D&D 5E Why Are Ability Scores Necessary?

[doctorbadwolf]

Mental resistance in the sense of Willpower, or resisting someone elses social influence, would be the Social ability. The Social ability handles the ability to withstand and to see thru someone elses mental manipulation.

On the other hand, the ability to see thru an illusion (or fraud, or deception, or concealment, or stealth, or disguise) would require the Perceptive ability.

Personally, I would use Perceptive to make stealth/deception checks as well as to detect someone else making stealth/deception checks.

That makes sense.

 

[Bawylie]

Oh! I do like the idea of using theThree Pillars - Combat, Exploration and Interaction and making them a whole lot more prominent in the game play.

I’d even go as far as using something like the Fate Accelerated Approaches applied to the Pillars

so using a 5 point spread

A Ninja Assasin
Combat - Careful +2 - (silently she observes her opponent to identify weaknesses)
Exploration - Sneaky +2 (keeping hidden and moving through the shadows)
Interaction - Clever +1 (but she uses bluff and wit when needed)

A Knight Cavalier
Combat - Flashy +1 (a glorious Knight in armour with sword blazing)
Exploration - Forceful +3 (he passionately rushes directly into things)
Interaction - Careful +1 (but his heart is noble and sensitive to al)l

A Wizard Illusionist
Combat - Flashy +3 (using distraction and confusing spells)
Exploration - Forceful +0 (he might act without waiting for the team)
Interaction - Careful +2 (and is very manipulative in his speech)

I’ve never played Fate Accelerated actually. Where do you get these secondary traits like Careful?

 

[Tonguez]

I’ve never played Fate Accelerated actually. Where do you get these secondary traits like Careful?

Fate Accelerated replaces Attributes with Approaches that describe HOW you do actions. The standard approaches are

• Careful: A Careful action is when you pay close attention to detail and take your time to do the job right. Lining up a long-range arrow shot. Attentively standing watch. Disarming a bank’s alarm system.
• Clever: A Clever action requires that you think fast, solve problems, or account for complex variables. Finding the weakness in an enemy swordsman’s style. Finding the weak point in a fortress wall. Fixing a computer.
• Flashy: A Flashy action draws attention to you; it’s full of style and panache. Delivering an inspiring speech to your army. Embarrassing your opponent in a duel. Producing a magical fireworks display.
• Forceful: A Forceful action isn’t subtle—it’s brute strength. Wrestling a bear. Staring down a thug. Casting a big, powerful magic spell.
• Quick: A Quick action requires that you move quickly and with dexterity. Dodging an arrow. Getting in the first punch. Disarming a bomb as it ticks 3… 2… 1…
• Sneaky: A Sneaky action is done with an emphasis on misdirection, stealth, or deceit. Talking your way out of getting arrested. Picking a pocket. Feinting in a sword fight.

The best example of play Ive seen is this one using the Avengers Battle of New York (it was this that convinced me to invest time into FAE)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think, after taking some time to let the ideas here percolate, that the easiest solution for dnd is to allow each character to use one stat for spellcasting and for attack and damage, which can't be the same stat unless a class feature or something explicitly allows a normally mental stat for attack and damage, and they use those stats regardless of any multiclassing, racial spells, feat-based abilities, etc.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, all weapons become finesse. Your barbarian can shoot a bow just as well as a rogue can, and your rogue can use a handaxe for sneak attack without issue.

Meanwhile, a Sorcerer or Warlock can take the very thematically appropriate step of multiclassing Wizard without an arbitrary penalty to efficacy that basically exists because some previous editions had way too much out of whack power hidden in multiclass builds.

 

[clearstream]

I've been thinking about this for a long time. I've played a lot of characters who could be members of a given class, if not for the need for a high score in some ability or other. A rogue who story wise is hyper-intelligent, impulsive, and doesn't really understand other people easily, who is MC wizard because his story needs him to have spent most of his adult life ignoring a knack for magic, only to realize he needs it within the last few years (so arcane trickster would have felt wrong), and his high Int means that wizard is the only caster that mechanically works.
There is an incongruity with him that will always bother me. Given his enviroment, his strong faith, the animistic nature of that faith, etc, any of ranger, paladin, druid, or even cleric, would have made more sense. A bard that doesn't rely entirely on charisma, one of his lowish stats, would also work, but I MCd Wizard because it got me ritual casting and spells to counter enemy casters, and it didn't require me to build him with high stats that don't make sense for him.

On the other hand, in my in development game, Quest For Chevar, your ability scores are just a personal resource pool. You spend from Will to salvage crap rolls or activate spells, but you don't add any of the scores to a skill check. Skills are purely about training. You roll your action die and rank dice, and that's it.

So, I've been wondering, could DnD be made to work in a similar manner? Has anyone tried anything like that? Perhaps reducing the number of stats would alleviate these sorts of issues, so your Mind stat covers all the spellcasters, or something?

Is your question - can D&D ability scores be replaced with resource pools? The answer is no, because ability scores feed into more than just dice rolls. For example, your Dex sets an AC level that is a bar to creatures hitting you, while your Int sets a number of spells limit for some classes.

The reason I point that out is that you might answer your own question by listing out each mechanic ability scores feed into, and then considering if there is an alternative method that would work? You could then define what = good for your purposes so as to establish if the alternatives are superior to the original on some criteria.

In that vein, you seem to say that what = good is that there should be no fundamental array of scores that impacts on a characters efficacy in a class. Personal resource pools seem to me to fail that test, because if I can spend from Will to activate spells it seems to me that the more Will I have, the better I will be at activating spells. You might be saying that all characters have the same Will, or they choose whatever Will they want, or apply whatever pool they want to activating spells. Those terms could all be applied equally well to ability scores. For a change in rules to be worthwhile, it should be more streamlined and robust in play, and/or it should have differentiable outcomes on the criteria that matter.

My advice would be to dig deeper into what you want to achieve prior to ideating your solutions. A standard approach to design problems is essentially problem definition > success definition > divergence > convergence. What is my burning problem, what are my terms for success, ideate divergently, bring it back in. And you can always travel back up the path and refine as you go. Iteration.

 

[CubicsRube]

I've thought about something similar for a while, but as with many things with d&d, you change one thing, and there's all these unexpected interactions. So...it's a hard ask.

However if I were to do it, i would fold everything into the skill system. Saves would be represented as a skill, such as acrobatics for dex saves, athletics for str, "endurance" as a new con skill save. Weapons would need new skills, such as finesse, heavy, ranged and martial (as examples). As mentioned, soell casting would need its own skill or skills.

In most cases, you could double proficiency without having too much variance from base 5e, being from +4 at level 1 to +12 at the top end.

Armour would have to be reworked, perhaps using half of acrobatics and capped by armour type. Half endurance would have to replace a con modifier for hp gain per level. Perhaps acrobatics would influence initiative.

But then i start gping down this track and i realise I'd rather muse on it than put in the hard work at hacking together what staets becoming pretty different from 5e imo.

 

[Scott Christian]

As @Iry said, other games do this better. Use the right tool for the job.

That said, I think we sometimes put too much emphasis on ability scores. There’s nothing wrong with playing a character who doesn’t have the highest score possible in their main stat. A one point difference in an Ability score only matters on 5% of rolls. And once you start getting magical weapons and increase proficiency as you level up, it becomes even less important.

I'm with Bucky. What's 5% or even 10%. It means very little in the overall enjoyment of the game, unless all of your enjoyment comes from being the strongest character or the character that deals the most damage. A fighter with a 14 strength but a 16 intelligence is a smart fighter. Maybe you don't like the fact that the 16 doesn't do much for the fighter, such as, give him an advantage to fight more intelligently than his foes. And that's fair. But that's what multi-class is for.

As for the OP's question. No. You do not need it. But, it's D&D. So that's what they use. There are some games out there that do not use ability scores. Some of them are awesome. But none hold a candle to D&D's polish.

 

[TwoSix]

I think, after taking some time to let the ideas here percolate, that the easiest solution for dnd is to allow each character to use one stat for spellcasting and for attack and damage, which can't be the same stat unless a class feature or something explicitly allows a normally mental stat for attack and damage, and they use those stats regardless of any multiclassing, racial spells, feat-based abilities, etc.

Out of curiosity, what about AC? Is that also swappable? I (and most DM's I've played with) have had no problem with stat-swapping for particular concepts, although we haven't tried adopting that as general rule to support multi-classes. When we do stat-swap, we generally move AC calculation to move along with attack, as long as one of the stats being targeted isn't Charisma. The general approach is that there are two stats you really want to prioritize (attack and spellcasting), and a tertiary you'd like to raise but is OK with staying at a 14 (assuming point-buy).

 

[clearstream]

Out of curiosity, what about AC? Is that also swappable? I (and most DM's I've played with) have had no problem with stat-swapping for particular concepts, although we haven't tried adopting that as general rule to support multi-classes. When we do stat-swap, we generally move AC calculation to move along with attack, as long as one of the stats being targeted isn't Charisma. The general approach is that there are two stats you really want to prioritize (attack and spellcasting), and a tertiary you'd like to raise but is OK with staying at a 14 (assuming point-buy).

Once one is going to freely map everything onto two values, what is the motive form more than two values? Aren't those essentially "spells" and "actions"?

I like that each of the six scores inputs a parameter into a collection of mechanics that are narratively cohesive and mechanically related. I tried three and four scores, and found that too narrow - too much fell to each score - and I tried a dozen and found that needlessly broad. I do feel there can be worth in world-specific seventh scores, or those can be secondary (derived from one of the six primaries, like sanity).

Between five and seven primary variables seems right to me. It is mechanically expressive and sufficient to give good narrative coverage. It does seem facile to me to shift mechanic=score pairings. I mean that in a technical rather than pejorative sense. That is likely down to my personal preference for trade-offs, and doesn't mean that it can't mechanically work (it can) or might not be preferable on criteria that I don't prioritise (it might be).