Community

So we spent a lot of time updating characters and looking at the new rules, and then playing them out, and even opening up some old AD&D books and reminiscing while comparing.

What really strikes me is how impacting and important ability scores have become in these newest editions, and I am not entirely sure that’s for the better.

18 being +4 on primary skills/attacks really affects the balance of the game, and it’s not hard to reach with all the new bonuses.  Even 20 isn’t unheard of now, offering a whopping +5.

Compare that to good old AD&D.  A 15 was a good score… and offered, at best, +1.  It took a 16 STR to get to +1 damage and a whopping 17 STR to get to +1 hit.  DEX required 16 to improved missile attack rolls, and it didn’t help damage to boot.

What did that mean?  It meant the character was about the roleplay more than the ability scores.  That lucky SOB who rolled a 17 and 15 was only marginally better than your average guy with a 15 and 14 as primary scores.  Or even that Joe Average with the 13 and 12.  Joe wasn’t gimped.  Wasn’t unplayable at all, because ability scores weren’t the primary focus of character creation, class, skill selection, race, and, yes, that thing called roleplay is what the core of a character was.

I honestly think that much of the scaling and balancing problems with characters and the bestiary boils down to the arms race that character creation has become (and yes, I recognize there’s a 0% chance of it going away). The impact of ability scores and how it resonates through everything (from combat probabilities to skill resolution) has made stat rolling more important than class, race, skill, and feature selection – all of which should be the core of the game.  Having a 20 STR will be more important to a Fighter than whatever Fighting Theme, Background, or Specialty they’ll choose… hands down.

And get off my lawn, you young high stat whippersnappers!

PS: It’s also why I think creatures (bestiary) is getting muddled, too.  The effect of stats on a kobold and their weapon choice, etc., is causing some risk vs reward problems from our early (latest packet playtest) experiences.  AD&D certainly had its issues with its monster manual and the difficulty of some creatures versus their XP value, but it was easier to balance.  Creatures had pretty set attack and damage blocks, armor and HPs, or at least fixed enough to have a baseline to use as a guide. Now in Next, I see kobolds using finesse weapons while goblins aren’t, and the impact is dramatic.  Toss a short sword on a goblin, and suddenly he’s a lot more dangerous.  Give a club to a kobold and it’s dreadfully weak.

Honestly, it would be easier to just see Kobold as AC 11, HP 2, Att +0, Dmg 1d4 or by weapon, than trying to recalculate it, what it’s new XP value maybe should be, etc., simply because it found a new blade on the ground.

If ability scores didn’t impact everything so much… those mid range score given to the kobolds or goblins wouldn’t matter.

But it won’t happen.  The (Score-10)/2 and all the up scaling problems (imo) it’s causing is here to stay.  Still, I can’t help but think that they had it right all those years ago.  Let character creation be more about the role than the rolls.