Will D&D make strength matter again?

[Lost Soul]

Wow. Wow. Everything you just said is absolutely wrong. Read over the Grappled condition in the PHB again, because you clearly do not know what grappled entails in 5e. Come to think of it, your lack of knowledge of the game as a whole has been quite visible in this entire thread.

You are correct. I confused grappling with restrained in the advantage/disadvantage. Grappling does nothing but reduce an enemies movement to zero and you can only use it on creatures your size or smaller. Its worthless.

 

[Mistwell]

Umm..no dude. Grappling is a joke. It only workings on humanoid monsters approximately your size. If you are succeeding in grappling giants I would check your rolls. Either your players are cheating or you are handing out OP magic items

It's not a joke (I edited my initial reply by the way). It's not applicable to only humanoid monsters - I am not aware of any such rule. And there are ways of getting larger creatures with it, if your PC is focused on grappling. Again, I recommend you read the grapplers guide.

 

[Mistwell]

You are correct. I confused grappling with restrained in the advantage/disadvantage. Grappling does nothing but reduce an enemies movement to zero and you can only use it on creatures your size or smaller. Its worthless.

You're not groking it (and you again got that rule wrong). Just READ THE GUIDE ALREADY. Here it is again.

 

[Gladius Legis]

You are correct. I confused grappling with restrained in the advantage/disadvantage. Grappling does nothing but reduce an enemies movement to zero and you can only use it on creatures your size or smaller. Its worthless.

And you're wrong again, yaaaaay!

You can grapple one size larger.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Dude, being knocked down only affects the monster till it goes again. it stands up and prone condition vanishes. Its not that great.

You do realize that an enemy can't stand up if its speed is 0, right? What if there was something a high-STR Athletics-trained character could do that could reduce an enemy's speed to 0?

And even in the event they could stand up, you still got advantage on your attacks for your turn. And reduced your enemy to half its speed for its turn. Yeah, totally worthless ...

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Example: 2 1st lv character, one dex 18 and one dex 12, both attack an AC 17 opponent. Dex 12 rolls 19 on the die and Dex 18 rolls an 11 on the die. Both hit, why does Dex 18 do more damage?

If accuracy/precision is the reason we're adding dex bonus to damage, why are we not adding proficiency bonus to damage as well? Skill is just as important as natural ability, in my opinion anyways.

I'm not a fan either, for pretty much those reasons. At the end of the day, our group treats it as an in-game construct designed to let the less-athletic characters (such as those based around some media) the capability to fight alongside the Bruce Lees and Conan T. Barbarians of the world.

Umm..no dude. Grappling is a joke. It only workings on humanoid monsters approximately your size. If you are succeeding in grappling giants I would check your rolls. Either your players are cheating or you are handing out OP magic items

You're obviously entitled to your opinion of the usefulness of grappling, but you are factually wrong on a couple of points. If your opinion is based on your belief that you can only grapple humanoids, or that you can only grapple foes of the same size or smaller than you, I would suggest you reevaluate that opinion.

Dude, being knocked down only affects the monster till it goes again. it stands up and prone condition vanishes. Its not that great .

You often follow up a shove with a grapple because then your opponent can't get back up without breaking your grapple.

Repeated and bolded for emphasis.

Also per the shove rules you can make a strength (athletics) check OR a dexterity (acrobatics) check to avoid the prone condition. So shield bashing a dexterity fighter is not got going to work as often as you think

?
Are you talking PvP? That is a whole different ball game.
If you're not talking PvP you'll find that most opponents that the players face, even the ones with high Dexterity scores, are not proficient in acrobatics. Thus even against an opponent with superhuman dexterity, a strength-based PC has a pretty good chance of shoving. There often isn't much else a sword-and-board fighter can use a bonus action for, so its not generally an action wasted.
A Dexterity fighter can try to avoid/break shoves and grapples, but they will have real trouble initiating them.

 

[Remathilis]

I have heard of magic. It does not allow wizards to make staff attacks with their staff using intelligence at will. .

Shillelagh says "hi".

Rogues were never meant to be in the thick of combat. That is a 3E invention. They were meant to be skirmishers and archers. Dex being reflected in range combat accurately represents that. Are you saying Tasslehoff Burfoot should do as much damage as Lord Soth with a melee weapon? I completely disagree.

There was some serious design flaws in the original Thief class, since it lacked both magic and combat prowess and assumed that the thief skills (which were easily replaceable with magic) were somehow sufficient. AD&D Thieves sucked; I played one for decades and got him to 16th level. The best thing a thief could do was multi-class with fighter (combat ability) or wizard (magic) to give it something to do aside from hide and pick the occasional lock.

As for Tass and Soth; never read much Dragonlance but technically, Tasselhoff was a handler, not a thief, so he didn't even get backstab and was intentionally gimped in combat. If he did have backstab, a hoopak did 1d6 which Tass could backstab into x5 damage (at 13th+ level, I'm going to assume we're going to assume Tass and Soth are of equal level here because if not, you're arguing if characters at different levels should do similar damage) so Tass hits for 5-30 points of damage. Soth, if he is the Monster Compendium death knight, has 1 attack with a weapon (usually a longsword) using his 18/00 strength, meaning he does... 1d8+6 (or 7-14 damage) per round with his sword. If you want to give Soth a magic sword (as death knights are supposed to be armed with) add another 2-4 damage to the min and max.

So yeah, Tass could do more damage in one round with his hoopak than Soth can in one round, assuming Tass has backstab.

 

[Ancalagon]

It's not a joke (I edited my initial reply by the way). It's not applicable to only humanoid monsters - I am not aware of any such rule. And there are ways of getting larger creatures with it, if your PC is focused on grappling. Again, I recommend you read the grapplers guide.

I think there are some edge cases. Like... don't grabble a Gibbering mouther, or a gelatinous cube. It's just going to eat you. But I do agree with you that baring very strange form (or incorporeality) grappling works on most monsters that aren't ridiculously enormous.

The nice thing about a grappler built is that if there is a situation where their grappling can't be use... they still should be a decent combatant. "Oh well, I'll guess I'll have to take out my axe and shield, woe is me"

 

[Satyrn]

I have heard of magic. It does not allow wizards to make staff attacks with their staff using intelligence at will.

But it does let druids do that with Wisdom. Actually, the way Shillelagh's written, a warlock with the tome pact can use Charisma for those staff attacks.

And if a wizard can learn it as a wizard spell (like as a feature of some fey themed subclass), then magic can do exactly what you say it can't.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Thinking about it, for our lot at least, dropping Strength has not been an issue. We work with a Theatre of the Mind style of play, using various digital tools to mock up before & update maps on the fly.

Anyway, wondering why, reflecting on the sessions, I've noticed:

- there's a lot of physical interaction with the environment. For example, carrying folks, pushing/lifting/pulling things, climbing/vaulting.

- all of us exercise/lift heavy objects regularly and are painfully aware of how ...heavy.. stuff can be. As such, while we don't track encumbrance religiously, we certainly keep an eye on it. And when the Str 10 character offers to vault the chasm whilst clutching 50' of hempen rope with their two-man tent stuffed in their backpack, eyebrows are rapidly raised.

- on a specific personal note, I wonder how some players envision their Str 8 rogues moving through the city. Because there's only so far ducking and diving will get a cur (Acrobatics). Sooner or later, fences will need vaulting, railings a clambering and loot-a-hauling-whilst-being-chased-by-angry-hounds-down-an-empty-street (Athletics).

But aye, as some clever folks near the beginning of the thread said -- Intelligence. That's the stat I find lacks 'punch' (!). While we can certainly attempt to reign in folks that play characters 'smart' rather than smart characters, I feel it could do with.. something. Perhaps bring back bonus languages. Tho saying this, even with this said, we don't see it dumped because folks prefer to play more knowledgeable characters.