D&D 5E Where's the Dump?

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah, dex and con are must-haves for nearly everyone (dex can be dumped if you have heavy armor), and str and wis are generally useful for anyone. Int and Cha are either your spellcasting ability or a nice-to-have.

Yep, which is why before IME DEX and CON were always in the top 3 scores for just about every PC.

By removing HP from CON and making the AC change to DEX below, we've removed that and had more interesting arrays.

I'd be willing to try getting Con out of hp, (although it becomes a bit of a nice-to-have at that point IMO) but I'm more worried about getting dex out of AC for most classes. Without needing it for AC dex it's still useful for anyone but it shouldn't be necessary for classes like wizards and druids and such.

A house-rule we use now is you can add your DEX mod to AC or your proficiency bonus - 2. This way DEX isn't needed for AC, at least not at higher levels. Another option is to use half your proficiency bonus to AC in place of DEX and we go back and forth about which way we like better.

We already allow Monks and Barbarians to use full proficiency bonus to replace DEX and/or WIS/CON for Unarmored Defense.

Another change is Sorcerers use CON for their spellcasting ability in our games, not CHA. Too many CHA-based casters already. Unfortunately, it was a net-0 shift because we moved Clerics to CHA...

 

[J.Quondam]

My dump stat is comeliness.

 

[Yora]

I ran one campaign, and with the exception of one wizard early on, I remember every character in the party barely having a positive Intelligence save modifier.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I thought everybody needed wisdom for Perception (to avoid surprise) and wisdom saves. Having low wisdom is a good way to lose the ability to take actions in combat.

Surprise is pretty rare in my group, and they are pathologically afraid of splitting the party, so one good Perception is all they need.

 

[Inchoroi]

Strength 3/4 of the time, the rest is Charisma. I cannot play dumb characters, as it literally hurts my brain.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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!)

I ran into a similar problem when all my players dumped Strength and they faced off with shadows. Nearly had two PC deaths!

 

[DND_Reborn]

I thought everybody needed wisdom for Perception (to avoid surprise) and wisdom saves. Having low wisdom is a good way to lose the ability to take actions in combat.

I think an honest oversimplification, but you don't lose the ability to take actions in combat, just the first round, and even then after your turn you can still take reactions.

Also, IME most often the first round involves a lot of movement, with the possibility of ranged attacks and/or spells. Since being surprised doesn't affect your AC or saves at all, often the surprise "round" isn't that detrimental to the PCs.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I generally go with Wisdom, unless I'm playing a cleric. Because it can be fun and free to make a somewhat unwise character.

When I play clerics, I generally go with Dexterity. Because yeah, I'm going to go for heavy armor as soon as I can, and am unlikely to rely on any ranged weapons over Sacred Flame.

 

[Adamant]

I hate dump stats, but with point buy they're almost unavoidable on certain classes. Given a choice I'd dump CHA, since I'm not that good at talking to npcs anyway, but if the class is based on it I'll dump STR or DEX instead. I almost never dump INT because I like having smart characters and it's very hard to play dumb on the intellectual side of gameplay. In regards to CON and WIS, being unable to participate isn't fun, so I make sure I have decent hit points and always take resilient(WIS) if I don't already get the save. It's less about perception, although I try to take that as well, and more about resisting effects that prevent me from being able to control my character.

 

[Mezuka]

Maybe D&D has too many Abilties. Having 4 instead of 6 would make each of them more valuable.