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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 6944239" data-attributes="member: 6799649">I like 5E a great deal, but one of the things I don't like is that your attack stat is either Str OR Dex. When in reality it's better to have high ratings in both, in 5E you only benefit from one (as your attack stat). So, unless you are a barbarian, only one of these two stats counts. Since a poor Dex doesn't negatively impact your AC if you wear heavy armour, a warrior either chooses Str and heavy armour or Dex and light armour.What makes this even worse is the prevalence of point-buy; if you have 16 Dex (or Str), it is a complete waste of points to assign any points at all to Str (or Dex)! With point-buy, as a (non-barbarian) warrior you have either Str 16/Dex 8 OR Str 8 Dex 16, and any other choice is a waste of points. It also renders medium armour unused by non-barbarian warriors.DM: I see you have Dex 16 and Str 8 (again!); would you like a free extra four points of Str, no strings attached?Player: Are we using variant encumberance?DM: No.Player: Errm....no, not really. There's no point.That's the problem: an unrealistic realisation that if you are a melee warrior and attack with one stat then it's actually better to have a low score in the other, because then you have more points to spend on other stats. This is absurd! Every warrior should want, and benefit from, high scores in both stats!I remember Chaosium games from the '80s, where the attack modifier was made up of modifiers from four stats: Str, Int, Pow, Dex. Parry modifiers were from Str, Pow, Dex and the inverse of Size (being smaller made it easier to parry, being larger made it harder). Damage was from Str and Size (being bigger meant you hit harder). This meant that you wanted to be good at every stat, except Size which was a double-edged sword, as it were. This had the benefit of making sense!So maybe the solution is to remove the concept of finesse weapons, and make the attack modifier be an average of Str AND Dex for every weapon.</blockquote>

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