Community

Oct 5, 2012 -- 3:26AM, lawrencehoy wrote:

Your example only indicates that the 5e Fighter & Rogue has less disparity than the 1e Fighter & Rogue:
1e gap of 54 HP (42%)
5e gap of 40 HP (21%)

I don't think that anybody is suggesting that a narrower hp gap between classes is a bad thing now that fighters have class abilities beyond high AC and a sack of hit points because hit point disparity is one of the issues that creates the 5 minute work day.  Narrowing the gap across the board is more sensible.  Con saves are among the most important of the game as they are most often the save or die ones - whatever form this edition's save or die mechanics will take.  If you want to be power gamey about it, dwarves, traditionally the hardiest of the races, have less reason to invest in con than others since they come loaded with poison immunity and boosted AC or hit dice.  That's not how I roll baby.

In the bounded system, I'm in favour of applying half the ability bonuses in certain circumstances and I think this is a good one to pick.  So I think characters should get half their ability bonus on attack rolls and full bonus to damage.  As a compromise, while I prefer the first playest method, I think they could get half their con bonus to their rolls for hit points and their full bonus to healing rolls.  This way most characters will get only +1 hit point per level and those who invest heavily in con will get +2 for a difference of 40 hit points at level 20 plus 100 hit point difference on healing.  It's still pretty big but it looks more manageable to me and you aren't more than doubling wizards' hit points each level.

Oct 6, 2012 -- 6:11AM, kadim wrote:

See I really want your stats to matter, and halving their impact on rolls only makes having attributes in the first place kinda redundant.

If the investment of a high int doesn't produce a totally different character than the investment of a high str then I really don't see the point. Classes can get away with a bounded system because the focus shifts to their actual class abilities. I like that; it makes us define class more clearly.

But attributes are the first thing that we see numberwise and they are the first real choice we've got about how our characters work. If those choices don't turn out to be all that meaningful because the stats are similarly bounded then there's no real choices to make.

Unless attributes were changed so they unlocked certain abilities rather than modify the actual numbers.

I agree up to a point - in a bounded system high numbers need to award something other than bonuses to dice.  That may have its own balance issues but I'd certainly like to see them try.

Oct 6, 2012 -- 1:17PM, kadim wrote:

I think the trick would be to let the early modifiers be straight up bonuses - say up to +4. Then you could do something like halve the progression (18-21 +4, 22-25 +5, 26-29 +6, etc) and give them some kind of thing they can do with their exceptionally high stat. Maybe once per session they can perform some extraordinary feat of strength for having a 22 str and you get more of them for every four stats past that.

We could make the stats give fewer bonuses for their value but make those bonuses more interesting that way.

You will have to start much lower - PC stats are capped at 20 in Next.  Stats beyond 20 will only affect monsters.  Advantage works out a roughly +3 doesn't it?  So maybe +3 is where they need to draw the line?  If that's the case, you can halve the bonus and round up.

The simplicity of the skill check to perform tasks is nice but I agree that adding bonuses to your roll instead of finding a way to use the whole ability score is a shame as it means you can't get every point of that score to feel meanigful.

'Classic' was originally 18 (or 19 for cerrtain races in AD&D 1e except for Wisdom which was uncapped).  Admittedly, with wishes you could theoretically reach 25 in a stat but realistically this wasn't possible for PCs as it would take 50-70 wishes wishes and magic items to get there.  It was only in 3e that the initial cap went up to 20 so you could boost it up to 25 if you pumped all your points into the same stat and then with items you could exceed 25 anyway.  Personally I can live with it PCs got fewer boosts to stats.  For example, I'm happy if Gauntlets of ogre power only give you a boost to damage, skills, throwing, and lifting.

I would also prefer it if their skill bonus was limited to +5 but with a +1 bonus to all ability checks at level 10 and 20.

It has been stated in the development blogs I think, although not mentioned specifically in the playtest.  They stated max 20 for pcs and max 30 for monsters.  I'm unhappy that halflings can be stronger than ogres as it is so I'm not looking to encourage them to remove those caps.  Basically they need to retain caps to keep attack rolls and AC sufficiently bounded.  They should probably also restrict level 1 PCs to a cap of 18, which might help to reign in rolled stats a bit.  I'd be in favour of level 1 racial caps at 16-18 but I know that's quite contentious.  It also works better with the halved attack roll bonus system.