D&D 5E [Playtest] Ability Scores are Important in Next, but is the Prime Requisite?

[ferratus]

As I like to meet my Characters rather than specifically craft them, I rolled up a series of ability scores in order.

STR - 7
DEX - 13
CON - 18
INT - 15
WIS 13
CHA 11

Since I had a low strength score and a high Con score, I decided to play a halfling. (With a human it doesn't really make sense why his strength score would be so low with such robust health). Since my second highest score is intelligence, I'd like to play a wizard, but I would only end up with an INT score of 16 (or 15 if I wanted to make my halfling even tougher).

In 3e and 4e, the monster defenses made having anything less than a maximum ability score in the prime requisite tantamount to career suicide. 1e and 2e generally were more forgiving of middling ability scores, but also richly rewarded high ability scores.

I know ability scores are important in D&D Next for saves and for skills. I know the prime requisite is important for attacks and the power of your spells. But the question I have is a mathematical one. Can I sacrifice a little bit of raw spell power and still be a viable character? How would a 15 INT stack up against the monsters I am going to face? Will the flatter math save me from having to optimize? How about multi-classing? Can I have a secondary class with a middlingly good ability score and still be effective?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Why not playtest it and find out? That's what it's there for, after all.

 

[ferratus]

I was kind of wondering if the answer was obvious enough that playtesting wasn't necessary. Sometimes I miss the obvious.

 

[Pickles JG]

15 int is what you get if you use the default array.

You are just as much gimped (or not) in this edition as in those others as fundamentally the maths is the same. I think it will be more like 3e with more randomness hiding the benefits you get compared with the very many rolls per combat in 4e.

 

[pauljathome]

As I like to meet my Characters rather than specifically craft them, I rolled up a series of ability scores in order.

STR - 7
DEX - 13
CON - 18
INT - 15
WIS 13
CHA 11

Can I have a secondary class with a middlingly good ability score and still be effective?

You rolled insanely well. You're a good magic user, a decent rogue or cleric or dex based fighter. With that Con you even have a fighting chance of surviving .

Compare with the character that I rolled up :

STR - 11
DEX - 9
CON - 12
INT - 12
WIS - 8
CHA - 14

On the good side, this will almost certainly die in its first adventure so I get to try again

I know that its probably selective memory. but I tend to do absolutely terribly when rolling up characters. Back in 3.0 days where there were incredibly minimal standards (something like the character had to add up to at least a +2 total modifications) I once rolled up 7 characters in a row before getting one that was legal. And that one still sucked