Forum > Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion
Min-maxing and racial ability score adjustments
jhkim:
So there's been some discussion of racial ability score adjustments that focus on politics. From my view, though, the biggest issue with ability score adjustments is min-maxing.
The key point here is that +X strength for a fighter or +X intelligence for a wizard is worth a lot more than the same bonus in a non-prime stat, like strength for a wizard. The fighter uses strength-based rolls very frequently, while the wizard doesn't - and vice-versa for intelligence. That means that if you have a strength-focused character and are then allowed to choose race, one gets the best bang for the buck by choosing a strength-boosting race like half-orc. That's true regardless of whether you got that high strength by random roll in order, roll and arrange, or point-bought.
This isn't true if one picks race before roll-in-order stats, or if race is based on a random roll. If these are true, then statistically, even with stat mods, 35% of half-orcs will have higher intelligence than strength.
If race is chosen after stats, though, a lot of player will choose half-orc when they already have a high strength score to boost min-max or just because they feel "high strength fits being a half-orc". I think this is failing to represent what the stat mod is claimed to represent - because PCs won't match the distribution, but will be skewed by player psychology.
If there is choice, then I dislike encouraging this sort of min-maxing. In design systems like Fantasy Hero, then if I want to make an 18 Strength character, I pay the same for 18 Strength regardless of whether I'm a strong human like Conan or Imaro, or if I'm a half orc.
Stephen Tannhauser:
--- Quote from: jhkim on September 26, 2022, 04:43:19 PM ---From my view, though, the biggest issue with ability score adjustments is min-maxing.
If race is chosen after stats ... a lot of player will choose half-orc when they already have a high strength score to boost min-max or just because they feel "high strength fits being a half-orc". I think this is failing to represent what the stat mod is claimed to represent - because PCs won't match the distribution, but will be skewed by player psychology.
If there is choice, then dislike encouraging this sort of min-maxing.
--- End quote ---
This is a cogent point. Ironically, the biggest argument against it in practice is (I think) traceable to another element of player psychology: one could account for represented distributions by requiring players to roll stats within certain key ranges before they could choose a particular race, in the same way one used to have to roll CHA 17 to play a paladin -- but this then imposes the requirement that anybody who wants to play a member of a particular race may be "forbidden" from doing so on the grounds of his die rolls. Nobody liked this when it limited the classes they could choose, and nobody would like having their PC race choices limited this way either.
A more effective way to do it would be simply to provide unique characteristic generation methods for every single race-class combination available in the game -- so, for example, if you want an elven wizard you are by definition going to have an INT score between 13 and 20, because elven wizards roll 1d8+12 for that score -- but given the volume and design time this would take up, I'm not surprised nobody's taken that approach.
Osman Gazi:
Personally, I'd say the easiest way around this is simply having minimums and/or maximums for a race and/or class that the character wants to play--no bonuses or penalties applied after attributes are determined. Roll up the attributes, assign them as you will, and if you meet the racial/class minimums and don't exceed the maximums, you're ok. No bonuses.
Or you go with a points-based system like GURPS (which I do like)...but that's a different kind of game than D&D.
hedgehobbit:
The way most people play D&D now, point buy is really the best option. And not just point buy of the Ability Scores, but the racial powers as well. So, Darkvision might be two points, same for Thick Skin (armor class bonus) or pay one point for Sharp Claws, etc.
Then they could just have a list of "suggested" powers for each race. For example, if you want to play an elf, they suggest having the Darkvision and Gender Nonbinary powers.
Steven Mitchell:
I handled this issue in my system (which starts with scores of 3d6 in order) by:
1. Designing the system to expect ability score boosts over time, and setting up the process to explicitly reward trying to improve a lower score. That is, you may prefer to improve your best score, but you are more likely to get a bigger boost with something heretofore neglected.
2. Related to #1, skewing the mods so that they are not even across the distribution. If every N points of ability gets you a plus, and there is no mechanism to make the higher points of ability cost more, then players will nearly always skew towards the latter. Whereas, with the skew, it takes about 2 points on average to remove a minus but 3 points on average to get another plus (and more once you get past a 17 on a typical 3-18 range).
3. Making racial boosts be a pick from a limited list, and in some cases enforcing the pick to the lowest score. So my dwarves can pick either "Might" or "Will" (at least one of which will be useful to almost any character except a classic D&D wizard/glass cannon), with an option to pick Dexterity instead if its particularly crummy compared to the other two scores. Meanwhile, the elves get to boost Lore, Dexterity, or Perception, whichever is lowest.
From a classic D&D perspective, I'd say a good fix would be to simply have every race boost their worst score from a set list (like I did with elves), with humans getting a boost on either their worst or their second worst. There, you've skewed the distribution by race, but cut out nearly all possibilities for min-maxing.
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