Helping To Fix Strength and Intelligence

[demonslayerelf]

Short solution; Every character(Literally, every character... Maybe not NPC's) gets Extra Effort points and Applied Knowledge dice.

You have a number of Extra Effort points equal to your Strength modifier. When you make a strength, dexterity, or constitution-based skill or tool check, you can expend one to gain advantage on the check. If you make a Strength, Dex, or Con saving throw, you can spend one point to reroll it.

Extra Effort Points come back on a short rest.

Applied Knowledge Dice equal to your Intelligence modifier. The dice's size is that of your proficiency die(Variant rule in the DMG... +2 is 1d4, +3 is 1d6, etc.) Whenever you make any skill or tool check, you can roll one of your dice and add it to the check.

Applied Knowledge Dice come back on a long rest.


Short solution, been using it in my recent games. The skillmonkeys in my games are quite smart, now.

[JNAProductions]

Strength is fine-it's got more damage potential than Dex and better AC via Heavy Armor.

Intelligence is a bit of a sore point, but what I've seen people do is that you get an extra tool or language at +1 and +3 Int mod (at character creation), and an extra skill at +2 (again, only at character creation).

I don't see anything wrong with your system, but I do view it as unneeded. Glad it's worked well for you, though!

[Man_Over_Game]

Eh, I'd just have more challenges related to Strength and Intelligence than the other ones.

Make Perception not good at spotting traps. Make minor encumbrance, or have problems that are solved with excessive strength (like prying open some rusted iron bars). Or include enemies that rely on psychic damage or are easily countered via grappling.

[Sindeloke]

The problem with most Intelligence fixes is they tend to reward wizards in ways that aren't thematic. Extra languages makes sense for the stereotypical absent-minded sheltered academic - she probably knows Draconic at the very least, it's useful for those arcane tomes - but one does not expect her to be spotting camoflauged hares in the underbrush or performing feats of unparalleled acrobatics. Yet a wizard who is offered a bonus to skill rolls is almost certainly going to use them on performance-relevant things like Perception and Acrobatics that she's otherwise weak in; failing to escape a grapple is a much more immediate concern for the average player than failing a Nature check. Intelligence to initiative is similar, as one does not associate "wizard" with "quick on his feet" (in fact Gandalf is notoriously late for things).

If you're okay with making wizards competitive with rogues on their own turf, of course, that's fine - it's not like there's any objective problem with the idea. But in a class-based, trope-centric game system it's something to consider.

[Beastlands]

The other thing that you can do is use the variant rule to allow some of the different underused stats. But yeah, they need a little bit of help. Maybe bring back rules like 2h attacks gain 1.5 the strength mod.

[JMS]

For Int, a large part of the problem is that we have one Int based class, and 2-4 subclasses that use it, compared to the large number of classes using other stats. (This gets better with UA, for Mystic and Artificer.) If more classes used Int, and a skill use or two were shifted, it would be fine against Cha and Wis.

Strength: no idea. Track encumbrance?

[Vogie]

I use Strength-based slotted encumbrance. If you have 8 strength (like my warlock player does), you can only carry 8 slots of items. 15 strength, 15 slots.

Your worn equipment and a pack doesn't count towards the slots.


Item
Slots


Every 1000 coins
1


Light items (<5 lbs)
1


Medium items (5<20 lbs)
2


Heavy items (20<80 lbs)
4


Bag of Holding
5


Items greater than 80 lbs
Custom



For intelligence, I like that it's already tied to a study of certain things.

Maybe you can make it that you can pick up a number of tool & skill proficiencies from other people. For example, a 10 intelligence could learn a language or be proficient in, say, animal handling, in 6 months. For each point of your Int Modifier, that is reduced by a month. A 20 Int Wizard can become proficient in any tool or skill over a single month. However, you can't have more added skills than your int modifier (minimum 1)... So, a 10-13 level intelligence character can learn a single new skill, 14-15 could add 2, and so on. Trying to learn other things beyond that will make you lose proficiencies in something other skill.