Okay, I can't actually change the ability scores. No, really, I can't. It doesn't matter what the issues are with the current ability scores are, I can't change them. As the Angry DM points out, the classic D&D ability scores are a "sacred cow". Revered. Untouchable. Holy. Have influenced affected the ability scores of every gaming system thereafter. Heck, even D20 modern uses the same classic ability scores!
Fallout uses a different set of attributes, S.P.E.C.I.A.L (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) but Fallout gets away with it because it's not a revision of D&D (also, it's a primarily a CRPG in a different setting and the tabletop games came later). 13th Age and Pathfinder for instance can't and never will get away with revising the classic ability scores. And neither will I.
But it's fun to consider. What can I say? I like the mental exercise.
So what ability scores are best for a medieval fantasy D&D if used for action resolution? In my opinion, what attributes you should set for an RPG system it depends on the setting, the character archetypes played by the player and that setting actions the player characters take in the setting. These are all closely related.
Let's say, we were making a game which was very... Catholic. You play as a crusaders, battling heretics and defending the faith from its enemies. Perhaps Faith is going to be an important ability score for such a setting. If there are armies involved and lots of NPC soldiers of the faith to lead (since the crusades was a war), a leadership-type score may be appropriate. If the biggest challenge was temptations and weariness from travelling so freaking far to unfamiliar lands, well.
Alternatively, we could just pull up the classical Armor of God verse from the bible: "Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."
Okay, it may be bit tricky to work with truth, righteousness, gospel, faith, salvation and spirit as attributes which resolve actions, but you can't beat that flavor!
Alright, I hope you got my point so put aside Crusader Quest and let's focus back on D&D's medieval fantasy. It's probably easiest if I once again bring out the Big Three... I mean the Big Four: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric.
The Fighter is the easiest. These are your Aragorns, Gimlis, Conans, etc. Strength is fine. We'll keep strength. But keep in mind that in the original version of D&D, strength also represented other aspects of physical prowess such as athleticism and gross physical coordination. Yes, gross physical coordination. Dexterity didn't determine gross physical coordination, Strength did. That's why in D&D, strength also gives a bonus to hit chance when attacking with melee weapons and not Dexterity. I always wondered about why strength helped you hit things and not dexterity as a child, as I read my player's handbook from the Red Box set.
I'd like to uncouple hit chance from Strength. I'll come back to this later.
The Rogue have always been represented by Dexterity. Linguistically, the word means good with fine motor skills. This worked fine with the role of the rogue as the "skill monkey". Dexterity was there for the expressed purpose of helping skills checks. Those skills were open lock, remove traps, hide in shadows, pickpocket, move silently, and so on. The concept of agility was folded into 'Dexterity', so it helped with AC as well. Dexterity also boosted initiative as apparently reflexes and speed got folded into dexterity as well. In earlier editions of D&D, Dexterity did help you aim bows but did NOT add to bow/ranged damage. There were no finesse weapons back then so Rogues needed Strength to hit folks with daggers/shortswords for that sweet backstab damage (see Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment).
3rd edition introduced a number of changes to make Rogues more relevant in combat. The most significant was the concept of finesse, where you could get a bonus to attack with a light weapons like a rapier or dagger with dexterity instead of strength but ONLY if you you had the "Finesse" feat. However finesse did not allow a bonus to damage back then. 3rd edition also introduced the reflex save which was only now keyed to Dexterity, and thus help rogues dodge most of fireballs. Previously saving throws were keyed to class, not ability scores, and thus the Fighter were better at resisting fireballs. Bows do more damage with dexterity in this edition too.
5th edition took the Finesse feature even further, making it a natural property of light weapons rather than a feat tax, and allowed Dexterity to add to damage as well. All this was done to make the poor Rogue more relevant in of combat but in doing so may have turned Dexterity into the best ability score in the game since dexterity retained the benefits of improving AC and initiative.
--------
One Stat to rule them all, One Stat to find them; One Stat to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.
---------
Angry DM complained that concepts like reflexes and agility got folded in dexterity. I'm not so concerned: that's a semantic issue which doesn't really generate confusion since there is no ability score which represents agility better than dexterity. Anyway, replacing the term dexterity is tricky because so many fine motor actions in D&D really do depend on manual dexterity, not gross agility. Opening locks and removing traps in particular (pick-pocketing too, although it is kind of rare to see in play). And mechanically, we still kind of need Dex to help with AC in light armor because the poor Rogue really needs it. We certainly don't want Dexterity to be the "One stat to rule them all" if we can however, so perhaps reducing the power of dexterity. We'll come back to this later.
Update: Aha, Chong Jia Zhen has supplied me a very nice term which may better encompass both concepts of dexterity and agility: Finesse. Finesse it is!
The Wizard gains power from knowledge and research. They even carry around BOOKS to help them cast spells. Intelligence is fine.
The Cleric on the other hand... Wisdom, really? Linguistically, the word wisdom, to me, means the ability to make good judgement and decisions. Making decisions and judgement well is NOT an attribute of the player's character. Nope. Making decisions and judgement is the duty of the player herself, who makes decisions on behalf of the character. Besides, wisdom comes primarily from experience, something that is tracked separately from the ability score system.
Which actions in 5E are resolved by wisdom? The skills listed are Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Perception, Survival. So wise people are supposed to be very observant and good scouts in D&D. Erm. Clerics make for good scouts, trackers and have good survival skills? Being able to read people well sounds more like a streetwise thief trait to me. It looks like wisdom isn't really important for action resolution in D&D, and that's probably a good thing since true wisdom depends on the players.
What is the primary attribute of priests, pastors, and clergy? By what means should these clerics perform miracles in the name of their gods? Faith, of course. Thanks to a quote by Jesus Christ, faith in popular culture is unquestionably the means through which miracles are performed and demons are cast out (Matthew 17: 19-20). However, faith doesn't really work well as an attribute used for D&D action resolution outside of casting divine spells... I mean praying for miracles. We really want an attribute that sounds useful to everyone, not just Clerics. (Hear that Dark Souls?)
What other attribute are most characteristic of clergy? Priests evangelize to folk to attract worshipers, counsel those in grief, convince their flock to follow the teachings of their religion... Yes, Charisma. In fact, the "turn undead" feature was based on a charisma check in many editions of D&D even though wisdom was the cleric's primary statistic and not charisma. All religious leaders depend on their ability to speak to and lead people in order to effectively serve their role and give hope to the hopeless. It is no coincidence that Pentecostal churches are sometimes called charismatic churches. It's why one of the signature cleric spells is "Command"!
But what's that? D&D traditionally associates charisma with Bards (and somehow Sorcerers) and not Clerics? You can't imagine clerics praying for miracles through the power of their charisma? Well fine. Charisma is another attribute that probably depends more on the player's role-play than an actual attribute score so maybe we won't use charisma.
So how about Will. Will is the primary characteristic of the fanatical, the zealots, those who resist temptation and those who hold strongly to their beliefs in the face of opposition. Some folks would argue that charisma is an extension of one's strong will (vs stage fright?) and willingness to force their beliefs onto others. It's easy to see how Will determines the Cleric's ability to pray for miracles, perhaps better than Wisdom.
Right, so we keep Strength, Finesse, Intelligence, but replace Wisdom with Will. Two left.
Constitution has never made sense to me. Constitution is the ability score that improves your health. Shouldn't that be Strength? Yes, you could argue that this is the difference between a body builder (strength?) and a marathon runner (constitution?). But stamina isn't health: who would take more punches to the stomach, the body builder or the marathon runner? Strong muscle tension helps reduce bruising and injury when hit.
Functionally, the classes who need a large pool of hit points the most are the ones at the front lines taking hits, the warriors. Might as well fold constitution's benefits into strength which they'll need anyway. Bye Constitution! You won't be missed.
Update: Flavor reasons aside, a more important reason why Constitution needs to go however is because there is no common action which keys off constitution that needs to be resolved. The endurance skill is gone in 5E due to how rarely it comes into play. It's been folded into strength checks and athletics. Unless poison drinking contests becomes a common adventuring activity, constitution is pretty much out.
Finally, in D&D constitution is a compulsory score to put points into for optimization purposes. There is no class in the game who can afford not to stuff points into constitution. Constitution is an Ability Score tax essentially which everyone needs to put points into in order to be optimal. The constitution stat essentially reduces the number of meaningful choices for players to make. Reduced meaningful choices is bad design folks. It needs to go.
----
If you find this concept of reduced meaningful choices difficult to understand, try watching this video by Extra Credits.
"If there is a definitive right answer that can be ascertained wholly through mathematics or strict logical reasoning at the time of making the choice, the choice is no longer meaningful." The prime example they use are the skill trees in Word of Warcraft long ago, where while there are choices to be made there was in fact only one optimal selection.
Let me give an extreme example to show why constitution is a bad ability score. Imagine that there is an ability score called LEARNING. For every bonus modifier you have in this ability score, you will gain an extra level every level up. Basically, it is a ability score that is mandatory for everyone to invest points into. Sounds bad, right?
Constitution is the same way, but to a lesser degree since it's important but not nearly as mandatory. But in a way that lesser degree of importance makes it even worse than my example of LEARNING above. Since it is not so obvious that Constitution is mandatory, less min-maxy players may fail to invest adequately into it. Placing a trap for less wise players is not a good design if you want your game to be accessible.
----
But wait! If I realigned the bonus health to strength instead, doesn't that mean strength is going to be the new Uber stat? Not if there's another ability score which improves health. That would be Will. Of course, the bonus health from Will does not stack with the bonus health from strength. So if you want bonus health you either stack up strength or will.
So now we have TWO must-have stats. Er. Oops?
Right then. No ability score should improve health, period. That probably works better. Huh. It's so obvious now when I think about it again. Bonus health is attached to class features or races instead, and monster damage is rebalanced with consideration for the overall lower hit points.
Charisma is one of the ability scores that have been subject to some hate. Yes, players do need to talk a lot to NPCs. Interaction is one of the 3 pillars of adventure. But have you ever seen a player give an epic speech in role-play, then roll a natural 1 on his ability check with charisma? Assigning charisma to an ability score statistic meddles with role-playing that the players themselves do. In my games, I normally give players a choice: role-play the interaction or roll it. Rolling it allows the players with high charisma characters but are not personally sure what to say some due. But even the players with high charisma characters often want to role-play it instead. It's just more fun to role-play interactions if you can do it yourself.
That's the thing: most of the actions in D&D are resolved by rolls because you can't do it in real life or during a tabletop game session. Talking is the one of two actions that CAN be done by players themselves during a tabletop game session (the other is puzzle-solving). I don't think a dice roll should do it on the players behalf. Players who are not good at speaking should put in the effort to learn. It's a valuable life skill.
How fun would puzzle-solving be if relegated to an Intelligence dice roll instead of giving the players an actual puzzle? What, you did that as a DM? Don't do it again. Give the players the puzzle to solve.
So that leaves Strength, Finesse, Intelligence, Will... and that's it? Better see if these match up with the common actions folks like to take in D&D. Conveniently, there's a list to help us; the skills (and some tools which used to be skills).
5E's original skills are:
Strength: Athletics
Finesse: Acrobatics, Sleight of Hand, Stealth
Intelligence: Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, Religion
Wisdom: Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Perception, Survival
Charisma: Deception, Intimidation, Performance, Persuasion
As well as some important tools which used to be skills:
Thieves’ tools (Probably Finesse)
Hrmmmm. I'm scrapping using a Charisma roll for interactions so all the interaction skills are irrelevant. We can probably assign the other charisma checks, Performance, to Will. Medicine probably best stays in Intelligence (where it used to be in 3E). The real trouble starts when we look at Perception and Insight. Perception and insight have always fitted a bit strangely in wisdom, but these very popular skills don't really fit well in our current ability score selection either.
Perception checks are so common in-game that I'm of the mind that
Fortunately for me I intend to use 13th Age's background system in replacement of a laundry list of skills, so I don't need to come up with a fancy new name for the Perception skill such as spotting ambushes like Awareness or Spotting. Conveniently, rangers and scouts who use bows are best known for spotting danger. So having good aim with a ranged weapon now depends on Perception, not
I've mentioned that I didn't want strength to improve hit-chance with weapons but I didn't say which ability score should. Maybe Finesse? Maybe Observation?
I think it's best if none of the ability scores help you to hit better. It's consistent with the principle of bounded accuracy, as well as mirrors the flavor better. Flavor-wise, it makes more sense that the primary means through which you improve your chance of hitting with weapons is your skill in using that weapon. That's it. If I was building this ability score system for 3rd edition, player's would depend on their base attack bonus for their to-hit. For 5E, this would be proficiencies, fighting style specialization and tier of play (i.e. levels).
Strength already increases the player's damage per round by directly increasing the damage done in melee. It doesn't need to also increase the player's hit chance with the weapon. The same goes for Finesse weapons: Finesse improves damage already. It doesn't also need to increase the hit-chance. I'd shuffle the bonus damage of bows over to Perception.
Part of the reason why min-maxers shoot for maxing out their primary ability scores is because each increase has so much impact: both hit chance AND damage. Lowering the impact of the ability scores in combat help make less min-maxed builds more competitive.
So I'd have 5 stats: Strength, Finesse, Intelligence, Will, Observation
Strength
-Break stuff, force open doors, jump, etc.
-Damage with melee/throwing weapons,
-Wearing heavy armors
-Resistance to poisons/pushes
Finesse
-Fine motor skills, gross agility, hiding
-Damage with finesse melee/throwing weapons
-AC in light armor
- Resistance to fireballs and other explosions
Intelligence
-Knowledge, Memory, research
-Wizard spell-casting
Will
- Stubbornness, ignore pain and torture
- Cleric and Sorcerer spell-casting
- Resistance to mental affects
Observation/Cognizance?/Perception?/Awareness?
- Spot clues, hidden doors, ambushes, enemy weaknesses, tracking, survival in the wild
- Damage with ranged weapons
- Initiative
- Druid/ranger spell-casting
--------
Intelligence may seem weak, but wizard spell-casting is valued very very highly as I explained in earlier posts. Wizards really pay for that yummy spell-casting!
Since I have only 5 ability scores instead of six, I'd have to rebalance point buy. Using 5E's point buy system (cap of 15, moving from 8 to 13 costs 1 point, moving to 14 and 15 needs 2 each), I'd like players to be able to reach 16 a primary and one secondary stat. Most races have a +2 and a +1 ability score modifiers. So that's at least (1+1+1+1+1+2+2) + (1+1+1+1+1+2) =16 points used. Fiddling about with a 5E ability score calculator... about 24? Hrm. Let's keep that on hold for now.
This is no longer relevant since bonus health is no longer tied to ability scores at all. I'll leave the picture of Gandalf though because it's funny :)
-------
Gandalf, you're really a fighter with 18 Intelligence weren't you?
-------
This ability score system would completely change how much class features are valued in the classless system I'm developing.
---------
Huh. That actually looks pretty tidy.
Update: I've changed my mind. I'm gonna use these ability scores instead.
Good writing, although best if you split your post because the wall of text did scare me off at first haha.
ReplyDeleteI like the end result.
Me too. I want to use it after all haha
ReplyDelete