Please critique this house-rule

[Unwise]

I went for a pretty simple system with one quick game I played. You get an 18 and a 14 to put where you like. All other stats are 3d6 rolled in order, no substitutions. This allows you to have a retarded sorcerer or a charismatic fighter, yet it does not effect their core role and combat abilities.

 

[mneme]

cavalier973: Cool, glad you liked it! I take it I caught your intent well enough?

The one mod I'd probably make to my tweak is to adjust things a bit on the high end -- as including racials, PCs get up to a 20, not an 18. Given that in the resulting system, natural 18s would be hella rare, I'd probably just make 19-20 a +3 -- it would mean that a player could start with an effective 22 in a stat (in the standard math), but they'd have to roll it honestly.

 

[cavalier973]

cavalier973: Cool, glad you liked it! I take it I caught your intent well enough?

The one mod I'd probably make to my tweak is to adjust things a bit on the high end -- as including racials, PCs get up to a 20, not an 18. Given that in the resulting system, natural 18s would be hella rare, I'd probably just make 19-20 a +3 -- it would mean that a player could start with an effective 22 in a stat (in the standard math), but they'd have to roll it honestly.

That's fine, if it's a natural 18 that's rolled. As for increasing the ability scores, the DM would just have the player increase scores of the abilities that his character uses all the time.

So, a wizard that casts spells but also slings daggers or shoots a bow can get an increase to both his intelligence and his dexterity.
Also, use of skills contribute to the increase of the relevant ability modifier.

 

[Destil]

Looking for a way to have random ability scores without punishing the players too much.

Replace every instance of +[Ability] in powers with the following:

Level 1-7 +4, level 8-13 +5, 14-19 +6, 20-28 +7, 29-30 +8

Retain standard rules/bonuses for feat requirements, defenses and skills.

 

[mneme]

[MENTION=1980]Destil[/MENTION]: I think that's mising the point, though -- the ability scores should still mean -something-. My suggestion shifted things more towards level -- putting the lion's share of increase into the level-based bonus, while reserving a smaller factor for the stat.

 

[Mapache]

IMHO, that badly messes with the low levels of the game (and makes them much harder), but epic tier would be easier.

Yeah, under the normal rules, a character will have a post-racial primary stat of 18 or 20, for a +4 or +5 bonus at 1st level. They'll pump that at every opportunity, gaining +4 in bonus and +15 in half-level bonus over the course of 30 levels, for a +23 or +25 bonus at level 30.

Under the proposed random rules, nearly everyone will have a +1 modifier from their attribute, so they'll go from +2 at level 1 to +31 at level 30. So, yeah, it leads to low-level characters being gimped and high-level characters being massively powered up.