Let's talk about Ability scores. Today I'd like to start with my favorite of them all, and perhaps the least esoteric character abilities- Strength- the physical might of an individual. It is perhaps the easiest to quantify by a multitude of means. Allow me a bit of an oversimplification here: If you want to determine who is the strongest in a contest between individuals, have them each pick-up increasingly weighty objects. Whomever is the strongest is the probably one that lifts the heaviest object. I realize you are trying to think up anecdotal exceptions (different people exercise different muscle groups or have training/techniques which makes them defeat opponents who should be stronger, etc.) But let's not talk about exceptions to the rules or be too pedantic about this.
But before we can delve into my analysis of why your 20 strength is full of weak sauce, I would like to review the way we determine ability scores in 5e and how this is the start of our problem. The standard method is to roll 4 six-sided dice and discarding the lowest of them, adding the sum of the other three to determine that ability score. This process leads to a median outcome of 3.5 x 3 = 10.5 prior to any racial bonuses you may add. For now, let's disregard the variant rules for generating ability scores for now as the 3d6 method has existed since D&D basic rules.
What this distribution causes is a linear progression which if we chart it out is a parabola that has a peak in nearly the very center of attainable scores. Because of this, a 10 or 11 is considered an “average” score.
Why am I am pointing this out will become clear later. But for now, let's assume you roll your attributes and you get an 8 as your lowest number (This is the lowest score in standard array variant). Also, let's assume you are planning to play a spell caster class. Most of us would probably chose to stick that “below average” 8 in Strength. (#dumpstat).Wow, you are so weak! Your adventuring career could end with the first unlocked door with rusty hinges you run into. But let us break down what that “weak” 8 strength means for you when interacting in our fantasy world.
Variant Rules: Encumbrance
Encumbered weight is 5x your strength score. 8 STR x 5 = 40 lbs. Carrying any weight above this and your movement drops by 10' per round.
Heavily encumbered is 10x your strength score upto your carrying capacity. 8 STR x 10 = 80.
Carrying Capacity is 15x your strength score. 8 STR x 15 = 120 lbs. and you've still got movement. Hmmm. Between heavily encumbered and capacity your speed drops by 20 feet and you suffer disadvantage on any physical ability checks while burdened this way.
Maximum push drag or lift is 30 x your strength score. 8 STR x 30 = 240 lbs! And you can still move 5' every round (6 seconds). Okay, maybe that 8 strength means you're not too wimpy after all.
Now there are no encumbrance figures in exhaustion. And I don't know about most of you, but I'm going to throw myself under the bus here. I considered myself an “average-ish” in my youth but I don't think I would be able to carry 120 lbs. for very long before I'd have to set it down and take a breather, or even be able to move it 10' every six seconds on average duration at pace! If you told me to drag a 240 lb anvil down the street, I'm guessing I would make it maybe 5' before I gave up and went looking for a hand truck, dolly, or a much beefier person that owes me a favor. To be completely honest, with my 175 pound frame, I probably wouldn't get 240 pounds to budge an inch. Though I do believe I could manage to deadlift the 120 lb. “carrying capacity”. Not only that but there is math that supports it! (though I will admit to having spaghetti arms).
But don't take my word for it. According to PhysicalLiving.com the average American male today that weighs 198 lbs. can deadlift 155 lbs. without training.
Now, performing a proper deadlift you aren't moving an inch much less 5' every round unless you want to hurt yourself, but lacking a better analog, let's use this weight as the max push/drag/lift comparison. So a 198 person lifting 155 lbs. divided by 30 = 5.1666. Rounding down the average american male has a Strength rating of..(drum-roll please!)...5.
Fun fact, it turns out that most people can deadlift roughly 80% of their weight (bar trivia is fun!). And there's a bit of logical science as to why “this is a thing”. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but you need muscles to move around and if you weigh little, you don't need or even tend to build-up muscles more than you use. And if you are overweight (I'm not judging anyone here), you tend to build-up a good deal of muscle just moving around all that body mass. So a person who is out of shape can still be quite strong due to the weight they carry around on themselves. Let me point out again, if you start training regularly that 80% rule goes out the window. Even moderate training over a few weeks to months, a person can lift their own body weight or more.
Now let's look at the official D&D ability charts. Even a strength of 3 (the minimum you can roll), means you can deadlift 90 lbs! If you're an old school D&D player, (1 edition) you may remember Raistlin Magere, an infirm lev 3 magic-user, from the Dragonlance series of novels had a strength of 10. Yes, 10!!! Golden boy with the hourglass eyes could barely lift his wizard staff without getting winded in stories, but according to the charts, he could probably bench press 150 lbs. And dead lift 300# ( 1/6 of a ton!) WHAT?! Way to go Raistlin! You're a feeble beast!
But what does a weak Raistlin and average humans in the REAL world have to do with D&D and my 20 STR character? After all D&D is a game of epic heroes, in the vein of Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja, Hercules, He-man et.al. And so we are now to the point of my original premise and title of this homebrew. Forget about those stupid wimpy average or weak examples we just talked about! Your character can have a Strength of 20! Now that's some power right? Let's move some numbers around in your abilities and assume you rolled an 18 and with feats and/or race attribute you now have a 20 Strength at 1st level. Let's show those wimps what-is-what. Doing the math on our Max push/pull/lift. 20 x 30 = 600 lbs. That's awesome! I bet your character is the strongest person that's ever lived all of Earth's history!..... If you've read this far you probably are starting to tell I like sarcasm.
Ummm. Nope. 600 lbs is not even close to the world record. According to Strengthlevel.com, 600 lbs. (based on 1.6 mill data points) is the average for “Advanced” male lifters who's mass is about 280 lbs. And “elite” male lifters in the 310 lb. weight can lift over 700 lbs. on “average”. At the time of me writing this, the world record weight for female deadlift (Becca Swanson) is 683 lbs. And the world record male deadlift is 1155 lbs. Yes. That is over 1/2 of a ton!
In fact if we look for Zydrunas Savickas' (world record holder for male deadlift) strength on the standard rules chart, he'd have a strength of....wait for it....38.5! Holy moly! You better get back to the gym pumping some more of that iron, Conan! That 20 strength is paltry compared to most elite weight lifting athletes.
Now I want to clarify my numbers by saying, maybe in your fantasy world, the strongest of the strong are a bit wimpy compared to our reality. An elite weight lifter probably wouldn't have the agility to swing a sword in perfect form. And perhaps in your world the “average” commoner that works in the field has a body of a member of airborne division that's completed boot camp. Or maybe “max lift” means something completely different in your D&D world. And all that is perfectly fine to explain away these discrepancies. And, TBH, I can live with that. But IMO, the worst part of this method and standardization is the distribution of those ability ranks. (I direct you to the lovely symetrical parabola graph at the top of this page). In the REAL world there is a low 1 percentile (the lowest 1 percent of people) and a highest 99 percentile (top 1 percent) that would represent the extremes of weak & strong data points. And I'm sorry (and not only because I think I have a real world strength of 2) to tell you that the average person doesn't sit right in the middle of weakest and strongest humans.
In reality the weakest have a tenancy to be somewhat weaker than the average person, but the strongest tend to be WAAAAAYYY Stronger than the average person. For in the real world, the median strength for both men and women is weighted to the lower half of the scale. And perhaps it's not just a coincidence but IQ and other ways of comparing people in attractiveness and other attributes also tends to also follow a “principal of factor scarcity” or what you might call a “prato scale”. Simply put, there are a lot of people at the lower half of the range, and fewer at the upper half which also stretches out further up in capacity than tends to extend lower because....well....no one's maximum lift capacity is “negative” weight. (We'll discuss negative intelligence in a later memo possibly).
So what does this all mean?
I'm going to recommend to you (and please try to stay calm as I say the words) that the average statistic in D&D should be 5. Yep. That is not a misprint. I didn't hit the wrong number key. You read that correctly. It's just 5. I call it the “Average 5” ability system. In my world, an infirm, old, handicapped or just weak individual could have a stat that is as low as 1! And that doesn't make them a baby or weird. What that means if someone that has a stat of 4, is just....a bit below average. But it also means that a person with a 11 Strength is seemingly WAY more athletic than the average person they meet in my D&D world. But they still have a long ways of improving themselves to be “The strongest” dude or dudette in the world.
Why does this work at all?
100% is optimally “all” of the examples in a data set, and because there is the potential to have a 1 to 20 score in your ability scores, the math parses out simply in multiples of 5%. We just need to work out how to distribute it.
For proper prado distribution, the scale of “average” should be weighted toward the first 20-ish percent of the scale. And since 5 STR x 5%=25% we're very near a good prado point of average! Yay!
The strongest individuals would be increasingly rare and it would be more difficult to attain higher levels. Perhaps working out for a decade or more (or adventuring!) as an adult to hit peak performance.
The change I'm recommending doesn't change the calculations for encumbrance, heavy encumbered or weight capacity. I personally do not have an issue with those numbers affecting movement in a linear scale for simplicity sake. They're a bit dodgy but we could mess with those in some tweaking later.
With" Average 5" You don't have to allow people to increase their strength to 38 for the values to make sense.
Conveniently; The built-in diminishing returns of this scale creates a point buy system that almost mirrors the “point buy modify chart” that exist as a variant rule in the base game rules. But no conversion chart is needed! Just buy the ability points with a set # of points and bob's your uncle!
And this leads me to my last reasoning; you don't even have to sacrifice your Ability bonus and it will possibly even “help” them in a way. As there is no -4 or -5 penalty in this system.
For this last point, I would like to opine that that road to “peak performance” has to be earned. This gives us a tertiary benefit. And character's self improvement in the hero's journey is a major aspect of playing D&D. If the DM allows us to have nearly max stats right at the beginning, it's taking away part of the fun of improvement and leveling up! In standard 5e rules, it's not unusual for a player or two to get 16 or 17 in a primary stat right off the bat. With racial bonus and feats it's not at all unusual for a character to be at the peak level 20 in one or several abilities by level 4! Ever wonder why most people stop playing by the time they reach level 6 to 10? One reason is that there's such little room for improvement. Also, not to be demeaning but, honestly you're character is a bit of a Mary Sue at level 1.
So, how do we impliment this?
To get everything to fit in 1 to 20 scale, you have to fudge the system by have a sliding scale for the Max/push/pull values to make sense relative to each other. So there is a “modifier” that increases as strength level does. We could implement a 3d6-3 roll scale, but that gives a 7.5% increase in all attributes, and a beefier range that once again falls into super-human range at level 1 with racial and feat bonuses. So, see below for my recommendations for generating an "Average 5" <-really it creates an "Average 6". But I know people will cry foul if I start off players with realistic ability scores.
I mentioned above that you don't have to change much for this to make logical sense. The numbers in black are identical to the base rules! The only thing changing are the numbers in red: three quarters of the Max push/pull/lift and the way the bonuses/penalties are dispersed logarithmically. That's it! Bonuses do not confer an increase in bonus every 2 points (linear) as in the standard rules. Also in standard rules, because the ability score confers evenly spaced bonuses, it's a bit easy to abuse point buy systems by taking “dump stats” to max out other abilities to start level 1.
In this homebrew of “Average 5” the bonuses are conferred in a logarithmic method. At the weakest levels you get -1, -2, or -3 attribute modifier. But above average human, the bonuses get increasingly harder to attain...That's because being the strongest (or smartest, or most dexterous et. al.) takes some effort. And once again, to be at the very highest level it is the rarest of the rare. With a score of 20, you are a fraction of the 99 percentile! Ever hear of “Diminishing Returns”? Well, the standard D&D rules have NOT. They have a strict linear “every 2 points gives you either a +1 or -1 mod to your bonuses.
Okay smarty pants. How do I get an “Average 5” score on an attribute then? At this point I have to say that the DM should pick a method that they think is best for the campaign they want to run, or perhaps devise a method of their own.
Method A: “I love rolling dice!” This is the simplest method. For each stat: Roll 4D4. subtract 4. If all 4 dice are 1's (resulting in a net 0), then re-roll. No score will be over a 12 before you add racial bonus or feats using this method. But realize with “average 5” a score of 11 or 12 confers a +3 modifier, and that's not too shabby for starting off a campaign 1 level. The average result is 6, not 5, but it works passably well. There's still a potential (though it is slim) to get a 1, 2 or 3 ability score. Multiple small dice makes the average a tight grouping.
Method B “Chaos! Let the gods decide”: Roll 1d10. Record the roll. Repeat this 8 times. Looking at the results drop the 2 worst rolls. Or drop the 2 best if you're a masochist. Take the remaining six scores and assign them each to an ability as you desire. No score would be above 10. But if you are lucky in your rolls, you should get abilities higher than the average common villager. This will leave a lot of room for improvement even with racial bonuses and feats. If the DM is feeling kind, he could just say “you can re-roll anything lower than 4”. Or they could be a big meanie and say you only get 6 rolls, and have to record each stat in the order that you rolled it.
Method C “Point Buy Build”: Assign any whole number to any of the 6 abilities as you desire so long no individual score is less than 1 or more than 20 AND the total sum of all ability scores is no more than 36. In this variant you could have an ability start at the peak of 20, but the rest of your ability scores will suffer. I actually would allow this if the player gave me a reason. E.g. the character is an old scribe who only very late in life realized his high intellect (20 INT) and penchant for reading has bestowed on him an aptitude for understanding and replicating wizard spells. But due to his age, poor social skills from being cloistered all his life, the rest of his ability scores are at or below average. He's frail, in questionable health, not the most agile, though he's book smart, he's not very wise for his age. (STR 1, CON 4, DEX 3, WIS 6, CHA 2)
Method D “(L)Awful Method”. This is the most beneficial method for character attributes for “heroic” ability levels. A standard array can be made by you, the DM. I recommend something rounded like 11, 6, 6, 5, 4, 4 (Bonus distribution: +3, +1, +1, 0, 0, 0). Or 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 3 (Bonus distribution: +2, +2, +1, +1, 0, -1). These both give a similar bonus spread of the “standard array” offered in 5e which nets a sum of +5 in total ability bonuses.
All of these methods with the exception of B, do not venture far off the results for standard array. And the median for each method is 36 total ability points! (though the probabilities of each create slightly different data sets or odds to get that median). Feel free to respond and tell me how I am wrong because my math is bad. And how I am a heretic that should be burned at the stake for defiling the holy of holys.
P.S. And one last bit of interesting strength trivia. In the US Army to be awarded the Expert Infantryman Badge you must complete a 12 mile ruck-march (loaded) course over terrain in under 3 hours. With rifle and pack this can be roughly 70 lbs. of weight.
12 miles = 63,360 ft. 3 hours =1200 turns. Which works out to 35.2 feet per turn. A strength 5 character has a Carry Capacity of 50-75 lbs (heavily encumbered) so a dash of 40' so long as the terrain isn't difficult. So they at their best, a Strength 5 D&D character could qualify for the Expert Infantryman Badge, assuming of course they don't fail any ability checks that might cause them to slow down. Also, I'm not sure I would allow a dash with heavily encumbered so, U.S. infantry probably eek up a bit further in the scale. :)
Lastly here are some charts for you, because everyone loves charts!
Next week, “Dexterity: Are you as agile as a cat or does you life need to be more balanced?”
I think gravity is also non-standard in D&D. An average PC in the realms falls 500 ft. per round (6 seconds), from XGtE, which is ~83.3 ft/second. Let's assume this is terminal velocity, since XGtE doesn't provide for acceleration. Some estimates for a real human falling "in random positions" suggest a terminal velocity of 100-120mph, or ~150-170 ft/second. This will vary with wind resistance. In other words, these back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that gravity is about half as strong in the realms as in reality, assuming wind resistance is similar. Thus, your Str 20 character lifting 600lbs is lifting roughly twice as much mass as they would be able to under Earth surface gravity. That doesn't really resolve your issues, though, because lifting X lbs is equally difficult in any gravity field, but lifting Y kg is roughly half as difficult in the realms.
It does, however, explain how a level 10, Con 14 fighter (with an average of 75 hp (10d10+20)) falling a distance of 200 ft+ at terminal velocity (taking an average of 70 (20d6) damage), will stand up next turn and walk away, while an Earth human would invariably be a pancake.
I feel that you really made the case for different encumberance calculations. Also, the standard system is rolling 4 d6's, then removing the lowest one resulting in something much more like your 4d4-4 idea. Also, with the "base of 5" idea, even the flimsiet wizard would be significantly stronger than the average human. Also, 20 is not the max possible, as powerful creatures can have a strength score of up to 30. Your idea would be good as a variant rule for campaigns where the characters are meant to be truly superhuman, a valid option.
Let's talk about Ability scores. Today I'd like to start with my favorite of them all, and perhaps the least esoteric character abilities- Strength- the physical might of an individual. It is perhaps the easiest to quantify by a multitude of means. Allow me a bit of an oversimplification here: If you want to determine who is the strongest in a contest between individuals, have them each pick-up increasingly weighty objects. Whomever is the strongest is the probably one that lifts the heaviest object. I realize you are trying to think up anecdotal exceptions (different people exercise different muscle groups or have training/techniques which makes them defeat opponents who should be stronger, etc.) But let's not talk about exceptions to the rules or be too pedantic about this.
But before we can delve into my analysis of why your 20 strength is full of weak sauce, I would like to review the way we determine ability scores in 5e and how this is the start of our problem. The standard method is to roll 4 six-sided dice and discarding the lowest of them, adding the sum of the other three to determine that ability score. This process leads to a median outcome of 3.5 x 3 = 10.5 prior to any racial bonuses you may add. For now, let's disregard the variant rules for generating ability scores for now as the 3d6 method has existed since D&D basic rules.
What this distribution causes is a linear progression which if we chart it out is a parabola that has a peak in nearly the very center of attainable scores. Because of this, a 10 or 11 is considered an “average” score.
Why am I am pointing this out will become clear later. But for now, let's assume you roll your attributes and you get an 8 as your lowest number (This is the lowest score in standard array variant). Also, let's assume you are planning to play a spell caster class. Most of us would probably chose to stick that “below average” 8 in Strength. (#dumpstat).Wow, you are so weak! Your adventuring career could end with the first unlocked door with rusty hinges you run into. But let us break down what that “weak” 8 strength means for you when interacting in our fantasy world.
Variant Rules: Encumbrance
Now there are no encumbrance figures in exhaustion. And I don't know about most of you, but I'm going to throw myself under the bus here. I considered myself an “average-ish” in my youth but I don't think I would be able to carry 120 lbs. for very long before I'd have to set it down and take a breather, or even be able to move it 10' every six seconds on average duration at pace! If you told me to drag a 240 lb anvil down the street, I'm guessing I would make it maybe 5' before I gave up and went looking for a hand truck, dolly, or a much beefier person that owes me a favor. To be completely honest, with my 175 pound frame, I probably wouldn't get 240 pounds to budge an inch. Though I do believe I could manage to deadlift the 120 lb. “carrying capacity”. Not only that but there is math that supports it! (though I will admit to having spaghetti arms).
But don't take my word for it. According to PhysicalLiving.com the average American male today that weighs 198 lbs. can deadlift 155 lbs. without training.
Now, performing a proper deadlift you aren't moving an inch much less 5' every round unless you want to hurt yourself, but lacking a better analog, let's use this weight as the max push/drag/lift comparison. So a 198 person lifting 155 lbs. divided by 30 = 5.1666. Rounding down the average american male has a Strength rating of..(drum-roll please!)...5.
Fun fact, it turns out that most people can deadlift roughly 80% of their weight (bar trivia is fun!). And there's a bit of logical science as to why “this is a thing”. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but you need muscles to move around and if you weigh little, you don't need or even tend to build-up muscles more than you use. And if you are overweight (I'm not judging anyone here), you tend to build-up a good deal of muscle just moving around all that body mass. So a person who is out of shape can still be quite strong due to the weight they carry around on themselves. Let me point out again, if you start training regularly that 80% rule goes out the window. Even moderate training over a few weeks to months, a person can lift their own body weight or more.
Now let's look at the official D&D ability charts. Even a strength of 3 (the minimum you can roll), means you can deadlift 90 lbs! If you're an old school D&D player, (1 edition) you may remember Raistlin Magere, an infirm lev 3 magic-user, from the Dragonlance series of novels had a strength of 10. Yes, 10!!! Golden boy with the hourglass eyes could barely lift his wizard staff without getting winded in stories, but according to the charts, he could probably bench press 150 lbs. And dead lift 300# ( 1/6 of a ton!) WHAT?! Way to go Raistlin! You're a feeble beast!
But what does a weak Raistlin and average humans in the REAL world have to do with D&D and my 20 STR character? After all D&D is a game of epic heroes, in the vein of Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja, Hercules, He-man et.al. And so we are now to the point of my original premise and title of this homebrew. Forget about those stupid wimpy average or weak examples we just talked about! Your character can have a Strength of 20! Now that's some power right? Let's move some numbers around in your abilities and assume you rolled an 18 and with feats and/or race attribute you now have a 20 Strength at 1st level. Let's show those wimps what-is-what. Doing the math on our Max push/pull/lift. 20 x 30 = 600 lbs. That's awesome! I bet your character is the strongest person that's ever lived all of Earth's history!..... If you've read this far you probably are starting to tell I like sarcasm.
Ummm. Nope. 600 lbs is not even close to the world record. According to Strengthlevel.com, 600 lbs. (based on 1.6 mill data points) is the average for “Advanced” male lifters who's mass is about 280 lbs. And “elite” male lifters in the 310 lb. weight can lift over 700 lbs. on “average”. At the time of me writing this, the world record weight for female deadlift (Becca Swanson) is 683 lbs. And the world record male deadlift is 1155 lbs. Yes. That is over 1/2 of a ton!
In fact if we look for Zydrunas Savickas' (world record holder for male deadlift) strength on the standard rules chart, he'd have a strength of....wait for it....38.5! Holy moly! You better get back to the gym pumping some more of that iron, Conan! That 20 strength is paltry compared to most elite weight lifting athletes.
Now I want to clarify my numbers by saying, maybe in your fantasy world, the strongest of the strong are a bit wimpy compared to our reality. An elite weight lifter probably wouldn't have the agility to swing a sword in perfect form. And perhaps in your world the “average” commoner that works in the field has a body of a member of airborne division that's completed boot camp. Or maybe “max lift” means something completely different in your D&D world. And all that is perfectly fine to explain away these discrepancies. And, TBH, I can live with that. But IMO, the worst part of this method and standardization is the distribution of those ability ranks. (I direct you to the lovely symetrical parabola graph at the top of this page). In the REAL world there is a low 1 percentile (the lowest 1 percent of people) and a highest 99 percentile (top 1 percent) that would represent the extremes of weak & strong data points. And I'm sorry (and not only because I think I have a real world strength of 2) to tell you that the average person doesn't sit right in the middle of weakest and strongest humans.
In reality the weakest have a tenancy to be somewhat weaker than the average person, but the strongest tend to be WAAAAAYYY Stronger than the average person. For in the real world, the median strength for both men and women is weighted to the lower half of the scale. And perhaps it's not just a coincidence but IQ and other ways of comparing people in attractiveness and other attributes also tends to also follow a “principal of factor scarcity” or what you might call a “prato scale”.
Simply put, there are a lot of people at the lower half of the range, and fewer at the upper half which also stretches out further up in capacity than tends to extend lower because....well....no one's maximum lift capacity is “negative” weight. (We'll discuss negative intelligence in a later memo possibly).
So what does this all mean?
I'm going to recommend to you (and please try to stay calm as I say the words) that the average statistic in D&D should be 5. Yep. That is not a misprint. I didn't hit the wrong number key. You read that correctly. It's just 5. I call it the “Average 5” ability system. In my world, an infirm, old, handicapped or just weak individual could have a stat that is as low as 1! And that doesn't make them a baby or weird. What that means if someone that has a stat of 4, is just....a bit below average. But it also means that a person with a 11 Strength is seemingly WAY more athletic than the average person they meet in my D&D world. But they still have a long ways of improving themselves to be “The strongest” dude or dudette in the world.
Why does this work at all?
For proper prado distribution, the scale of “average” should be weighted toward the first 20-ish percent of the scale. And since 5 STR x 5%=25% we're very near a good prado point of average! Yay!
The strongest individuals would be increasingly rare and it would be more difficult to attain higher levels. Perhaps working out for a decade or more (or adventuring!) as an adult to hit peak performance.
The change I'm recommending doesn't change the calculations for encumbrance, heavy encumbered or weight capacity. I personally do not have an issue with those numbers affecting movement in a linear scale for simplicity sake. They're a bit dodgy but we could mess with those in some tweaking later.
With" Average 5" You don't have to allow people to increase their strength to 38 for the values to make sense.
Conveniently; The built-in diminishing returns of this scale creates a point buy system that almost mirrors the “point buy modify chart” that exist as a variant rule in the base game rules. But no conversion chart is needed! Just buy the ability points with a set # of points and bob's your uncle!
And this leads me to my last reasoning; you don't even have to sacrifice your Ability bonus and it will possibly even “help” them in a way. As there is no -4 or -5 penalty in this system.
For this last point, I would like to opine that that road to “peak performance” has to be earned. This gives us a tertiary benefit. And character's self improvement in the hero's journey is a major aspect of playing D&D. If the DM allows us to have nearly max stats right at the beginning, it's taking away part of the fun of improvement and leveling up! In standard 5e rules, it's not unusual for a player or two to get 16 or 17 in a primary stat right off the bat. With racial bonus and feats it's not at all unusual for a character to be at the peak level 20 in one or several abilities by level 4! Ever wonder why most people stop playing by the time they reach level 6 to 10? One reason is that there's such little room for improvement. Also, not to be demeaning but, honestly you're character is a bit of a Mary Sue at level 1.
So, how do we impliment this?
To get everything to fit in 1 to 20 scale, you have to fudge the system by have a sliding scale for the Max/push/pull values to make sense relative to each other. So there is a “modifier” that increases as strength level does. We could implement a 3d6-3 roll scale, but that gives a 7.5% increase in all attributes, and a beefier range that once again falls into super-human range at level 1 with racial and feat bonuses. So, see below for my recommendations for generating an "Average 5" <-really it creates an "Average 6". But I know people will cry foul if I start off players with realistic ability scores.
I mentioned above that you don't have to change much for this to make logical sense. The numbers in black are identical to the base rules! The only thing changing are the numbers in red: three quarters of the Max push/pull/lift and the way the bonuses/penalties are dispersed logarithmically. That's it!
Bonuses do not confer an increase in bonus every 2 points (linear) as in the standard rules. Also in standard rules, because the ability score confers evenly spaced bonuses, it's a bit easy to abuse point buy systems by taking “dump stats” to max out other abilities to start level 1.
In this homebrew of “Average 5” the bonuses are conferred in a logarithmic method. At the weakest levels you get -1, -2, or -3 attribute modifier. But above average human, the bonuses get increasingly harder to attain...That's because being the strongest (or smartest, or most dexterous et. al.) takes some effort. And once again, to be at the very highest level it is the rarest of the rare. With a score of 20, you are a fraction of the 99 percentile! Ever hear of “Diminishing Returns”? Well, the standard D&D rules have NOT. They have a strict linear “every 2 points gives you either a +1 or -1 mod to your bonuses.
Okay smarty pants. How do I get an “Average 5” score on an attribute then? At this point I have to say that the DM should pick a method that they think is best for the campaign they want to run, or perhaps devise a method of their own.
Method A: “I love rolling dice!” This is the simplest method. For each stat: Roll 4D4. subtract 4. If all 4 dice are 1's (resulting in a net 0), then re-roll. No score will be over a 12 before you add racial bonus or feats using this method. But realize with “average 5” a score of 11 or 12 confers a +3 modifier, and that's not too shabby for starting off a campaign 1 level. The average result is 6, not 5, but it works passably well. There's still a potential (though it is slim) to get a 1, 2 or 3 ability score. Multiple small dice makes the average a tight grouping.
Method B “Chaos! Let the gods decide”: Roll 1d10. Record the roll. Repeat this 8 times. Looking at the results drop the 2 worst rolls. Or drop the 2 best if you're a masochist. Take the remaining six scores and assign them each to an ability as you desire. No score would be above 10. But if you are lucky in your rolls, you should get abilities higher than the average common villager. This will leave a lot of room for improvement even with racial bonuses and feats. If the DM is feeling kind, he could just say “you can re-roll anything lower than 4”. Or they could be a big meanie and say you only get 6 rolls, and have to record each stat in the order that you rolled it.
Method C “Point Buy Build”: Assign any whole number to any of the 6 abilities as you desire so long no individual score is less than 1 or more than 20 AND the total sum of all ability scores is no more than 36. In this variant you could have an ability start at the peak of 20, but the rest of your ability scores will suffer. I actually would allow this if the player gave me a reason. E.g. the character is an old scribe who only very late in life realized his high intellect (20 INT) and penchant for reading has bestowed on him an aptitude for understanding and replicating wizard spells. But due to his age, poor social skills from being cloistered all his life, the rest of his ability scores are at or below average. He's frail, in questionable health, not the most agile, though he's book smart, he's not very wise for his age. (STR 1, CON 4, DEX 3, WIS 6, CHA 2)
Method D “(L)Awful Method”. This is the most beneficial method for character attributes for “heroic” ability levels. A standard array can be made by you, the DM. I recommend something rounded like 11, 6, 6, 5, 4, 4 (Bonus distribution: +3, +1, +1, 0, 0, 0). Or 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 3 (Bonus distribution: +2, +2, +1, +1, 0, -1). These both give a similar bonus spread of the “standard array” offered in 5e which nets a sum of +5 in total ability bonuses.
All of these methods with the exception of B, do not venture far off the results for standard array. And the median for each method is 36 total ability points! (though the probabilities of each create slightly different data sets or odds to get that median).
Feel free to respond and tell me how I am wrong because my math is bad. And how I am a heretic that should be burned at the stake for defiling the holy of holys.
P.S. And one last bit of interesting strength trivia. In the US Army to be awarded the Expert Infantryman Badge you must complete a 12 mile ruck-march (loaded) course over terrain in under 3 hours. With rifle and pack this can be roughly 70 lbs. of weight.
12 miles = 63,360 ft. 3 hours =1200 turns. Which works out to 35.2 feet per turn. A strength 5 character has a Carry Capacity of 50-75 lbs (heavily encumbered) so a dash of 40' so long as the terrain isn't difficult. So they at their best, a Strength 5 D&D character could qualify for the Expert Infantryman Badge, assuming of course they don't fail any ability checks that might cause them to slow down. Also, I'm not sure I would allow a dash with heavily encumbered so, U.S. infantry probably eek up a bit further in the scale. :)
Lastly here are some charts for you, because everyone loves charts!
Next week, “Dexterity: Are you as agile as a cat or does you life need to be more balanced?”
I think gravity is also non-standard in D&D. An average PC in the realms falls 500 ft. per round (6 seconds), from XGtE, which is ~83.3 ft/second. Let's assume this is terminal velocity, since XGtE doesn't provide for acceleration. Some estimates for a real human falling "in random positions" suggest a terminal velocity of 100-120mph, or ~150-170 ft/second. This will vary with wind resistance. In other words, these back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that gravity is about half as strong in the realms as in reality, assuming wind resistance is similar. Thus, your Str 20 character lifting 600lbs is lifting roughly twice as much mass as they would be able to under Earth surface gravity. That doesn't really resolve your issues, though, because lifting X lbs is equally difficult in any gravity field, but lifting Y kg is roughly half as difficult in the realms.
It does, however, explain how a level 10, Con 14 fighter (with an average of 75 hp (10d10+20)) falling a distance of 200 ft+ at terminal velocity (taking an average of 70 (20d6) damage), will stand up next turn and walk away, while an Earth human would invariably be a pancake.
Lol.
I feel that you really made the case for different encumberance calculations. Also, the standard system is rolling 4 d6's, then removing the lowest one resulting in something much more like your 4d4-4 idea. Also, with the "base of 5" idea, even the flimsiet wizard would be significantly stronger than the average human. Also, 20 is not the max possible, as powerful creatures can have a strength score of up to 30. Your idea would be good as a variant rule for campaigns where the characters are meant to be truly superhuman, a valid option.
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