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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erechel" data-source="post: 7144825" data-attributes="member: 6784868">Strength saves are awfully common. I've proven that. They are, indeed, much more common than Dex in the first 10 levels. As soon as you start fighting dragons, dex saves suddenly become important, but Strength saves have place too. Unless you are fighting a whole lot of spellcasters, you don't have to worry about Dex saves. A warhorse, a lion, a worg, all of them have Strength saves too, and it's very easy to grapple someone with a strong character or beast.Also, it seems that your adventure include nothing more than fights in featureless plains. One thing you are not considering is how much cover hampers archers, and how much it doesn't hamper melee. Cover is huge (half cover equals 2 to AC and Dex saves, Three quarters cover is 5/5), and it's easy to come by: a tree, a lapid, a big dude with a shield (my character). But a melee character is almost never hampered by cover: it just moves to avoid giving it. And cover helps too to avoid that pesky lightning bolts. Also, if you worry about spellcasters or dex saves, just pick Shieldmaster feat: your common shield gives you +2 to your dex save, and if you pass it you don't give a <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> about the fireball or dragon's breath. Not that a fighter will worry too much about damage (it can self-heal, after all, although arguably not a lot), but it helps. Actually, the best use for the feat is strength-locked too: the ability to knock someone prone, and gain advantage on your 1d8+7 attacks. If you are a champion, this is golden: your probability to crit suddenly improve to more than 20% each strike. In a 5 round fight you will crit once at least without multiattack. You also can use other awesome feats: Heavy Armor Master gives you +1 to Strength and DR 3 against the most common damages, besides the better AC. This is huge: most monsters deal damage by multiattack, so it actually matters a lot in late levels (Paladin 12 and Warrior 10 in a party I'm dming). You have one monster that deals 30 DPR by 3 attacks? It suddenly deals 21. Offensive and defensive at the same time, the same as Shield Master (remember, shove is an Athletics check).Even when you aren't in combat, Athletics is a catch'it all form of exploration based checks: you want to climb a mountain or a tower? Athletics. You got to swim? Athletics. You got to force the entry to a crypt? Athletics. You got to catch that big ball of rock falling? Athletics. You got to break free from chains? Athletics. You got to break free another creature from chains? Athletics. Are you beneath a net? Athletics. You got to jump over a pit? Strength. And so on and so on. All of them have made their way in my adventures, and other people's adventures which I've seen. Yes, many characters can circumvent this tasks with spells or ingenuity, but those will also fail a lot or expend valuable resources. Also, there can be nasty surprises (oh, why the flying wizard fall to the ground and die? Of course: strong winds (look at it in the DMG). I cannot say how many times the rogue and the wizard with 20 dex falled to the spike pits because they aren't strong enough to jump over them, and failed their checks, while the paladin and the warrior laughed at the other side. How many times my bulky guy saved my fast dex friend from falling to its death-No, Strength isn't underpowered. Strength is underrated. Of course, Dexterity is useful, but isn't "da big stat".</blockquote>

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