Hi, i wanted to give strength a boost lately, did so a year ago for a campaign and it was a blast.
that said, i started wondering why are people thinking strength and intelligence are bad stats that should be buffed ?!! heres a few reasons why people say they suck... 1) not many skills use it. only 1 skill uses it. 2) dexterity does the same thing but better. (false, explaining why later) 3) dexterity allows multiple attacks doing the same damage if not more then 2-handed swords (false, explaining why later)
those are the three main reasons as to why people think strength sucks badly... now let's see the rules about strength and what it actually does... 1) encumberment, carrying capacity. the problem with this one is that nobody uses it, thus it literally gives the finger to the strength stats main purpose. that is to see how fit you are. as an exemple... as a DM you give a hoard to your players. they all take it... that hoard had a grand total of 5000 coins split between gold, silver and copper. now you hand wave this and now the players are used to having that much coins with them. far better, they just dont count so they dont care about how much they have on them. so in the end you even destroy the coin economy by just not having players change from copper to silver, silver to gold and gold to platinum, thus lowering the number of coins on you and thus enabling you to hold far more. that's literally two systems you just got rid of.
Exemple of strength with coins... 5000 coins = 100 pounds ! that's heavier then a full plate !!! how do we get to that number, per the rules... every 50 coins weights 1 pound. notice how they say coins, not silver, gold or platinum. because the coin value as no bearing on its weight. they all weight the same. thus if we would take all 5000 gold coins and switch them to platinum... we'd get 500 total and thus only have a weight of 10 pounds. barely the weight of a big book.
it already becomes evident why strength is the better. as a wizard with 8 strength cannot carry nearly as much full plates or coins as a paladin with 18 strength. while you are not using these two systems, and you should really... you shouldn'T start counting every nook and crannies either. the systems are way too much math heavy. that said, you can still tell your players as they load up that hoard that they are now starting to be encumbered. just letting them know, without counting, that the more they hold the more time it will take them to get to their destinations. its also easy to tell players that their bags aren't on them when they fight. after all.. a player fighting while being burdened by a huge bag of coins is really not ideal. you could simply give them disadvantages or give them nerfs to their AC because of dexterity problems. all in all its up to the DM but i highly encourage people in trying to bring back a sense of realism into their encumberment and coin economy. you'll end up with much less players trying to loot every nook and crannies they find and keeping all 15 full plates off those orcs just to sell and become richer.
2) Jumping distances ! (Special Type of Movement) this is also a very usefull concept that most DMs do not even check the rules for... most people just ask an athletic check and say you jump that 15 foot crevisse... but this is strange for a wizard with 8 strength to do. that is not how the rules explain the thing. in fact athletic checks aren't even needed to determine jump capabilities. they do gives you the option of a check to see if they can go further then needed. but in reality the rule is quite simple...
high jump distance is 3 + your strength modifier, minimum of 0 feet. that means a wizard with 8 strength can only jump 2 foot high. while a fighter with 18 strenght can jump 7 foot high. thats a huge difference. as the fighter can reach higher grounds way easier. including jumping to a roof 10 feet high. because he can just jump and then extend his arm and grab the ledge and pulls himself up. this allows a fighter not even 1 athletic checks to climb. he just reaches it. while the wizard would need a check to see if he even reaches the roof.
the same is true for long jumping... you can long jump with ease your actual strength score in distances. imagine this... the wizard can long jump 8 feet. almost a record by itself in the olympics... but that fighter... without a sweat can long jump 18 feet !!! a 15 feet gap, no sweat just jump over it. no checks required. this is per the rules !!!
puts all this together and this is nothing dexterity can do. after all, everyone who says parjour can do it too, have no idea how much strength is needed to make those jumps and to make those ledge grabs. parkour people train not only dexterity, but strength in equal manners. so no... running up a vertical wall is an impossible task to do for dexterity alone... it requires strength. unless you are a high level monk who can just run up a vertical wall of 50 feet height...
all of this is why strength is much better then you think... but these only explains the first part of the problems... what about the part where people say dexterity does it much better ? what about the part where they say its only a single skill ? heres the thing about those two parts... they are completely false !!! they are both based off the facts of what you see and what most people play... not what most people should be playing. let me explain those in more details below...
3) the skills dexterity is better at... it is true that dexterity uses up 3 skills... but if you look at the rules mechanics of skills... a DM can easily interchange those skills for something else if they wish to. basically saying the skills aren't set in stones for ability scores... what you see there is not the rules... it is what the game "suggests" its hard to see atheletics be a dexterity check, or be a wisdom check... but imagine this instead... that wizard knows techniques to climb a wall. intelligence could be used to find a clever way to climb the wall. wisdom could be used to avoid those slippery surfaces you see on the wall, thus giving you a better idea of where to have it easier. i could see players do this ! it would be logical ! the same is true for sleight of hands... i could easily switch it for intelligence instead. after all you dont just need dexterity to pull those off, you need to know the actual tricks too. so knowing that skills aren't limited to their respective ability score, by the rules itself !!! makes this entire point a moot one. it is lost to the fact that any skills can be replaced by anything else you preffer.
4) dexterity offers you so much more... -- 3 skills (see above), Initiative, AC, Best Saves in the game, Ranged attacks damage and Finesse weapons. this is all true... but let's see what strength offers... -- 1 skill (See above), melee weapon damage and thats it...
see where the problem lies in that statement ? the players and DMs who say these things aren'T even counting everything the strength score actually does... like jumping and encumberment. how often do you get a dex fighter to say "i can't budge the door guys, i have no strength !" or the fabled, "yeah you had to ask for my lowest stat !" its ridiculous how often i get that as a DM. Its the game, people seem to handwave strength for the sake of their own arguments. but in reality if we add it all... we get something much more akin to what dexterity can do... because without strength there is no door knocking, there is no mountain climbing. mountain climbing with dexterity alone is laughable at best. any people who tryed rock climbing can attest to that
5) dexterity weapons deals more damage because they grant more attacks... this is false by omission... people do the math and say... you are better off with two shorsword and 2 attacks because blah blah... they are right that two shortsword are 2d6+dexterity modifier... while a great sword is 2d6+strength modifier... but they are wrong it is not the same thing at all ! the problem lies in the action economy. what makes a rogue strong ? its action economy. sneak attack helps but losing its prcious bonus action just to do sneak damage is not the primary focus. they need that cunning action to hide ! which allows them to avoid damage. and by extension gives themselves high ground by gaining advantage on next attack. which grants them sneak attack. a dex fighter, definitely worth it... loses that defense to gain that one more attack. we're talking forgetting action economy to just deal damage here. you can't heal yourself, you can't drink a potion, you can't do anything else, then make an attack with that bonus action. so this is why it seems worth it if you do only maths... the math says its better for damage... but d&d isn't just damage dealing ! d&d is more and foremost an action economy and to deal damage, you lose that economy.
6) conclusion of my observations... I think people who claims strength to be nothing in this version... just want to do more damage and only focuses on that part. thing is... strength does a lot more and its up to the DM to make use of it, not the players. if you ask the players they will always take their better stats to make any checks. or make any attacks. its up to the DM to enable that balance and say... "no, you can't vertical wall run the well you just fell into with acrobatics" all arguments are easy to fall into if you look just at damage and handwave other systems like jumping and encumberment... but when you look at everything and then ask players... make an athletic check for me ! and they answer... "it had to be my lowest stat !" you know they also see the need for strength !
i'm ending this discussion with my own homebrew on how to fix strength... i dont need more then just this... - make strength damage, be twice the modifier, instead of once ! exemple... fighter with 16 strength shortsword would be 1d6+6 instead of 1d6+3. it sees not much, but at higher levels it really shows and at lower levels it even more shows. thats what 3E was doing to make strength more usable. and this is what i do too... players also have to be aware that monsters also do that. thus dragons with 30 strength would do +20 on any attacks. at high levels thats a huge pain when they can deal 4 attacks like that. i tryed this in my last campaign and i really intend on using it again. players didn't really abuse it, monsters didn't either. small fix, made strength much better for fighters / barbarians and paladins !
but if you ask me... strength does feel underpowered... but its just a feeling ! strength is a lot of things, even in 5E !
DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
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Leaving out encumberance to the end It is very useful to have someone in the party who is strong but generally speaking you only need one. It is the same with intelligence. The wizard makes the arcana checks the barbarian liftsthe heavy rocks and everyone else dumps int and str.
Spellcasters will gain far more from dex (initiave, AC etc) then from strength. Yes there might be the odd occasion when the wizard needs to jump or make an athletics check but stealth rolls will be far more common. Some clerics get heavy armor proficiency so can get AC from strength making it viable for then to put strength above dex.
Rogues and Monks obvious need to focus on Dex over strength
Fighters, Barbarians and Paladins can either go:
Sword and board: Dex based usually results in slightly lower AC but this is made u pfor with initiative and the fact that dex saves ar efar more common than strength saves
Two Handed: Only really an option for strength based, more damae thas S&B at the cost of lower AC.
Two Weapon: This depends on whether you have a use for your bonus action, but I think is generally a poor choice for most builds.
Regarding jumping spell casters often have other options such as misty step. Otherwise if one person can jump accross / up they can uaually get the rest of the party over. For example by using a rope.
If you think strength is much better than everyone thinks why do you need to "fix" it? All your fix will do is make dex based fighters, and paladins unviable, it will also make rogues and monks weaker compared to them (and monks are already one of the weaker classes. spellcasters will still take dex as therir second or third stat and dump strength because the weapon damage means nothing to them.
.Encumberance
The reason encumberance is usually ignores is the rules actually say "most characters don't need to worry about it", while a few players anjoy micro managing everything they carry most don't. The rule allows a DM to have something to go back on if a PC is trying ot carry far too much for example taking all the armor off enemies in order to sell without the need ot constantly add up the weight of everything in your possession.
In a similar vain most players just think the DM is being a pain if they find 10 gp 409sp and 4329 cp
If you use variant encumberance then I admit strength becomes the God stat. An explores pack weights 59 lb add some leather armor and a weapon or two and you will need 15 or 16 strength not to be encumbered. A fighter wearing chain mail and a shield and carrying an explorers pack would need strength will be encumbered unless their strength somehow gets to about 25. Sure you can just throw away most of the items in the pack and then debate with your DM whether you can eat rations without a mess kit. The party's objective then becomes ot find a bag of holding or portable hole so they can actually get by without being encumbered
Fair Points... let me debunk a few of the things you just said though... because i feel like your experience or DMs are simply hand waving too much for sake of just being lazy.
[/quote] Leaving out encumberance to the end It is very useful to have someone in the party who is strong but generally speaking you only need one. It is the same with intelligence. The wizard makes the arcana checks the barbarian liftsthe heavy rocks and everyone else dumps int and str. [/quote] while this might be true for most group composition... group composition is rarely a thing as people do not want to be dedicated healers or dedicated tanks or dedicated basher or damage dealers... you often get a mix of all of them at once including some people who ends up taking the same race or class as others. not because they thought of others, but because they wanted to play that one class and race.
considering the need for a single intelligence caster is lack luster, for in the end, the goal is to have fun playing and two or more members wants casters they will play them. wizard are strong, artificers too. it would be normal to have two of them in the group. just because people wanted to play them. but i will agree that if your group is making a group composition and everyone agrees to play whatever composition part they should be playing then yes, its as you say... but even in adventurers league which is the most strategically composed groups, the group composition barely ever gets to that point. people just play what they want.
as for intelligence meaning nothing... i fear your DM or your experience with players are just being handwaved. it happens very often that a player will ask you for information their character may have forgotten or they have forgotten. that is memory and memory is intelligence. so its not far fetched to require intelligence checks for those. that's why there are 5 intelligence checks for memory stuff. like history, arcana, medical stuff or religion or nature. those checks happens more often then you think because players ask for them often. them dumping the stat means they dont care about whatever lore you are gonna drop them. because they are never gonna ask you about it. at that point one could ask those players... why are you even there then ?
the same is true for the rangers which everyone seems to hate and say he's useless... mainly becaus ehe has no combat ability. everything is role play wise. magical items have the same problem, if its not directly boosting the stats of my character or have a clearly usefull signification then the item is considered useless by players. the same is true for intellect and strength... people just look at combat and say, its useless ! because it doesn't give them anything. again this is bad DM behavior and bad player behavior... because its taking the game as a game and not as a role playing game. which primary purpose is to have role play. but somehow everyone only look at combat options as if D&D was only combat !
Spellcasters will gain far more from dex (initiave, AC etc) then from strength. Yes there might be the odd occasion when the wizard needs to jump or make an athletics check but stealth rolls will be far more common. Some clerics get heavy armor proficiency so can get AC from strength making it viable for then to put strength above dex.
it really depends on your games, i have 3 campaigns under my belt in the last 7 years. of all the 15 people i played with stealth was barely a thing ever. one would stealth the others would wait. not stealth. then once they get bored they just bash the door in. or the wizard just firebolt the doors out of existence. in 7 years, about 15 people in 3 groups... stealth was rarely a thing. even when i did stealth mission. so that point is really dependant on the players themselves. not to the game itself., thus the point of it seems loss if not just obviously an excuse for saying dex is better.
Rogues and Monks obvious need to focus on Dex over strength
rogues do not need a focus on dex. they actually have next to nothing except stealth that requires them to be used. even thieves tools can use intellect instead of dex. i would also argue that thieves tools are not dexterity based. you need to know your stuff. so it again comes down to what you consider as rules. but skill checks is the only reason why rogues go dex. a rogue who would want to use intelligence instead of dex for sleight of hand or thieves tool. i would let them do it. it makes sense. monks do not have heavy dex based stuff... thats you only trying to maximise the AC thus why you go full dex and wisdom. but because 1 ability tells you to do that, it doesn't mean you absolutely need to be maxing those stats. in fact monks main stats are both Strength and Dexterity if you look at their saves ! because as i mentionned above... dexterity isn't all encompassing... monks are also ripped. they are trained physically. again the only reason why people max out wisdom and dex is because of a single ability and them trying to maximise that ability. i have no problem with maximising i do it too... but no dexterity is not a must for those class either. both those classes would do still very well without dexterity.
Fighters, Barbarians and Paladins can either go:
Sword and board: Dex based usually results in slightly lower AC but this is made u pfor with initiative and the fact that dex saves ar efar more common than strength saves
Two Handed: Only really an option for strength based, more damae thas S&B at the cost of lower AC.
Two Weapon: This depends on whether you have a use for your bonus action, but I think is generally a poor choice for most builds.
initiative isn't making up for AC at all. initiative is only good during the first round of combat. and only if you try to do one thing. i have a player who always have alert and always roll above 10 on initiatives. he's always making sure to be first in combat. it barely ever means anything. really being the first to hit isn't meaning anything. doesn't really change the opponents play either. so one would have to wonder why initiative would be making up for loss of AC ? AC is much better if you are the sword and board guy !
dex saves being the most prevalent in spells... totally false, i read all spells and counted... there are as much strength, intelligence or wisdom saves as there are dex saves asked... reality is, of all 350 spells that exists, players only ever use only like 15. because they are the wow spells. and it happens that those spells requires dex saves. again, thats a bad thing if your DM only ever requires dex saves. i often require intelligence saves, often requires charisma saves by spells and monsters alike. i even often use constitution saves. strength saves happens often too when certain abilties are used or certain spells like gust of winds. pushing players and grapples also uses athletics. sure the player can use acrobatics. but thats not a dex save now is it ? overall, there are many opportunities to use other stuff then just dex saves. i believe its the DM and Players choice to always stay on dex saves.
two-handed sword a poor build ? my strength wizard would like to have a conversation with you... he can hit much more then he ever could with a one handed sword. those paladins are also much better with a two handed sword. in fact the only class that isn't better with two handed is barbarian. that said, barbarian are built for crits and great axes are the best for crits for them. and everyone of those groups... if you have the fighting style for two weapon fighting by just addinga single fighter level... definitely becomes much better then your sword and board in damage.
if anything on the internet on many forums who have done the number crunching, they will all tell you that barbarian and paladins are better off using two handed weapons. greatsword for paladin and great axe for barbarian. really only the fighter is better with dexterity because he lacks abilities unlike the barb and paladins who both gains abilities who requires more dice to be thrown.
Regarding jumping spell casters often have other options such as misty step. Otherwise if one person can jump accross / up they can uaually get the rest of the party over. For example by using a rope.
spell casters rarely want to lose a spell slot for misty step, let alone a second level spell slot. this only becomes relevant at higher level when they start thinking level 1 and 2 spell are useless and thus can spend them. otherwise as a DM you did your job, you made them waste a spell slot. as for the jumping and rope thing... you still requires a lot of saves or checks even if the fighter jumps that chasm and attach a rope. or just want to haul you over. have you ever tryed to just traverse a chasm with a rope. just pulling that rpe to the other side is an endeavor. then its not over... traversing requires either your strength by crawling that rope. strength to hold onto the wheel like thing to traverse. and if you are thinking... just attach yourself and let the fighter reel you in... you still need to not get hurt by hitting the chasm wall when you're gonna fall. again lots of things to do for a good dm who wants it to be a challenge. so again... i think its bad dm handwaving stuff for sake of hand waving.
If you think strength is much better than everyone thinks why do you need to "fix" it? All your fix will do is make dex based fighters, and paladins unviable, it will also make rogues and monks weaker compared to them (and monks are already one of the weaker classes. spellcasters will still take dex as therir second or third stat and dump strength because the weapon damage means nothing to them.
i actually don't ! the reason i did in the first place was that my players all told me the same thing... dexterity gives me more and strength doesn't give me more damage. the only reason i did try it in one campaign... was because my players requires me to find a way to make those stats better. in that campaign i had a sole paladin who really liked it. 3 rogues who simply didn't care because of uncanny dodge and sneak attack which is always why people play rogues. rogues dont care, they would hti with a dagger and a d4. what they want is not the weapon, its the sneak attack. monks aren't weak a class... anyone can tell you they break game if used well... its not their damage that is the problem, its the versatility of their combat prowess. they control the board with stunning strikes and open hand stuff. wizard do care for their AC, thats the only reason they go Dexterity as their first or second stats. i mae wizard a lot, so was 2 of the players in the first campaign... we all agree the only reason we want dexterity is AC, the rest is just bonus. thats also why we also go CON, because we need life too.
.Encumberance
The reason encumberance is usually ignores is the rules actually say "most characters don't need to worry about it", while a few players anjoy micro managing everything they carry most don't. The rule allows a DM to have something to go back on if a PC is trying ot carry far too much for example taking all the armor off enemies in order to sell without the need ot constantly add up the weight of everything in your possession.
people ignore encumberance not because of a rule... they ignore it because its hard to maintain when you are not using computer to generate your characters. encumberance is much much much better now because we have automation. something we didn't have 10 years ago. but again, thats just a lot of maths coming at you fast and thats why people hates it. again i didn't suggest you use micro management. i don't use it... but i suggested that you start still looking at what your players are carrying... sorry but a player who tells me i carry 10 full plates on me... i will encumber them on the spot. i'm not checking much. a wizard who keeps 3 bags of holding, because those are not infinite space. which is another problem with lazy DMs who just give players that because they are too lazy to deal with encumberence. and a big chest full of full plates and that wizard is supposedly ok just because you dont care... thats not my style... and i encourage people to start putting a bit more realism into their games... you'd be surprised how much more immersive the game is when players have to make choices about their treasures.
In a similar vain most players just think the DM is being a pain if they find 10 gp 409sp and 4329 cp
my players like it, a lot... of 15 people in 3 campaigns right now... only 2 wanted to convert everything to gold to not have that hassle... i asked why ? my world use it all so yeah. the other players explained this to them and they were fine. honestly i have never found anyone who disliked the fact that treasures weren't just gold everywhere. on the contrary it makes much more sense for it to be various types of coins. i go even further by having different coins for different countries in my world. and again my players don't care... they think its more immersive. i have yet to find players who hates that... i mean i've been DMing for 30 years. so i think you are generalising on your own emotions or those with whom you play. to each their own if they think that. but most people do not care.
If you use variant encumberance then I admit strength becomes the God stat. An explores pack weights 59 lb add some leather armor and a weapon or two and you will need 15 or 16 strength not to be encumbered. A fighter wearing chain mail and a shield and carrying an explorers pack would need strength will be encumbered unless their strength somehow gets to about 25. Sure you can just throw away most of the items in the pack and then debate with your DM whether you can eat rations without a mess kit. The party's objective then becomes ot find a bag of holding or portable hole so they can actually get by without being encumbered
i will say this point making me wonder, i'll have to go check that one again... the only encumberance rule i follow is that i dont check coins weight. because i dont like my players to see a treasure hoard and not be able to keep it with them. but i do check for everything else. which is what encumberance is for. you don't need to enforce it for every single items.. i dont care how many weight a parchment is , i don't care for that once bottle weight... but i will care for those full plates, i will care for that giant boulder you think should fit in your bag of holding. i will mind when they try to displace their friend who got petrifyed and have his weight multiplyed by 8. which now forces players to make group checks to move the statue.
there is a missconception about portable holes and bag of holdings. a missconception driven by the bad DMs back then who literally didn't want to check for encumberance... bag of holding and portable holes have a maximum carrying capacity. something nobody ever check, they see the bag of holding as an infinite space. same for the portable hole. all of the items magical or not designed for transportation have a maximum capacity. it has both a weight capacity and a space capacity... exemple... say the full plates go onto a bag of holding... sorry but that bag of holding wont hold 15 of them... its gonna be full after the 3rd one and thats me being generous. it should be full after the first one. but somehow DMs use them as if they were infinite space. thats not in rules. thats homebrew !
overall i think the reason people go for those problems, is mainly because story wise they are problematic. story wise everything can be solved by magic and thats why people say casters are much better. and since casters are much better then its automatically because strength sucks because its a melee stats. story wise, its not combat... combat is not story. its combat. its its own story. somehow though, people want more story out of D&D... but somehow all they ever think about is to use that axe or spell on that wall instead of talking to NPCs or learning stuff... thats not counting new players who only want loot loot loot because video games syndrome.
overall... Strength is stronger stat then you think. but i will agree that many DMs forgo a lot of rulings for sake of being lazy and making the game much easier for themselves.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Pretty much everything you said there was either false or completely incorrect. Not everyone hates Rangers and they absolutely do have combat functionality. Especially since Tasha’s, Rangers have massively increased in power to the point that in one game I play my ranger is out damaging the fighter in the party comfortably in melee and for ranged attacks the fighter doesn’t come close. You comments suggest you haven’t played a properly built ranger.
Having a higher dex than strength has no bearing whatsoever on how many attacks you can make as you stated in point 3 of your op. Rogues and monks absolutely benefit from higher dex for more than just their stealth skill. It boosts Attack and damage, initiative, ac, stealth, acrobatics, sleight of hand, lock picking, dex saves.incoming damage via their evasion feature, and so on. Saying that there is no point in boosting dex tells me you have no clue how to build or play either of those classes.
And your comment of initiative only mattering in the first round of combat is patently absurd. A higher initiative can make the difference between an easy fight and a tpk. To deny its importance is crazy and tells me you have no clue about how combat works.
In fact I don’t understand where you are getting any of your ideas from at all, how can you say that most groups dislike using different coin types? Have you played in ‘most groups’? You’ve never played in any of mine and I’ve been playing over 30 years. You have mo idea how my groups play. You just seem to be making sweeping generalisations with absolutely nothing to back them up.
Carrying Capacity (assuming you're using point buy and don't have access to buffs that will take you past 20, this is 120-300 pounds)
Jump Distance (assuming you're using point buy and don't have access to buffs that will take you past 20, the breakpoints for this are 10, 15, 20 for long jump and 14 for high jump)
Melee Weapon accuracy and damage
Qualifying to ignore the speed penalty for heavy armor (breakpoints are 13 and 15)
Athletics Checks (including the DC 10 Athletics check to jump over a hurdle 1/4 the height of your long jump's distance)
Raw Strength checks
3) the skills dexterity is better at... 4) dexterity offers you so much more... -- 3 skills (see above), Initiative, AC, Best Saves in the game, Ranged attacks damage and Finesse weapons. this is all true...
Dexterity gives you:
Ranged/Finesse/Monk weapon accuracy and damage
Better AC in no, light, or medium armor
Stealth checks
Acrobatics checks (including for passing the DC 10 Acrobatics check to land a jump in difficult terrain)
Sleight of Hand checks that aren't tying knots
Thieves' Tools checks
Raw Dexterity checks, including Initiative
5) dexterity weapons deals more damage because they grant more attacks...
That's just not true, and I'm skeptical a substantial number of people are making this claim. Two-weapon fighting is broadly recognized by pretty much everyone as sucking in 5E. Dexterity weapons are only superior to Strength weapons, in general, in terms of their range. Outside of that, Dexterity is considered better than Strength due to the other things the two attributes do, although certain specific feats absolutely matter, like how we have Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master but no other -5/+10 feats.
Even with two-weapon fighting, hand axes exist (the only benefit short swords and scimitars have over hand axes is being finesse) and so do longswords if you pick up the Dual Wielder feat. There's just no damage benefit to Dexterity and never has been.
6) conclusion of my observations... I think people who claims strength to be nothing in this version... just want to do more damage and only focuses on that part.
Strength weapons do more damage because you can only do 2d6 damage baseline with a Strength weapon, and Strength is better than Intelligence for almost all possible builds. However, it's pretty significant that range on your weapon is usually better than superior mobility, due to most people not wanting to get too far from the rest of the party.
i'm ending this discussion with my own homebrew on how to fix strength... i dont need more then just this... - make strength damage, be twice the modifier, instead of once !
Wildly overpowered. Here are some less overpowered suggestions for making Strength better:
Let OAs happen when someone leaves any threatened square, not only when someone goes from a threatened square to a non-threatened one. This makes reach weapons better and makes all melee weapons better. Note that one of the weapons buffed by this is whips, but the overall effect is that glaives and greatswords skyrocket in utility.
Let all thrown weapons be drawn as part of the attack in the same way ammunition is. This will primarily benefit javelins, although it will also benefit darts and nets.
Change Barbarians so their benefits that only work on Strength melee weapons instead work on Strength weapons.
Let all ranged thrown weapons, slings, shortbows, and longbows use strength (in other words, give all of them Finesse). You can do this for blowguns, too, but blowguns are so bad this won't matter.
In terms of making Dexterity worse, I am a big fan of using alternative ability scores for Initiative: you can simply pick Intelligence (because Intelligence is the worst stat in the game and needs love) and/or Wisdom (because Initiative being based on the same ability score as Perception has always been the only ruling that actually makes consistent sense) and let the roller choose from Dexterity and the 1 or 2 mental scores you picked just like they do for escaping a grapple. That way Dexterity loses some of its luster compared to other ability scores, but only because you buffed those two mental scores, not because you nerfed anything.
I think to some extent "which stat is best" is an outdated concept for this edition of D&D, since WOTC has shown themselves to be very willing to bend the rules for what stats can do to accomodate different character builds. Intelligence doesn't do much on its own, but if WOTC wants a character to care about it, they give them Int to attack and damage or spell mechanics, or ac, or initiative, or anything.
The broader problem is that as a result of this, 5e characters are generally discouraged from going outside their wheelhouse. If you aren't a "strength character" or "intelligence character" or "charisma character", these stats have very limited returns for you which can make it feel discouraging to try to play a character who wants to care about those stats for non-mechanical reasons. Building a wizard who's kind of strong or a fighter who's kind of smart is, to some extent, building a character who has fewer attributes than their counterparts. You can try to lean into the concept, but it can be difficult to make work well.
The other problem is that WOTC was a little bit inconsistent here, because while most stats are driver stats, Dexterity provides an incredible amount of passive benefits while still being a good driving stat too. Con is similarly problematic because it doesn't enable anything and is mostly just a sort of survivability tax (insofar as that the more you want to care about other stats, the less healthy you'll be).
Additionally, your Strength Wizard shouldn't care if he is using a 2-hander or a 1-hander as they will both have the same to-hit bonus (outside of GWM feat or a fighting style, but those are character choices on weapon type, not tied to Str). I will disagree with Jegpeg that a Dex base Barbarian is a decent choice as the rage bonus relies on Str based attacks.
All that said, Str is good for 2-handed weapon builds and most Sword and Board builds. However, most all of those builds are going to want at least a decent Dex score too.
Sorry I wasn't clear, while a barbarian being sword and board is an option I agree that the dex option only really works for fighters and paladins (though I think it is thematically odd for paladins).
While Strength based builds wearing heavy would like high dex it is often best dumped due to other priorities. For example a Paladin needs high strength, charisma and con. Wisdom is a very useful stat generally (as a face insight is useful, perception is a very important skill and wis saves are common and usually cause more problems than a failed dex save), when not using dex for AC it is debatable whether dex or wis is the more important stat. Therefore a aladin will have dex as their 4th or 5th most important stant and with the top 3 being very important using pont buy they could easily decide to go 15/15/15/8/8/8.
While Strength based builds wearing heavy would like high dex it is often best dumped due to other priorities. For example a Paladin needs high strength, charisma and con. Wisdom is a very useful stat generally (as a face insight is useful, perception is a very important skill and wis saves are common and usually cause more problems than a failed dex save), when not using dex for AC it is debatable whether dex or wis is the more important stat. Therefore a aladin will have dex as their 4th or 5th most important stant and with the top 3 being very important using pont buy they could easily decide to go 15/15/15/8/8/8.
It's remarkably easy as a Fighter or Paladin (and hence even easier for a Heavy Armor Cleric) to rely on Dex and just accept the paltry -10' movement penalty in your heavy armor.
Fighters, and especially Paladins, are already severely limited by their speed. Cutting their speed by a third is a HUGE increase in this limit, so that they can rarely even get to the fight before others finish it. Unless you know there won't be very many dungeons or indoor battles, making mounted combat a consistent option, that could very well ruin a character.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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Instead of trying to wear plate in a character who's dumping strength, why not just wear medium armor? You can always pick up Medium Armor Mastery and have the same max AC, plus no longer having disadvantage on Stealth rolls.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Unless your class grants the ability for a caster to use armor you have to pick it up as a feat. And getting the heavy armor feat requires the medium and light armor feats first.
it is true that dexterity uses up 3 skills... but if you look at the rules mechanics of skills... a DM can easily interchange those skills for something else if they wish to. basically saying the skills aren't set in stones for ability scores... what you see there is not the rules... it is what the game "suggests" its hard to see atheletics be a dexterity check, or be a wisdom check... but imagine this instead... that wizard knows techniques to climb a wall. intelligence could be used to find a clever way to climb the wall. wisdom could be used to avoid those slippery surfaces you see on the wall, thus giving you a better idea of where to have it easier. i could see players do this ! it would be logical ! the same is true for sleight of hands... i could easily switch it for intelligence instead. after all you dont just need dexterity to pull those off, you need to know the actual tricks too. so knowing that skills aren't limited to their respective ability score, by the rules itself !!! makes this entire point a moot one. it is lost to the fact that any skills can be replaced by anything else you preffer.
rogues do not need a focus on dex. they actually have next to nothing except stealth that requires them to be used. even thieves tools can use intellect instead of dex. i would also argue that thieves tools are not dexterity based. you need to know your stuff. so it again comes down to what you consider as rules. but skill checks is the only reason why rogues go dex. a rogue who would want to use intelligence instead of dex for sleight of hand or thieves tool. i would let them do it. it makes sense. monks do not have heavy dex based stuff... thats you only trying to maximise the AC thus why you go full dex and wisdom. but because 1 ability tells you to do that, it doesn't mean you absolutely need to be maxing those stats. in fact monks main stats are both Strength and Dexterity if you look at their saves ! because as i mentionned above... dexterity isn't all encompassing... monks are also ripped. they are trained physically. again the only reason why people max out wisdom and dex is because of a single ability and them trying to maximise that ability. i have no problem with maximising i do it too... but no dexterity is not a must for those class either. both those classes would do still very well without dexterity.
This is ridiculous. Rogues have EVERYTHING that focuses on dexterity; AC (no heavy armor proficiency), Initiative (High initiative is more important than it seems, effectively a free and better action surge every combat), and their essential skills. They get little from strength that they couldn't get from dexterity, even if you include encumbrance. A single goliath or magic item usually takes care of encumbrance, and it's not like the weight benefit from a rogue sacrificing a more important stat would be anywhere near worth it. Then there's long/high jumps, which barely ever come into play. It's a similar pot with monks. Yes, there is a main ability that makes monks dexterity based, but it is a core one considering their lack of proficiency in any armor at all. Unless you specifically want to grapple, they pretty much have a substitute for strength in Step of the Wind and Unarmored Movement allowing them to climb walls, and without high dexterity they would go down even faster in combat than they normally do.
Now the bit that I really hate about this. You think that THIEVES TOOLS should be INTELLIGENCE BASED. AND SLIEGHT OF HAND. AND CLIMBING. Dude.
Yes, I agree that you have to know about these abilities to use them properly. So does WotC. In fact, they agreed so much, that they implemented an entire mechanic for knowing how to do things. No, it isn't intelligence, it's PROFICIENCY. By your logic, literally every single ability check in the game would require Intelligence, since "you have to know how to persuade people" or "you have to know how to administer aid" or "you have to know where the slippery parts of a wall are." There are situations where skills can use different ability scores, but they are relatively uncommon, and it CERTAINTLY does not make the vast superiority of dexterity skills to athletics go away.
dex saves being the most prevalent in spells... totally false, i read all spells and counted... there are as much strength, intelligence or wisdom saves as there are dex saves asked... reality is, of all 350 spells that exists, players only ever use only like 15. because they are the wow spells. and it happens that those spells requires dex saves. again, thats a bad thing if your DM only ever requires dex saves. i often require intelligence saves, often requires charisma saves by spells and monsters alike. i even often use constitution saves. strength saves happens often too when certain abilties are used or certain spells like gust of winds. pushing players and grapples also uses athletics. sure the player can use acrobatics. but thats not a dex save now is it ? overall, there are many opportunities to use other stuff then just dex saves. i believe its the DM and Players choice to always stay on dex saves.
Dexterity saves and wisdom saves are about on par with each other, easily better than all others. Intelligence saves only really matter against a few illusion spells and mind flayers, constitution is pretty useful, charisma is only possession and banishment (which rarely happens for players), and strength saves are... pretty much entirely useless. Saves are often initiated by things other than spells, especially dexterity saves. Pretty much any monster with a damaging AOE uses dexterity saves, and many of the most powerful combat spells (yes I mean fireball) use dexterity, so of course dexterity saves matter more. Your argument that you change saves to intelligence and charisma is poot, since that's homebrew.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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dex saves being the most prevalent in spells... totally false, i read all spells and counted... there are as much strength, intelligence or wisdom saves as there are dex saves asked... reality is, of all 350 spells that exists, players only ever use only like 15. because they are the wow spells. and it happens that those spells requires dex saves. again, thats a bad thing if your DM only ever requires dex saves. i often require intelligence saves, often requires charisma saves by spells and monsters alike. i even often use constitution saves. strength saves happens often too when certain abilties are used or certain spells like gust of winds. pushing players and grapples also uses athletics. sure the player can use acrobatics. but thats not a dex save now is it ? overall, there are many opportunities to use other stuff then just dex saves. i believe its the DM and Players choice to always stay on dex saves.
two-handed sword a poor build ? my strength wizard would like to have a conversation with you... he can hit much more then he ever could with a one handed sword. those paladins are also much better with a two handed sword. in fact the only class that isn't better with two handed is barbarian. that said, barbarian are built for crits and great axes are the best for crits for them. and everyone of those groups... if you have the fighting style for two weapon fighting by just addinga single fighter level... definitely becomes much better then your sword and board in damage.
if anything on the internet on many forums who have done the number crunching, they will all tell you that barbarian and paladins are better off using two handed weapons. greatsword for paladin and great axe for barbarian. really only the fighter is better with dexterity because he lacks abilities unlike the barb and paladins who both gains abilities who requires more dice to be thrown.
I have also counted all the spells
Spells requiring Dex Saves 64
Spells Requiring Con Saves 57
Spells Requiring Wis Saves 53
Spells requiring Strength Saves 19
Spells Requiring Charisma Saves 14
Spells REquiring Int Saves 9
So one of us can't count
Every Class gets proficiency in 2 saves, One from Dex, Con and Wis and one from Str, Int and Charisma. It is accepted the the Dex Wisand Con are the major saves. There are non spell features that induce saves but I am fairly sure there are more of these for Dex thatn strength (may more traps require a dex save than a strength save for example)
It is absolutely clear that a Paladin or Barbarian does more damage wirlding a two handed weapon than a one handed weapon as long as they ar econcious but the sword and board uses get an extra 2 AC so they are less likely to get hit and therefore ake less damage. No number cruching can say where the optimal balance between AC and damage lies, a lot depends on the DM, thr more monsters that fight requiring saving throwns the less use a shield is. Generally I prefer to play a paladin S&B and a barb with a two handed weapon.
The thing about S&B for paladin is most spellcasting requires a free hand, to perform somatic components and hold material components. With two handed, you have a free hand whilst not attacking, but the closest you can get to that with S&B is the Warcaster feat. Warcaster allows you to use a weapon hand for somatic components, and technically you are allowed to use the same hand for material as somatic, but you should ask your DM if you can cast spells with material components like that since it's kind of iffy.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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Its true that a thief does not need his highest score to be in Dex but he does hamper his best abilities if he does not.
But if you create the character with the first three levels in Thief and all the rest in fighter he could be a fairly rounded out character. Fun to play.
In the end I believe that a pretty good dexterity score helps all characters. Strength not always. Just buy a donkey to carry the rest of your stuff if you can not.
But what scores are best totally depends on your race and class. Work to their strengths.
Its true that a thief does not need his highest score to be in Dex but he does hamper his best abilities if he does not..
What’s a thief? Rogues aren’t thieves. They can be anything from spies, scouts, intelligence analysts, security specialists, smugglers, dashingly charismatic duelists, to burglars and back alley thugs. This is 5e not 2e
Its true that a thief does not need his highest score to be in Dex but he does hamper his best abilities if he does not..
What’s a thief? Rogues aren’t thieves. They can be anything from spies, scouts, intelligence analysts, security specialists, smugglers, dashingly charismatic duelists, to burglars and back alley thugs. This is 5e not 2e
Some rogues are thieves, I don't know if it was the intent but what he said is true for the thief subclass.
Its true that a thief does not need his highest score to be in Dex but he does hamper his best abilities if he does not..
What’s a thief? Rogues aren’t thieves. They can be anything from spies, scouts, intelligence analysts, security specialists, smugglers, dashingly charismatic duelists, to burglars and back alley thugs. This is 5e not 2e
Some rogues are thieves, I don't know if it was the intent but what he said is true for the thief subclass.
Did you honestly feel the need to mansplain that one of the rogue subclasses is called thief?
Pretty much everything you said there was either false or completely incorrect. Not everyone hates Rangers and they absolutely do have combat functionality. Especially since Tasha’s, Rangers have massively increased in power to the point that in one game I play my ranger is out damaging the fighter in the party comfortably in melee and for ranged attacks the fighter doesn’t come close. You comments suggest you haven’t played a properly built ranger.
Having a higher dex than strength has no bearing whatsoever on how many attacks you can make as you stated in point 3 of your op. Rogues and monks absolutely benefit from higher dex for more than just their stealth skill. It boosts Attack and damage, initiative, ac, stealth, acrobatics, sleight of hand, lock picking, dex saves.incoming damage via their evasion feature, and so on. Saying that there is no point in boosting dex tells me you have no clue how to build or play either of those classes.
And your comment of initiative only mattering in the first round of combat is patently absurd. A higher initiative can make the difference between an easy fight and a tpk. To deny its importance is crazy and tells me you have no clue about how combat works.
In fact I don’t understand where you are getting any of your ideas from at all, how can you say that most groups dislike using different coin types? Have you played in ‘most groups’? You’ve never played in any of mine and I’ve been playing over 30 years. You have mo idea how my groups play. You just seem to be making sweeping generalisations with absolutely nothing to back them up.
your assumptions here are blatant disrespect of my opinion... while my way of thinking was more inline of what people thinks of the lower level abilities of the ranger which are purely role play abilities... unless you actually found a way to gain damage from natural explorer and favored foes. you then go into saying that the new ranger mechanics are too good in the tashas book which is the very reason why those hapenned in the first place. to replace the actual abiities i just mentionned... so in thanks for prooving my point about people thinking rangers sucked. while i do agree that rangers do not sucks... their low level abilities makes them much less usefull and in the end a poor choice for any low level class. and thanks for assuming i didn't play a proper build... i actually player a beast master ranger, no tasha and dealth more damage then a monk, fighter or barbarian. but again... why all the changes to the ranger class if its not true that it requires redoing ? again, why are DDB data indicating that the ranger class is the least played of all classes and has been for like 5 years ?
fair points, its true that most games uses dex to a much bigger extent... but my point of contention is that it is not the stats fault, it is the DMs fault for making their game use that stats much more then others. way too often would i have players requires me to change the stats of strength to a dextrity based checks just because they want to win and succeed att he thing. its normal for players to want to succeed, but its not normal for a DM to accept players bullshit for sake of making them happy. i had a player who wanted literally to remove STR from his character entirely saying it was a bullshit stat and making dex do everything including history checks. granted this is extreme, but you get what i mean... its up to the DM to make good uses of all stats, not up to the rules of the book. as an exemple, we use intellect often in my games, for everything they ask about the world is requiring some kind of intellect check. my players are fine with that. of course everything character would know as common i just give them info on... but anything else, requires an intelligence check. seeing illusions requires intelligence checks. there is noneed to wait for them to investigate the illusion. just the way they interact might reveal it to them and making them see it without checks makes the game less interesting, unless they see something pass through it and obviously making it an illusion. illusions are easy to do in the world and pretty much everyone can do them even at level 1. so thats one way to deal with a stat that nobody really uses.
from quindraco
again, repeating what i said, there are facts about finesse weapon aka "dexterity weapon" that makes them stronger then strength weapons. those facts are... a greatsword deals 2d6 damage, has a single chance of hitting. thus rolling a single attack. two shortsword would deal the same damage, 2d6. but over two rolls, making you having more chances of actually dealing damage. and dexterity weapons, are most likely light weapons, thus giving you 1 more attack as a bonus action. all the maths on the internet that was done prooves that you have more average damage if you have more attacks, because you have more chances of hitting the creature and doing any damage at all. its called steady damage dealing. with a simple feat, the two weapon one, you also get higher damage because now you can beat a greatsword as you can deal more then 2d6.
mathematically speaking, its been prooven that two weapon fighting is better ! that said... in order to make any classes go over in damage.. it requires many abilities and magical stuff... somethign pretty much everyone can do. thus i'm not gonna get into that. everyone can add hex/hunters mark and say i deal tons of damage.... everyone could get paladin levels to get divine smite added to their barbarians... everyone could add +3 greatswords... and even there two +3 shortswords would be much greater then a single great sword. so thats why im not adding those to my own calculations...
but really the maths are out there, many people did them and finesse weapons are doing much better two-handed weapons... which is part of the reason why strength is so bad. that said there are ways to make it better if just the DM and players would look at their options more. my point of contention is, strength isn't as lacking as people say. DMs just need to make use of it more.
From JedPeg
true that most spells if you count them all requires dex saves... but many of those spells makes no senses whatsoever to use dex... many of them could easily be constitution saves. my point was that spells in themselves are whack as they are. true i could of been much much much clearer about that one. so my apologies for that mistake... that said... of all 350 spells int he player handbook, not counting the others in all other books... how many do we really play ? at level 3 spells, fireball is a must... so nobody every take anything else... they just take that one... there are other spells that could be taken that have good uses too, yet everyone only ever takes dexterity saves fireball. so its obvious that everyone thinks dex is the best stats if DMs and players alike only uses that everytimes. i have players who decided to use less used stats in spells and ended up ruinging my campaigns as much as a fireball would have. just because they made great uses of it.
per RAW, i would say that if you just look at the spells themselves, you are right, dexterity is overused ! but if you look at what you can do, you'll realise that dexterity is not the most abusive stats on saves. other spells have much greater value if you use them well. so this comes back to the same principles as to why people say "insight checks" are lie detector while that is completely false statement. but yet DMs uses it as such and as such only.
from birdsinger he brings a good point though it was not his original point... back in 1e and 2e, there was a clear distinction in strength and dexterity stats. rogues or any melee classes needed to use strength at all cost if they wanted to be melee... dexterity was for ranged weapon only. there was no finesse weapons there was no way of using dexterity for melee weapons... meaning a rogue needed both strength and dexterity to be good at what they did.
3E broke the game in itself... by allowing players to completely dump strength and use dexterity only to do everything. now the game is trying to say to everyone... stats have no real baring on you, you can just do whatever you want. even hitting in melee with dexterity. or hitting with any other stats for that matter. and i think the problem comes from there... i think people are too used to 3e and above with their finesse weapons and all... that now they think strength is useless cause we can just drop it for anything else.
back in 1e and 2e, both strength and dexterity were pretty separate abilities. 3e started mixing them up too much. in fact the only reason 3E fighters were still using strength weapons, was simply because of the twice the modifier on damage rolls. which is one fo the reason why i homebrewed that in my games. to bring back that 3E strength actual strength.
all of this leads me to think of something i preffer not to think about... if strength and intelligence are dump stats... wouldn'T it be better then for D&D to just drop them entirely and fall onto a system with only 4 stats instead of 6. many games now uses only 4 stats instead.
but if we look at it that way... then why are we still having 18 skills when half of them are never used ? again i would say that its all the DMs fault for not using them in the first place. i mean its normal for everyone to want proficiency in perception check... its the most used skill afterall... but i think people should start wondering why that is ? not how often it comes up in games...
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Hi, i wanted to give strength a boost lately, did so a year ago for a campaign and it was a blast.
that said, i started wondering why are people thinking strength and intelligence are bad stats that should be buffed ?!!
heres a few reasons why people say they suck...
1) not many skills use it. only 1 skill uses it.
2) dexterity does the same thing but better. (false, explaining why later)
3) dexterity allows multiple attacks doing the same damage if not more then 2-handed swords (false, explaining why later)
those are the three main reasons as to why people think strength sucks badly... now let's see the rules about strength and what it actually does...
1) encumberment, carrying capacity.
the problem with this one is that nobody uses it, thus it literally gives the finger to the strength stats main purpose. that is to see how fit you are. as an exemple... as a DM you give a hoard to your players. they all take it... that hoard had a grand total of 5000 coins split between gold, silver and copper. now you hand wave this and now the players are used to having that much coins with them. far better, they just dont count so they dont care about how much they have on them. so in the end you even destroy the coin economy by just not having players change from copper to silver, silver to gold and gold to platinum, thus lowering the number of coins on you and thus enabling you to hold far more. that's literally two systems you just got rid of.
Exemple of strength with coins...
5000 coins = 100 pounds ! that's heavier then a full plate !!! how do we get to that number, per the rules... every 50 coins weights 1 pound. notice how they say coins, not silver, gold or platinum. because the coin value as no bearing on its weight. they all weight the same. thus if we would take all 5000 gold coins and switch them to platinum... we'd get 500 total and thus only have a weight of 10 pounds. barely the weight of a big book.
it already becomes evident why strength is the better. as a wizard with 8 strength cannot carry nearly as much full plates or coins as a paladin with 18 strength.
while you are not using these two systems, and you should really... you shouldn'T start counting every nook and crannies either. the systems are way too much math heavy. that said, you can still tell your players as they load up that hoard that they are now starting to be encumbered. just letting them know, without counting, that the more they hold the more time it will take them to get to their destinations. its also easy to tell players that their bags aren't on them when they fight. after all.. a player fighting while being burdened by a huge bag of coins is really not ideal. you could simply give them disadvantages or give them nerfs to their AC because of dexterity problems. all in all its up to the DM but i highly encourage people in trying to bring back a sense of realism into their encumberment and coin economy. you'll end up with much less players trying to loot every nook and crannies they find and keeping all 15 full plates off those orcs just to sell and become richer.
2) Jumping distances ! (Special Type of Movement)
this is also a very usefull concept that most DMs do not even check the rules for... most people just ask an athletic check and say you jump that 15 foot crevisse...
but this is strange for a wizard with 8 strength to do. that is not how the rules explain the thing. in fact athletic checks aren't even needed to determine jump capabilities. they do gives you the option of a check to see if they can go further then needed. but in reality the rule is quite simple...
high jump distance is 3 + your strength modifier, minimum of 0 feet.
that means a wizard with 8 strength can only jump 2 foot high. while a fighter with 18 strenght can jump 7 foot high. thats a huge difference. as the fighter can reach higher grounds way easier. including jumping to a roof 10 feet high. because he can just jump and then extend his arm and grab the ledge and pulls himself up. this allows a fighter not even 1 athletic checks to climb. he just reaches it. while the wizard would need a check to see if he even reaches the roof.
the same is true for long jumping... you can long jump with ease your actual strength score in distances. imagine this...
the wizard can long jump 8 feet. almost a record by itself in the olympics... but that fighter... without a sweat can long jump 18 feet !!! a 15 feet gap, no sweat just jump over it. no checks required. this is per the rules !!!
puts all this together and this is nothing dexterity can do. after all, everyone who says parjour can do it too, have no idea how much strength is needed to make those jumps and to make those ledge grabs. parkour people train not only dexterity, but strength in equal manners. so no... running up a vertical wall is an impossible task to do for dexterity alone... it requires strength. unless you are a high level monk who can just run up a vertical wall of 50 feet height...
all of this is why strength is much better then you think... but these only explains the first part of the problems... what about the part where people say dexterity does it much better ? what about the part where they say its only a single skill ? heres the thing about those two parts... they are completely false !!! they are both based off the facts of what you see and what most people play... not what most people should be playing. let me explain those in more details below...
3) the skills dexterity is better at...
it is true that dexterity uses up 3 skills... but if you look at the rules mechanics of skills... a DM can easily interchange those skills for something else if they wish to. basically saying the skills aren't set in stones for ability scores... what you see there is not the rules... it is what the game "suggests" its hard to see atheletics be a dexterity check, or be a wisdom check... but imagine this instead... that wizard knows techniques to climb a wall. intelligence could be used to find a clever way to climb the wall. wisdom could be used to avoid those slippery surfaces you see on the wall, thus giving you a better idea of where to have it easier. i could see players do this ! it would be logical ! the same is true for sleight of hands... i could easily switch it for intelligence instead. after all you dont just need dexterity to pull those off, you need to know the actual tricks too. so knowing that skills aren't limited to their respective ability score, by the rules itself !!! makes this entire point a moot one. it is lost to the fact that any skills can be replaced by anything else you preffer.
4) dexterity offers you so much more...
-- 3 skills (see above), Initiative, AC, Best Saves in the game, Ranged attacks damage and Finesse weapons.
this is all true... but let's see what strength offers...
-- 1 skill (See above), melee weapon damage and thats it...
see where the problem lies in that statement ?
the players and DMs who say these things aren'T even counting everything the strength score actually does... like jumping and encumberment. how often do you get a dex fighter to say "i can't budge the door guys, i have no strength !" or the fabled, "yeah you had to ask for my lowest stat !" its ridiculous how often i get that as a DM. Its the game, people seem to handwave strength for the sake of their own arguments. but in reality if we add it all... we get something much more akin to what dexterity can do... because without strength there is no door knocking, there is no mountain climbing. mountain climbing with dexterity alone is laughable at best. any people who tryed rock climbing can attest to that
5) dexterity weapons deals more damage because they grant more attacks...
this is false by omission... people do the math and say... you are better off with two shorsword and 2 attacks because blah blah...
they are right that two shortsword are 2d6+dexterity modifier... while a great sword is 2d6+strength modifier... but they are wrong it is not the same thing at all ! the problem lies in the action economy. what makes a rogue strong ? its action economy. sneak attack helps but losing its prcious bonus action just to do sneak damage is not the primary focus. they need that cunning action to hide ! which allows them to avoid damage. and by extension gives themselves high ground by gaining advantage on next attack. which grants them sneak attack. a dex fighter, definitely worth it... loses that defense to gain that one more attack. we're talking forgetting action economy to just deal damage here. you can't heal yourself, you can't drink a potion, you can't do anything else, then make an attack with that bonus action. so this is why it seems worth it if you do only maths... the math says its better for damage... but d&d isn't just damage dealing ! d&d is more and foremost an action economy and to deal damage, you lose that economy.
6) conclusion of my observations...
I think people who claims strength to be nothing in this version... just want to do more damage and only focuses on that part.
thing is... strength does a lot more and its up to the DM to make use of it, not the players. if you ask the players they will always take their better stats to make any checks. or make any attacks. its up to the DM to enable that balance and say... "no, you can't vertical wall run the well you just fell into with acrobatics" all arguments are easy to fall into if you look just at damage and handwave other systems like jumping and encumberment... but when you look at everything and then ask players... make an athletic check for me ! and they answer... "it had to be my lowest stat !" you know they also see the need for strength !
i'm ending this discussion with my own homebrew on how to fix strength... i dont need more then just this...
- make strength damage, be twice the modifier, instead of once !
exemple... fighter with 16 strength shortsword would be 1d6+6 instead of 1d6+3. it sees not much, but at higher levels it really shows and at lower levels it even more shows. thats what 3E was doing to make strength more usable. and this is what i do too... players also have to be aware that monsters also do that. thus dragons with 30 strength would do +20 on any attacks. at high levels thats a huge pain when they can deal 4 attacks like that.
i tryed this in my last campaign and i really intend on using it again. players didn't really abuse it, monsters didn't either. small fix, made strength much better for fighters / barbarians and paladins !
but if you ask me... strength does feel underpowered... but its just a feeling ! strength is a lot of things, even in 5E !
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Leaving out encumberance to the end It is very useful to have someone in the party who is strong but generally speaking you only need one. It is the same with intelligence. The wizard makes the arcana checks the barbarian liftsthe heavy rocks and everyone else dumps int and str.
Spellcasters will gain far more from dex (initiave, AC etc) then from strength. Yes there might be the odd occasion when the wizard needs to jump or make an athletics check but stealth rolls will be far more common. Some clerics get heavy armor proficiency so can get AC from strength making it viable for then to put strength above dex.
Rogues and Monks obvious need to focus on Dex over strength
Fighters, Barbarians and Paladins can either go:
Regarding jumping spell casters often have other options such as misty step. Otherwise if one person can jump accross / up they can uaually get the rest of the party over. For example by using a rope.
If you think strength is much better than everyone thinks why do you need to "fix" it? All your fix will do is make dex based fighters, and paladins unviable, it will also make rogues and monks weaker compared to them (and monks are already one of the weaker classes. spellcasters will still take dex as therir second or third stat and dump strength because the weapon damage means nothing to them.
.Encumberance
The reason encumberance is usually ignores is the rules actually say "most characters don't need to worry about it", while a few players anjoy micro managing everything they carry most don't. The rule allows a DM to have something to go back on if a PC is trying ot carry far too much for example taking all the armor off enemies in order to sell without the need ot constantly add up the weight of everything in your possession.
In a similar vain most players just think the DM is being a pain if they find 10 gp 409sp and 4329 cp
If you use variant encumberance then I admit strength becomes the God stat. An explores pack weights 59 lb add some leather armor and a weapon or two and you will need 15 or 16 strength not to be encumbered. A fighter wearing chain mail and a shield and carrying an explorers pack would need strength will be encumbered unless their strength somehow gets to about 25. Sure you can just throw away most of the items in the pack and then debate with your DM whether you can eat rations without a mess kit. The party's objective then becomes ot find a bag of holding or portable hole so they can actually get by without being encumbered
Fair Points... let me debunk a few of the things you just said though... because i feel like your experience or DMs are simply hand waving too much for sake of just being lazy.
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Leaving out encumberance to the end It is very useful to have someone in the party who is strong but generally speaking you only need one. It is the same with intelligence. The wizard makes the arcana checks the barbarian liftsthe heavy rocks and everyone else dumps int and str. [/quote]
while this might be true for most group composition... group composition is rarely a thing as people do not want to be dedicated healers or dedicated tanks or dedicated basher or damage dealers... you often get a mix of all of them at once including some people who ends up taking the same race or class as others. not because they thought of others, but because they wanted to play that one class and race.
considering the need for a single intelligence caster is lack luster, for in the end, the goal is to have fun playing and two or more members wants casters they will play them. wizard are strong, artificers too. it would be normal to have two of them in the group. just because people wanted to play them. but i will agree that if your group is making a group composition and everyone agrees to play whatever composition part they should be playing then yes, its as you say... but even in adventurers league which is the most strategically composed groups, the group composition barely ever gets to that point. people just play what they want.
as for intelligence meaning nothing... i fear your DM or your experience with players are just being handwaved. it happens very often that a player will ask you for information their character may have forgotten or they have forgotten. that is memory and memory is intelligence. so its not far fetched to require intelligence checks for those. that's why there are 5 intelligence checks for memory stuff. like history, arcana, medical stuff or religion or nature. those checks happens more often then you think because players ask for them often. them dumping the stat means they dont care about whatever lore you are gonna drop them. because they are never gonna ask you about it. at that point one could ask those players... why are you even there then ?
the same is true for the rangers which everyone seems to hate and say he's useless... mainly becaus ehe has no combat ability. everything is role play wise.
magical items have the same problem, if its not directly boosting the stats of my character or have a clearly usefull signification then the item is considered useless by players. the same is true for intellect and strength... people just look at combat and say, its useless ! because it doesn't give them anything. again this is bad DM behavior and bad player behavior... because its taking the game as a game and not as a role playing game. which primary purpose is to have role play. but somehow everyone only look at combat options as if D&D was only combat !
it really depends on your games, i have 3 campaigns under my belt in the last 7 years. of all the 15 people i played with stealth was barely a thing ever. one would stealth the others would wait. not stealth. then once they get bored they just bash the door in. or the wizard just firebolt the doors out of existence. in 7 years, about 15 people in 3 groups... stealth was rarely a thing. even when i did stealth mission. so that point is really dependant on the players themselves. not to the game itself., thus the point of it seems loss if not just obviously an excuse for saying dex is better.
rogues do not need a focus on dex. they actually have next to nothing except stealth that requires them to be used. even thieves tools can use intellect instead of dex. i would also argue that thieves tools are not dexterity based. you need to know your stuff. so it again comes down to what you consider as rules. but skill checks is the only reason why rogues go dex. a rogue who would want to use intelligence instead of dex for sleight of hand or thieves tool. i would let them do it. it makes sense. monks do not have heavy dex based stuff... thats you only trying to maximise the AC thus why you go full dex and wisdom. but because 1 ability tells you to do that, it doesn't mean you absolutely need to be maxing those stats. in fact monks main stats are both Strength and Dexterity if you look at their saves ! because as i mentionned above... dexterity isn't all encompassing... monks are also ripped. they are trained physically. again the only reason why people max out wisdom and dex is because of a single ability and them trying to maximise that ability. i have no problem with maximising i do it too... but no dexterity is not a must for those class either. both those classes would do still very well without dexterity.
initiative isn't making up for AC at all. initiative is only good during the first round of combat. and only if you try to do one thing. i have a player who always have alert and always roll above 10 on initiatives. he's always making sure to be first in combat. it barely ever means anything. really being the first to hit isn't meaning anything. doesn't really change the opponents play either. so one would have to wonder why initiative would be making up for loss of AC ? AC is much better if you are the sword and board guy !
dex saves being the most prevalent in spells... totally false, i read all spells and counted... there are as much strength, intelligence or wisdom saves as there are dex saves asked... reality is, of all 350 spells that exists, players only ever use only like 15. because they are the wow spells. and it happens that those spells requires dex saves. again, thats a bad thing if your DM only ever requires dex saves. i often require intelligence saves, often requires charisma saves by spells and monsters alike. i even often use constitution saves. strength saves happens often too when certain abilties are used or certain spells like gust of winds. pushing players and grapples also uses athletics. sure the player can use acrobatics. but thats not a dex save now is it ? overall, there are many opportunities to use other stuff then just dex saves. i believe its the DM and Players choice to always stay on dex saves.
two-handed sword a poor build ?
my strength wizard would like to have a conversation with you... he can hit much more then he ever could with a one handed sword.
those paladins are also much better with a two handed sword. in fact the only class that isn't better with two handed is barbarian. that said, barbarian are built for crits and great axes are the best for crits for them. and everyone of those groups... if you have the fighting style for two weapon fighting by just addinga single fighter level... definitely becomes much better then your sword and board in damage.
if anything on the internet on many forums who have done the number crunching, they will all tell you that barbarian and paladins are better off using two handed weapons. greatsword for paladin and great axe for barbarian. really only the fighter is better with dexterity because he lacks abilities unlike the barb and paladins who both gains abilities who requires more dice to be thrown.
spell casters rarely want to lose a spell slot for misty step, let alone a second level spell slot. this only becomes relevant at higher level when they start thinking level 1 and 2 spell are useless and thus can spend them. otherwise as a DM you did your job, you made them waste a spell slot. as for the jumping and rope thing... you still requires a lot of saves or checks even if the fighter jumps that chasm and attach a rope. or just want to haul you over. have you ever tryed to just traverse a chasm with a rope. just pulling that rpe to the other side is an endeavor. then its not over... traversing requires either your strength by crawling that rope. strength to hold onto the wheel like thing to traverse. and if you are thinking... just attach yourself and let the fighter reel you in... you still need to not get hurt by hitting the chasm wall when you're gonna fall. again lots of things to do for a good dm who wants it to be a challenge. so again... i think its bad dm handwaving stuff for sake of hand waving.
i actually don't !
the reason i did in the first place was that my players all told me the same thing... dexterity gives me more and strength doesn't give me more damage.
the only reason i did try it in one campaign... was because my players requires me to find a way to make those stats better. in that campaign i had a sole paladin who really liked it. 3 rogues who simply didn't care because of uncanny dodge and sneak attack which is always why people play rogues. rogues dont care, they would hti with a dagger and a d4. what they want is not the weapon, its the sneak attack. monks aren't weak a class... anyone can tell you they break game if used well... its not their damage that is the problem, its the versatility of their combat prowess. they control the board with stunning strikes and open hand stuff. wizard do care for their AC, thats the only reason they go Dexterity as their first or second stats. i mae wizard a lot, so was 2 of the players in the first campaign... we all agree the only reason we want dexterity is AC, the rest is just bonus. thats also why we also go CON, because we need life too.
people ignore encumberance not because of a rule... they ignore it because its hard to maintain when you are not using computer to generate your characters. encumberance is much much much better now because we have automation. something we didn't have 10 years ago. but again, thats just a lot of maths coming at you fast and thats why people hates it. again i didn't suggest you use micro management. i don't use it... but i suggested that you start still looking at what your players are carrying... sorry but a player who tells me i carry 10 full plates on me... i will encumber them on the spot. i'm not checking much. a wizard who keeps 3 bags of holding, because those are not infinite space. which is another problem with lazy DMs who just give players that because they are too lazy to deal with encumberence. and a big chest full of full plates and that wizard is supposedly ok just because you dont care... thats not my style... and i encourage people to start putting a bit more realism into their games... you'd be surprised how much more immersive the game is when players have to make choices about their treasures.
my players like it, a lot... of 15 people in 3 campaigns right now... only 2 wanted to convert everything to gold to not have that hassle... i asked why ? my world use it all so yeah. the other players explained this to them and they were fine. honestly i have never found anyone who disliked the fact that treasures weren't just gold everywhere. on the contrary it makes much more sense for it to be various types of coins. i go even further by having different coins for different countries in my world. and again my players don't care... they think its more immersive. i have yet to find players who hates that... i mean i've been DMing for 30 years. so i think you are generalising on your own emotions or those with whom you play. to each their own if they think that. but most people do not care.
i will say this point making me wonder, i'll have to go check that one again...
the only encumberance rule i follow is that i dont check coins weight. because i dont like my players to see a treasure hoard and not be able to keep it with them. but i do check for everything else. which is what encumberance is for. you don't need to enforce it for every single items.. i dont care how many weight a parchment is , i don't care for that once bottle weight... but i will care for those full plates, i will care for that giant boulder you think should fit in your bag of holding. i will mind when they try to displace their friend who got petrifyed and have his weight multiplyed by 8. which now forces players to make group checks to move the statue.
there is a missconception about portable holes and bag of holdings. a missconception driven by the bad DMs back then who literally didn't want to check for encumberance...
bag of holding and portable holes have a maximum carrying capacity. something nobody ever check, they see the bag of holding as an infinite space. same for the portable hole. all of the items magical or not designed for transportation have a maximum capacity. it has both a weight capacity and a space capacity... exemple... say the full plates go onto a bag of holding... sorry but that bag of holding wont hold 15 of them... its gonna be full after the 3rd one and thats me being generous. it should be full after the first one. but somehow DMs use them as if they were infinite space. thats not in rules. thats homebrew !
overall i think the reason people go for those problems, is mainly because story wise they are problematic. story wise everything can be solved by magic and thats why people say casters are much better. and since casters are much better then its automatically because strength sucks because its a melee stats. story wise, its not combat... combat is not story. its combat. its its own story. somehow though, people want more story out of D&D... but somehow all they ever think about is to use that axe or spell on that wall instead of talking to NPCs or learning stuff... thats not counting new players who only want loot loot loot because video games syndrome.
overall... Strength is stronger stat then you think.
but i will agree that many DMs forgo a lot of rulings for sake of being lazy and making the game much easier for themselves.
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Pretty much everything you said there was either false or completely incorrect. Not everyone hates Rangers and they absolutely do have combat functionality. Especially since Tasha’s, Rangers have massively increased in power to the point that in one game I play my ranger is out damaging the fighter in the party comfortably in melee and for ranged attacks the fighter doesn’t come close. You comments suggest you haven’t played a properly built ranger.
Having a higher dex than strength has no bearing whatsoever on how many attacks you can make as you stated in point 3 of your op. Rogues and monks absolutely benefit from higher dex for more than just their stealth skill. It boosts Attack and damage, initiative, ac, stealth, acrobatics, sleight of hand, lock picking, dex saves.incoming damage via their evasion feature, and so on. Saying that there is no point in boosting dex tells me you have no clue how to build or play either of those classes.
And your comment of initiative only mattering in the first round of combat is patently absurd. A higher initiative can make the difference between an easy fight and a tpk. To deny its importance is crazy and tells me you have no clue about how combat works.
In fact I don’t understand where you are getting any of your ideas from at all, how can you say that most groups dislike using different coin types? Have you played in ‘most groups’? You’ve never played in any of mine and I’ve been playing over 30 years. You have mo idea how my groups play. You just seem to be making sweeping generalisations with absolutely nothing to back them up.
Right. Strength, in general, does the following:
Dexterity gives you:
That's just not true, and I'm skeptical a substantial number of people are making this claim. Two-weapon fighting is broadly recognized by pretty much everyone as sucking in 5E. Dexterity weapons are only superior to Strength weapons, in general, in terms of their range. Outside of that, Dexterity is considered better than Strength due to the other things the two attributes do, although certain specific feats absolutely matter, like how we have Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master but no other -5/+10 feats.
Even with two-weapon fighting, hand axes exist (the only benefit short swords and scimitars have over hand axes is being finesse) and so do longswords if you pick up the Dual Wielder feat. There's just no damage benefit to Dexterity and never has been.
Strength weapons do more damage because you can only do 2d6 damage baseline with a Strength weapon, and Strength is better than Intelligence for almost all possible builds. However, it's pretty significant that range on your weapon is usually better than superior mobility, due to most people not wanting to get too far from the rest of the party.
Wildly overpowered. Here are some less overpowered suggestions for making Strength better:
In terms of making Dexterity worse, I am a big fan of using alternative ability scores for Initiative: you can simply pick Intelligence (because Intelligence is the worst stat in the game and needs love) and/or Wisdom (because Initiative being based on the same ability score as Perception has always been the only ruling that actually makes consistent sense) and let the roller choose from Dexterity and the 1 or 2 mental scores you picked just like they do for escaping a grapple. That way Dexterity loses some of its luster compared to other ability scores, but only because you buffed those two mental scores, not because you nerfed anything.
I think to some extent "which stat is best" is an outdated concept for this edition of D&D, since WOTC has shown themselves to be very willing to bend the rules for what stats can do to accomodate different character builds. Intelligence doesn't do much on its own, but if WOTC wants a character to care about it, they give them Int to attack and damage or spell mechanics, or ac, or initiative, or anything.
The broader problem is that as a result of this, 5e characters are generally discouraged from going outside their wheelhouse. If you aren't a "strength character" or "intelligence character" or "charisma character", these stats have very limited returns for you which can make it feel discouraging to try to play a character who wants to care about those stats for non-mechanical reasons. Building a wizard who's kind of strong or a fighter who's kind of smart is, to some extent, building a character who has fewer attributes than their counterparts. You can try to lean into the concept, but it can be difficult to make work well.
The other problem is that WOTC was a little bit inconsistent here, because while most stats are driver stats, Dexterity provides an incredible amount of passive benefits while still being a good driving stat too. Con is similarly problematic because it doesn't enable anything and is mostly just a sort of survivability tax (insofar as that the more you want to care about other stats, the less healthy you'll be).
Sorry I wasn't clear, while a barbarian being sword and board is an option I agree that the dex option only really works for fighters and paladins (though I think it is thematically odd for paladins).
While Strength based builds wearing heavy would like high dex it is often best dumped due to other priorities. For example a Paladin needs high strength, charisma and con. Wisdom is a very useful stat generally (as a face insight is useful, perception is a very important skill and wis saves are common and usually cause more problems than a failed dex save), when not using dex for AC it is debatable whether dex or wis is the more important stat. Therefore a aladin will have dex as their 4th or 5th most important stant and with the top 3 being very important using pont buy they could easily decide to go 15/15/15/8/8/8.
It's remarkably easy as a Fighter or Paladin (and hence even easier for a Heavy Armor Cleric) to rely on Dex and just accept the paltry -10' movement penalty in your heavy armor.
Fighters, and especially Paladins, are already severely limited by their speed. Cutting their speed by a third is a HUGE increase in this limit, so that they can rarely even get to the fight before others finish it. Unless you know there won't be very many dungeons or indoor battles, making mounted combat a consistent option, that could very well ruin a character.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
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Just make the players use D&Db and turn on encumbrance.
Most problems solved and the players do not need to micro manage everything all the time. Their phone does it for them.
Unless their real argument is that they can not carry all the junk they want.
Instead of trying to wear plate in a character who's dumping strength, why not just wear medium armor? You can always pick up Medium Armor Mastery and have the same max AC, plus no longer having disadvantage on Stealth rolls.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Unless your class grants the ability for a caster to use armor you have to pick it up as a feat. And getting the heavy armor feat requires the medium and light armor feats first.
This is ridiculous. Rogues have EVERYTHING that focuses on dexterity; AC (no heavy armor proficiency), Initiative (High initiative is more important than it seems, effectively a free and better action surge every combat), and their essential skills. They get little from strength that they couldn't get from dexterity, even if you include encumbrance. A single goliath or magic item usually takes care of encumbrance, and it's not like the weight benefit from a rogue sacrificing a more important stat would be anywhere near worth it. Then there's long/high jumps, which barely ever come into play. It's a similar pot with monks. Yes, there is a main ability that makes monks dexterity based, but it is a core one considering their lack of proficiency in any armor at all. Unless you specifically want to grapple, they pretty much have a substitute for strength in Step of the Wind and Unarmored Movement allowing them to climb walls, and without high dexterity they would go down even faster in combat than they normally do.
Now the bit that I really hate about this. You think that THIEVES TOOLS should be INTELLIGENCE BASED. AND SLIEGHT OF HAND. AND CLIMBING. Dude.
Yes, I agree that you have to know about these abilities to use them properly. So does WotC. In fact, they agreed so much, that they implemented an entire mechanic for knowing how to do things. No, it isn't intelligence, it's PROFICIENCY. By your logic, literally every single ability check in the game would require Intelligence, since "you have to know how to persuade people" or "you have to know how to administer aid" or "you have to know where the slippery parts of a wall are." There are situations where skills can use different ability scores, but they are relatively uncommon, and it CERTAINTLY does not make the vast superiority of dexterity skills to athletics go away.
Dexterity saves and wisdom saves are about on par with each other, easily better than all others. Intelligence saves only really matter against a few illusion spells and mind flayers, constitution is pretty useful, charisma is only possession and banishment (which rarely happens for players), and strength saves are... pretty much entirely useless. Saves are often initiated by things other than spells, especially dexterity saves. Pretty much any monster with a damaging AOE uses dexterity saves, and many of the most powerful combat spells (yes I mean fireball) use dexterity, so of course dexterity saves matter more. Your argument that you change saves to intelligence and charisma is poot, since that's homebrew.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
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I have also counted all the spells
So one of us can't count
Every Class gets proficiency in 2 saves, One from Dex, Con and Wis and one from Str, Int and Charisma. It is accepted the the Dex Wisand Con are the major saves. There are non spell features that induce saves but I am fairly sure there are more of these for Dex thatn strength (may more traps require a dex save than a strength save for example)
It is absolutely clear that a Paladin or Barbarian does more damage wirlding a two handed weapon than a one handed weapon as long as they ar econcious but the sword and board uses get an extra 2 AC so they are less likely to get hit and therefore ake less damage. No number cruching can say where the optimal balance between AC and damage lies, a lot depends on the DM, thr more monsters that fight requiring saving throwns the less use a shield is. Generally I prefer to play a paladin S&B and a barb with a two handed weapon.
The thing about S&B for paladin is most spellcasting requires a free hand, to perform somatic components and hold material components. With two handed, you have a free hand whilst not attacking, but the closest you can get to that with S&B is the Warcaster feat. Warcaster allows you to use a weapon hand for somatic components, and technically you are allowed to use the same hand for material as somatic, but you should ask your DM if you can cast spells with material components like that since it's kind of iffy.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
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Its true that a thief does not need his highest score to be in Dex but he does hamper his best abilities if he does not.
But if you create the character with the first three levels in Thief and all the rest in fighter he could be a fairly rounded out character. Fun to play.
In the end I believe that a pretty good dexterity score helps all characters. Strength not always. Just buy a donkey to carry the rest of your stuff if you can not.
But what scores are best totally depends on your race and class. Work to their strengths.
What’s a thief? Rogues aren’t thieves. They can be anything from spies, scouts, intelligence analysts, security specialists, smugglers, dashingly charismatic duelists, to burglars and back alley thugs. This is 5e not 2e
Some rogues are thieves, I don't know if it was the intent but what he said is true for the thief subclass.
Did you honestly feel the need to mansplain that one of the rogue subclasses is called thief?
your assumptions here are blatant disrespect of my opinion... while my way of thinking was more inline of what people thinks of the lower level abilities of the ranger which are purely role play abilities... unless you actually found a way to gain damage from natural explorer and favored foes. you then go into saying that the new ranger mechanics are too good in the tashas book which is the very reason why those hapenned in the first place. to replace the actual abiities i just mentionned... so in thanks for prooving my point about people thinking rangers sucked. while i do agree that rangers do not sucks... their low level abilities makes them much less usefull and in the end a poor choice for any low level class. and thanks for assuming i didn't play a proper build... i actually player a beast master ranger, no tasha and dealth more damage then a monk, fighter or barbarian. but again... why all the changes to the ranger class if its not true that it requires redoing ? again, why are DDB data indicating that the ranger class is the least played of all classes and has been for like 5 years ?
ArntItheBest
fair points, its true that most games uses dex to a much bigger extent...
but my point of contention is that it is not the stats fault, it is the DMs fault for making their game use that stats much more then others.
way too often would i have players requires me to change the stats of strength to a dextrity based checks just because they want to win and succeed att he thing. its normal for players to want to succeed, but its not normal for a DM to accept players bullshit for sake of making them happy. i had a player who wanted literally to remove STR from his character entirely saying it was a bullshit stat and making dex do everything including history checks. granted this is extreme, but you get what i mean... its up to the DM to make good uses of all stats, not up to the rules of the book. as an exemple, we use intellect often in my games, for everything they ask about the world is requiring some kind of intellect check. my players are fine with that. of course everything character would know as common i just give them info on... but anything else, requires an intelligence check. seeing illusions requires intelligence checks. there is noneed to wait for them to investigate the illusion. just the way they interact might reveal it to them and making them see it without checks makes the game less interesting, unless they see something pass through it and obviously making it an illusion. illusions are easy to do in the world and pretty much everyone can do them even at level 1. so thats one way to deal with a stat that nobody really uses.
from quindraco
again, repeating what i said, there are facts about finesse weapon aka "dexterity weapon" that makes them stronger then strength weapons.
those facts are...
a greatsword deals 2d6 damage, has a single chance of hitting. thus rolling a single attack.
two shortsword would deal the same damage, 2d6. but over two rolls, making you having more chances of actually dealing damage.
and dexterity weapons, are most likely light weapons, thus giving you 1 more attack as a bonus action.
all the maths on the internet that was done prooves that you have more average damage if you have more attacks, because you have more chances of hitting the creature and doing any damage at all. its called steady damage dealing. with a simple feat, the two weapon one, you also get higher damage because now you can beat a greatsword as you can deal more then 2d6.
mathematically speaking, its been prooven that two weapon fighting is better !
that said... in order to make any classes go over in damage.. it requires many abilities and magical stuff... somethign pretty much everyone can do. thus i'm not gonna get into that.
everyone can add hex/hunters mark and say i deal tons of damage.... everyone could get paladin levels to get divine smite added to their barbarians... everyone could add +3 greatswords... and even there two +3 shortswords would be much greater then a single great sword. so thats why im not adding those to my own calculations...
but really the maths are out there, many people did them and finesse weapons are doing much better two-handed weapons... which is part of the reason why strength is so bad. that said there are ways to make it better if just the DM and players would look at their options more. my point of contention is, strength isn't as lacking as people say. DMs just need to make use of it more.
From JedPeg
true that most spells if you count them all requires dex saves... but many of those spells makes no senses whatsoever to use dex...
many of them could easily be constitution saves. my point was that spells in themselves are whack as they are. true i could of been much much much clearer about that one. so my apologies for that mistake... that said... of all 350 spells int he player handbook, not counting the others in all other books... how many do we really play ? at level 3 spells, fireball is a must... so nobody every take anything else... they just take that one... there are other spells that could be taken that have good uses too, yet everyone only ever takes dexterity saves fireball. so its obvious that everyone thinks dex is the best stats if DMs and players alike only uses that everytimes. i have players who decided to use less used stats in spells and ended up ruinging my campaigns as much as a fireball would have. just because they made great uses of it.
per RAW, i would say that if you just look at the spells themselves, you are right, dexterity is overused !
but if you look at what you can do, you'll realise that dexterity is not the most abusive stats on saves. other spells have much greater value if you use them well.
so this comes back to the same principles as to why people say "insight checks" are lie detector while that is completely false statement. but yet DMs uses it as such and as such only.
from birdsinger
he brings a good point though it was not his original point...
back in 1e and 2e, there was a clear distinction in strength and dexterity stats.
rogues or any melee classes needed to use strength at all cost if they wanted to be melee...
dexterity was for ranged weapon only. there was no finesse weapons there was no way of using dexterity for melee weapons... meaning a rogue needed both strength and dexterity to be good at what they did.
3E broke the game in itself... by allowing players to completely dump strength and use dexterity only to do everything.
now the game is trying to say to everyone... stats have no real baring on you, you can just do whatever you want. even hitting in melee with dexterity. or hitting with any other stats for that matter. and i think the problem comes from there... i think people are too used to 3e and above with their finesse weapons and all... that now they think strength is useless cause we can just drop it for anything else.
back in 1e and 2e, both strength and dexterity were pretty separate abilities. 3e started mixing them up too much.
in fact the only reason 3E fighters were still using strength weapons, was simply because of the twice the modifier on damage rolls.
which is one fo the reason why i homebrewed that in my games. to bring back that 3E strength actual strength.
all of this leads me to think of something i preffer not to think about...
if strength and intelligence are dump stats... wouldn'T it be better then for D&D to just drop them entirely and fall onto a system with only 4 stats instead of 6.
many games now uses only 4 stats instead.
but if we look at it that way... then why are we still having 18 skills when half of them are never used ?
again i would say that its all the DMs fault for not using them in the first place.
i mean its normal for everyone to want proficiency in perception check... its the most used skill afterall...
but i think people should start wondering why that is ? not how often it comes up in games...
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