You primary stat should never be lower than 18

[daddystabz]

It seems to me that for a Dragonborn Paladin stats of

Str 16* (+3), Con 14 (+2), Dex 12 (+1), Int 8 (-1) , Wis 14 (+2), Cha 16* (+3)


seem to be pretty optimized to take advantage of all this race/class combo has to offer. It gives good Str, Wis, Cha, and Con, which are all important for this race/class combo. An 18 Str or Cha Paladin seems more to be a 1 trick pony to me.

 

[Regicide]

seem to be pretty optimized to take advantage of all this race/class combo has to offer. It gives good Str, Wis, Cha, and Con, which are all important for this race/class combo. An 18 Str or Cha Paladin seems more to be a 1 trick pony to me.

I haven't looked too closely at paladin but it seems like they get a lot of nice effects of WIS. I'd go all points to CHR then anything else into WIS and to heck with everything else.

Although were I to make a paladin, mine would be screaming "Allah akbar" and smiting all the peasants and people that don't believe in his god, much as the rules describe they do. Man I love the new paladins, they're real butchers, have a god, got a reason to kill, alll riiiiiight.

 

[wiser]

meh

i play a half elf cleric with 16 wis and 16 char. he is not uber or min maxed, but he does pretty well.
+3 to spell attacks and healing is almost as good as +4
so far i have been able to keep the party alive just as well as if i had taken an 18 is wisdom and neglected some of my other stats, which is something i really didnt want to do because;
Str 10 - I assumed i was going to have to hit something with my mace eventually, and i didnt want to have to RP a weakling
con 14 - hp, enough said.
dex 13 - the buff to initaitive is nice
int 11 - again i could have made this a dump but i didnt want to RP an idiot
wis 16 - a decent stat, +3 to spell attacks. what more do you need
char 16 - good for converting the locals.

I know some min maxers out there are going to say that ill be stuck on a +3 untill lvl 8 (when i buff wis and cha up to 18) and that everyone else will have +5s to their main stat but im really not fussed about that. I think a well ballanced character, that is fun to RP is more important than the +5.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The funny thing about this is that the one edition this was NOT true in was 3rd edition.

As Nifft argues, you could gain attack bonuses from a lot of sources in 3rd edition that enabled you to make up for the attack deficit vis a vis the 18 starting stat guy. (A few that Nifft forgot to mention--stacking attack bonuses and larger attack bonuses. For instance, 3rd edition charging is +2 not +1 and a prone, stunned, flanked, and tanglefoot bagged foe nets you +8 to hit with a -2 to the armor class of the foe (maybe +11 if you manage to jump onto a table as a part of your charge to gain +2 for charging and +1 for higher ground); in 4th edition, there is no tanglefoot bag and your bonus to hit a stunned, prone, and flanked foe is still +2 for non-stacking combat advantage). In addition, the math worked differently as melee and ranged attacks at least were expected to hit most of the time as you increased in level. The difference between miss on a 1 and miss on a 1 is not that significant. Now, it's not always a miss on a 1 situation in 3.x but for characters who are focused on physical combat, it often is. And even when it's not, 80% and 85% are both pretty likely to hit. On the other hand, when we're playing in the 40-60% range, you have to scrabble for every 5% increment you can get.

You also could much more easily take advantage of multiclassing to benefit from different stats. And, perhaps most importantly, it was quite possible to make an effective character who would only very rarely roll an attack. If he cleric who casts recitation in the first round of combat, cure moderate wounds in the second, and searing light in the third round of combat doesn't have a good DC on his spells, who cares? Nothing he does is affected by his primary stat (except spells per day). Likewise, a wizard could happily make do with magic missile, haste, displacement, solid fog, and freezing fog, or a druid could stick to summon nature's ally spells. There are a lot of character classes and concepts in 3rd edition that work just fine with a starting 15 in the primary stat and don't improve too much by increasing that. From what I can tell thus far, 4th edition (by design) does not have similar options. Your character should be rolling an attack roll every round.

If you are a min/maxer yes you should have 18+ in your primary ability score.

Same as every edition.

But 4E is the first edition that guarantees an 18 as the standard.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

Personally, unless I'm forced into taking standard array, or if we're rolling, I'm taking 16/16/13/11/10/8 point buy every time with one exception.

1.) Archer ranger, where I can dump 3 stats (Int, Str, Cha).

There's something to be said for a Wizard dumping three stats as well to get a 20, but I'm still unsure on the math (and obviously, the wand wizard wouldn't do that.)

 

[toxicspirit]

It hurts my soul to see a 8 Int ranger/archer, but yeah it is probably the best dump stat for the archer build. And yeah, that would likely whoop butt.

Could probably dump the 8 into Charisma instead of Intelligence. I keep switching back and forth between the two.

 

[mlooney]

Reading this whole thread reminds me of why I don't use point buy or arrays in my game. 4d6, highest three, aka Method 3 in 4th ed.

Been using it for 33 years.

 

[Ahglock]

Reading this whole thread reminds me of why I don't use point buy or arrays in my game. 4d6, highest three, aka Method 3 in 4th ed.

Been using it for 33 years.

Yes, the price you pay for stat balance between the players is a disturbing amount of uniformity. For some it is worth the cost. I usually give the players a wide range of options that statistically work out to being equal on average, with rolling being one of the options. Almost all of them roll.

 

[AntiPaladin]

I rolled for most of my 3E campaigns, but I was never really happy with the result. Call me a jealous person but I always nursed a sense of resentment when I played a character with 15s in a party with others that had an 18. Furthermore, rolling HP was one of the most exciting and harrowing parts of the game but I'm glad it's gone. Watching the crestfallen look on a player's face when he sees a 1 on the HP die is something I never want to see again. It could literally break a character and that was bogus.

I'm glad that point buy is the new gold standard (well I guess it is just one of three options in the rules, but I imagine it will be the most popular).

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

My human paladin has:

str 16, con 12, dex 14, int 8, wis 14, cha 14.

Compensated for lower hit/dam & hps by spending the feats on weapon focus(heavy blades) and toughness. At level 2 he further took weapon prof. (bastard sword).

AC 21, Fort 16, Ref 17, Will 15. HPs 38. Base attack +7, 1d10+4.

Good all round character that'll qualify for all the heavy blade feats I want. Won't get plate spec until level 24 though...

I don't think the lack of an 18 is so painful. Slightly noticeable especially against the stat 20 characters, but then they have their share of regrets too.