In my campaigns, I have noticed that there are many more DEX-based characters than STR-based ones. In one group, for example, there are six characters, one of which is a wizard who literally never uses weapons for anything. Out of the other five, four (a rouge, a bard, a cleric, and a fighter) use DEX. This includes a life domain cleric and valor bard who wield finesse weapons, and an arcane archer who, obviously, primarily uses a longbow.

I've noticed that, out of the NPC villains and helpers I've created, most of them, including clerics, paladins, warlocks, and rangers, are DEX-based as well, with only one or two exceptions. What this has led me to wonder is, are DEX builds mechanically better at fighting?

It would kind of make sense to me if they were. Strength is mostly for melee weapons only, but DEX can be used for both melee and ranged attacks, as well as benefitting your initiative, AC (in some cases), 3 skills including the frequently used stealth skill, and even being a common saving throw ability. On the other hand, there are really only 4 finesse weapons that mechanically exist.

What I want to know is, is DEX just a flavor preference for my primarily Chaotic Good party and Lawful Evil villains, or is it actually mechanically better to build most characters around dexterity, including melee fighters?

I would say Dex is more broadly useful, but there is absolutely a place for Str-based characters in the game.

DEX is one of those stats in the system similar to CON that literally every character benefits from. Not only does it determine AC when wearing armor, DEX saves are also the most common kind of saving throw right after WIS. And even then WIS saving throws aren’t too common when compared to DEX saving throws. So you can have a character with low WIS and not be too concerned over it, but a character with either low DEX or CON always feels like more of a risk.

Dex is just generally more useful, as others said. You can still wield a 1-handed d8 weapon, and you get a common save, initiative, some skills, your AC is really only 1 off a heavy armor build. Str let’s you wear heavy armor, it’s good for shoving, and if you want a 2-handed weapon. But the save will almost never come up. And the 1 skill (athletics) is often replaceable by a dex skill (acrobatics).

Of course, if there’s something heavy that needs lifting, you’ll be glad to have it. But it’s kind of like, you really can use one person in the party with it, but you don’t need one. But outside of great weapon builds, str just isn’t doing much for you. 

Quote from Xalthu >>

Of course, if there’s something heavy that needs lifting, you’ll be glad to have it. But it’s kind of like, you really can use one person in the party with it, but you don’t need one. But outside of great weapon builds, str just isn’t doing much for you. 

Never underestimate the usefulness in having someone who can Lift Really Heavy Things, it's part of why Goliaths have become one of my favorite races to play :)

Since almost no one uses the weight system, and almost everyone uses acrobatics for a lot of things that should use atlethics, str doesn't give you anything that dex doesn't. At most 1 point in AC comparing the best medium armor and the best heavy armor.

Beyond that, Dex offers you the main save of the game and many more skills than Str. On the other hand, weapons that work only with str usually have a higher damage die than those that can be used with Dex. But that doesn't really matter that much either (except for the critics). Actually, the fixed modifier is much more important than the size of the die. Plus, with Dex you can stay behind with ranged weapons while your teammates eat the aggro.

In short: Dex offers many more advantages than Str. However, a good Str-based build can be just as effective as a good Dex-based build. Especially builds based on GWM and/or PAM feats. So in absolute terms the answer is yes, Dex is better than Str. But in relative terms, it depends on your build. Of course, we must bear in mind that in terms of optimization both are mutually exclusive.

Quote from Xalthu >>

Dex is just generally more useful, as others said. You can still wield a 1-handed d8 weapon, and you get a common save, initiative, some skills, your AC is really only 1 off a heavy armor build. Str let’s you wear heavy armor, it’s good for shoving, and if you want a 2-handed weapon. But the save will almost never come up. And the 1 skill (athletics) is often replaceable by a dex skill (acrobatics).

Of course, if there’s something heavy that needs lifting, you’ll be glad to have it. But it’s kind of like, you really can use one person in the party with it, but you don’t need one. But outside of great weapon builds, str just isn’t doing much for you. 

 This is all true except for the skill part.  Athletics is one of the most commonly-used skills in the game, whereas Acrobatics does almost nothing.  Which skills you choose to be proficient in will always depend on the rest of the build and the niche you're trying to fill in your party, but if you have to choose, Athletics proficiency will usually do far more for you than Acrobatics unless your DM house-rules in such a way that Acrobatics starts genuinely coming up.

It's not usually worth investing anything in Strength, though.  If you determine you do want to be good at Athletics, Skill Expert for expertise in it is usually a far, far wiser expenditure of resources.

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Quote from Xalthu >>

Dex is just generally more useful, as others said. You can still wield a 1-handed d8 weapon, and you get a common save, initiative, some skills, your AC is really only 1 off a heavy armor build. Str let’s you wear heavy armor, it’s good for shoving, and if you want a 2-handed weapon. But the save will almost never come up. And the 1 skill (athletics) is often replaceable by a dex skill (acrobatics).

Of course, if there’s something heavy that needs lifting, you’ll be glad to have it. But it’s kind of like, you really can use one person in the party with it, but you don’t need one. But outside of great weapon builds, str just isn’t doing much for you. 

 This is all true except for the skill part.  Athletics is one of the most commonly-used skills in the game, whereas Acrobatics does almost nothing.  Which skills you choose to be proficient in will always depend on the rest of the build and the niche you're trying to fill in your party, but if you have to choose, Athletics proficiency will usually do far more for you than Acrobatics unless your DM house-rules in such a way that Acrobatics starts genuinely coming up.

It's not usually worth investing anything in Strength, though.  If you determine you do want to be good at Athletics, Skill Expert for expertise in it is usually a far, far wiser expenditure of resources.

 Agree to disagree. I won’t dispute how commonly used it is at your table, but neither of us has enough of a sample group to know if it is or isn’t broadly commonly used. And it will be very campaign dependent.
Beyond that, I don’t find it to be house ruling when it comes up, it’s a judgement call. Is the character trying to muscle their way climbing up the wall or parkour run up the wall? In many if not most instances, the appropriate check can change based on how the player describes what the character is trying to do.

Honestly, each ability score is important and really what ability score is best for your character really depends on who you are playing and what class you are. To say one ability score is "better" or "more useful"  is rather subjective, and there certainly is no clear answer. Yes - dexterity saving throws are quite common and their are several commonely played dex-based classes such as rogue, monk, and ranger. However, almost all of the weapons in the PHB (page 149) rely on strength for both damage and the attack roll.

Several dex-based classes manage to work around this, and many of them do so quite succesfully. But for classes such as barbarian, fighter, and paladin, strength is Avery important stat.

Dual wielding with finnese weapons is one of the main way for fighters to become dex-based for fighters, and it's different from the other way with the difference being that it actually works. However, it consumes your bonus action, and when you're using an ability such as second wind or another special ability that requires a bonus action, you might have to forfeit your second attack. In addition, action surge gives you an extra action but not an extra bonus action, meaning that one you do it you won't get to make the second bonus action attack again.

Overall, strength is very important for several classes, such as barbarian, fighter, and paladin. Though there are ways to make some of these dex-based, as we have discussed, some of those ways don't work and each certainly has it's flaws. Since strength is such an important score to so many classes, it makes it a rather important abilty score in general. Dexterity also has it's uses, and is also an important stat for many classes. However, to say one ability score is better than another is similar to saying that one color is objectively superior to a different color. So much of this is opinion oriented, so that to choose which ability score is "better" is honestly close to impossible.

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Overall, strength is very important for several classes, such as barbarian, fighter, and paladin. Though there are ways to make some of these dex-based, as we have discussed, some of those ways don't work and each certainly has its flaws. 

By default, ranged weapons use Dexterity, not Strength, for attack and damage rolls. Considering your post, you seem to have missed that in the basic rules.

Fighters are created to be versatile. Some of the best archers in the game are fighters, and archers are extremely powerful - even brokenly overpowered against some types of monsters. Saying that Strength-based fighters are always superior to Dexterity fighters is a bold, untested statement. The longbow and heavy crossbow, both martial ranged weapons, are powerful options for ranged damage that can almost hold up to melee great weapons for sheer damage numbers, and are, as I said, broken against spellcasters and flying monsters.

Paladins, on the other hand, do tend to need strength. DEX-based paladins are possible to create (and I say this having created and run a DEX-based paladin villain as an NPC), but they are more restrictive and need to put up with some flaws that don't come up with STR-based ones. And of course, barbarians need to use STR for most of their features to work. In the end, though, fighters still can operate equally well with DEX and STR.

I played a dex-paladin and he kicked butt. If you go sword and board with a rapier, offensively you’re on par with any other 1-handed melee, and my AC in studded leather was still good and high. I think only really 1 point off if I wore plate. And with that dex, I went high in the initiative order, was always making my dex saves, and was pretty darn stealthy when it was needed.

My thought is if they really wanted to see str builds more, get rid of the rapier. That would push more melee builds into str. Though maybe not as avg damage between a d6 and d8 weapon is only 1 point. So you wouldn’t lose much as a dex melee using a short sword instead.

It might be your group' and your own taste to favour the style of Dex-based builds. Personally, I like STR builds a lot. Now, setting flavour aside, looking at things mechanically: 

1. I think you all underestimate heavy armour. Splint costs 200 GP whereas Half-Plate costs 750 GP, and they give out the same AC (assuming the stats are high enough), unless a whole feat is used to add that 1 extra AC point, which heavy armour can get by "simply" buying that 1,500 GP Plate armour. Still, much less expensive than an entire feat. Next best option for medium is Breastplate for 400 GP, still more expensive than Splint, or an option that will give disadvantage on Stealth, which some people mentioned is a frequently used skill. Of course, you also get that on heavy armour, but at least there you get more AC to compensate. Half-Plate has that too, by the way. Also, 1 extra AC is no joke in those numbers. 11 and 10 are almost identical, but the higher your AC goes, the more significant each point added is. 

2. Ranged builds are nice, but uselss without someone in melee to tank the hits while youcshoot your arrows, and like it or not, STR melee weapons are better than DEX melee weapons. Also, you can get a ranged build by using thrown weapons, thus using STR. The range is shorter, but in most campaigns, you don't really get to fight in an endless open field. In closed areas, 30 feet are usually more than enough. 

3. Initiative is nice and all, but unless one side can take out all or some of the other side, the only ones benefitting from it are those who buff/debuff/control, and those don't use weapons anyhow, usually. Also, for Barbarians, at higher levels they get advantage on that, and Champion Fighters get to add half their proficiency. So can bards. And there are many more ways to affect that.

4. Sleight of Hand is not commonly used, unless you're a Rogue who steals a lot (but then you're probably using Dex for other reasons) or in a campaign where hiding your weapons is important. Acrobatics is rarely used, or mistakingly used instead of Athletics. Stealth is nice and all, but it's not necessary in many campaigns. Plus, anyone can roll low and mess it up. Athletics, on the other hand, is common, and you can make it more common by Grappling/Shoving. Shield Master? Also, if your DM asks you to use Athletics for something, it's usually something you can just keep trying even if you fail, until you succeed. 

5. Strength saves might be less common, but their effects are often much more dangerous. Fail a Dex save and you take some damage. Fail a Str save and you take damage, and many times, get stuck/bound/grappled/something. Also, Barbarians get advantage on these saves too, and Shield Master allows for a fat bonus, if not complete damage nagation against such effects. You do have to make the first, though.

6. Every Finesse weapon can be used with Str, not every weapon can be used with Dex. Ranged weapons that are not thrown require Dex only, but there are less of them, and they deal less damage. And for those who mention Heavy Crossbow, it requires a feat for most martial builds, and at that point, a Hand Crossbow is better for most. Good for Rogues, though.

7. If you find yourself in the common "you have nithing but clothes on" scenario, Str is a lot more useful than Dex, for any martial class but Monks. I exclude casters of course, because they aren't bothered as much. 

And back to flavour... I'm sorry, but stabbing someone with a sad rapier will never be as satisfying as splitting them in half with a greataxe. For me, anyhow. You can think otherwise.

Quote from Xalthu >>

I played a dex-paladin and he kicked butt. If you go sword and board with a rapier, offensively you’re on par with any other 1-handed melee, and my AC in studded leather was still good and high. I think only really 1 point off if I wore plate. And with that dex, I went high in the initiative order, was always making my dex saves, and was pretty darn stealthy when it was needed.

My thought is if they really wanted to see str builds more, get rid of the rapier. That would push more melee builds into str. Though maybe not as avg damage between a d6 and d8 weapon is only 1 point. So you wouldn’t lose much as a dex melee using a short sword instead.

There are a lot of good str based builds that you can't do with dex. I don't think it's necessary to nerf the rapier.

In any case, what would be interesting is to expand the combat maneuvers based on str. There's a lot of room for it, and I don't understand why they haven't done it already.

@firecat5 I hate those nested quotes thing, so I'll just reply like this.

I don't know if dex is my group's thing. Don't get me wrong. I love str characters. Fighter in plate with a two-handed weapon is my default character. I'm simply saying my character was just as effective as a dex paladin, where I was the only tank, as I ever was running a fighter in plate armor. I was trying something out, and it worked very, very well. 

If you're a dex build, you're not even looking at medium armor, that's kind of a red herring as an argument. You're getting studded leather for 45 gp and calling it a day. No disadvantage on anything ever, heat metal doesn't bother you. And once you max out your dex score, you're only 1 point behind plate. Agreed, that mathematically, the 1 point is technically worth more as you get higher. But in practice, it didn't amount to much. There were very few times when my DM was rolling and hit exactly my AC (the only times that extra point would have mattered). And there are other ways to get boosts to initiative but having a high dex would supplement those. champion fighter, with a high dex will have a better initiative than one without. 

I wasn't even talking about ranged builds. (Though ranged combat happens, and you're much better off with a longbow that throwing a javelin. Especially after you get multiple attacks and can't draw multiple javelins.) However, dex melee was all I was talking about. I will acknowledge that 2-handed weapons can do more damage, especially if you take the right feats for it. Beyond that, I'm going to need some detail about how "str melee weapon are better than dex melee." Because, as I said above, once you have a rapier, you're not really any different than someone using a longsword, battleaxe or flail. Though, on the other side with those str weapons, you can't take defensive duelist, which can make up for that AC deficit (not very well, I admit, its not exactly a great feat, solid in T1, but falls off when enemies start to multi-attack. But it's not nothing, and str characters won't use it).

Initiative is much more than de-buffing. If you go first, you can choose where you go and force enemies to react to you, instead of the other way around. You choose the terms of the fight, can move to block choke points, can go around enemies to get to the back lines before they can form up their defenses. Going first isn't about damage, it's about positioning, and if you do it right, its huge and sets the tone for the fight. 

Everyone keeps saying acrobatics are rarely used, but I don't know where they are getting that. I think maybe some people don't use it, because they don't have it. It's just about describing what you are doing creatively, much of the time. And in cases where you can't, escaping a grapple or shove, you get to choose if you want to use athletics or acrobatics, so that seems a wash, you'll use whichever you're better at. If you're going to try an initiate a grapple, I'm not sure where your free hand is coming from. Unless you are just building a straight up grappling character, in that case, str is better hands down. And I don't agree with your assertion that you can "keep doing" something called for by acrobatics. If you have to make a roll, there are going to be consequences for failing it. And a high-dex character with shield master is going to be even better off than a str based one, since they'll be even more likely to make their save.

If you are stuck with nothing but clothes on and are dex based, you have a 15 ac, vs the str character with a 10 or 11. Not really sure you're much better off there. Yes, your punches are more likely to hit, but you have to survive to make the attacks, and with that AC you're getting hit all the time. Really, your best bet is probably to run away, in which case, it's a good thing your high dex gives you a high initiative roll.

Again, str builds can begreat, and are my favorite kinds of characters. But it's just not true that they are necessarily better than dex builds. There are a few things you can do with str that you can't do with dex, absolutely. But there are a lot more things you can do with dex that you can't do with str.

I have read all of your posts, and decided that using Dexterity is probably a flavor choice for me and my players. It looks like, from an optimization standpoint, STR and DEX-based characters perform about equally well, and in combat, both have different opportunities to shine. Nimbly fencing with a rapier (which is not at all sad, FireCat5) or shooting arrows looks just as cool as hitting things with a greataxe or maul, if for different reasons, and both are good at different stunts. All in all, you have shown me that both Strength and Dexterity have a place in D&D. Thank you all for your interesting (and very thorough, I must say) analyzations of every aspect of these two stats!

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Overall, strength is very important for several classes, such as barbarian, fighter, and paladin. Though there are ways to make some of these dex-based, as we have discussed, some of those ways don't work and each certainly has its flaws. 

By default, ranged weapons use Dexterity, not Strength, for attack and damage rolls. Considering your post, you seem to have missed that in the basic rules.

Fighters are created to be versatile. Some of the best archers in the game are fighters, and archers are extremely powerful - even brokenly overpowered against some types of monsters. Saying that Strength-based fighters are always superior to Dexterity fighters is a bold, untested statement. The longbow and heavy crossbow, both martial ranged weapons, are powerful options for ranged damage that can almost hold up to melee great weapons for sheer damage numbers, and are, as I said, broken against spellcasters and flying monsters.

Paladins, on the other hand, do tend to need strength. DEX-based paladins are possible to create (and I say this having created and run a DEX-based paladin villain as an NPC), but they are more restrictive and need to put up with some flaws that don't come up with STR-based ones. And of course, barbarians need to use STR for most of their features to work. In the end, though, fighters still can operate equally well with DEX and STR.

 Ok, forgot that rule and I have used that to edit my post (thank you for reminding me of that info btw).

Either way, my main point remains intact: strength is an important stat for many builds, and it is almost impossible to definitively determine that one ability score is better than another.

PS-Sorry for bad spelling and punctuation, I’m doing this on a phone.

Quote from Xalthu >>

 Agree to disagree. I won’t dispute how commonly used it is at your table, but neither of us has enough of a sample group to know if it is or isn’t broadly commonly used. And it will be very campaign dependent.
Beyond that, I don’t find it to be house ruling when it comes up, it’s a judgement call. Is the character trying to muscle their way climbing up the wall or parkour run up the wall? In many if not most instances, the appropriate check can change based on how the player describes what the character is trying to do.

By definition, if your DM doesn't house rule, it's Strength (Athletics) to climb.  There is a variant rule for letting you persuade your DM to make it Dexterity (Athletics) in your parkour example; whether we count variant rules as RAW or homebrew we didn't settle at the outset, so I'm not going to fuss about it.  However, it is explicitly against the rules to use Dexterity (Acrobatics) in your example.  That's the definition of house rule.  

The way I see it is dex based builds and strength based builds each have their place and neither is necessarily better than the other,  but non strength based builds nearly always want decent dex while can quite happily dump strength.

• The whole party might need to swim across a river (athletics check) but it is probably more cmmon that the whole party want to be quite (stealth check).
• Unless you wear heavy armor or are a tortle you want reasonable dex for AC
• As others have said dex saves are far more common and winning initiative can make a combat much easier.

The exception comes when variant encumberance rules are applied. Then anyone who wants ot wear medium armor must have decent strength t oavoid encumberance and the total party strength limits what equipment and loot can be carried.

While this isn't as visible in actual tabletop games, I know that when playing Solasta (CRPG 5e) playing a strength build feels really painful because all your ranged attack options are bad and in any remotely complex terrain you're frequently going to be more than your speed away from the things you want to hit.

@Xalthu,

I was referring to the author of this thread when I said it might be his group's preference, actually, because that's what he asked. And for the record, I always found Dex-based Barbarians really cool too, everyone can play more than just one thing.

Light armour is an investment too since you're giving up on feats. If you rolled for stats and got high, maybe it's worth it, but most people won't use both their first two ASI to max their primary stat. I did it with one character I enjoy playing, but it's not so common. Not to mention, for builds that rely on other ability scores too (Barbarians and Monks excluded, but I was thinking more about Clerics, Druids, Bards and the like), they'd most likely be using that ASI to boost their other stat. And I know we've been mostly referring to martial characters in this thread, but the author of this post did mention a Valour Bard, and a Cleric.

I meant on the damaging side of things, of course. That said, now that I think of it, most (I think all but the Whip, with a d4 for damage) of the Reach weapons are STR weapons, so many builds will benefit from that. The same goes for PAM builds, even though I personally don't really like that feat. There are some really nasty builds with reach, so don't underestimate it. Also, Defensive Duelist adds your proficiency bonus to your AC, so if you have a DEX of 13 or higher, you're good. Most people wouldn't completely dump Dex even on STR builds (though personally, I always wanted to try that on a Barbarian), so getting to just 13 isn't out of the question.

Perhaps, I'm not saying it's completely useless, but it's not as crucial as some people make of it, for some characters. I mean, sure, if your entire party acts last, that's bad. But if the others play first and the Paladin acts last, it's usually fine. It also really changes depending on the number of enemies, the way they fight, the goal of this specific combat encounter... And yes, getting Bless or other buffs before you attack is very important. Also, though homebrew rules are usually out of the question in such discussions, many people use variant rules to make initiative and combat flow better, so that's also something to keep in mind.

There's this meme I saw recently, which summarises what I meant in a rather simple way. No matter how you describe it, you can't move that rock with Acrobatics (and don't tell me the boulder is too heavy to be moved with Athletics either, that's not the point). Athletics comes more often simply because it does. "Your Strength (Athletics) check covers difficult situations you encounter while climbing, jumping, or swimming. Examples include the following activities:" These are really common situations for a DND party. Meanwhile, "Your Dexterity (Acrobatics) check covers your attempt to stay on your feet in a tricky situation, such as when you're trying to run across a sheet of ice, balance on a tightrope, or stay upright on a rocking ship's deck. The GM might also call for a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to see if you can perform acrobatic stunts, including dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips." This happens, but less often. It'll be very useful in a seafaring campaign but will see nearly no use in many others. What I mean with "keep doing" is that, taking from the examples above, if you fall from a tightrope, you fall, and usually, that's it. If you try to climb a wall and fail, your DM will most likely not describe you climbing all the 30' high wall just to fall at the last second and take 3d6 damage. Most likely, you climbed a foot or two and slipped back down.
Grappling requires a free hand, which most people won't always have, true. Shoving does not, however, and is very useful for melee builds, especially GWM and the like. Shield Master works better with STR because it helps cover where they're weak, and works with Athletics. A Rogue or Monk with evasion and a fat bonus to Dex saves will find little interest in this feat. 

Perhaps, but your fists deal damage, too, while most Dex builds dump Str for 0 damage fists. So while you will survive for a shorter time, you will have a chance of doing something with the short time you get. Of course, running away is preferable if possible, so maybe you're right.
I'm not saying STR builds are necessarily better, I was just saying they're not as bad as all the other comments were making them. And I disagree, the only thing you can't do with Str is ranged weapons, and even that can be somewhat bypassed. Everything else works with Str, technically even Rogues and Monks (even if they're better off with Dex).