Getting rid of ability scores

[Anonymouswizard]

My group still rolls attributes. We would object.

I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I'm revising my answer slightly.

Nothing meanigful would hange, and there'd be no additional hoops to jump through. You'd roll and then look up your modifier in a table, but most people do that anyway. If we keep the modifiers the same and want the same distribution we don't even need to change the table from it's current iteration beyond the headers.

And of course, the operation is a simple floor(roll/2)-5.

[Lord Raziere]

But don't get me wrong, I like the lack of feel. It allows much more room for the things I actually get feeling from to prosper. Like, the feeling of L5R is always going to be that kind of romanticized feudal Japan thing. Doesn't really matter what kind of game you're playing, combaty, gritty, horror, intrigue, it's all still romanticized feudal japan horrow/romance/intrigue/grit/etc... I can run romanticized feudal japan in D&D just fine, with whatever flavor I want, precisely because the game systems inject so little "feel" into the actual gameplay. Because on the flipside, if I don't want to play romanticized feudal japan, I have to set down my L5R books and pick up something else.

I mean I understand the lack of feel being good, I'm just confused as to how DnD achieves it for you when there are so many universal systems that does it better without its DnD-isms getting in the way. to me DnD will always be a bizarre choice to consider a universal system.

[Jason]

I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I'm revising my answer slightly.

Nothing meanigful would hange, and there'd be no additional hoops to jump through. You'd roll and then look up your modifier in a table, but most people do that anyway. If we keep the modifiers the same and want the same distribution we don't even need to change the table from it's current iteration beyond the headers.

And of course, the operation is a simple floor(roll/2)-5.

But "+4 Strength" doesn't have the same feel as "18 Strength". Feel is meaningful, even if mechanically it works just the same. THAC0 works mathematically just the same as BAB, but the feel is not the same.

I still miss having "18/00 Strength" (or at least the possibility of having 18/00 Strength. Very few of my characters actually had 18/00). Removing even the 18 would be going too far. It would no longer be Theseus' ship.

[False God]

I mean I understand the lack of feel being good, I'm just confused as to how DnD achieves it for you when there are so many universal systems that does it better without its DnD-isms getting in the way. to me DnD will always be a bizarre choice to consider a universal system.

For two reasons:
1: D&D is well known and there are enough people skilled in it to make finding players easy and finding players who are willing to play *whatever* with the D&D system is also pretty easy. Even 5th-editioners (folks who started with 5E) are typically by this point skilled enough in the system to be open to new experiences beyond "generic quasi-medieval-but-not-really fantasy".
2: While I argue that D&D lacks a particular "feel", most "we can do anything!" systems are just plain dull. They've been opened up, widened out, watered down and generally genericized to the point where they're just not even interesting to run. D&D at least says "We're generic fantasy, but you can also do other stuff.". "universal systems" say "do whatever"...which isn't terribly inspiring.

Like, to go back to my LEGO analogy, D&D is LEGO, you're stuck working with a bunch of little blocks of various colors and while they have fixed sizes, shapes and colors to them, they're still general enough you could take the same pieces you used to build a house and build a boat, or a starship, or a gun. There is a starting point you can both build towards, and build away from. Instead of a house you build a space-house, or instead of a house you build a house-boat.

"Universal" systems on the other hand are like clay. Dull. Grey. Blobular. But with significant skill and effort you can forge something truly amazing. But if you lack that skill, you get something misshapen, half-baked and generally unpleasant. Further, there's no "jumping off point". You didn't get a clay shoe that you're going to reform into a clay cup, you got a clay block that you have to reshape into...something. It's a massive amount of effort for a comparatively minor result that could have been achieved via tweaking an existing if imperfect generic system.

[Lord Raziere]

"Universal" systems on the other hand are like clay. Dull. Grey. Blobular. But with significant skill and effort you can forge something truly amazing. But if you lack that skill, you get something misshapen, half-baked and generally unpleasant. Further, there's no "jumping off point". You didn't get a clay shoe that you're going to reform into a clay cup, you got a clay block that you have to reshape into...something. It's a massive amount of effort for a comparatively minor result that could have been achieved via tweaking an existing if imperfect generic system.

Eh, tweaking an imperfect generic system just doesn't feel right to me. by using one system for something its clearly not built for, your distracting from what your trying to actually do and it feels messy trying to use something with aesthetics and systems clearly built for a specific thing for something completely different. sure you can use it for that, but its fitting an already bad tool into an even worse slot. sure its a clay block, but at least its not a stone shoe your trying to use as a sword.

[False God]

Eh, tweaking an imperfect generic system just doesn't feel right to me. by using one system for something its clearly not built for, your distracting from what your trying to actually do and it feels messy trying to use something with aesthetics and systems clearly built for a specific thing for something completely different. sure you can use it for that, but its fitting an already bad tool into an even worse slot. sure its a clay block, but at least its not a stone shoe your trying to use as a sword.

But D&D has been used for everything, even officially. It may not have been initially designed for Rokugan, Spelljammer, CoC or Star Wars, but these all work fairly well. Referring back above, much of D&D's mechanics are already divorced from the lore. There aren't any particular skills or stats that aren't perfectly suitable elsewhere. There's no thematic reason to use AC (and a fair share of arguments against) or to use a 1d8 for a longsword. They're just indifferent mechanical aspects. Faerun doesn't care if your sword does 1d8 or 4d2. It's lore is just as divorced from the mechanics.

To me, D&D's "systems" aren't specific at all, and IMO, the designers put quite some effort into making the mechanics and the lore pretty easy to divorce. Sure the lore's all there if you want to use it. But if you stripped "D&D" off the character sheet, or "troll" off the monster stats, that sheet could be for a dozen different games and that monster could be a dozen different things.

[Anonymouswizard]

D&D is less like LEGO and more like an Airfix kit. Sure, you can turn it into a model of something other than what's intended, but it's going to take a lot of work, but on the other hand if you use it as intended you get a nice model. Or if I'm using my actual thoughts it's like MegaBlocks: it claims to be a construction you and then mainly gives you specialised pieces, but an Airfix model works for specialised systems.

A well done generic system is like a box of Lego bricks. You can build a ton of things with them, but you're limited by what bricks you have and when all put together it's not going to look as sleek and nice as an Airfix model.

And occasionally you get systems that are like a Lego model of the ISS. There's not a whole lot you can do with the set and have it look good, but if you don't want the ISS you can use the bricks with other bricks to make something new.


D&D is full of things that point out towards a very specific model of world and game. That's not bad, but it does imply a certain kind of feel.

But having played all three of the Big Generics, I can say that GURPS, Savage Worlds, and Fate all have specific feels to them and if you threw the same setting at all three you'd get different games. If anybody can find me an RPG without feel I'd be surprised, I'm sure if I played enough Fudge I could tell you how it felt.

[Tanarii]

D&D is less like LEGO and more like an Airfix kit. Sure, you can turn it into a model of something other than what's intended, but it's going to take a lot of work, but on the other hand if you use it as intended you get a nice model. Or if I'm using my actual thoughts it's like MegaBlocks: it claims to be a construction you and then mainly gives you specialised pieces, but an Airfix model works for specialised systems.

As someone that loves D&D ... I completely agree. And the newer editions aren't even very good at what D&D was for originally. Heck, D&D wasn't very good for a lot of the kinds of later modules released. It pretty much started to go downhill when TSR tried to shoehorn it into something other than dungeon or hex crawls.

That's why there are constant complaints about 5e lacking an exploration component. In an effort to make it more generic, WotC didn't emphasize and provide and even removed a lot of things that were designed around crawls, starting in 3e. In 5e they just try to handwave everything. At least in 4e they knew what they were building it for, 3-4 hour sessions of official play, with pickup tables and self-contained adventures heavy on tactical combat and heroics. There are lots of echoes of that in 5e, but they loosened up the structure to make it more generic, and then published a bunch of adventure-paths instead.

As such 5e ends up being like the Lego ISS, as you say. I just had a lot of fun building that 2 months ago, but it's a little janky looking on the stand it comes with and half the good stuff is out of sight when on the shelf, I couldn't make anything but the ISS out of it, and large numbers of the parts wouldn't be useful for anything else even if I were to combine it with other lego parts.

But, and this is the thing that I like, I just picked it up, followed the instructions, and had a blast. Even when I was a kid with dozens of space lego sets all parts mixed together, I'd rather put them all together from the plans. I'm not a fan of picking up a box of lego parts and building my own stuff from it. It always looks terrible and doesn't work right. That's how I feel about 'generic' systems. Or even point buy character systems.

But "+4 Strength" doesn't have the same feel as "18 Strength". Feel is meaningful, even if mechanically it works just the same. THAC0 works mathematically just the same as BAB, but the feel is not the same.

How would you feel about ability scores that went from 4-10 instead of 8-20? With your bonus to a d20 roll being your ability score.

[Lord Raziere]

But D&D has been used for everything, even officially. It may not have been initially designed for Rokugan, Spelljammer, CoC or Star Wars, but these all work fairly well. Referring back above, much of D&D's mechanics are already divorced from the lore. There aren't any particular skills or stats that aren't perfectly suitable elsewhere. There's no thematic reason to use AC (and a fair share of arguments against) or to use a 1d8 for a longsword. They're just indifferent mechanical aspects. Faerun doesn't care if your sword does 1d8 or 4d2. It's lore is just as divorced from the mechanics.

To me, D&D's "systems" aren't specific at all, and IMO, the designers put quite some effort into making the mechanics and the lore pretty easy to divorce. Sure the lore's all there if you want to use it. But if you stripped "D&D" off the character sheet, or "troll" off the monster stats, that sheet could be for a dozen different games and that monster could be a dozen different things.

Yeah but.....

it just feels so......wrong to treat DnD that way, and its not because any particular love for the system, I kind of actively dislike it actually because of the way its designed. its so clearly NOT meant to be universal, and anything that is made from it to make something else feels so obviously kludgey and haphazard. and I don't get how people think its so easy to make it universal or why just because its a specific system forced into a thousand different specifics that it gets worse at the farther way its from its source that its somehow universal.

anything you could possibly make feels more like a reskinned DnD adventure than actual emulation. I know this because I've seen D20 conversions of some anime and they feel wrong because they have to adhere to the class-level system and thus its equipment style as well, when such anime aren't about getting loot, don't have dungeons and such. its like this one fanfic I've read where Naruto gets gamer powers: the author has to come up with this dungeon-like training ground that simply doesn't fit in with the rest of the world to justify random encounters, loot drops, mutant squirrels and whatnot to kill because of "leftover chakra" and it just feels so out of place, unnatural and forced in.

like, any DnD conversion just feels real videogamey in how its done and I just can't see that as a good conversion.

[Jason]

How would you feel about ability scores that went from 4-10 instead of 8-20? With your bonus to a d20 roll being your ability score.

Like it wasn't D&D. And my ability scores go from 3-18 before racial modifiers, not 8-20.

[False God]

like, any DnD conversion just feels real videogamey in how its done and I just can't see that as a good conversion.

You do realize that the design of like, 90% of action/adventure video games come from a D&D basis? A great many of them even use "random number generation", ie: dice rolls, in their base mechanics.

Saying D&D reskins feel "videogamey" is so weirdly circular.

Going back a couple posts, I mean, this IS video game design:

As far as D&D running any game... I mean, at the end of the day, any system can... if you try hard enough. I don't think D&D is very good at it. Even 3.x, the edition best at "running any game", doesn't do a fantastic job of it. D&D's conceits are very much baked into it - zero-to-superhero progression, high focus on combat, faux-medieval world, Vancian magic, lots of magic item acquisition, etc.

[Lord Raziere]

You do realize that the design of like, 90% of action/adventure video games come from a D&D basis? A great many of them even use "random number generation", ie: dice rolls, in their base mechanics.

Saying D&D reskins feel "videogamey" is so weirdly circular.

Going back a couple posts, I mean, this IS video game design:

I know. That doesn't stop it from being true though. the kludgy artificiality of it doesn't go away just because DnD was the origin.

the point is, it doesn't work for many worlds. it forces worlds that don't actually rely on equipment stat boosts to function to implement it even though it makes no sense. it forces world to treat everything as zero-to-hero progression even though it makes no sense. focus on combat, makes sense, I've yet to see d20 used for a world that doesn't focus on combat, but the last thing I want for some forms of combat is a tactical grid as if I'm playing Fire Emblem or other turn based strategy game.

[InvisibleBison]

But "+4 Strength" doesn't have the same feel as "18 Strength". Feel is meaningful, even if mechanically it works just the same. THAC0 works mathematically just the same as BAB, but the feel is not the same.

I still miss having "18/00 Strength" (or at least the possibility of having 18/00 Strength. Very few of my characters actually had 18/00). Removing even the 18 would be going too far. It would no longer be Theseus' ship.

Feel is meaningful, but it's also subjective. My first D&D was 3.5, and to me "18/00 Strength" feels equivalent to "18 Strength" - the slash reads as a decimal point. I've picked up enough from hanging around on these forums to know that's not correct, but that knowledge doesn't change how the feel. If 6th Edition did away with ability modifiers there would be lots of people for whom "+4 Strength" would feel just as strong as "18 Strength" does to me or "18/00 Strength" does to you.

[quinron]

I think a big thing that's made D&D feel more "universal" is the lack of a defined setting. The most you ever get in the core books is the brief rundowns on how the classes and races might fit into any given world and a list of gods with maybe a brief description of each. The official settings have always been a big source for content, sure, but the key there is settings - there's always more than one, and they're almost always supplementary rather than core. Many non-universal systems (especially the popular ones) have a built-in setting with a degree of metaplot and/or lore (see Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Warhammer, etc.). Core D&D is always "generic fantasy setting," and even with 5e being explicitly Forgotten Realms-based, the FR lore is still minimal.

[Anonymouswizard]

As someone that loves D&D ... I completely agree. And the newer editions aren't even very good at what D&D was for originally. Heck, D&D wasn't very good for a lot of the kinds of later modules released. It pretty much started to go downhill when TSR tried to shoehorn it into something other than dungeon or hex crawls.

That's why there are constant complaints about 5e lacking an exploration component. In an effort to make it more generic, WotC didn't emphasize and provide and even removed a lot of things that were designed around crawls, starting in 3e. In 5e they just try to handwave everything. At least in 4e they knew what they were building it for, 3-4 hour sessions of official play, with pickup tables and self-contained adventures heavy on tactical combat and heroics. There are lots of echoes of that in 5e, but they loosened up the structure to make it more generic, and then published a bunch of adventure-paths instead.

As such 5e ends up being like the Lego ISS, as you say. I just had a lot of fun building that 2 months ago, but it's a little janky looking on the stand it comes with and half the good stuff is out of sight when on the shelf, I couldn't make anything but the ISS out of it, and large numbers of the parts wouldn't be useful for anything else even if I were to combine it with other lego parts.

But, and this is the thing that I like, I just picked it up, followed the instructions, and had a blast. Even when I was a kid with dozens of space lego sets all parts mixed together, I'd rather put them all together from the plans. I'm not a fan of picking up a box of lego parts and building my own stuff from it. It always looks terrible and doesn't work right. That's how I feel about 'generic' systems. Or even point buy character systems.

Oh, I picked the ISS because I had a blast building it about a year ago, even if the model is better suited to a table than a shelf.

I'll agree with everything you say, with one additional note: D&D, especially 5e, are presented as things it isn't and some of those have been taken at face value. D&D is great when being used for what it's designed for, but the insistence on it having three 'pillars' while only giving rules for one of those areas, a tendency for people to assume it's a storytelling game when it isn't, and ab tendency to ignore all the setting implications in the roles. But if I want a dungeon crawl free systems are better for that than D&D, and it might say a lot that I've spent more time recently going cver the Rules Cyclopaedia then the current Player's Handbook.

I think a big thing that's made D&D feel more "universal" is the lack of a defined setting. The most you ever get in the core books is the brief rundowns on how the classes and races might fit into any given world and a list of gods with maybe a brief description of each. The official settings have always been a big source for content, sure, but the key there is settings - there's always more than one, and they're almost always supplementary rather than core. Many non-universal systems (especially the popular ones) have a built-in setting with a degree of metaplot and/or lore (see Shadowrun, Pathfinder, Warhammer, etc.). Core D&D is always "generic fantasy setting," and even with 5e being explicitly Forgotten Realms-based, the FR lore is still minimal.

The only way D&D is generic it's if you ignore all the food that is actually there. It's nondescript, but it has (in the latest edition):
-Active yet distant gods
-Multiple different types of magic.
-All these intelligent nonhuman species that come with their own fluff, sometimes pages of it.
-All that fluff that monsters have, although 5e might have got rid of that so it could wear a false moustache.
-Dangerous subterranean complexes filled with shiny things, a rare concept outside of it's descendants.

And that's just off the top of my head without going through the book, and editions like BECM had even more (hello explicitly assumed political systems and frontier lands). The end result is an arguably nondescript but not generic setting.

D&D's settings are great and some of them really break the mould, I've tried to move Dark Sun into about three other rules systems just so the magic makes sense. But at the end of the day they do start to struggle the further you get from Greyhawk. It's not like Fate, where a fairy tale, an intergalactic cooking show, the Gangsters of the Round Table and a gritty Quatermass homage all fit into the same system (and yes, all four of those are Fate settings).

[quinron]

The only way D&D is generic it's if you ignore all the food that is actually there. It's nondescript, but it has (in the latest edition):
-Active yet distant gods
-Multiple different types of magic.
-All these intelligent nonhuman species that come with their own fluff, sometimes pages of it.
-All that fluff that monsters have, although 5e might have got rid of that so it could wear a false moustache.
-Dangerous subterranean complexes filled with shiny things, a rare concept outside of it's descendants.

And that's just off the top of my head without going through the book, and editions like BECM had even more (hello explicitly assumed political systems and frontier lands). The end result is an arguably nondescript but not generic setting.

D&D's settings are great and some of them really break the mould, I've tried to move Dark Sun into about three other rules systems just so the magic makes sense. But at the end of the day they do start to struggle the further you get from Greyhawk. It's not like Fate, where a fairy tale, an intergalactic cooking show, the Gangsters of the Round Table and a gritty Quatermass homage all fit into the same system (and yes, all four of those are Fate settings).

I'm basically in agreement - I don't think D&D is actually generic. I just think this is one possible explanation for why people tend to view it as generic - because it is, compared to the most similar other properties, more setting-generic.

There's also the fact that, still being the most widely known system by a long stretch, D&D is most likely to attract new players, most likely to retain them once they start, and most frequently discussed online - all of that is simply a numbers and name recognition phenomenon. Because of all those factors, D&D is the easiest system for which to find homebrew that can make the game into something other than what it is. So while D&D isn't generic, there are probably enough subsystems and system overhauls homebrewed for it that you can turn it into something generic without too much effort.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm basically in agreement - I don't think D&D is actually generic. I just think this is one possible explanation for why people tend to view it as generic - because it is, compared to the most similar other properties, more setting-generic.

I think it might be a terminology issue as well, because we're basically in agreement. Which is why I brought up 'nondescript', universal suggests all-encompassing which isn't true for D&D even if we limit it to the fantasy genre.

There's also the fact that, still being the most widely known system by a long stretch, D&D is most likely to attract new players, most likely to retain them once they start, and most frequently discussed online - all of that is simply a numbers and name recognition phenomenon. Because of all those factors, D&D is the easiest system for which to find homebrew that can make the game into something other than what it is. So while D&D isn't generic, there are probably enough subsystems and system overhauls homebrewed for it that you can turn it into something generic without too much effort.

Oh, yeah, I'm not disputing that there isn't a wide variety of good (and not so good) stuff based on D&D, some of it even in other genres entirely. I actually really like Low Fantasy Gaming by Psikerlord, and think it does a lot to try and refocus the D&D structure on sandbox exploration (and the Deluxe Edition with additional theming is great).

[Jason]

Feel is meaningful, but it's also subjective.

No, it isn't really. How someone reacts to the feel of a system is subjective, but the feel of a system is as fixed as the words that make up the system.

[Tanarii]

I'll agree with everything you say, with one additional note: D&D, especially 5e, are presented as things it isn't and some of those have been taken at face value. D&D is great when being used for what it's designed for, but the insistence on it having three 'pillars' while only giving rules for one of those areas, a tendency for people to assume it's a storytelling game when it isn't, and ab tendency to ignore all the setting implications in the roles. But if I want a dungeon crawl free systems are better for that than D&D, and it might say a lot that I've spent more time recently going cver the Rules Cyclopaedia then the current Player's Handbook.

5e isn't just people assuming it's a storytelling game when it isn't. The Developers wax lyrical about it being a storytelling game, it's the very first sentence in the PHB. When the only thing they included that slightly resembles a narrative tool is the Personality System and Inspiration. Which is a groundbreaking (for D&D)roleplaying aid, not really a narrative tool. About the only "storytelling" is closer to the old trope of railroading = storytelling, and publish some fairly linear adventure-paths.

Agreed BECMI (and RC specifically) has far better crawling tools built in. The checklists are awesome. It also has a better progression / outline of the transitions, dungeon -> wilderness -> ruler -> planar exploration/immortality quest. I consider it superior to AD&D (either edition) because of that.

No, it isn't really. How someone reacts to the feel of a system is subjective, but the feel of a system is as fixed as the words that make up the system.

Brotha, people can't even agree on the meaning of written rules. And you want us to accept that the way systems feel is objective?

[Jason]

Brotha, people can't even agree on the meaning of written rules. And you want us to accept that the way systems feel is objective?

I'm saying it is objective. It doesn't matter if people accept that or not.

RPGs are fixed groups of words, just like any book. The feel or tone or character or whatever you want to call it of the system is fixed when the words are printed. If you go read the Original D&D rules the same words are there, even if you react differently to them today than someone who read them for the first time in 1974 reacted.

[Tanarii]

I'm saying it is objective. It doesn't matter if people accept that or not.

RPGs are fixed groups of words, just like any book. The feel or tone or character or whatever you want to call it of the system is fixed when the words are printed. If you go read the Original D&D rules the same words are there, even if you react differently to them today than someone who read them for the first time in 1974 reacted.

But that's not what objective means. Objective means personal feelings and opinions don't enter into the matter. The "feel" of something is inherently subjective. That's why we call it the feel in the first place.

[Jason]

But that's not what objective means. Objective means personal feelings and opinions don't enter into the matter. The "feel" of something is inherently subjective. That's why we call it the feel in the first place.

Which is perhaps why "feel" isn't the right word for it. Tone, character, or something else, perhaps.

If a movie is dark in tone then some people will like it, and some won't, and some will think it's too dark, and some will be fine with it, but those are all reactions to the tone, not the tone itself. The movie has a specific combination of sights and sounds that do not change from viewer to viewer, despite the change in reactions from viewer to viewer.

[Anonymouswizard]

5e isn't just people assuming it's a storytelling game when it isn't. The Developers wax lyrical about it being a storytelling game, it's the very first sentence in the PHB. When the only thing they included that slightly resembles a narrative tool is the Personality System and Inspiration. Which is a groundbreaking (for D&D)roleplaying aid, not really a narrative tool. About the only "storytelling" is closer to the old trope of railroading = storytelling, and publish some fairly linear adventure-paths.

It says a lot that groundbreaking for D&D had been part of the industry for at least eight years (Aspects appearing in Spirit of the Century, although 'metagame currency for playing your character as you defined' is far older). It also shows how little I've bothered to read the current edition, I basically own the PhB on sufferance and supplements only to expand chargen and have the one setting I care about.

So revise that to 'the designers spread barefaced lies as to what the game is'. At least when Evil Hat says it in Fate Core they have a firmer leg to stand on and generalise it to every game in the industry.

Agreed BECMI (and RC specifically) has far better crawling tools built in. The checklists are awesome. It also has a better progression / outline of the transitions, dungeon -> wilderness -> ruler -> planar exploration/immortality quest. I consider it superior to AD&D (either edition) because of that.

BECM is great (I have never read either version gf the Immortals rules, so I'm not counting them), and the RC is the one example of D&D doing core how I like it: an entire game in a single book. I really need to get it in print.

Like, I don't often want what D&D provides, bbut if I did I'd run either BECM or use it to support Basic Fantasy.

Brotha, people can't even agree on the meaning of written rules. And you want us to accept that the way systems feel is objective?

How dare you imply that somebody's opinion isn't universal!

[quinron]

Which is perhaps why "feel" isn't the right word for it. Tone, character, or something else, perhaps.

If a movie is dark in tone then some people will like it, and some won't, and some will think it's too dark, and some will be fine with it, but those are all reactions to the tone, not the tone itself. The movie has a specific combination of sights and sounds that do not change from viewer to viewer, despite the change in reactions from viewer to viewer.

Just because something has objective correlates doesn't mean the effect it produces is objective. A movie can be technically proficient, capably written, and acted with conviction by skilled performers, but that doesn't mean it's objectively a "good" movie. It just means more people are going to subjectively consider it "good" than "bad." Consensus is not an empirical value.

[OldTrees1]

Which is perhaps why "feel" isn't the right word for it. Tone, character, or something else, perhaps.

If a movie is dark in tone then some people will like it, and some won't, and some will think it's too dark, and some will be fine with it, but those are all reactions to the tone, not the tone itself. The movie has a specific combination of sights and sounds that do not change from viewer to viewer, despite the change in reactions from viewer to viewer.

You are trying to communicate that objective differences in mechanics can create different textures. Players may notice or not notice different differences in texture. Players that notice a difference in texture might feel something about that difference.

Changing from the 3-18 ability scores to just modifiers (or ability scores equal to modifiers) is similar to the difference in TCGs having stats in the 1000s, 10s, or 1s. The math can be tuned to nearly or completely account for the difference during calculations. However some players might still notice a difference between a 14(+2)Str and an 8(+8 but DCs increase by 6)Str. The math will have those be equivalent but they might feel different because there is a texture difference.

Normally mechanical texture pops up as extra context for opinions when there is a difference in the math but opinions about the difference go beyond just the literal difference. Consider what the ludonarrative is saying about being able to do a whirlwind attack at will vs 3 times per encounter vs 12 times per day. Half of the difference is the frequency you can use it, but the other half is the difference between how at will vs consumable abilities feel (even when the number of uses are identical).


Would a change from 0-20 to 0-10 cause an issue for many players? I cannot tell. But I believe you when you say it will impact you.

[quinron]

You are trying to communicate that objective differences in mechanics can create different textures. Players may notice or not notice different differences in texture. Players that notice a difference in texture might feel something about that difference.

Changing from the 3-18 ability scores to just modifiers (or ability scores equal to modifiers) is similar to the difference in TCGs having stats in the 1000s, 10s, or 1s. The math can be tuned to nearly or completely account for the difference during calculations. However some players might still notice a difference between a 14(+2)Str and an 8(+8 but DCs increase by 6)Str. The math will have those be equivalent but they might feel different because there is a texture difference.

Normally mechanical texture pops up as extra context for opinions when there is a difference in the math but opinions about the difference go beyond just the literal difference. Consider what the ludonarrative is saying about being able to do a whirlwind attack at will vs 3 times per encounter vs 12 times per day. Half of the difference is the frequency you can use it, but the other half is the difference between how at will vs consumable abilities feel (even when the number of uses are identical).


Would a change from 0-20 to 0-10 cause an issue for many players? I cannot tell. But I believe you when you say it will impact you.

The first thing I could see changing in the "increase all DCs by 6" scenario is that a lot more beginners and non-optimizers would be willing to take what amounts to an ability penalty if the ability was getting a +4 (out of a total 10) rather than a -1. I actually think the notion of an ability penalty is pretty key to D&D's identity, or at least 5e's - by signaling to you that there are things you're bad enough at that your score hurts your end result, they increase the sense that you're a collaborative party that will need to cover each other's weaknesses. Though, of course, it's very easy (probably too easy, by my reckoning) to get rid of those penalties.

[OldTrees1]

The first thing I could see changing in the "increase all DCs by 6" scenario is that a lot more beginners and non-optimizers would be willing to take what amounts to an ability penalty if the ability was getting a +4 (out of a total 10) rather than a -1. I actually think the notion of an ability penalty is pretty key to D&D's identity, or at least 5e's - by signaling to you that there are things you're bad enough at that your score hurts your end result, they increase the sense that you're a collaborative party that will need to cover each other's weaknesses. Though, of course, it's very easy (probably too easy, by my reckoning) to get rid of those penalties.

I really like ability scores as something that can be damaged. Not only can you take hp damage, but necromancy can even bypass your hp to attack your Constitution directly. Unfortunately if a stat can be damaged it is more intuitive for 0 to be the death / failure state.

You bring up a good reason to want negative ability modifiers. Signaling to the player that there are things the PC is bad enough at they their modifier hurts their end result.

And this whole thread has been full of reasons to prefer ability modifier to be equal to ability score.

Is it just me, or is this a classic "pick 2 of the 3" situation? We can't have the minimum ability score be 0, have negative ability modifiers, and have ability score equal ability modifier. We can pick any 2.

[SunsetWaraxe]

Ability Scores have not needed to really exist for at least the last 21 years. They remain because they are something that many players associate with what makes the game feel like D&D (which was the entire goal with 5th edition).

[Mendicant]

I really like ability scores as something that can be damaged. Not only can you take hp damage, but necromancy can even bypass your hp to attack your Constitution directly. Unfortunately if a stat can be damaged it is more intuitive for 0 to be the death / failure state.

You bring up a good reason to want negative ability modifiers. Signaling to the player that there are things the PC is bad enough at they their modifier hurts their end result.

And this whole thread has been full of reasons to prefer ability modifier to be equal to ability score.

Is it just me, or is this a classic "pick 2 of the 3" situation? We can't have the minimum ability score be 0, have negative ability modifiers, and have ability score equal ability modifier. We can pick any 2.

I agree. Ability score damage and the intuitive benefit of negative modifiers hits at what I think is one of the disconnects this conversation keeps having. Ability scores separate from modifiers may or may not be necessary, but that isn't the same thing as deciding if they're useful. I haven't seen much reason why they're actively harmful; in fact, the ease with which they could lift out seems pretty directly correlated with how little harm they do if left in.

If the actual upside of keeping the scores is kinda small at this point, the net benefit of taking them out seems even smaller.

[DwarfFighter]

Ability Scores have not needed to really exist for at least the last 21 years. They remain because they are something that many players associate with what makes the game feel like D&D (which was the entire goal with 5th edition).

I disagree, at least with regards to 5e.

The basic premise is that any unskilled and average (human) character makes their tests at +0. They have not special training (proficiency bonus) or talent (ability modifier). Yet they do have basic competence that enables them to perform the action.

However, not all creatures are the same. Goblins, gelatinous cubes, dragons - these have characteristics where the average for their category is of different capability than that of a human (the presumed norm), and it makes sense to allow for lower or higher ability modifiers than +0.

Now, for some reason modifiers will not go below -5, but are practically unlimited as to how high they can go. I don't think this is an issue: players characters are the ones that experience the game world, and encountering extraordinarily powerful enemies is in keeping with the fact that the PCs advance in power themselves, while encountering extraordinarily weak or vulnerable creatures doesn't make for great drama, challenge, or excitement.

So what purpose do ability scores serve? Well, if nothing else they make it possible for ability modifier advancement to be more gradual. This is kinda enforced by ability scores in general coming in every 4 levels, but is kinda undermined by the characters getting 2 points to spend each time, which happens to be the "cost" of a full +1 increase. A wily player will quickly realize that it is better to invest both points in one ability to get the +1 now, and later invest both points in another ability, rather than invest a single point in both abilities and get two +1s when he has done so twice.

However, for my own character I found it a a worthwhile decision to invest my first ability score increase in the Resilience feat to gain proficiency with Dexterity saves, then spend the second ability score increase to get Dexterity to a even number and Wisdom to an odd number, and my next ability score increase will be invested in the Resilience feat to gain proficiency with Wisdom saves. What can I say, I like to have a better chance at making saves. This has resulted in my character having odd numbered abilities throughout his career, even if I had the possibility to round them out fairly early.

So, do ability scores have a purpose? Yes, if you go looking for reasons. But arguably they could fairly readily be replaced by plain bonuses in 6e. I like them, though. It's part of the DnD brand the way D20s, dragons and fireballs are.