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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Alternative Attribute System [PEACH]



Sir Valdon
2019-08-18, 06:42 PM
Introduction:
In short, the six core D&D stats feel incomplete to me, and so this is an attempt to (a) make them more complete and (b) make them interact in a way that is more in line with reality. Also, I just like theorycrafting and playing with Excel and such, so if nothing else I like this as an intellectual exercise. Finally, bear in mind that I'm basing this off 5e.

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The Core Stats:
These are, I think the core characteristics you can use to describe just about anyone. Nine rather than the six of D&D, but I don't think I've left anything major uncovered this way...

Strength: Mostly unchanged from D&D. Can be used to Intimidate instead of Charisma, if you happen to have used the latter a dump stat (hi, Barbarians). However, every X in Dexterity grants you +1 Strength, up to Y*.
Dexterity: This is Dexterity from D&D, but it covers only large body movements - think acrobatics, monk skills, and so on. Almost all weapon attack rolls are made using Agility, including "heavy" weapons like greatswords and the like. Tool users also generally use Deftness (below). Finally, every X in Dexterity grants you +1 Strength, up to Y*.
Constitution: Mostly unchanged. Strength =/= toughness IRL. Concentration could be moved to Willpower (below) though.
Intelligence: Your capacity to think & reason logically - think IQ, book learning ability, and so on.
Willpower: Your capacity to retain mental control over your mind and body. Essentially your "mental Constitution" score, this will have no skills attached, but will be used a lot for saving throws against everything from Frightened effects to some Charm ones, and various other spells and abilities. Expect to move a lot of Wisdom, some Intelligence, and some Charisma saving throws to this stat, and maybe Concentration saves too.
Charisma: Your force of personality, much like it is in regular D&D. Good for bards and party faces as usual.
Wisdom: Consider this a synonym for life experience. A wise farmer can glance at the sky and tell you what the weather will be like, even if he's got a low IQ (ie low Intelligence).
Deftness: This covers fine motor skills - the kind needed to craft a delicate and beautiful necklace or write beautiful calligraphy. Separated from Dexterity into its own stat.
Awareness: This covers your Initiative rolls and Perception skill - though I can see an argument for the former remaining as a Dexterity skill check, in general I'd say that the person who sees first is going to (re-)act first.

*I'm thinking "every 4 in Stat 1 gives you +1 Stat 2, up to 12". The thinking here is that because these two "stats" are rather closely related IRL (see many acrobats with well-below-average strength? Me neither), so the intent here is to provide a modest boost in the event that one of the stats is badly rolled. In this example, if you have >12 Strength, then you get no benefit from this, no matter how high your Dexterity score. This probably should only apply at character generation - no abusing Belt of XYZ Giant Strength to get your Dexterity up - and should obviously not feed off itself ("my Dex gives me more Str which gives me more Dex" ... no, bad rules lawyer).

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Ability Score Caps:
Like D&D 5e, I'd cap these at 20/30, at least for Medium humanoids, just like D&D 5e does at present. Things can be different with larger / smaller creatures - particularly monsters - but I see no need to change this up much. That said, I think having some idea of what the stats mean would be a good idea. To take Strength as an example, I might think of a miner as having 16, maybe even 18 Strength - long days, backbreaking labour and so on will result in some seriously big muscles on those arms - more-so than many (most?) soldiers and the like even. Low tier superheroes like Captain America are the kind of people you expect to be in the 21-30 Strength range (Superman of course breaks the system hard, so we'll ignore him & his ilk). In terms of Intelligence, an IQ of ~145 (ie in the top ~0.1% or thereabouts) is probably a >20 Intelligence score (MENSA is for the top ~2.5% BTW), and so on.

Note that I don't consider a score of 10 to be "average", except coincidentally. For example, before you add in proficiency bonuses, you have a 50% chance to pass or fail a DC10 ability check - that might work in some circumstances, but pluck a random medieval peasant off the streets of 13th century England and quiz him on Christianity or farming or what-have-you and you'll soon find ordinary people don't exactly conform to this model. 10 (or 8 in D&D 5e) is a nice starting point for building a character with points buy systems etc, but that's all. Averages will vary by geography, culture and period - you can bet that compared to medieval people, modern 1st world humans have lower physical stats on average simply because we're much less physically active (he writes, seated at the same computer he's been at all day...).

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Skills:
On the whole, I think that these can remain the same, albeit with obvious changes based on the ability scores above:
Medicine: Could be Intelligence or Wisdom, depending on the circumstances & setting.
Nature: The same as Medicine.
Performance: Dexterity for dancing etc, Deftness for musical instruments, Charisma for singing, acting etc?
Sleight of Hand: Deftness.
Thieves' Tools: Deftness. Most tools use this stat, as noted above, though there's obviously a case-by-case basis for other tools not using it (lumberjack's axe, blacksmith's hammer, etc).
The speed at which you learn new skills would be based on your Intelligence stat - smarter people learn things faster, on the whole.

Finally, I'd have a kind of pseudo-skill called Knowledge (Intelligence) which would be divided into various specialised sub-skills based on the circumstances. You'd never be proficient in "Knowledge", but your nobleman background might give you "Knowledge: Heraldry" and "Knowledge: Courtly Behaviour" for free. A scholar who obsesses over the Wars of the Roses might have "Knowledge: Wars of the Roses" but not the History skill if he's never taken an interest in anything else, and so on. Our 13th Century English peasant could have "Knowledge: Christianity", whilst his Japanese counterpart doesn't, etc etc etc. Think of it more as a way to track stuff your character knows about rather than a regular skill, and a way for DMs and players to add more granularity to skill checks than "it's a flat Int roll or it's a generic Arcana / Religion / History roll".

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Weapons:
On the whole, weapons should behave as they currently do. The blanket exception is using Dexterity for all your attack rolls instead of Strength for all except a handful of Finesse weapons etc, but the other change I'd make is with the longbow and shortbow - specifically, I'd tie their damage and max ranges to Strength, to represent the fact that these weapons require some serious muscle to use IRL. Sorry all you ranged Dex users with twiggy arms :P . Anyway, ideally for balance purposes you want high Strength users to benefit from using them as much as, if not more than, other ranged weapons, because if your crossbow is always superior then... why use a longbow? That's not a situation you want to be in, so to conjure some numbers out of thin air, you might set the longbow damage as 1d8 + Strength Piercing, and the range as 10/40 x Strength ability score, such that anyone with 15 Strength gets the same range as a vanilla longbow (150/600), and stronger characters get an additional benefit. Similar rules could apply to other muscle-powered ranged weapons.

One thing I would not change is the idea of Finesse weapons, as in weapons that use your Dexterity modifier to deal damage. Lots of weapons do not rely on sheer strength to deal damage, and anyway what with D&D hit points not being "meat points", there's rather more abstraction here. It'd be easy to make it more complex (and for the record I think armours need a re-work irrespective of this thread), but I also don't want to slow combat down much. It's one thing to say "plate gives Resistance to non-magical Slashing damage" or "reduce all incoming magic damage by 3" etc, but I don't really want to mess around with this here, so let's move on.

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Balancing:
Oh happy days. Best thing here is to break this down I think...
NPCs & Monsters: Probably the easiest to fix. For example, +Wisdom save modifiers becoming +Willpower will fix possibly the biggest change as far as monster stat blocks go.
Class MAD issues: Take the classic Fighter (Champion), arguably the simplest 5e archetype there is. At the moment, you want Strength or Dexterity, and Constitution. With this system, the Str/Con option still requires Dexterity in order to get a decent attack bonus. As "you can use Strength for attack rolls" undoes the whole point of the changes above, I think it's a solution that should be used sparingly, and ideally not at all.
Spell saves: One issue I can easily see is Willpower becoming the #1 go-to saving throw you want to concern yourself with, at least where magic is concerned. From a dragon's presence to Polymorph to arguably a lot of psionics, it might be best to keep Concentration saves off Willpower (to name but one example) simply to avoid weighting down one stat with so much defensive utility.
Racial Traits: This isn't so bad - elves could get +Awareness instead of Keen Senses (or not, YMMV), dwarves might get a +Deftness bonus given their traditional love of making things, etc.
Character stat spread: Related to the second point here, it's mostly an issue when making characters with a points-buy system or similar, as rolling for stats more or less eliminates this issue - you have more stats, but that just means you roll more and distribute things as usual.
Class save proficiencies: Probably needs adjusting - do wizards want Int+Wis or Int+Willpower here? And if the latter, what about Concentration?

On the other hand, there are also more opportunities for new fun things - I like the idea of giving Barbarians (especially Berserkers) proficiency in Willpower saves ("puny god..."), and you have a potential new spellcasting stat and so on. Bards and Rogues are obvious choices for unique class-based Deftness buffs, being the two main skill monkey classes, etc.