D&D 5E Where's the Dump?

[the Jester]

When I make a character, I roll my stats in order.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I was playing with roll20, and it make -1 on the plate AC.
dump stat are over shun, in plate 18-1 = 17 AC is quite enough, and rolling for a DC 18 dex save, having +0 or -1 won’t make such a difference.

Which is odd, because RAW dex doesn't affect your AC in heavy armor.

 

[HammerMan]

My best effort was to dump cha, dex, int to 8, with the same character.

why would you want to play real life me? (I assume an 11 wisdom 10 str and 10 con to go with it)

 

[Krachek]

Which is odd, because RAW dex doesn't affect your AC in heavy armor.

I just check out, you’re right.

 

[Krachek]

why would you want to play real life me? (I assume an 11 wisdom 10 str and 10 con to go with it)

He got three 15 in the others starting stat, which isn’t surely you!

 

[iserith]

This largely tracks with my own experience: no one in the group playing a strength-based character is rare. I have never seen a party where no one is playing a charisma-based character, but for non-cha classes cha is a popular low stat.

Fun anecdote: My player pool is larger than the number of seats for a given session and often players have more than one character to choose from. As it happened one night a few years back, all of the characters in that session had dumped Strength. One of the challenges in the dungeon was to get past a very large, heavy door. They literally couldn't do it, which was hilarious. Ultimately they had to go find a monster in the dungeon that was strong enough to open it and convince it to do it for them. (And they succeeded!)

 

[DND_Reborn]

I just check out indeed, you don’t add penalty for negative bonus for AC, another reason to dump dex!

Yeah, it makes no sense IMO and allows STR-based heavy armor wearers to dump dex.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Also not surprising is how no one has selected CON.

I've only ever even seen 2 PCs with CON 10, most nearly always are 12 - 14, or higher for martials.

It is why HP should not be linked to CON, IMO. Your HP bonus should be half (round up) your highest ability modifier, so PCs would normally get +1 to +3 hp per level, without having to make CON their 2nd or 3rd best ability.

 

[Oofta]

I love that you went with dex for one of them!

Another issue I take with 5E, and don't enforce, is DEX penalties don't hurt your AC when wearing heavy armor. Screw that! A clumsy person in heavy armor is going to be easier to hit and thus hurt than someone who isn't clumsy.

Heavy armor is incredibly underrated in D&D. You may be able to hit someone with an 8 dex, but unlike what you see on TV and movies you can't just stab someone in the chest if they're wearing well made armor and do anything other than potentially leave a small scratch they'll have to buff out later.

Given how the game is constructed, there's not really a good solution, but traditionally the main way to take out someone in plate armor was to wrestle them to the ground and stab them in the face after opening their visor. So I don't mind that dex makes it easier to connect, it's still not going to do much most of the time.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Also not surprising is how no one has selected CON.

I've only ever even seen 2 PCs with CON 10, most nearly always are 12 - 14, or higher for martials.

It is why HP should not be linked to CON, IMO. Your HP bonus should be half (round up) your highest ability modifier, so PCs would normally get +1 to +3 hp per level, without having to make CON their 2nd or 3rd best ability.

Only problem with that is without hp, con becomes a pretty weak stat.