Stat bumps from level increase

[the Jester]

I've used that system ("reroll everything and take the old or new, whichever is better") for hit point advancement.

 

[howandwhy99]

Think if guaranteed by level Stat Bumps were made optional / modular.

How difficult would this be to design for?
How would products with stats like the Monster Manual need to be changed?
What do these add to the game?
What are the representing in the game world?
Could some other method of Stat Bumps be used?


[sblock]
I don't have these tied to increasing class levels in my game, but it is possible to magically and through training raise stats. It's simply takes time and that time could better off used to improve elsewhere.

Also, I like characters with variance. So 15 STR really is more the mean average for the PC than a level of physical fitness. Their increases cost more the higher the score goes up. So +1 costs 1, +2 2, It doesn't matter if they start at 15 STR or 3.[/sblock]

 

[Hassassin]

I still think level based increases are a bad idea, but if they want abilities to increase in 5e, I think having the racial maximum as a cap is a good idea. I.e. a human can never increase any ability above 18, a dwarf can get a Con of 20 but only 16 Cha, etc.

That way it isn't always a given that you point-buy your primary ability to 18 and use every increase on it. The player who rolled well and got an 18 won't get as much benefit from level increases as the one who "only" got a 16.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'd be happy going one of two ways:

1. Stats are flavored as pure talent--though not necessarily fully realized at 1st level. Stats are difficult to increase, and you don't have full control over it. It certainly doesn't happen as often as +1 every level.

In a reasonably fast leveling game, I wouldn't mind something such as, "Each level, pick 2 or 3 stats that you don't care about. Roll a d4 or d3 to randomly determine the stat that might increase. Reroll that stat. If you reroll is greater than or equal to the current ability, increase it by one. If you roll an 18, increase it by 2. Things change at the cap, where you need a natural 17 or 18 to improve by 1 at all."

Then for the point-buy version, calcuate the rough odds, and give extra "points" per level which can be applied in the original point-buy formula to roughly simulate the same thing. So buying up your 6 Cha is cheap, but going above 16 is still expensive. One point-buy point per level sounds about right to me.

I absolutely despise the mixture of point buy and straight stat bumps by level. It has a huge list of negatives, while the only positives are minor handling simplification at level up and slight encouragement to spread out at low levels.

2. Alternately, stats are explicitly flavored as a combination of talent and broad skill (i.e. working with the gist of the various skill options they seem to be noodling). In this case, you can buy up stats, but this comes not as automatic increases by level, but cost skill resources.

Balancing that can be tricky, but not impossible. You just need to charge enough for the ability improvement that it is usually not worth it, but occasionally is.

 

[El Mahdi]

I prefer that any Ability Score increases come at the cost of a Feat.

 

[Mokona]

Ability scores never need to increase with level. Inflating ability scores creates increasing gaps between specialists and everyone else or between high-level and low-level characters. These gaps are bad for the game.

Roll (or point-buy) your stats and they never need to change ever again.

 

[Oni]

If stats are going to increase I think it should be pretty rare, I'd really like to stay away from the need for ever increasing numbers and the idea that to be good you need to have high stats. More over I think this particular method would inevitably lead to a sort of sameness among stat distribution on average. Honestly if there are going to be stat increases I would rather they be a result of what occurs in play (say your character goes off and trains or is granted a wish to that effect) rather than as a function of simply leveling up.

 

[Lanefan]

You actually added the result of 2d10 to the percentile. Kept the stat inflation fairly modest.

The last 1e campaign I ran longterm used this variant for all 6 ability scores. The players enjoyed the bonus and the occassional stat increase, but the overall effect was pretty modest. We played from 1 to 9 and most characters ended up with 2 stat increases of 1 each.

We use the same thing but you can only have 2 or 3 stats increasing, if 3 then they all go up a bit slower. One of these must always be your primary stat.

Our games tend to go 1-10 and it's possible for a percentile stat to not move at all during that - I know, as I've done it. (stat started at xx.01 due to bad luck, by 11th level it had ground its way up to xx.72 due to more bad rolling; where xx is a number I don't remember but is the same in both cases)

I far prefer this system, where there's some randomness as to when and if a stat might go up, than the programmed stat bumps of 3e and 4e.

Note however that it interacts very badly with the 1e 18.xx exceptional strength system unless the various to-hit/damage increments get broken out into their own whole integers thus the old 18.41 becomes 19 etc. up to the old Hill Giant strength of 19 becoming 25. We did this ages ago too.

Lanefan

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

You could control the randomness by choosing which stat to try to increase. Rolling 4d6dl to increase your 17 to 18 only has about 1% chance of success, whereas rolling to increase a 10 has a 60% chance of success.

There's the question of original stat generation - independent of the above.

There's the question of how often the stat bumps occur - independent of the above.

There's the question of how many chances you at each stat bump milestone?

There's the question of whether lower stats can increase at a higher rate, i.e. stats <10 bump up by 2

Then there's the question of where the game is calibrated stat wise? In this regard I'd much prefer higher stats to simply grant advantage over a lower set baseline. The system itself would incorporate enough flex.

I'm fine with a bit of randomness, that's classic D&D to me. What I'm not fine with the randomness including extreme lows & highs that break the game.

 

[Gryph]

We use the same thing but you can only have 2 or 3 stats increasing, if 3 then they all go up a bit slower. One of these must always be your primary stat.

Our games tend to go 1-10 and it's possible for a percentile stat to not move at all during that - I know, as I've done it. (stat started at xx.01 due to bad luck, by 11th level it had ground its way up to xx.72 due to more bad rolling; where xx is a number I don't remember but is the same in both cases)

I far prefer this system, where there's some randomness as to when and if a stat might go up, than the programmed stat bumps of 3e and 4e.

Note however that it interacts very badly with the 1e 18.xx exceptional strength system unless the various to-hit/damage increments get broken out into their own whole integers thus the old 18.41 becomes 19 etc. up to the old Hill Giant strength of 19 becoming 25. We did this ages ago too.

Lanefan

Your variant is more in line with the rules for Cavaliers. That would have been better. I wish I would have thought to do it that way at the time. Though having the magic-user get a stat increase in Dex was pretty funny. I'm sure going from 9 to 10 helped him a lot.

I do remember having some issues with our ranger after a few levels when his strength bumped to 18 from 17. That may have been the reason my group at the time decided we wouldn't use for the next campaign (that sadly never happened, damn you, life).