D&D 5E Racial Ability Scores: Default Low Ability Score

[Horwath]

I no longer use racial ability score boosts. Instead I have racial ability minimums.

For example, for a High Elf, the Dexterity must be 12 or higher and the Intelligence 11 or higher. On average, these High Elf abilities are higher than Human, and never below average.

I am happy with how this is working out, both for flavor and mechanics. It also allows the High Elf to be just as good as any other race in any class. A High Elf Paladin with very high Strength and Charisma? Great!



I wouldnt worry about weak abilities, but if you want, the opposite might possible. Say, the maximum score for a High Elf at level 1, might be 16 Constitution. Then allow the player to improve Constitution normally, upto 20, while leveling.

I'm on similar page.

Na racial ability boosts.

Point buy set at 16 max.

8 - 0pts
10 - 2pts
12 - 4pts
14 - 6pts
16 - 10pts

34pts total.

Human: free point buy

Elf: Dex; min 14, Con; max 14
high elf: int; min 12
wood elf: wis; min 12
Drow; cha; min 12

Dwarf: Con; min 14, Str; min 12, Cha max 14, Dex; max 14

H.Orc: Str; min 14, Con; min 12, int max 14, cha max 14

H.Elf: Dex; min 12

Gnome; Int; min 12, Con; min 12, Str; max 14

Halfling: Dex; min 12, Cha min 12, Str: max 14

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Locking the lowest roll to a particular ability score for every member of a race is way too restrictive. It effectively means a player is defining their character with only five ability scores rather than six, and means that all members of a race are going to look a lot alike. If you want to reinforce this idea that, say, halflings are on the physically weak side, you might want to consider a gentler "Strength can't be your highest score", or at the very most "Strength can't be in your top three", rather than going all the way to "Strength must be your lowest".

It's also worth mentioning, just in case you're thinking along these lines, that no requirement of this form is a balancing factor against requirement-free humans. Freedom of choice at character creation is not comparable to freedom of choice in play; after all, once in play, a nonhuman character built this way is going to have an ability score block that looks exactly the same as a block a human character could have. In other words, if the player was planning on putting their lowest score in Strength anyway, picking halfling over human would not cost them anything at all. So you have to make sure that the other human and nonhuman racial features are balanced against each other, independent of these requirements. (This is the same balance logic as for old race-class limitations and the like.)

 

[DammitVictor]

The key problem with DLAB (and DHAB) is that they're going to enforce... rather more uniformity than you want, in terms of ability score variation within a race, and in terms of what classes each race can viably play. Notably, this isn't going to lock the races into the classes you want, and it's going to lock them out of classes you do want.

Dwarves with DLAB Charisma are going to fare poorly as Paladins or Clerics. DHAB Constitution means their high stat is never going to be the primary for their class. Going to see a lot of Barbarians.

Elves with DLAB Constitution? Never gonna be Bladesingers. Actually, you're probably just never gonna see an Elf again. This may be a point in your favor.

I've mentioned it before, and I'm gonna keep mentioning it, but Alternity had a pretty standard point-buy system-- unweighted, unfortunately-- but had two alternate random generation methods in the Gamemaster's Guide: one, you picked your Profession first, and rolled 6 Ability Scores guaranteed to get your Prof minimums; two, you picked your Species first and rolled 6 Ability Scores guaranteed to fall within your minimum and maximum values.

Like, say, human is 2d6+2 for each. (Human range was 4-14.) Weren might get 10+d4 for Strength, but 2+2d4 for Intelligence. Combat Spec also got 10+d4 for STR and 8+d6 for DEX. All approximately, away from books.

And what I've been trying to do for the last twenty years is combine them, so you pick Profession and Species, average the two rolls for each score, and then adjust for minimums and maximums accordingly.

---

Still away from books, but you remember that one AD&D method where you got some ridiculous number of d6s and you allocated them to your six abilities and rolled them and... picked the best, I think?

I'm wondering if you could building something like the Alternity optional methods out of something like that. Gonna try to remember to have a look when I get back to my library.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I no longer use racial ability score boosts. Instead I have racial ability minimums.

For example, for a High Elf, the Dexterity must be 12 or higher and the Intelligence 11 or higher. On average, these High Elf abilities are higher than Human, and never below average.

I am happy with how this is working out, both for flavor and mechanics. It also allows the High Elf to be just as good as any other race in any class. A High Elf Paladin with very high Strength and Charisma? Great!

I wouldnt worry about weak abilities, but if you want, the opposite might possible. Say, the maximum score for a High Elf at level 1, might be 16 Constitution. Then allow the player to improve Constitution normally, upto 20, while leveling.

Do you roll scores or use point-buy? Do you find the minimums stop players from choosing races at times?

I kind of like the idea of maximum scores during creation, but I wonder how often that will really come into play.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I've mentioned it before, and I'm gonna keep mentioning it, but Alternity had a pretty standard point-buy system-- unweighted, unfortunately-- but had two alternate random generation methods in the Gamemaster's Guide: one, you picked your Profession first, and rolled 6 Ability Scores guaranteed to get your Prof minimums; two, you picked your Species first and rolled 6 Ability Scores guaranteed to fall within your minimum and maximum values.

Like, say, human is 2d6+2 for each. (Human range was 4-14.) Weren might get 10+d4 for Strength, but 2+2d4 for Intelligence. Combat Spec also got 10+d4 for STR and 8+d6 for DEX. All approximately, away from books.

And what I've been trying to do for the last twenty years is combine them, so you pick Profession and Species, average the two rolls for each score, and then adjust for minimums and maximums accordingly.

This reminds me of an idea I had a while back. Instead of giving other races a set +X modifier, I was thinking of granting extra dice when rolling ability scores. For instance, if you use a straight 3d6 or even 4d6k3, an elf might get +1 dice for DEX, making it 5d6k3, and -1 dice for CON, making it 3d6 flat. That way, the other races still have the potential to have really high scores in a "weak" ability, but it isn't as likely.

I'll spend the morning checking some numbers and report the results later today or tomorrow.

 

[clearstream]

I talked to my DM tonight and what he does for creatures is pretty simple to use if you adopt our +8 max proficiency progression:

CR 0 - 4, no adjustment
CR 5 - 14 = +1
CR 15 - 24 = +2
CR 25+ = +3

The modifier is applied to all the listed in the stat block saving throws and skills, as well as attack rolls.

View attachment 114209

For example, a drow elite warrior is CR 5 so gains a +1 to DEX, CON, and WIS saves over the value listed in the stat block. It would also gain +1 more to Perception and Stealth (again, those listed in the block). And finally all of the attack rolls under that actions section (i.e. shortsword and hand crossbow).

To what extent is this not just number inflation?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Here's the problem I feel with any sort of bonus or penalty to ability scores system you have in the game... once characters are created, none of them matter anymore.

The whole point of minimums or maximums or bonuses or penalties is to distinguish how a race on the whole compares to humans. If you take a large swathe of everyday elves... they will more often than not be more dexterous that a similar large swathe of humans because of their bonus. The problem though... is that PCs aren't average. None of these perceptions that elves tend to be more dexterous than humans applies to PCs because once you introduce rolling or point buying ability scores, the bonuses or penalties disappear once the character has been made.

Case in point-- a person makes an Elf Bard and after rolling or point buying their Dexterity score and applying their racial bonus... the PC ends up with a 14 DEX. Okay. Fine. Meanwhile, the player of the Human Rogue rolls or point buys their Dexterity score and ends up with a 16. All right then. But now... what does this mean once the game begins? Will the Elf's Dexterity bonus for being an elf have any impact on the character or the game ever again in the game? Nope. Not a single bit. ALL the players are going to know and notice is that the Human is always more dexterous than the Elf, and that fact is going to be true for the entirety of the campaign. The idea of the "average elf" compared to the "average human" is washed away because the Elf and the Human in the game are not average elves and humans and the only comparison is to each other. A comparison where humans are more dexterous than elves.

So what exactly did the Elf's Dexterity bonus at character creation get them? Pretty much absolutely nothing. At least nothing they couldn't have been gotten by just re-jiggering the points they bought or the rolls they assigned. So at that point, why even bother? The only time you ever really notice a non-human's racial bonus occurs when that player buys the highest score available for the ability they get their +2 in. Because then and only then are they assured of being "better" than their human counterpart there at the table. But ironically even that usually doesn't mean very much (in point buy especially) because the human PC can still usually acquire the exact same ability modifier as their non-human counterpart. The elf might be able to point buy and racially bump to a 17 DEX compared to a human only getting to 16... but seeing as how they are both playing with +3 DEX modifiers, that's all anyone is really going to care about. Applicable numbers-wise... the elf isn't more dexterous than the human... they both are running around with +5s for their attack bonuses, skills, and saving throws when DEX + proficiency is applied.

At the end of the day, it feels like there should be some noticeable difference for non-humans being a bit better or worse than humans in certain abilities... but once you assign or roll random numbers and apply them however you want... those feelings just go away. So its nothing you really should even think about or bother with anymore.

 

[DND_Reborn]

This reminds me of an idea I had a while back. Instead of giving other races a set +X modifier, I was thinking of granting extra dice when rolling ability scores. For instance, if you use a straight 3d6 or even 4d6k3, an elf might get +1 dice for DEX, making it 5d6k3, and -1 dice for CON, making it 3d6 flat. That way, the other races still have the potential to have really high scores in a "weak" ability, but it isn't as likely.

I'll spend the morning checking some numbers and report the results later today or tomorrow.

So, I like this idea. While not ideal, I balanced out the racial bonus dice and class bonus dice between all six ability scores. This is only a first draft, and if you start with rolling a base 4d6k3, maybe even allow it to grow to 6d6k3 for a combination with both +1 race dice and +1 class dice, like a Elven Wizard (both +1 INT dice, for a total of +2 dice). The Elven Wizard would also have -1 dice for CON, making the dice rolled thus:

STR: 4d6k3
DEX: 5d6k3
CON: 3d6
INT: 6d6k3
WIS: 4d6k3
CHA: 4d6k3

Next step would actually rolling and building difference combinations.

 

[DND_Reborn]

To what extent is this not just number inflation?

Well, it make the explanation short, we felt the difference between levels for proficiency was too narrow (+2 to only +6 by level 17...?) but agreed the +1 per level of prior editions was too much. We toyed with different progressions, and eventually decided +2 to +8 worked nicely. With a normal (house-rule) ability cap of 19, this makes it so ability max at +4 compared to proficiency max at +8 makes more sense to us than +5 and +6 RAW.

With other house-rules, we have (like a boost to AC based on level), our DM noticed that we were getting more powerful via higher numbers than the opponents we faced. So, a slight boost (+1 to +3) made the opponents good again.

I get the bounded accuracy thing in 5E, but like some others I think they went overboard and made it too tight. So while to some it might seem like number inflation, to our table it is creating a range of numbers for our version of bounded accuracy that has a bit more disparity.

 

[Knightfall]

This reminds me of an idea I had a while back. Instead of giving other races a set +X modifier, I was thinking of granting extra dice when rolling ability scores. For instance, if you use a straight 3d6 or even 4d6k3, an elf might get +1 dice for DEX, making it 5d6k3, and -1 dice for CON, making it 3d6 flat. That way, the other races still have the potential to have really high scores in a "weak" ability, but it isn't as likely.

I'll spend the morning checking some numbers and report the results later today or tomorrow.

That is brilliant!