D&D 5E Solution to ASI Problem

[schnee]

For sure.

I often let myself get carried away with modifying this game, sometimes to the point where it is pretty much a completely different game. The main feature of D&D when it comes to finding people to RP with is name-recognition. It is much easier to recruit people to "play D&D" than it is to convince people to play almost anything else, especially something they don't already know. It is a fine balancing act, one that I sometimes go too far with and have to scale back my enthusiasm.

Well, either that or just treat it like a creative endeavor for the fun of it and don't be attached to playing it. I mean, it's really fun to mess with this stuff.

I've put a LOT of work into our game house rules and West Marches setup, in Slack and Google Docs, and it's 90% for us three DMs, and players won't ever really read it - just listen when we talk about it.

 

[Wulffolk]

It's not my fault that you're bad at math. You can't blame me for that.

Meanwhile, I'll be over here trying to actually solve the problem at hand, which your suggestion still doesn't do. I mean, feel free to take it through a test run in your next campaign, but my advance prediction is that you won't be happy with the results. If you're fixed on this as a solution, you might have better luck if you introduce additional changes to the system in order to support it.

7 is not 40% greater than 5? You are really trying to argue that is bad math? A +1 and +2 advantage from 6th - 20th level in one secondary Ability is not even worth considering over a +1 in a primary from 14th -20th, especially when a campaign is unlikely to ever even hit that level? Setting that decision before players will not encourage at least some of them to add a 2nd dimension to their character? Encouraging players to be something more than one dimensional is not a step in the right direction of solving the problem? Wow, just wow.

As for needing additional rules to support this adjustment, did you not understand what I wrote when I said that this would be part of a collection of rules that are intended to synergize with each other?

Seriously? That much has gone over your head? My apologies for the snarkiness, but it bothers me that somebody that is so clearly not tuned in to this discussion is so determined to interfere with others working on something that they consider to be a problem.

Hopefully your responses to this thread are a poor example of your general contributions to this forum, and our discussions in other threads can be more productive.

 

[Wulffolk]

(1 Day) x (6 Combats / Day) x (3 Rounds / Combat) x (3 Attacks / Round) x (2 Strength checks / Attack) = 108 Strength checks in an adventuring day, and that's just in combat.

In trying to understand how you could view things so differently, this part of one of your previous posts stuck out for me.

You actually subscribe to the notion that character's should be fighting 6 times per day, and your games are likely to be VERY combat heavy. I personally believe that is a ridiculous notion. My games have not been even remotely that combat heavy since I was an adolescent.

With your games revolving around so much combat I can understand why you do not value anything else. If you have fun with that, then great, have at it, but please stop trying to tell those of us that are more about role-playing and story-telling that the only intelligent decision is to keep bumping your primary Ability no matter the cost.

 

[ccs]

I am surprised that you can't see how this would reduce the number of clones. I will try to help you understand why I think it would.

Joe and Bob are Fighters that choose not to invest all of their ASI's towards maxing out Strength because it is now more expensive. So, they might choose Feats instead, and most likely will choose different Feats. Let's say that they both prefer to boost lower Abilities instead of choosing a Feat. One might choose Wisdom to increase his Will save and his Perception skills, while the other might prefer to be tougher by increasing his Constitution, or to improve his ranged options with Dexterity. Maybe one of them styles themself as a leader of men and chooses to boost Charisma, and the other enjoys scholarly pursuits or wants to be a tactical genius so improves Intelligence.

And there ya go, greater diversity in builds. To me that is much more fun than both Joe and Bob being as strong as Ogres, and having no interesting choices beyond "Me swing sword again".

In my experience there's a an easier way to get more diverse characters than fiddling with the rules. Two actually, though you can combine them.

1) Patience.
Everyone who plays these games goes through a phase where they try & make the most awesome min/maxed encounter wrecking things the rules will allow. Everyone. If someone claims "Not me!"? They're lying to you.
And very often (but not always) this resets when they start playing a new edition.
So just ride it out. Eventually the player(s) will tire of this approach & try other mixes.

2) Alter the adventures/encounters you run.
You're the DM. You have 100% control over what challenges the characters encounter. So if you're tired of players not investing in various stats/skills/whatever? Then make it important. And don't make your challenges geared so that only 1 member of the party needs to roll well in them. Because then all you'll get is 1 specialist & a bunch of spectators.
Initially people will fail. But if they realize that "Oh, this is going to be (or could definitely be) an ongoing thing" then they'll start making characters that have a better chance of succeeding.

 

[Stalker0]

You actually subscribe to the notion that character's should be fighting 6 times per day, and your games are likely to be VERY combat heavy. I personally believe that is a ridiculous notion. My games have not been even remotely that combat heavy since I was an adolescent.

With respect...that is in fact what the standard game assumes....at least 5-6 encounters. While an encounter doesn't have to be combat, they commonly are.

Now personally I also think 6 combats is way too many...but the poster is not wrong to quote the balancing assumption that the game assumes.

 

[Wulffolk]

[MENTION=6803664]ccs[/MENTION] and [MENTION=5889]Stalker0[/MENTION]

You both make excellent points. The 6 encounters per day is that standard by which the system was written, which is why so much of the system needs adjusting to encourage a less combat heavy game, for those of us that prefer it. And I also agree that all of us have gone through phases of min/max due to the influence of the rules, and we all hopefully grow through patience and experience as players and DM's.

 

[Bradley Hindman]

Problem: in my opinion one of the main problems with ASI's is that too many character's end up with a 20 in their primary Ability and end up looking like clones.

If the only problem is the similarity between characters (i.e., all melee combatants end up with a 20 STR independent of whether they are Hercules or Joxer), then a simple solution is to change the level cap individually. At the beginning of the campaign, each player chooses a single ability score that will exemplify their character. The ability score cap is raised to 22 for that ability and for that character only. Thus, if my character conception is a Sir Persecutio, the "toughest man alive", I choose Constitution and Sir Persecutio (and no one else) can raise his Constitution to 22 through ASIs. Of course, this suggestion will only work for campaigns with a stable group of players and a stable cadre of characters (new characters don't appear very often).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You actually subscribe to the notion that character's should be fighting 6 times per day, and your games are likely to be VERY combat heavy. I personally believe that is a ridiculous notion. My games have not been even remotely that combat heavy since I was an adolescent.

I agree that it's a ridiculous assumption which they have set as the baseline. There are a lot of ridiculous assumptions in this game, and some are changed more easily than others. Nevertheless, the baseline game is what is under discussion, unless you make caveats to the contrary in the opening post.

If your game varies from the defaults, then that changes the relative value of different stats. Whether or not your house rule would go too far or not far enough is going to depend on exactly how little combat you have in your game. If your game was much more heavily weighted toward investigation, then you shouldn't have been seeing anyone maxing out their Strength or Dex anyway - and the rule under discussion would not have been necessary - so that indicates some sort of limit to how different your game really is.