D&D 5E Is Tasha's Broken?

[Minigiant]

Bam Bam Bigelow was acrofatic! And he was (mostly) real!

I often go to pro wrestling for my feats of strength.

Fat yet fast and flexible guy is a stable wrestling trope. Bam Bam, Dusty, Vader, Kevin, Keith, and many others lived of it. And those luchadors with rather short but often pretty strong.

I mean you can't SSP if you have no muscles.

 

[Horwath]

Indeed.

+2 STR doesn't make you significantly stronger. It helps you in 1 of 20 Strength checks. But it make take 20 sessions before you make 20 Strength checks.

But you can easily make 20 STR attacks in a session. AND stacks on your damage.

So +2 STR doesn't enough make the lore. The number is too low. Yod have to make it +8 to make a difference in STR checks. But that breaks combat. Modern game design would do double carrying capacity, advantage on STR checks, and +2 to Strength damage.

heres is the problem with d20.

change the d20 into 3d6 and every 1 point of difference makes lot more impact.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

heres is the problem with d20.

change the d20 into 3d6 and every 1 point of difference makes lot more impact.

heck change it to 1d8 and it matters more

 

[Horwath]

heck change it to 1d8 and it matters more

sure, but 3d6 has same average as d20, so we do not have to change a lot of math,
Bell curve really stomps out extremes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I wonder how much this argument would have changed (or changed at all), if Tasha's had instituted a three-point system. What if:

Your Origin gives you a +1 to any stat of your choice
Your Background gives you a +1 to a fixed ability score (Adept = +1 Int, Acolyte = +1 Wis, Athlete = +1 Con, etc.)
Your Class gives you a +1 to the key ability score (Bard = +1 Cha, Cleric = +1 Wis, Fighter = +1 Str or +1 Dex, etc.)

Would this have solved this ability score issue, in your opinion, by spreading them out across the character build instead of concentrating them on "race" alone? Or do you think it would it have only exacerbated the problem, creating an incentive for players to cherry-pick all the options just to get an all-important +3 to Whatever?

As I've said, if you're going to have ASIs ar all they should be attached to something. I liked them on race, but you could attach them to culture or background instead and that would be fine. Level Up attached them to background, for example. What I don't want is to attach them to nothing. Who does that serve? If there's a lazier way to answer complainers I don't see it.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

sure, but 3d6 has same average as d20, so we do not have to change a lot of math,
Bell curve really stomps out extremes.

5d4 allows for a 'crit' on 20.

make advantage roll 7d4 drop the lowest 2
make disadvantage roll 7d4 drop the highest 2

wait I am giving myself ideas...

 

[Micah Sweet]

I wonder if (some) people who staunchly defend racial ASIs secretly think there should be gender ASIs. It would logically follow. And I wouldn't blame them for keeping quiet about it.

On the other hand, if they understand and agree with the reason for not having gender ASIs, it makes me wonder why they don't extend that same logic to racial ASIs.

I have to ask: do you really think your physical form should have no bearing at all on any of your ability scores?

 

[Horwath]

5d4 allows for a 'crit' on 20.

make advantage roll 7d4 drop the lowest 2
make disadvantage roll 7d4 drop the highest 2

wait I am giving myself ideas...

5d4 is average 12,5. Little too much.

but 3d6 would have advantage on 5d6 drop 2,
then it leaves room for small advantage at 4d6 drop 1, like flanking.

 

[Ondath]

I don’t even see what on Earth your point of view is based on, so yeah, sure.

It's based on my table's experiences with the new books and general encounter design, as well as dozens of people expressing similar views all over the Internet. If your experience is different and my view doesn't seem reasonable to you, that's fine, but this is just a really rude way of getting the last word in when I was trying to part amicably.

 

[Irlo]

I have to ask: do you really think your physical form should have no bearing at all on any of your ability scores?

Answering for myself, yes, I really do.

D&D ability scores are abstract and, when they do try to represent anything concrete, we just get a mish-mash of in-game effects that should be (mostly) unrelated to one another. Overall, ability scores in D&D are ill-suited to representing physical differences based on physical form.

Just one example:

A halfling and a human with equal strength scores have the same carrying capacity, sure, but the game doesn't acknowledge that the stuff the halfling carries is generally smaller and lighter, so in some sense they can't carry as much as the larger human with the same score. One might think that carrying capacity is an objective, concrete measurement — I mean, there’s a mathematical formula right in the books to make it seem concrete — but in truth that's abstract, too.