Ability score minimums

[Perseus]

So after reading the lovely thread about a Monk someone on there brought up the old 2e ability score minimums from 2e.

What should be the minimum score for the classes in 3.P?

[Psyren]

So after reading the lovely thread about a Monk someone on there brought up the old 2e ability score minimums from 2e.

What should be the minimum score for the classes in 3.P?

The what now?

I know that in Point Buy you can't go below 7 or 8 in any stat. Or do you mean minimum stat to be considered a member of {class}? Or something else entirely?

[Vhaidara]

In response to the OP: NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT THAT WAS BAD. especially the level they were at.

@Psyren: Not sure if these were official 2e numbers, but in Baldur's Gate (used 2e), there were minimum ability scores for each class, like Paladin required a 13 Str, a 13 Wis, and a 17 Cha. Druid was 13 Wis and 15 Cha. Each specialist wizard had a different minimum stat in addition to Int

[Karnith]

The what now?2E required that characters of (pretty much?) every class have minimum ability scores to actually be that class. Paladins, for example, required something like Str 12, Con 9, Wis 13, and Cha 17. If your character didn't have (at least) those stats, it meant that she could not be a Paladin.

Applied to 3.5/PF, it would be a way to make sure that players don't accidentally build characters with ability score distributions that don't support the character's class (e.g. you wouldn't be able to build a Monk with 16 Str, 12 Dex, and every other ability a 10, or whatever was going on over in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=332811)).

Of course, such a rule could make certain classes unplayable below certain PB values, or get you into the fun 2E place of "Well, I want to play X, but the dice decided that I have to play Y instead." It would also tend to limit multiclassing.

[Psyren]

Ah, I see.

Yeah, that wouldn't really work for 3e. Between enhancement bonuses, stat boosts from leveling, and inherent bonuses (manuals/miracle/wish/RR) you can end up with a permanent +16 to any stat by level 20. You could start your career as an 8 Int yokel and still end up an archmage. And for secondary/tertiary stats it just limits and penalizes available character concepts for no reason. Throw in retraining/Reformation and you don't even need to feel the pain of being unsuited for your chosen field early on.

[Chronos]

There are also some classes can go in multiple directions with their attribute dependence. One can envision a rogue, for instance, that focuses exclusively on any one of Dex, Int, Cha, or Str, while dumping the others.

[The Trickster]

There is the part of PHB where it states when stats should be rerolled. I can't find the exact line, but I think it is, "if you have no stats higher then 12, or an overall modifier of <+0, you may reroll". Not sure if this counts as "minimum stats", but it's something.

[Yorrin]

I know at my table we do 5d6 drop 2 seven times drop lowest with rerolls allowed if you don't at least get one +3mod or higher. But I like my players a bit more powerful than point-buy.

[Yawgmoth]

There is the part of PHB where it states when stats should be rerolled. I can't find the exact line, but I think it is, "if you have no stats higher then 12, or an overall modifier of <+0, you may reroll". Not sure if this counts as "minimum stats", but it's something. {{scrubbed}}

[Kraken]

I believe there are rules somewhere that say that no PC ability scores can go below 1, except int which can't go below 3 (int 1-2 is considered animal intelligence). A source does not occur to me, and there's a lot of places it could be, though.

If it's worth anything, the aging rules in the PHB do at least say that they can't reduce a score below 1, and many spells that impose ability score penalties (as opposed to damage/drain) also state that they can't reduce a score below 1.

[Chronos]

Quoth Yorrin:

But I like my players a bit more powerful than point-buy.
I don't understand. What's "more powerful than point-buy"? If you want them to be more powerful, then you use a higher point-buy amount. Your method might make them "more varied", or "more unpredictable", but I can't see how it's "more powerful".

[eggynack]

There is the part of PHB where it states when stats should be rerolled. I can't find the exact line, but I think it is, "if you have no stats higher then 12, or an overall modifier of <+0, you may reroll". Not sure if this counts as "minimum stats", but it's something.
It's actually if your highest score is a 13 or lower, or if your modifier is +0 or lower, as can be found on page 8 of the PHB, under rerolling.

Also, ability score minimums are bad. If you want the problem of characters with unplayable stat arrays to stop happening, don't give your monk an unplayable stat array. That thread could have easily been solved by just rerolling the stats, but the group just didn't want to do that. That's no reason to restrict class access arbitrarily.

[Broken Crown]

The ability score minimums in AD&D were, I think, mostly there to enforce the rarity of the classes outside the Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief. I'm not entirely sure why this was done, though I think the fact that the Paladin and Ranger were essentially "Fighters, but better" had something to do with it. Even if you were allowed to arrange the ability scores you'd rolled, you had to make some trade-offs. For example, a Magic-User would naturally want to have the highest possible intelligence, to be able to learn more spells and cast spells of a higher level, but if you wanted to be an Illusionist, you had to have at least a 16 dexterity, so that was a high score you couldn't put into intelligence.

Monks were, as always, terrible: Not only did you need above-average to good ability scores across the board, you didn't even get most of the bonuses for having them.

Ability score bonuses also worked differently in AD&D than in 3.X. There was generally no numerical bonus or penalty for any score unless it was well above or below average. A character with all 8's was mechanically not really different from one with all 14's (except for spell casting). In 3.X, having a high or low ability score has its own built-in consequences, so there's no point in imposing extra, artificial constraints on character classes. If, in 3.X, you want to play a paladin with a 9 charisma, you'll be losing most of the benefits of being a paladin in the first place; there's no reason to ban it, if it's already self-nerfing.

I once played a one-shot game where the ability scores were 3d6, in order, no rerolls. The character I rolled didn't qualify for any class, thanks to having a 5 constitution ("The character can only be an Illusionist") but an insufficiently high dexterity. So I played as a 0-level character with a hit point penalty. I didn't contribute much (I hid most of the time, though I stabbed a fleeing goblin in the back as it ran away), but miraculously survived.

[Psyren]

I don't understand. What's "more powerful than point-buy"? If you want them to be more powerful, then you use a higher point-buy amount. Your method might make them "more varied", or "more unpredictable", but I can't see how it's "more powerful".

You can also assign stats, which gives your players the power of higher point buy without allowing them to start of with any stats dumped through the floor or pumped through the ceiling. For instance, I had a DM that gave us 16, 14, 14, 12, 12, 10 to put anywhere we wished, which in PF works out to roughly 24 PB but without any 20s or 6s.

[Invader]

I don't understand. What's "more powerful than point-buy"? If you want them to be more powerful, then you use a higher point-buy amount. Your method might make them "more varied", or "more unpredictable", but I can't see how it's "more powerful".

I think it's safe to say his method will net better scores than "standard" point but but def increasing the number of points would be better overall.

[Ravens_cry]

I'd say no for reasons of character diversity. There is a lot of ways in 3.X to switch what stats do what. If you are playing a Paladin who uses Wisdom for all his abilities and who uses Dex to hit, why do you care about having a high Charisma? The whole thing just crams characters into little boxes without really much to show for it in my opinion.

[bekeleven]

If you must roll, roll communally. Each player rolls one score (4D6 or 5D6 or whatever rules you're using), DM rolls the rest (up to 6, or 7 if you're dropping one), then those are the ability scores every player uses.

It can still force certain builds - obviously, 18/10/10/10/10/10 would encourage casters while 12/12/12/12/12/12 would push for, say, a binder or warlock - but it's at least "fair", whatever that means.

[shylocke]

My group rolls 4d6 and keeps the highest 3, rerolling 1's. So the lowest our character can start with is 6 before racial modifiers. Buddy had a character die because he forgot to add the racial changes and his wis hit 0

[Invader]

I'll be honest, there's a lot of times when I've skipped rolling my scores and just picked fairly average scores. I suppose you could say it's cheating but it's never really affected any of my characters all that much. I think to much emphasis gets placed on ability scores.

[Zweisteine]

They have something like this in Next as a prerequisite to multiclass, which makes some sense, but has its problems, such as the inability to multiclass into fighter as an archer.

I'd say ability score minimums are good, but it seems kind of silly sometimes. Some people have jobs they love, even if they are really bad at it. Wizards with 11 intelligence exist, though they wish they don't when they reach level 3.

Personally, I think the lowest maximum starting score should be 15, which lets primary casters cast their highest-level spells as soon as their spells/day lets them, even without magic items.

[eggynack]

Wizards with 11 intelligence exist, though they wish they don't when they reach level 3.

And then they're fine with it at level four, and then they pick up a +int item at level five, and it's spells forever from then on. Wizards, like other full casters, and especially the druid, can operate competently with really crappy scores. Really then, the only classes that deserve these restrictions is non-casters, which just seems kinda mean to non-casters to me.

[atomicwaffle]

my rules for stats:

standard
4d6 rolled 6 times, drop the lowest. if 4 of a kind, add them all together. Reroll allowed if you are below a +1 average, but you have to accept your reroll

greed
4d6 rolled 7 times, drop the lowest die and stat. if 4 of a kind, add them together (no rerolls)

countdown
17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12. These are your stats

I want heroes to be heroic, so i encourage beefier stats because beefier stats = bigger and badder meat grinders

[zlefin]

To OP:
I'd say there isn't a single well-defined minimum score for most classes, due to many classes having multiple viable builds.

But characters with terribly weak stats could be reasonably disallowed if letting them in would hurt the party. This would also have to factor in their class and build of course.

[Zweisteine]

I want heroes to be heroic, so i encourage beefier stats because beefier stats = bigger and badder meat grinders

Or bigger and badder diplomats, or bigger and badder liars, or bigger and badder pacifists!