough; being the "anti-mind-control" stat is a pretty good thing, and it is used for other skills (Healing and Dungeoneering--aka "dungeon survival skills"--are pretty solid.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I'm still unsure what to do with Strength. Athletics is a good skill, but other than that, it's entirely feast or famine. Encumberance isn't doing the trick--and not just because lots of folks ignore such things because they aren't engaging.</li> </ul>It really wouldn't take that much effort to find an initial solution. The actual effort would be doing the playtesting to see if the stats are in fact balanced against one another, and iterating on that until you reach the desired outcome (where players are reluctant to dump any stat, because all of them have important, desirable uses). I have no confidence that WotC as it exists today has the desire, let alone the werewithal, to do either the kind or the amount of testing required.</blockquote>

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