D&D 5E Weighing in on 5e

[keterys]

That's why it'd be a lot cooler if you could just add your stat to things. So, your strength is 14, so you add 14 to your melee damage.

Now _that's_ intuitive.

Does require some notable surgery on the backend to make things not explode, but hey, we already do it for base hit points.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's why it'd be a lot cooler if you could just add your stat to things. So, your strength is 14, so you add 14 to your melee damage.

Now _that's_ intuitive.

Does require some notable surgery on the backend to make things not explode, but hey, we already do it for base hit points.

The fundamental problem is that the 3-18 range really isn't particularly compatible with a d20. There's no 'notable surgery' that is going to get around the fact that the guy with a low STR has a 15% chance to succeed and the 18 STR guy has a 90% chance to succeed at the same thing, even before any other considerations are involved. That range MIGHT work if you assume PCs are always in a subset of that range, say from 6 to 18, but even then the variance is pretty high and leaves almost no room for things like training, etc.

The whole reason the ability bonus was invented was exactly to deal with that, by halving the variance. PCs in 4e go from -1 to +5 (and can get up to as high as +10 at 30th level). That's a maximum ability score based variation of 10 points, and relevant variation is more like around 4-6 points. Even so the skill system is bursting at the seams. Certainly you'd have to seriously rethink the whole skill system and I suspect that using ability score would always be balancing on the hairy edge of broken.

 

[Oldtimer]

It's the same mechanic, except you don't add or subtract anything and there's an upper limit based on your stat. Roll d20, If it's equal to or greater than the target DC (but not higher than your stat), it's good happy success time. Less math to boot. Both methods function as well as operating on the same general mechanic, which is better depends on your tastes.

Your proposed system is mathematically the same as: Roll d20 and add your stat. If it's equal or greater than the target DC + 20, it's good happy success time.

So all you've done is changed all DCs and made your stat twice as influential as today (and presented it in a way much harder to use). But when stats are twice as influental, the difference between a Strength 8 and a Strength 20 becomes 12 points. That could take you from a 30% chance of success to 90% chance of success. Far too much variance for my taste.

 

[Kzach]

That's why it'd be a lot cooler if you could just add your stat to things. So, your strength is 14, so you add 14 to your melee damage.

Now _that's_ intuitive.

Does require some notable surgery on the backend to make things not explode, but hey, we already do it for base hit points.

There's only two problems with me agreeing with you all the time.

1. I keep getting the, "You cannot give XP to this person until you spread it around more," crap.

2. I taint you with my foul-smelling reputation

 

[DracoSuave]

That's why it'd be a lot cooler if you could just add your stat to things. So, your strength is 14, so you add 14 to your melee damage.

Now _that's_ intuitive.

Does require some notable surgery on the backend to make things not explode, but hey, we already do it for base hit points.

Incredibly intuitive, and there are many games that use it.

However, instead of rating stats from 8-20, they rate them from 1-5 (as an example) because the amount of variance caused by a stat point is so much more.

The thing with d20 math is without the flattening of the ability score's contribution, if you ever have an opposed check, a difference of, say, 4, isn't a 20% variable of success. The probability actually works out quiiiiite different, because you're dealing with a bell curve and not a line.

So, in this instance, 20% of all attempts the one with the advantage wins, without contest from the disadvantaged. As well, in 20% of all attempts, the one with the disadvantage loses without contest from the advantaged. 4% of the time, both will roll in their no contest range. This ends up that 36% of the time, the advantaged will win with no contest.

The rest of it is a 50/50 split (provided ties don't go to the advantaged) so a four point bonus in opposed checks (such as initiative) actually leads to 68% chance of victory for the one with the advantage. There's a reason why people with improved initiative seem to go first a lot more often 20% of the time.

The interesting thing is that 3rd and 4th edition didn't flatten the math... they steepened it, allowing bonuses at 12, rather than at 15, and allowing those bonuses to go up to 4, rather than the usual 2. (Percentile Strength is an oddity)

 

[CroBob]

Your proposed system is mathematically the same as: Roll d20 and add your stat. If it's equal or greater than the target DC + 20, it's good happy success time.

So all you've done is changed all DCs and made your stat twice as influential as today (and presented it in a way much harder to use). But when stats are twice as influental, the difference between a Strength 8 and a Strength 20 becomes 12 points. That could take you from a 30% chance of success to 90% chance of success. Far too much variance for my taste.

With a nine strength, if you swing a baseball bat at something, due to how weak you are, you're less likely to hit (or, at least, it's more likely to get deflected harmlessly) and, if you do hit, it won't hurt as bad. With a 20 strength, you're so incredibly strong that not only are you 25% more likely to hit something with a noticeable effect, but you're going to do, on average, more than twice the physical damage to that object than your average person. We're talking a strength so strong that only exceptional humans are even capable of getting that strong in the first place, and they're probably professional bodybuilders. Those bodybuilders could probably lift trees that have fallen onto someone, thereby saving their lives, without too much trouble even. That guy who is so weak that he can't even properly swing a baseball bat doesn't have a chance at lifting a tree off of somebody. I don't normally care too much for realism in a game where magic's involved, but we're trying to say that this scrawny dude should be able to at least have a chance of doing the same feats of physical strength as someone who body-builds for a living?

Why should there not be certain things someone is just plain incapable of? Given the team play of the game, it should only really matter that someone in the group can do it, not everyone.

 

[Gort]

Yeah, one of the things the D20 system kinda fails at is providing people "certainty" as regards their skills and stats.

When your guy at first level has +12 to stealth because he's as dexterous as you could make him, has trained in the skill AND spent a feat to focus in it and another guy has -3 because he's in full plate armour, isn't sneaky at all, and has as low a dexterity as he could possibly have, there's STILL a chance that he can sneak past something better than you.

Same thing for a wizard deciphering a tome - your local meathead barbarian might beat him in the check.

It's not a massive deal though, as someone who really wants to be good at a skill can get magic items that'll push them past the boundary of "being beaten by the worst practitioner of the skill possible" but it still feels a bit like a weakness of the system.

I do wonder if the skills and stats system should work off a smaller dice than a D20 sometimes.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, one of the things the D20 system kinda fails at is providing people "certainty" as regards their skills and stats.

When your guy at first level has +12 to stealth because he's as dexterous as you could make him, has trained in the skill AND spent a feat to focus in it and another guy has -3 because he's in full plate armour, isn't sneaky at all, and has as low a dexterity as he could possibly have, there's STILL a chance that he can sneak past something better than you.

Same thing for a wizard deciphering a tome - your local meathead barbarian might beat him in the check.

It's not a massive deal though, as someone who really wants to be good at a skill can get magic items that'll push them past the boundary of "being beaten by the worst practitioner of the skill possible" but it still feels a bit like a weakness of the system.

I do wonder if the skills and stats system should work off a smaller dice than a D20 sometimes.

Using 2D10 instead of a D20 for skills mitigates a lot of this if it bothers someone that much.

As does calling for skill checks as DM for the trained PCs most of the time.

The issue isn't avoidable, but then again, it does emulate reality where the PC in Plate does get lucky, but the Sneaky PC accidentally steps on a twig that s/he didn't see and it makes a loud crack.

In your example, the odds of the Plate PC at -3 beating the Sneaky PC at +12 is 2.5%. It's not going to happen that often with that range.

Note: Using 2D10 instead of a D20 drops the odds from 2.5% to 0.14%.

 

[CroBob]

It's not even about the variance, it's about the decision to remove the stats as they are or not to. The only reason you'd remove them is because they don't actually do anything, mechanically. Their only use is to determine their granted bonus, which is used. So if we remove them as they are, we can simply use their bonus as the stat itself. Easily doable, but it's also removing something that has been part of the game since it's inception. Your other option is to simply include a use for the statistic itself, not just it's bonus. Or, perhaps, include different mechanics derived from the stat itself instead of only the bonus. It doesn't really matter which way you go, so long as the mechanics are internally consistent and not needlessly complicated.

Now, it's sort of balanced by requirements for feats being odd and bonuses arriving at even numbers, but that's not really that big a deal. Then, neither is the stat system as it is. It's not necessary, but that doesn't mean there's a good reason to get rid of it, either. We could get rid of skills, instead using stat checks where being trained simply gives you a bonus to stat checks to accomplish certain sorts of actions. We could abandon stat bonuses entirely, using stats solely to determine aspects of your class, where powers could dictate their own attack bonuses, and you deal damage and do some tertiary effect based on relevant stats. I personally think the current system rewards focusing really highly on one stat, and the game could use some more stat placement choice, perhaps basing the attack bonus for certain classes on one stat, the damage bonus on another, and a tertiary class-specific ability on the third (damage mitigation, friendly bonus granting, debuffing values, mobility/shifting, or whatever).

My point is that there's no innate need to remove the stats as are, and I think people advocating it are exaggerating the reasons to, perhaps fueled by some sort of "if we change it, it's bound to be better" philosophy. If it's not broke... and I don't see how it's broke. If we take the simplification factor to it's logical extreme, then we'll eventually have no stats anyway. Stats are kind of superfluous. If the game is designed with certain bonuses, just give people those bonuses to whatever they need the bonuses to instead of bothering with stats at all. Then just describe your character however you want.

But there are stats, and it's part of the flavor of the game.

 

[DracoSuave]

It's not even about the variance, it's about the decision to remove the stats as they are or not to. The only reason you'd remove them is because they don't actually do anything, mechanically.

The statement is inherently false, they do do something mechanically.

Open section on feats. See: Prerequisites.

Notice how every ability score-based prerequisite has an odd number, not an even one.

One mechanic uses even numbers, but it's not a true statement to state that's the ONLY mechanic that uses ability scores. They do something else as well, and that something else happens to involve odd numbers.

Things are dovetailing here more than you're giving due credit for.