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Dec 25, 2012 -- 7:41AM, Steely_Dan wrote:

Or, if Ability Modifiers were score -10.

this.

abilities and modifiers should go one for one.

Either put starting abilities at 3 to 18 with modifiers from -7 to +8 or put starting abilities from 6 to 14 with modifiers from -4 to +4.

+1 to a stat is a really uncommon bonus though.  It pretty much only happens when you level up.  You'd have to redo a some amount of the basic math, and you'd have to change the ogre strength/giant strength items (that would be pretty easy though), but I agree with the OP that this would be more fun as a stat system.

At any rate, the way it's set up right now doesn't really make +1 stat a lesser bonus if it's a bonus at all.  There's just a 50% chance that it will be a *completely useless* bonus depending on where your character is in that stat at the moment.  If you're worried about +1 stat being too good of a bonus, that's still not a very good solution because half the time it's providing too much power anyway.

As far as the basic math goes, there are four major things that you'd have to worry about:

- Character attack and save bonuses woud go up faster, but you can just reduce the class scaling to compensate for that
- Light armor AC would go up faster, so you'd have to slightly change the expectation for higher level monsters' to hit, and you'd have to change the progression for heavy armor AC a bit
- Skill bonuses would go up faster, but since skill checks already have a pretty wide range of things, you might be able to get away with not scaling them differently (or maybe you'd make the different categories 6 different rather than 5).
- All of the "floors" would change.  A normal AC at level 1 would be 18 or 19 instead of 15; a normal attack bonus at level 1 would be +7 or +8 instead of +4.  You'd have to either adjust all the enemy AC and attack numbers upwards by three or four, or use Level-13 (or something) rather than Level-10.

So, that would be a lot of stuff that would suck to actually go through and change if you're the intern or whatever that WotC puts in charge of that stuff, but in terms of how it affects the system, most of the math wouldn't break too hard.  As an added bonus, now you've got your extra +5 AC that some people really want to see on high level monsters, without having to arbitrarily give them Plot Armor. 

That's semantics; my point remains the same.  Odd stats higher than 11 actually do nothing, but we still have to keep track of them and they still count as something we're "supposed" to be excited about getting.

Yeah I've long agreed with changing around the ability score scale, the problem is that some people consider the 3-18 for ability scores to be sacrosanct, and that creates a big issue because you can't fix the problem without redefining or getting rid of the 3-18 scale.

The only other thing you can do is go back to 2E style and split the bonuses on odd/even. Like for strength, attack bonuses come from even numbers and damage modifiers come from odd numbers. Though that adds so much complexity that it may not be worth it.

The other option is simply going in increments of +2 for ability scores, so the modifier always matters. Of course this means the guy who rolled a 15 never sees a benefit over the guy who rolled a 14, so you might as well just eliminate ability score entirely and just go to bonus, but people are reluctant to dump the 3-18 scale, despite being outdated and mostly pointless.