D&D 5E (2024) The impact of reducing Ability Scores?

[NotAYakk]

All sounds good to me. There are four PCs to track their character’s stuff and one DM to track every other creature in the world. Makes sense to reduce the PCs a smidgen than increase everyone else.

Huh?

The rules for PCs are quite complex, because they are designed as hobby for players to fiddle with.

The rules for non-PCs (team monster) are extremely stripped down in 5e. Making or adjusting monsters is trivial compared to a PC. And half of what I described was literally "interpret a monster as a strong or weak example of its kind".

Like, if "Guard" is the stats of a professional soldier the PCs might fight, or if "Veteran" is the stats of a professional soldier. That is CR 1/8 or CR 2 "baseline soldier". That small shift is larger in impact than any tweak of PCs stats with regards to how the world feels.

The same holds true of "Orc"s. Is the "Orc" monster manual entry a "professional" orc warrior, or an incompetent grunt, the stats of a civilian orc who picks up an axe? And real front-line orcs are "berserkers"? You aren't even writing monster stats, just picking what the existing monsters mean.

That works pretty well. But it is really easy to go further; you want Griffons to be more of a threat, or whatever.

* Monsters get 2 save proficiencies per tier; 0-2 in T1, 2-4 in T2, 4-6 in T3, and start getting expertise in saves in T4.

* Up attack stats by +2 to +4, and Dex if it contributes to AC by +2 to +4, giving your monsters +1-2 to ATK and AC

* Up AC by 1 or 2 points whenever the source of AC isn't boosted by dex (hide is thicker, they have something like defensive fighting style, etc).

* Use max HP per HD.

* For damage on attacks, use the average as your damage bonus and also roll the dice. On crits, maximize the dice. So 2d6+3 (10) would be 10+2d6.

These monsters deal 1.75x damage, have 1.75x HP, and get +1-2 points on average on defences and attacks. Their XP value is about 2x baseline if you want an idea of how deadly the encounters are, or just calibrate your expectations of what "deadly" means to mean "party is likely to TPK" instead of "it is possible a party member may drop to 0 HP".

No need to mess with the PC buliding minigame, with all of its "this change makes monks nearly unplayable" type consequences. Because what PC stats means is in relation to the world.

 

[TheSword]

Huh?

The rules for PCs are quite complex, because they are designed as hobby for players to fiddle with.

The rules for non-PCs (team monster) are extremely stripped down in 5e. Making or adjusting monsters is trivial compared to a PC. And half of what I described was literally "interpret a monster as a strong or weak example of its kind".

Like, if "Guard" is the stats of a professional soldier the PCs might fight, or if "Veteran" is the stats of a professional soldier. That is CR 1/8 or CR 2 "baseline soldier". That small shift is larger in impact than any tweak of PCs stats with regards to how the world feels.

The same holds true of "Orc"s. Is the "Orc" monster manual entry a "professional" orc warrior, or an incompetent grunt, the stats of a civilian orc who picks up an axe? And real front-line orcs are "berserkers"? You aren't even writing monster stats, just picking what the existing monsters mean.

That works pretty well. But it is really easy to go further; you want Griffons to be more of a threat, or whatever.

* Monsters get 2 save proficiencies per tier; 0-2 in T1, 2-4 in T2, 4-6 in T3, and start getting expertise in saves in T4.

* Up attack stats by +2 to +4, and Dex if it contributes to AC by +2 to +4, giving your monsters +1-2 to ATK and AC

* Up AC by 1 or 2 points whenever the source of AC isn't boosted by dex (hide is thicker, they have something like defensive fighting style, etc).

* Use max HP per HD.

* For damage on attacks, use the average as your damage bonus and also roll the dice. On crits, maximize the dice. So 2d6+3 (10) would be 10+2d6.

These monsters deal 1.75x damage, have 1.75x HP, and get +1-2 points on average on defences and attacks. Their XP value is about 2x baseline if you want an idea of how deadly the encounters are, or just calibrate your expectations of what "deadly" means to mean "party is likely to TPK" instead of "it is possible a party member may drop to 0 HP".

No need to mess with the PC buliding minigame, with all of its "this change makes monks nearly unplayable" type consequences. Because what PC stats means is in relation to the world.

Well that was a stretch, how does reducing ability scores by 1 make a monk unplayable. Surely that just means they will be hitting on one less point and they might have 1 worse AC and be 1 point more likely to fail a save (like everyone else too)

I appreciate that it’s easy to change monsters. I just don’t think it’s easier to change every monster than slightly reducing starting stats for the 4 PCs.

 

[NotAYakk]

Well that was a stretch, how does reducing ability scores by 1 make a monk unplayable. Surely that just means they will be hitting on one less point and they might have 1 worse AC and be 1 point more likely to fail a save (like everyone else too)

I appreciate that it’s easy to change monsters. I just don’t think it’s easier to change every monster than slightly reducing starting stats for the 4 PCs.

Suppose you reduce all PC ability scores by 2. So modifiers are all -1. This is easy to model.

Heavy armor: less likely, but same AC.
Light armor: 1 less point of AC.
Monks, unarmored barbarians: 2 less points of AC.

Con goes from 14 down to 12. Impact on HP of a level 3 character:
d12 HD: 29/32, 9.4% less
d10: 26/29, 10.4% less
d8: 23/26, 11.5% less
d6: 20/23, 13% less

At level 4+, with GWF (2024) and a two handed sword, 16->15 attack stat damage per swing from 13 to 12, a 8.7% reduction.

With Monk Unarmed Attack, damage per swing goes from 6.5 to 5.5, a 15.4% reduction.

So the L 4 15 strength GWF with Plate has 33 HP+9.5 SW deals 12 per swing at +5 to hit and has 18 AC; before this character had 17 strength, 37 HP+9.5 SW, did 13 per swing at +6 and 18 AC. Valuing each +1 ATK/DEF has 10%, -2 to all stats weakened the fighter by 42.5/46.5 * 12/13 * .9 = about 24%.

(You can use armor weaker than plate; the point is, the fighter's AC doesn't change, as they can pull off 15, enough for max heavy armor, by level 4.)

The monk goes from 34 to 30 HP, from 6.5 to 5.5 damage, from +6 to +5 ATK, and from 15 to 13 AC. They are 30/34 * 5.5/6.5 * .9 * .8 = about 46% weaker.

Completely non-viable? Probably not, but extremely weakened by this change.

(If you want a concrete metric, measure how many Guard NPC monsters the PC can kill in sequence before dying, and you'll get similar percentages. Each time a guard dies, a new one arrives and attacks immediately, no kiting. The fighter's action surge and the monk's Ki points will roughly cancel.)

My point is that you wanted PCs to be weaker. You expressed no desire for certain PC classes to be made more weaker than other PC classes, yet the in between class power changes are as large as the per-PC changes in many cases. This is a sign that the unintended consequences are as large or larger than your goals, which makes me question if it is good plan.

 

[tetrasodium]

Suppose you reduce all PC ability scores by 2. So modifiers are all -1. This is easy to model.

Heavy armor: less likely, but same AC.
Light armor: 1 less point of AC.
Monks, unarmored barbarians: 2 less points of AC.

Con goes from 14 down to 12. Impact on HP of a level 3 character:
d12 HD: 29/32, 9.4% less
d10: 26/29, 10.4% less
d8: 23/26, 11.5% less
d6: 20/23, 13% less

At level 4+, with GWF (2024) and a two handed sword, 16->15 attack stat damage per swing from 13 to 12, a 8.7% reduction.

With Monk Unarmed Attack, damage per swing goes from 6.5 to 5.5, a 15.4% reduction.

So the L 4 15 strength GWF with Plate has 33 HP+9.5 SW deals 12 per swing at +5 to hit and has 18 AC; before this character had 17 strength, 37 HP+9.5 SW, did 13 per swing at +6 and 18 AC. Valuing each +1 ATK/DEF has 10%, -2 to all stats weakened the fighter by 42.5/46.5 * 12/13 * .9 = about 24%.

(You can use armor weaker than plate; the point is, the fighter's AC doesn't change, as they can pull off 15, enough for max heavy armor, by level 4.)

The monk goes from 34 to 30 HP, from 6.5 to 5.5 damage, from +6 to +5 ATK, and from 15 to 13 AC. They are 30/34 * 5.5/6.5 * .9 * .8 = about 46% weaker.

Completely non-viable? Probably not, but extremely weakened by this change.

(If you want a concrete metric, measure how many Guard NPC monsters the PC can kill in sequence before dying, and you'll get similar percentages. Each time a guard dies, a new one arrives and attacks immediately, no kiting. The fighter's action surge and the monk's Ki points will roughly cancel.)

My point is that you wanted PCs to be weaker. You expressed no desire for certain PC classes to be made more weaker than other PC classes, yet the in between class power changes are as large as the per-PC changes in many cases. This is a sign that the unintended consequences are as large or larger than your goals, which makes me question if it is good plan.

Weapon ProficienciesSimple weapons and Martial weapons that have the Light property



Level 1: Martial Arts
Your practice of martial arts gives you mastery of combat styles that use your Unarmed Strike and Monk weapons, which are the following:

Simple Melee weapons
Martial Melee weapons that have the Light property
You gain the following benefits while you are unarmed or wielding only Monk weapons
Martial Arts Die. You can roll 1d6 in place of the normal damage of your Unarmed Strike or Monk weapons.
Take the weapon mastery feat and add a magic weapon for two easy steps up in damage and still have all the non damage utility ki/always on monk abilities like stunning strike feather fall effective wall walking missile catching and so on

 

[CreamCloud0]

Martial Arts Die. You can roll 1d6 in place of the normal damage of your Unarmed Strike or Monk weapons.

tangentially to the topic, this reminded me i had the thought recently that i think the fighter ought to have a feature that just improves the damage die size of all weapons they use that have less than 1d8 to that, it wouldn't be a huge boost but i think it'd improve some niche weapons and styles.

 

[NotAYakk]

Weapon ProficienciesSimple weapons and Martial weapons that have the Light property



Level 1: Martial Arts
Your practice of martial arts gives you mastery of combat styles that use your Unarmed Strike and Monk weapons, which are the following:

Simple Melee weapons
Martial Melee weapons that have the Light property
You gain the following benefits while you are unarmed or wielding only Monk weapons
Martial Arts Die. You can roll 1d6 in place of the normal damage of your Unarmed Strike or Monk weapons.
Take the weapon mastery feat and add a magic weapon for two easy steps up in damage and still have all the non damage utility ki/always on monk abilities like stunning strike feather fall effective wall walking missile catching and so on

Sure, both before and after you can use a quarterstaff to get +1 damage, and you can use magic weapons, etc. But those are before and after the "lets lower PC stats" change.

I chose a simple model, and noted that the impact was much with one class in this simple model than another. That's all. I'm sure some optimization would shrink the gap slightly.

Ie, the fighter goes to 2d6+7 vs 2d6+6 (14 vs 13) on a swing with a +1 greatsword, while the monk is at 18.5 a flurry instead of 21.5 vs 15.5/18.5 without the +1 quarterstaff two-handed.

The exact percentage isn't the key point here. The point is that the impact is larger for some classes than others, that this was not the stated design goal of the change, and the size of this unintended effect is about the same size as the size of the intended effect.

In this simple model Fighters got 24% weaker; Monks got 47% weaker, twice as much. And this simple model does line up with a reasonable set of play options for characters.

The monks getting weaker comes from two things. First, this change makes multi-tap classes weaker, as their +attribute to damage shrinks, and makes hard-hit classes relatively stronger. For monks this makes up a significant portion of their damage, while for the great weapon fighter it does not.

Second, it lowers the toughness of lower HD classes relatively more than higher HD classses. This effect is pretty small, but happens to hit the monk a bit more than the fighter.

Third, monks use two attribute modifiers summed to calculate their AC; with lower stats, this means their AC gets double-hit by them being lower. The greatweapon fighter only requires a 15 in their strength to wear top-tier heavy armor, meaning their AC doesn't change at all.

This isn't just MAD (multiple attribute dependence), even though each of the lowered attributes (dex, con and wis) contribute to the monk's lowered effectiveness. It is more that the monk is more attribute-sensitive in its 3 main attributes than the heavy weapon fighter is in its 2 main attributes. A TWF dex fighter is closer to the monk (still not as sensitive) than the heavy weapon fighter, and the rogue is slightly more attribute sensitive than the heavy weapon fighter (but less so than the TWF dex fighter).

 

[tetrasodium]

Sure, both before and after you can use a quarterstaff to get +1 damage, and you can use magic weapons, etc. But those are before and after the "lets lower PC stats" change.

I chose a simple model, and noted that the impact was much with one class in this simple model than another. That's all. I'm sure some optimization would shrink the gap slightly.

Ie, the fighter goes to 2d6+7 vs 2d6+6 (14 vs 13) on a swing with a +1 greatsword, while the monk is at 18.5 a flurry instead of 21.5 vs 15.5/18.5 without the +1 quarterstaff two-handed.

The exact percentage isn't the key point here. The point is that the impact is larger for some classes than others, that this was not the stated design goal of the change, and the size of this unintended effect is about the same size as the size of the intended effect.

In this simple model Fighters got 24% weaker; Monks got 47% weaker, twice as much. And this simple model does line up with a reasonable set of play options for characters.

The monks getting weaker comes from two things. First, this change makes multi-tap classes weaker, as their +attribute to damage shrinks, and makes hard-hit classes relatively stronger. For monks this makes up a significant portion of their damage, while for the great weapon fighter it does not.

Second, it lowers the toughness of lower HD classes relatively more than higher HD classses. This effect is pretty small, but happens to hit the monk a bit more than the fighter.

Third, monks use two attribute modifiers summed to calculate their AC; with lower stats, this means their AC gets double-hit by them being lower. The greatweapon fighter only requires a 15 in their strength to wear top-tier heavy armor, meaning their AC doesn't change at all.

This isn't just MAD (multiple attribute dependence), even though each of the lowered attributes (dex, con and wis) contribute to the monk's lowered effectiveness. It is more that the monk is more attribute-sensitive in its 3 main attributes than the heavy weapon fighter is in its 2 main attributes. A TWF dex fighter is closer to the monk (still not as sensitive) than the heavy weapon fighter, and the rogue is slightly more attribute sensitive than the heavy weapon fighter (but less so than the TWF dex fighter).

I quoted a bunch of class abilities and class features, they can absolutely use weapons and should be expected to in d&d. The only "problem" facing a monk in a scenario where all of the PCs have a lower baseline set of attributes is the toxically bonkers idea that monk should have high utility significant control high defense and top tier damage totally naked even when compared to PCs who take feats find magical weapons/armor and devote spell choices needed to specialize in those areas.

I've tried many many times to give frustrated monk players at my tables magical gear only to watch them be refused even after explaining the actual capabilities granted to the class because the player is going for the absolutely toxic fantasy idea where cultivators in cultivation fiction are above mortals (ie literally everyone else at the table and every NPC or monster not a monk or ki driven spirit beast).

That mentality is fine in its own genre where cultivators face things that check behavior like Bottlenecks, Heaven's Will, Qi deviation, tribulations, tribulations, Demonic Cultivators∆ and more. None of those things even exist in d&d and the few with analog like the gm choosing to smite a PC with lightning/Unluck/disaster tend to be treated as gm behavior that is far beyond the pale. Monk in d&d is distantly outside its genre and monk players should expect to adapt to the genre of the d&d system/GM's setting choice father than demanding a genre dump from cultivation fiction where even "righteous" cultivators/sects would regularly be classified as flat out Evil on the d&d alignment spectrum

∆ I tried finding a good generic wiki page or similar but they are all over the map and specifics tend to be story specific where a vastly more powerful one is used in place of heavens will or wanting to use the MC's soul/cultivation/body in unspeakable and rarely survivable ways to further their own growth . "Demonic" in cultivation and the d&d "demon" type/subtype are entirely different things.

As a gm is exhausting when a base class encourages players to reject the basic premise of the game and demand that the gm play life support for a totally different and totally unsupported fantasy deeply in conflict with the game containing that base class itself