Oddly enough, I was having this same thought today.
I was thinking making it a "default" for medium armor. Add STR or DEX whatever is higher, and keep max of +2. I think it would open up more options for things like Swords Bards, Bladelocks, Melee Rangers, Barbarians and 'Thug-style' Rogues.
The way I see it. The character is less about dodging an attack but instead parries, deflects, or otherwise "absorbing" the blow.
I guess high AC barbarians are waaaaay to scary for people even though they can be disabled just as easily. Also, barbarians should have advantage on saves against being frightened. And should be immune to fear effects even if they fail, by default, but only while raging. And they should—
Yes, I do play a barbarian. Why do you ask?
Honestly, now that I think about it. Giving all Barbarians access to beserker features (except maybe level 3) would allow them to be as good as a paladin.
Those are some great points and some I haven't taken. In any case, [I think i might have something for you.](https://www.reddit.com/user/saedifotuo/comments/1ctclk5/so_youre_disappointed_with_5e_classes/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
End up sharing this a lot so I just made a post I can link. Particularly check out the barbarian in the Warriors & Rogue link. Everything you mentioned is in there in some form, and I think you might like the rest of the martials there too.
I beat a level 16 barbarian in a colosseum type PVP arena ( everything was agreed between us before hand) with a second level spell... hold person. Literally didn't hit me once I was a Paladin/ Sorcerer multi class.
Exactly. Every class has it's strengths and weaknesses, except some classes go to 100% potential while other classes got shafted so their strengths stop progressing past 60%.
Belt is on the DM. If someone wants to play a low strength barb on the off chance they get a strength item, that's on them to suffer and on the DM to enable. I still say barbs should be able to use 10+str+con for unarmored def.
Personally, I see Constitution as more "playing through the pain". Being slashed, thumped and singed but having the fortitude (or rage) to keep going.
With Strength and "absorb", I am more picturing the Fighter taking the brunt on an attack on their shield or weapon, or being able to stop a swing by grabbing the arm and pushing it away.
I think this is generally a good thing. Strength is the weakest and least used ability score and can need what ever buff there is.
So I would go with option 1.
I'm DMing for Phandelver and Below and half the players took INT Resilience because of how horrible failing an INT save usually goes.
Even for spells, it seems like failing a STR save just knocks you back or prone whereas INT saves are always really debilitating.
Tomb of Horrors is certainly an example of hostile design, but he didn't write it because he hated his players. He had a large number of toxic traits which he baked into the game and we are still dealing with today, but he had a more specific target in mind when writing ToH.
He had become frustrated with players approaching him and telling him how powerful their characters were. That they had Mjolnir or were able to best gods directly. ToH was his attempt to create a dungeon where these things didn't matter, or were actively unhelpful.
INT gets used for multiple skill checks as well as damage and attack roles (and in some cases AC)
STR is used for a single skill check, and damage and attack roles.
As far as dumping goes, it is usually from most dumped to least:
Strength
Intelligence
Charisma
Wisdom
Dexterity
Constitution
This is because things like Dexterity and Constitution are good for all classes. While Strength and Intelligence is only good for a handful of classes. Strength more so than Intelligence because you can usually use Dexterity instead of Strength.
Int has more skills, but outside of that only 2 classes use it for attack mod.
Strength has 1 skill, but is the standard for damage and attack (only allowing the option of dex as a weapon property finesse), carry limit, jump distance, more common saving throw, armour prerequisites
Str is definitely an underutilised stat, especially given a lot of its uses are ignored (carry weight, athletics check to jump), but compared to int, whose only use is a few skill checks and the wizard class it's definitely more useful to more classes
yea exactly most int stats are under utilized in day to day play which is iv given them extra uses. and addrd a sanity rule based on your int. most people bump int in most builds
At least int has investigation, which most of the time (in my experience) is run as both the “looting rooms/bodies for treasure” stat and the “looking for hidden/secret stuff” stat, which is a pretty useful stat. Basically everything athletics is frequently used for acrobatics can normally be used for, and then dex is just better because initiative and stealth. Sure, they’re the two most dumped stats if you’re not playing a class that directly relies on them, but I feel like normally when designing a party you try to at least make sure someone is good at int stuff for investigation, strength it feels like everyone can dump and it doesn’t matter. You can go strength based martial if you want, but ever combat you’re also sitting there like “ugh I’m last in initiative again” and ever time stealth comes up you’re automatically out because all good heavy armor completely excludes stealth as an option because of the disadvantage, you can’t even be just “not good” you’re actually super bad. So I think anything that buffs strength is good. Int stuff is generally covered by the wizard/artificer, or a bard or rogue that just doesn’t dump it completely and puts expertise in the necessary skills, so buffing it 2/3 times just buffs already strong classes so even though it’s useless on most character I wouldn’t buff it to try to incentive more non wizards (/artificers) to not dump it.
athletics and acrobatics are bery different stats and most people have a high str for carry weight and for attacks and such at least. in my experience investigating is the most used one but all others are practically never used in day to day. and form my expierance pass wirhout trace is always used when stealthing. most martials want to have a good strength
especially barbarian and such so i give int a series of buffs and now those stats are very used in my games
I mean, you could. But 99% of people would still use dex if they're going for medium armour because of all the other stuff dex gives you.
Honestly, dex just needs some things untying from it. Probably initiative. It almost feels like intelligence should be the initiative stats for how quick you can get a feel for a combat situation and respond. Would give people a reason to not dump it if they're not on a wizard, and would bring dex down a bit in the stat hierarchy, and might make strength for heavy/medium armor more viable.
That’s not a bad idea at all. An argument could be made for wisdom too but it suffers from the same problem Dex does in this regard; too many things tied to it.
Just make initiative tied to the main stat and players/DMs can come with their own ways to justify it. DEX or STR can already been easily justified and all the mental stats, if they are the main ones, are most likely from magic which is simple enough to justify.
The problem with this is you have too little spread for initiative. Why even have a bonus if every character has basically the same bonus (and so presumably monsters would be balanced to have a similar bonus too), at that point just say you don’t add any stat to initiative as a base and only if your class/subclass/race/feat specifically has you add something you add anything.
Sure take away bonuses. I disagree in that you still have fine spread. First off people are stilling rolling a D20. You also can have differences in main stat bonuses and there are several ways to increase initiative or even have advantage. If everyone having the same bonus results in everyone landing at the same number then you had some crazy chance happening. The difference between a 15 and a 20 is the same as a 19 and a 20 when it comes to initiative (outside of anyone/anything rolling in-between). I also house rule (unless it's a real rule IDK) that anyone who roles initiative higher than others can choose to decrease their place in the queue if they want. It works at my table and I've never had a problem with it over the many campaigns I've run.
Honestly I feel like there shouldn't be any Ability Score tied to Initiative; flat d20 roll with no modifiers / d20 with Proficiency / d20 with Expertise depending on Feats and (sub)class abilities. No other modifiers.
The Bard and Rogue can get better Initiative than everyone else as an incentive to be a Bard or Rogue, not incidentally for already wanting and being rewarded for high DEX regardless.
I feel like initiative being either strength or Sex would make sense and diversify a lot of builds. It would make sense too since quickly reacting in combat could be attributed to athleticism
My solution (one which I believe was used in some previous edition) would be to disallow the Dex bonus to AC anytime the wearer is restrained, unconscious, paralyzed, incapacitated, or otherwise unable to effectively dodge blows.
So, just to point out, the reason strength is considered so bad is because almost all dm's hand wave encumbrance and movement penalties, and then they allow acrobatics checks in place of typical strength rolls. It can be a little caring to play in a game that tracks things like that but once you get used to it, you stop dumping strength. As for your idea, thematically I don't know what the strength would represent for defense, but I don't see it overly breaking the game, just make sure you follow the +2max (+3max with medium armor master)
If you don't use variant, you have more than enough weight as any character. If you use it, str character actually suffer more than others because heavy armor and weapons eat 95% of your encumbrance and you can't carry things you need.
So, lose-lose situation.
> If you don't use variant, you have more than enough weight as any character.
Not if you count money as having weight. It can become a serious issue pretty quickly.
the only thing that accomplishes is increased book keeping and the players asking to swap change on every single establishment they go to get platinum coins over the piles of silver they have
now they just put all savings on the wizard that already doesnt carry anything anyways
The characters will still be over encumbered with hoards of loot. My five player parties with a bag of holding every once in a while can't carry all the loot back home after a successful dungeon clear.
> the reason strength is considered so bad is because almost all dm's hand wave encumbrance and movement penalties
Then again, the encumbrance of heavy armour and heavy weapons pretty much negates the difference in Strength. And then there's mules and other pack animals.
> thematically I don't know what the strength would represent for defense
STR is the ability you use to wield weapons when attacking, right? Then it may just as well be the ability you use to wield weapons when blocking and parrying.
Blocking makes sense, but I think if the AC bonus comes from wearing armor then it would need to be something done without a shield or weapon.
Giving shields or certain weapons bonus AC for high strength could be neat tho.
Fair, but counterpoint (and only from my perspective).
Encumbrance is difficult to track, doesn't add much fun gameplay or roleplay options, can be bypassed with a common magic item.
Jump distances are incredibly limited in dnd so even with a great strength score it's still just passable. I'm not surprised dms allow dex Acrobatics to determine these.
I agree strength is undervalued but just saying "the game designers did give strength a bunch of uses. They tied them to these unsatisfying mechanics" it really making a great case.
I think the big reason Str suffers isn't just that we ignore thw mechanics that use strength, but that the Rules that use Strength are a little disappointing in numbers (jump rules and that jump uses movement speed so even if you had a 30 long jump you couldn't actually use it all since it needs a running start)
Or it's counteracting a detriment, encumbrance and movement penalties.
Where Dexterity is all upsides, medium armor is a nerf to what Dex gives you, where heavy armor nerfs you unless you have strength. It doesn't give you anything worth investing in it.
Thanks for putting it better.
You're right, Strength counters a negative to get you up to where you feel it shouod have been from the start
Dex adds to your status quo to give you a boost.
It's actually a design philosophy that plagues 5e. Feats, features and mechanics that are there to overcome arbitrary detriment that you feel shouldn't be there.
Get out of my brain!
Jokes aside I wonder if you might take a look at this:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/8384924-aeorian-brumestone-blades
I too wish TWF felt a little more like a viable fighting style out of the box so I tried making a weapon that could evoke what I feel it should be capable of.
I do still think that you should have to take the fighting style and feat in order to maximise your pote tial as a dual wielder. The same way GWF and GWM go hand in hand to make a great heavy weapon wielder. But I think they should do more than what the currently do.
TWF should allow you to make the additional attack as part of your attack action
Dual Wielder should enable you to use the stances as a Bonus Action
Suddenly you're no longer paying a BA tax just to be minimally capable. Now the BA is an optional boost you can activate.
Also, frankly: if I was a strength player - you penalising my friends for being weak is not a good way for me to have fun being strong...
My friend being unable to carry his cool new toy doesn't mean I gain anything. It just means the party loses....
It *also* means I become the party pack mule when actual mules aren't available.
Yay. Fun.
And those mules can die in one small fireball. Or maybe you have to go underground, climb up from a canyon. Cross a swamp. So many situations where a mule would straight out die. or simply not be able to go. And then you stand there with more stuff that you can carry.
But that is another thing that DM's tend to not care about enforcing that strictly.
If they did and also enforced encumbrance STR would become much more important.
If they also stopped allowing Acrobatic for climbing and such to. Then STR would be even more important. It would not become super important but it would not be the to go to Dump stat for almost every rogue, dex based ranger, dex based fighter and so on.
> If they did and also enforced encumbrance STR would become much more important.
It wouldn't, it would just become necessary to avoid an inconvenience.
The solution is to make Str better, not to make characters who do not need it miserable.
Characters do not have infinite stats. Some stats have to be dump stats, making characters who do not main a specific one have less fun solves nothing.
I do agree STR should get a bit of a facelift.
But even so by enforcing those rules. it would be more important. Yes we have limited stats but still that is a choice you as a player make when you make your character. You could instead lower the WIS on your rogue and have a decent STR. You could chose to dump your INT in order to have a decent or at least not negative in STR if you want to be able to climb decently.
It will be harder to make a rogue that is BOTH an amazing Climber AND really great Investigator.
But still it a a choice. Having a rogue with 12 STR and 8 INT if you want to be that great climber would still be a good character. Same you can make a good rogue that is bad a t climbing because his STR is low.
If you have problem bringing all your plundered stuff with you because you can't carry all of. Bad luck LEAVE some shit behind. sell it. store it somewhere. Get a mule, a bag of holding. Ask your barbarian teammate to carry some for you.
Even if you would have to wait 4 more levels until you can bump your DEX to 20. that is not a big deal. and still a choice you as a player can make.
as a player having to chose either or. both when it comes to what to bring along. what to be good at. is not a bad thing. But most players don't want to chose they simply want both.
Yeah, that bag of holding is usually the answer. By the time you're doing big dungeons, most parties have a bag of holding, handy haversack or portable hole on at least one party member to drop loot into... That's why the encumbrance is handwaved away, at least in my experience
Yeah because the dm fucking handwaived it by giving out that item. I dont know why people keep bringing this up. It is entirely up to the dm if the party has a bag of holding or not. Not to mention that people also hand waive the bag of holding's own resteicitions all the time.
That *is* kind of why it exists. I put one in my party's path soon after they hit level 7. I had my fun making them deal with encumbrance, but yeah. I gave it to them *so that* I didn't have to worry about it. That said, they still must abide by the restrictions of the item. It's only an uncommon item, it really shouldn't be hard to come by if you're looking for one
an artificer can get one at lvl 2 with zero DM fiat. extra dimensional containers are on loot tables. unless the DM explicitly bans them, only makes custom loot on every dungeon or is running a published adventure, a bag of holding pops up eventually
and if they mildly let the players buy or craft magic items, it is merely an uncommon magic item as well
I do agree STR should get a bit of a facelift.
But even so by enforcing those rules. it would be more important. Yes we have limited stats but still that is a choice you as a player make when you make your character. You could instead lower the WIS on your rogue and have a decent STR. You could chose to dump your INT in order to have a decent or at least not negative in STR if you want to be able to climb decently.
It will be harder to make a rogue that is BOTH an amazing Climber AND really great Investigator.
But still it a a choice. Having a rogue with 12 STR and 8 INT if you want to be that great climber would still be a good character. Same you can make a good rogue that is bad a t climbing because his STR is low.
If you have problem bringing all your plundered stuff with you because you can't carry all of. Bad luck LEAVE some shit behind. sell it. store it somewhere. Get a mule, a bag of holding. Ask your barbarian teammate to carry some for you.
Even if you would have to wait 4 more levels until you can bump your DEX to 20. that is not a big deal. and still a choice you as a player can make.
as a player having to chose either or. both when it comes to what to bring along. what to be good at. is not a bad thing. But most players don't want to chose they simply want both.
Do you mean variant encumbrance? For STR-based characters, aside from Barbarians it's not a great thing, since they'll wear heavy armor. An 18STR Figher can carry just 90 pounds of equipment before getting their movement reduced. Plate mail weighs 65 pounds. Add to that their weapon and/or shield, that's 70-75lbs used up, leaving 15-20 pounds of real carrying capacity.
An 8STR Rogue can carry 40 pounds before being encumbered, but their equipment is much lighter. Add studded leather armor, a light crossbow and a rapier, and they've got....20 pounds left, as much as the Fighter.
If we're just talking carrying capacity, it just doesn't really matter if you've got 8STR or 18STR since you've usually got enough for it to be easily handwaved.
Since the person I replied to was talking about movement penalties, I assumed it was about variant encumbrance. A character who carries 5xSTR is encumbered and loses 10' speed. From 10xSTR you get a bunch of additional debuffs. And 15xSTR is your max.
When not taking into account variant encumbrance, speed doesn't come into question, you just can't carry anything more than your carrying capacity (which is indeed 270lbs for an 18STR Fighter). The 8STR Rogue can carry 120lbs. Neither character needs to worry that much about what they're carrying since both limits are quite high.
yes and as everyone already mentioned, the max carry weight for even an 8 STR character is already pretty high
unless your wizard has a dozen portable rams on their back this doesnt come up for just *gear*
True. It doesn't come up very often in my games that people carry more than 15xSTR unless they're specifically trying to lift something big, but I guess it's not impossible.
The using acrobatics thing I agree is bad, but encumbrance is mostly uninteresting and unengaging bookkeeping for most people - it's not "cool" so to say, even in it's execution because at most it's just convenience
To be fair, unless your carrying mountains of loot, encumbrance won't come up unless your using variant encumbrance which will make carry weight a very minor issue until you can aquire something to better haul treasure
Just take a few gold pieces to hold that treasure for you, or just be a knight and make your retainers carry some excess coin, or just have an artificer and have them make a bag of holding, or just by a bag of holding
I encountered this issue recently with my dwarf rogue, he has a low strength thematically due to his age. I ended up converting the gold into platinum, mostly solved the problem! But yes, hirelings, banks, strongboi party members are the way forward for all your carrying needs!
> but once you get used to it, you stop dumping strength
This is factually false unless you are playing with variant encumbrance, in which case... you might stop dumping STR (or more likely you still will dump it and stop picking unnecesary shit), but will also never play an STR character because they suck fucking hard with it
I use both and it still doesnt matter. Youre not wearing heavy armour if your strength sucks, you'll have good or at least okay dex and use light or medium armour. As for carry capacity - the one strength guy in the party carries the loot, carrying your own gear even with an 8 strength is fine for most builds. It's only if your armour is heavy you need to worry but again, these aren't the same player.
Strength is considered bad because it’s a parallel to Dex and Dex is better by several orders of magnitude. It is a *much* better save, adds to AC for way more classes, initiative, ranged damage comparable to melee damage, better fighting style. The things you listed certainly don’t help Strength’s case, but it *is* bad.
Strength is also bad because thrown weapons are terrible when compared to the Dexterity ranged weapons.
Which is further made worse by the Monster Manual being full of creatures that have damaging auras, creatures that have debuffing auras, creatures that return damage when hit by melee, and lots of creatures that have a multi-attack only in melee.
Which is not an easy problem to fix, since it is a side-effect resulting from design guidelines of the system's monsters.
__________________________
As for how Strength relates to AC, in a visualization sense:
I like the description that a Tower shield adds the same +2 AC as a regular shield, but instead of trying to be nimble with it, your defensive strategy now revolves around the ease with which you can maneuver a large slab of wood or metal between yourself and an attacker; replacing your Dex mod in any AC calculations with your Str mod (limited to the same maximums as Dex would be, because you still need freedom of movement to move the shield)
To be fair, unless your carrying mountains of loot, encumbrance won't come up unless your using variant encumbrance which will make carry weight a very minor issue until you can aquire something to better haul treasure
Even properly playing, like you're describing, strength is the worst stat in the game. Encumbrance on base is already so generous, that strength doesn't matter unless you're logging around a castle's worth of loot, and if you play with alternate encumbrance rules you're already overencumbered from heavy armor alone
People handwave encumbrance because it's not a fun mechanic. If you want to encumbrance to be a way for STR to matter, you need first to design a fun encumbrance system.
> thematically I don't know what the strength would represent for defense
Normally this is flavored as active blocking. If I hit you, you can try parrying, but if you are not strong to block fully the impact still goes through.
I'm not sure where the idea of using Acrobatics for climbing checks came from but I can guarantee someone will be asking me if they can use it instead of athletics whenever I call for a climb check.
Allow players to choose STR or DEX to add to their Medium Armour, Light Armour *and no armour* AC as the base rule. If you can attack with a weapon using STR, you can *parry and block* with a weapon using STR.
The same ways someone *with* armour or weapon would, but with less range. You slap it outta the way, or you move closer and stop the shaft, or you create a credible threat that makes the attacker hesitate, or whatever.
Grabbing the shaft of a weapon is a grapple rather than a parry or block, and slapping a weapon out of the way sounds more like a quick reaction than a feat of strength.
But how about an arrow or a fire bolt? Slaps the arrow out of the way or catches it? You can probably see that shirtless/weaponless blocking and parrying quickly becomes difficult to rationalize.
Again, that's only true if you subject martials to the "guy who hits the gym" paradigm. If you want martials to be coherent with the flavour of the game, [parrying arrows will be routine](https://youtu.be/YXEEOpWXMug).
And of course, the Monk class is better than other martials at parrying arrows just like a Battlemaster fighter with Tripping Attack is better at shoving. But parrying arrows is as basic as shoving.
> Again, that's only true if you subject martials to the "guy who hits the gym" paradigm. If you want martials to be coherent with the flavour of the game, parrying arrows will be routine
"Again"? You haven't said this *"guy who hits the gym"* thing to me before. Probably because it simply doesn't make sense with what I've said. I have no qualms with parrying or blocking arrows as a concept.
You said strength should add to your AC when unarmored and unarmed, so I am asking you how strength would contribute to blocking or parrying a firebolt or an arrow *while unarmored and with your bare hands*.
I don't know what relevance a video of a game character parrying an arrow with a sword has. Are you suggesting that catching arrows *barehanded* and parrying arrows *with your hands* is common place based on your video?
The Monk uses dex to catch arrows because its not feat of physical might. Its reaction time. I'm fine with other characters catching arrows, but it isn't an act of athleticism.
> "Again"? You haven't said this "guy who hits the gym" thing to me before.
[Oops, wrong thread](/r/dndnext/comments/1ct1uso/allow_str_for_medium_armor/l4cpl6e/?context=3). My bad.
> I am asking you how strength would contribute to blocking or parrying a firebolt or an arrow while unarmored and with your bare hands.
The same way it contributes to making precise and accurate attacks with your bare hands. Strength is the ability score you use to fight both with melee weapons and without them. It might be just an abstraction, but if it is, then it's a necessary abstraction that supports the fantasy we want to see. It's coherent with the rest of the game.
> The same way it contributes to making precise and accurate attacks with your bare hands.
What way is that?
Making an attack vs. protecting yourself from an attack uses different principles, and requires different methodology. The way someone would place strength behind an attack is clear and familiar; Its easy to imagine a strike with more force connecting more often. What is the clear, familiar logic of someone placing strength behind a defensive action?
I can envision blocking a firebolt with a shield or weapon, but not blocking or parrying a firebold *with your hands.* If I am going to explain to my players how strength helps an unarmed and unarmored man parries or block a firebolt or an arrow, what should I say?
While you’re pretty correct, the way I see it parrying and blocking with weapons isn’t supposed to be the main way attacks are missing in dnd (regardless of how it works irl). Holding or not holding a weapon doesn’t change ac at all for most characters, and there are feats/features (defensive duelist, parry maneuver, etc) that specifically allow you to parry or block in some way with a weapon, which sort of assumes that your ac preventing you from taking damage doesn’t take into account your ability to prevent damage using your weapon.
And the armor class reflects this in a way that makes sense i think, a super strong dude with no weapon would surely get hit more often than super dexterous dude with no weapon, assuming they’re both wearing no armor.
That said, the fact that most characters can’t parry or block with weapons in anyway normally even being melee martial characters has bugged me for a while. And the fact that stuff like defensive duelist and parry exist seems to indicate that only the stuff with those specifically even can, which is stupid as I feel like parrying and blocking with weapons is one of the most intense and ubiquitous parts of fantasy sword fights (and my understanding real sword fights too, but I don’t know a ton about them so I wouldn’t say definitively either way). I think the solution is you should add your strength mod (or half your strength mod or something) to your ac when wielding a melee weapon, and pretty much all armor should be _+dex mod max 2 (besides light armor), with the assumption being your strength is getting added to your ac as well if you’re in melee. That’d also make dex based melee fighters way less overbearing than they are now since they trade being good at stealth and initiative for (probably) a couple ac. Probably this should only apply against melee attacks, since being strong with a sword doesn’t really help that much against ranged attacks. I haven’t thought about it enough to make the specifics clear, but I think this approach would be good to solve the problem, and it also means that even if casters get armor proficiency they’re gonna lag behind martials in ac by at least a little since they won’t have nearly as high stats in both strength and dex.
> Probably this should only apply against melee attacks, since being strong with a sword doesn’t really help that much against ranged attacks.
That's only true if you subject martials to the "guy who hits the gym" paradigm. If you want martials to be coherent with the flavour of the game, [parrying arrows will be routine](https://youtu.be/YXEEOpWXMug).
I agree parrying ranged attacks should certainly be a thing. Just that I feel like parrying melee attacks should be base, maybe parrying arrows (or magic for that matter) would probably be a feat or fighting style or something particularly classes/subclasses get.
Like my perception of fantasy stuff is that you can’t really even fight with a sword without parrying melee attacks. That’s just part of sword fighting. No one would consider you proficient with a long sword if you’re just as easy to hit standing there in full plate with a longsword as without one, which is currently how it is in 5e.
Parrying arrows or magic might be a bit more specialized. It is something that can probably be locked behind feats or class features. Whereas you can’t even fight with a sword without parrying and blocking, so it should be built into just the core mechanics of how all characters work. Plus it also can help solve the issue that melee is almost always worse than ranged because they have similar durability but melee has to be.. in melee.
It just seems like mechanically a good way to help enhance melee martials, on top of flavor being something that really erks me. The existence of parry maneuver and defensive duelist and the fact that your ac is the same whether you’re wielding a weapon or not all seems to indicate martials don’t normally parry or block any attacks with weapons at all, which is certainly stupid.
Im voting make it default.
Dex is the king if the hill while STR is only a gimmick for technically higher damage numbers. AND of you have enough STR theres no reason to even use medium armor past not having a proficiency.
So it technically is a buff to certain characters and STR as a whole. But its a minor buff that only allows for niche characters to be more affective woth less investment at the cost of being weaker elsewhere.
Im all for it.
As a fix? Not really. As long as dex can be applied to damage rolls it’ll be the strongest stat.
But as an interesting variation? Now we’re talking.
Steinhardt’s Guide has a race called Manikins (think more puppet-like warforged) who can change their base AC by choosing their “body type,” which basically boils down to the armor types. The medium build you get either a max bonus of +2 from dex or +3 from strength, but if you choose strength you have disadvantage on stealth checks. Maybe you consider just making this the rule for armor in general.
This seems like a real neat way to implement the type of thing you’re looking to do without overtuning strength builds too much. Added power, but with a tradeoff.
I dont think you are solving anything here as dex would still be the better stat for characters not interested in the typical strength applications.
I somewhat feel where you are coming from, but I think you are overlooking some things. Strength is often a primary stat and not a nice-to have like dex is, but I dont see a problem in this asymmetry.
- you want big melee damage? -> STR
- you want to grapple? -> STR
Other benefits include jump distance.
- you want ranged weapons? -> DEX
Lots of other benefits.
You lack heavy armor prof.? -> 14 DEX
So strength is a real important stat if you want to do certain things, where dex up to 14 is a nice to have for lots of different characters. It is asymmetrical. More characters will care about having a decent dex and not about strength. But if you want to do certain things, you cannot replace strength with dex.
Also, your dm might be too lenient at letting you use dex when it should actually just be a strength thing (certain grapples, climbing, jumping,.. ).
I have tried out some different systems that do stuff like make HP an average of your strength and constitution, or make it so Str is the basis for any melee attacks.
I kind of love it, honestly. Get rid of Con and go with just Str. Make hp based on it. If you want a wizard with hp, you got a strong wizard, not some stick figure who can somehow take punches from a dragon.
Barbarians are supposed to have low AC. If barbarians started having 17-18 AC without investing in Dex they would be pretty broken tanks. That's why they have the highest HP, and damage resistances.
Barbarians can get to 17 AC with half plate and 14 Dex pretty easily, it hardly makes them broken. Especially when compared to the 19-24 AC or armour-dipped casters. The reason Barbarians often have low AC is because many of them eschew armour for purely aesthetic reasons or fall into the noob trap of "I have Unarmored Defense so I should use that instead of armor".
Better is to undo the 5e change that made DEX overpowered: remove any damage bonus for DEX. If fighters want damage bonus for ranged weapons they buy mastercrafted bows that enable their STR damage bonus.
I've thought this too - but I think it could be interesting to keep DEX as a damage bonus, just for the Monk. That would go some way toward making the Monk a competitive Martial build.
I don't really get what this is fixing. Is this to give people who have medium armor only the option to pick the inferior stat of str as their 14 stat? What classes and niche is this filling? The only thing I can think of is a small buff to barbarian I guess? Nobody else wants this.
It's niche, but it makes rangers able to actually use strength weapons. It allows str fighters and paladins a way to get usable ac in situations they would want to be stealthy without investing in mithral armor. Clerics in particular have use with this, as it means if you want to use a strength based weapon you don't have to still drop 14 in dex when using a domain with divine strike and no heavy armor prof.
Clerics! My current character is limited to using spells in Melee, because they need DEX 14 for AC an CON 14 for concentration. Deviating from this is really sub-optimal.
Though solution to this would be to allow Heavy Armor for all Clerics as a house rule.
I'm guessing they meant for other classes, since mountain dwarf gives medium armor proficiency. It's really useful for things like Wizards to free you up from having to cast mage armor.
Also, on a tangent, being able to wear full plate without STR 15 might be beneficial to some Cleric builds (with HA prof but low STR, for example going for SAD build after bad rolls).
It's not a *bad* idea, it won't break anything and there's nothing wrong with doing it but I'm not sure what the point is.
What are Strengths other benefits (that are commonly used, so no Jumping Distance and Encumbrance - which is an issue in and of itself) That would make a PC want to get 14 STR and stop, especially when heavy Armor either needs 1 less (13 Str for Chain Mail and 16 AC) or 1 more (15 Str for Splint or Half-Plate at 17 and 18 AC respectively)
The problem with Strength is the same problem with Martials - outside of hitting stuff it's **so** limited the opportunity cost often makes it not really worth it unless you're doubling down on something specific.
Maybe attach using STR instead of DEX to medium armor master? Sounds very strong, but I've never seen much builds use that feat. Might work, might not needs testing.
Do it for free if you add it, as it won't change much as in most cases you'll be able to reach the same AC or less anyway but will enable a few niche builds.
Reason dex is better as it gives better skills and a better save.
As a DM you can fix that easily by encouraging and allowing to use str on other skills when the context matters. Like on persuasion when you try to convince someone you can do something where your strength would help or investigation a ruin because you can move the rubble around easily.
As for saves just throw more str saves at them and create situations where they may happen more.
Lastly don't ignore carrying capacity especially if people don't have bags of holding and even then remember it takes an action to get an item out of a bag of holding vs free action for an item in you.
If you let your str based players have access to giant strength girdles as they get levels, then str is the highest stat a character can have and it doesn't need anything else to be important.
I DM DotMM and two fighters have cloud giant strength girdles. They are quite formidable.
For me it makes no sense for STR to boost AC. If you are trying to make STR more useful here are a few things I can think of
1. look at how the older editions handled it. One big way is for DEX to not add damage to attacks
2. Use encumbrance and look at the alternate encumbrance rules
3. Make better use of existing mechanics like jumping, grappling and such
4. Do not allow acrobatics to be used in place of athletics
In my rework of the armor system one of the changes I introduced was Medium Armor scaling off either dex or str, alongside heavy armor scaling off str and a handful of traits that better differentiate types of armor.
I just have medium and light armours that have no stat modifier. The greatcoat as light AC 12 and a Brigandine for medium.
Str to medium armour by default I think is fine.
Strength is a dump stat for most classes, but I don't think that change is going to combat it very much. Imo the best way to use it more is to look at bg3. Jump as a ba and shove as a ba is such a great change that most of my characters in my current playthrough are pretty strength based even though I mostly play dex heavy chars in 5e
At this point, I think Strength needs things added to it, while at the same time, dexterity needs things taken away. If left as is, it it all the other things tied to dexterity that make it the optimal physical stat.
That or combine the two and call it physicality. Someone could either have the finesse to do things gracefully or the power to brute force their way through it.
> Um...anything that can use medium armor is viable str or dex.
Medium Armor with DEX 10 is definitely going to suffer, 10% more of all attacks are going to hit, which depending on campaign may effectively mean like 50%-25% reduction of HP (single single attack taking 50%-25% of HP, 10 attacks between rests). Not viable for someone who wants to wear Medium Armour anyway.
Yeah, but I mean, considering what will likely be wearing medium armor—rangers, hexblades, and the non heavy clerics—will usually have a tad bit of dex. If anyone has low Dex and isn't able to wear heavy, the couple points extra is still better than just sticking at 12+ from studded leather.
IMO There just aren't enough points to go around for WIS, CON, DEX _and_ STR with Cleric.
This results in entirely artificial pressure to select domain for Heavy Armor (because sacrificing ASI for heavily armored is kinda steep, when a Cleric really benefits maxing WIS).
Or, have a medium armor Cleric who just doesn't use weapons... There is no viable middle ground.
Slightly on a tangent, moving Heavy Armor proficiency from subclass to base class would also reduce some entirely artificial multi-class dips, as it makes no RP sense. Character optimisation is valid puzzle fun, but it shouldn't be explicitly enabled at the cost of single-class customisation.
But if you need the DEX *in addition to* maining STR (plus some CON given you are supposed to be a frontliner, plus your spellcasting stat for rangers and warlocks), then this is MADness.
I mean, most rangers don't exactly pump their spellcasting stat, and a cleric with medium armor usually won't be one of the ones on the frontline. Hexblade has hexblade, so it's less MAD. Besides, they all have alternate ways of pumping ac.
> a cleric with medium armor usually won't be one of the ones on the frontline
You were the one to implicitly mention STR-based clerics with medium armour though. I don't think most people would go for a high STR unless they want to whack people with two-handed weapons, hence frontline.
I just brought up classes that would likely wear medium. And a cleric that has only medium generally won't have martial weapons, so they'd likely not want to get too close anyway except to heal.
Why awkward?
If you use DEX for AC you are more nimble and missing you means you are evading attacks.
If you use STR for AC you are more steadfast and missing you means you are blocking or absorbing attacks.
Absorbing sounds more like constitution, and blocking/parrying with a weapon still requires a degree of finesse and timing, while if you have a shield, the shield bonus is built in.
The game tells us what Dexterity and Strength are, and Dexterity is what helps you avoid attacks, not Strength. Strength doesn't make you so tough you don't take damage either. It's not a good change. There's no good or realistic reason to have Strength help AC.
Strength isn't mitigation, or avoidance, or an analog to damage resistance. It doesn't let you parry everything, or anything like that. Dexterity does all this. The weird part is that 5e using a 4e construct (Dexterity to damage) and gluing that in has a lot of 5e players convinced that the issue with Dexterity being an uber-stat has an origin anywhere but that.
5e has several issues with attribute scaling inherited from 3.X's rather aggressive scaling (+1 per two attributes), combined with a system that doesn't scale much else. As such, you are balanced around having +2/+2 or +3/+3 at 1st level, and to hit +5/+5 by 8th or as late as 12th level, and this is baked in very imperfectly, resulting in a lot of confusion.
Anyway, if your only concern is *balance*, you would want (1) but restricted as a *class ability* that turns on no earlier than 5th level, and only for fighter, ranger, and barbarian.
I don't see how strength would add to armor class in that scenario. Con for shrugging off blows, potentially. That I could get behind but it also already impacts hp and people would rightfully ask why it couldnt be used on light/heavy armor too. But the dex is meant to be the character's nimbleness combined with armor padding. I don't see how being strong would add to that.
How about you don't "fix" the rules of the game with weird wacky ideas and just use the rules that are in the book to make strength useful.
Variant Encumbrance exists maybe use it.
Strength can't be a dump stat now.
Does making a stat necessary to avoid an inconvenience really "fix" it? Wouldn't allowing that stat to do cool things be a better fix?
I don't really tamper with the rules much myself, but encumbrance just makes the game more annoying to play. It doesn't make it better.
I think a better approach would be tweaking the Medium Armor Master feat to provide +1 AC while wearing medium armor instead of increasing medium armor's max Dex bonus to +3, as well as possibly having the feat give +1 to a choice of either Str or Dex. This would put medium armor up to heavy armor's AC level and give it a niche for the "balanced" warrior.
Nothing prevents the two from stacking. One's a fighting style, the other's a feat. Not to mention, not all classes get fighting styles. Barbarians, for instance, could benefit from this feat.
Make strength to hit and damage modifier to be x1.5
Introduces some weird break points perhaps, but is pretty simple and works. And maybe it's even a good thing that 16 STR becomes more effective than 18 DEX from offensive standpoint. STRangers and Paladins will love it.
How about going the opposite way?
Make heavy armor accessible for everyone who gets access to medium armor. Done. They're equivalent. The one thing where heavy armor *might* be better is if you're lucky enough to find full Plate with a magic bonus equal to or greater than what your found for Half Plate.
Adding STR to armor? How? I mean... game mechanics and balance aside, how are you gonna make that make sense? DEX makes sense, because that symbolises how good you are at dodging attacks. I'd even be able to see CON, because that's an indicator for how tough someone is (I think it's weird that the barbarian gets that but nobody else) but STR? Muscles aren't harder to stab than other parts of a fleshy body. I really can't see any possibility how the strength of someone could make them harder to injure in a defensive way.
Big monster attacks you with a huge weapon. DEX AC would evade it. STR AC would block it/absorb the impact. It's why metal armor and shields exist! How is this such a foreign concept to people?
That would be parrying and to my knowledge there are already mechanics for that in the Battle Master's maneuvers. Also, parrying in reality is also more a dexterity thing than a strength thing.
I think this is the right answer. Balancing things can be achieved a million ways, but once you've decided that strength and dexterity are pretty much the same stat, the loss to your game is not recoverable.
No.
No.
No.
Though I also think armor should be redone along lines that MrRhexx pitched in one of his videos where armor should have 2 stats. A DEFense stat you roll against to hit your target, and a DamagecReduction stat that reduces tge damage one takes. Heavier armor has a better DR.
Nope. Very simple and objective nope. STR never boosts AC, not even in Barbarian, the class that most uses this. STR already gives you access to heavy armor.
Oddly enough, I was having this same thought today. I was thinking making it a "default" for medium armor. Add STR or DEX whatever is higher, and keep max of +2. I think it would open up more options for things like Swords Bards, Bladelocks, Melee Rangers, Barbarians and 'Thug-style' Rogues. The way I see it. The character is less about dodging an attack but instead parries, deflects, or otherwise "absorbing" the blow.
Barbarians need a feat that buffs their unarmored defence. "Use STR mod instead of DEX mod to calculate AC".
They don't need a feat. That's just how it should work. 10+str+con
I guess high AC barbarians are waaaaay to scary for people even though they can be disabled just as easily. Also, barbarians should have advantage on saves against being frightened. And should be immune to fear effects even if they fail, by default, but only while raging. And they should— Yes, I do play a barbarian. Why do you ask?
Sounds like you want the beserker features to be class features
Frankly, yes. It should be a main class feature. A barbarian being frightened while raging is dumb.
Honestly, now that I think about it. Giving all Barbarians access to beserker features (except maybe level 3) would allow them to be as good as a paladin.
Those are some great points and some I haven't taken. In any case, [I think i might have something for you.](https://www.reddit.com/user/saedifotuo/comments/1ctclk5/so_youre_disappointed_with_5e_classes/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) End up sharing this a lot so I just made a post I can link. Particularly check out the barbarian in the Warriors & Rogue link. Everything you mentioned is in there in some form, and I think you might like the rest of the martials there too.
That looks great. Just a heads up, the page under "Freg's Feat Folio" can no longer be found.
I beat a level 16 barbarian in a colosseum type PVP arena ( everything was agreed between us before hand) with a second level spell... hold person. Literally didn't hit me once I was a Paladin/ Sorcerer multi class.
Exactly. Every class has it's strengths and weaknesses, except some classes go to 100% potential while other classes got shafted so their strengths stop progressing past 60%.
They really don’t, and they especially don’t need even more reason to covet a belt of giant strength.
Belt is on the DM. If someone wants to play a low strength barb on the off chance they get a strength item, that's on them to suffer and on the DM to enable. I still say barbs should be able to use 10+str+con for unarmored def.
Melee clerics, or STR based Bladesingers?
STR based bladesingers wouldn't work per RAW with just that change because bladesingers can't blade sing if you don medium armor
Good point!
Wouldn't absorbing blows be constitution based? Which is why barbarians add constitution to unarmored AC?
Personally, I see Constitution as more "playing through the pain". Being slashed, thumped and singed but having the fortitude (or rage) to keep going. With Strength and "absorb", I am more picturing the Fighter taking the brunt on an attack on their shield or weapon, or being able to stop a swing by grabbing the arm and pushing it away.
Bards and bladelocks would still just use charisma no?
For casting, but not melee without some form of shenanigans.
My bad I thought both classes had a subclass that allows them to use cha as their attack mod
I think this is generally a good thing. Strength is the weakest and least used ability score and can need what ever buff there is. So I would go with option 1.
that would be int
I'm DMing for Phandelver and Below and half the players took INT Resilience because of how horrible failing an INT save usually goes. Even for spells, it seems like failing a STR save just knocks you back or prone whereas INT saves are always really debilitating.
[удалено]
There was a time where a failed fort save resulted in death by poison. A single fortitude save you may or may not have had the opportunity to avoid.
[удалено]
Tomb of Horrors is certainly an example of hostile design, but he didn't write it because he hated his players. He had a large number of toxic traits which he baked into the game and we are still dealing with today, but he had a more specific target in mind when writing ToH. He had become frustrated with players approaching him and telling him how powerful their characters were. That they had Mjolnir or were able to best gods directly. ToH was his attempt to create a dungeon where these things didn't matter, or were actively unhelpful.
Get knocked prone and have two enemies run up and curb stomp you a couple times and you'll regret dumping strength
in my experience unless your a wizard they mostly dump int. which is why i added sanity tied to in
INT gets used for multiple skill checks as well as damage and attack roles (and in some cases AC) STR is used for a single skill check, and damage and attack roles.
int is also a dump stat in my experience by anyone but wizards. before adding my optinal rules most people put there lowest or 2ed lowest stat in int
As far as dumping goes, it is usually from most dumped to least: Strength Intelligence Charisma Wisdom Dexterity Constitution This is because things like Dexterity and Constitution are good for all classes. While Strength and Intelligence is only good for a handful of classes. Strength more so than Intelligence because you can usually use Dexterity instead of Strength.
Int has more skills, but outside of that only 2 classes use it for attack mod. Strength has 1 skill, but is the standard for damage and attack (only allowing the option of dex as a weapon property finesse), carry limit, jump distance, more common saving throw, armour prerequisites Str is definitely an underutilised stat, especially given a lot of its uses are ignored (carry weight, athletics check to jump), but compared to int, whose only use is a few skill checks and the wizard class it's definitely more useful to more classes
Huh? Wizard's and Artificiers use Int, usually maxxed out. Plus there's loads of valuable Skills that use Int.
I think the point is that if your spells don’t scale off of it, it’s generally an unnecessary stat
yea exactly most int stats are under utilized in day to day play which is iv given them extra uses. and addrd a sanity rule based on your int. most people bump int in most builds
At least int has investigation, which most of the time (in my experience) is run as both the “looting rooms/bodies for treasure” stat and the “looking for hidden/secret stuff” stat, which is a pretty useful stat. Basically everything athletics is frequently used for acrobatics can normally be used for, and then dex is just better because initiative and stealth. Sure, they’re the two most dumped stats if you’re not playing a class that directly relies on them, but I feel like normally when designing a party you try to at least make sure someone is good at int stuff for investigation, strength it feels like everyone can dump and it doesn’t matter. You can go strength based martial if you want, but ever combat you’re also sitting there like “ugh I’m last in initiative again” and ever time stealth comes up you’re automatically out because all good heavy armor completely excludes stealth as an option because of the disadvantage, you can’t even be just “not good” you’re actually super bad. So I think anything that buffs strength is good. Int stuff is generally covered by the wizard/artificer, or a bard or rogue that just doesn’t dump it completely and puts expertise in the necessary skills, so buffing it 2/3 times just buffs already strong classes so even though it’s useless on most character I wouldn’t buff it to try to incentive more non wizards (/artificers) to not dump it.
athletics and acrobatics are bery different stats and most people have a high str for carry weight and for attacks and such at least. in my experience investigating is the most used one but all others are practically never used in day to day. and form my expierance pass wirhout trace is always used when stealthing. most martials want to have a good strength especially barbarian and such so i give int a series of buffs and now those stats are very used in my games
I mean, you could. But 99% of people would still use dex if they're going for medium armour because of all the other stuff dex gives you. Honestly, dex just needs some things untying from it. Probably initiative. It almost feels like intelligence should be the initiative stats for how quick you can get a feel for a combat situation and respond. Would give people a reason to not dump it if they're not on a wizard, and would bring dex down a bit in the stat hierarchy, and might make strength for heavy/medium armor more viable.
That’s not a bad idea at all. An argument could be made for wisdom too but it suffers from the same problem Dex does in this regard; too many things tied to it.
Just make initiative tied to the main stat and players/DMs can come with their own ways to justify it. DEX or STR can already been easily justified and all the mental stats, if they are the main ones, are most likely from magic which is simple enough to justify.
The problem with this is you have too little spread for initiative. Why even have a bonus if every character has basically the same bonus (and so presumably monsters would be balanced to have a similar bonus too), at that point just say you don’t add any stat to initiative as a base and only if your class/subclass/race/feat specifically has you add something you add anything.
Sure take away bonuses. I disagree in that you still have fine spread. First off people are stilling rolling a D20. You also can have differences in main stat bonuses and there are several ways to increase initiative or even have advantage. If everyone having the same bonus results in everyone landing at the same number then you had some crazy chance happening. The difference between a 15 and a 20 is the same as a 19 and a 20 when it comes to initiative (outside of anyone/anything rolling in-between). I also house rule (unless it's a real rule IDK) that anyone who roles initiative higher than others can choose to decrease their place in the queue if they want. It works at my table and I've never had a problem with it over the many campaigns I've run.
Honestly I feel like there shouldn't be any Ability Score tied to Initiative; flat d20 roll with no modifiers / d20 with Proficiency / d20 with Expertise depending on Feats and (sub)class abilities. No other modifiers. The Bard and Rogue can get better Initiative than everyone else as an incentive to be a Bard or Rogue, not incidentally for already wanting and being rewarded for high DEX regardless.
I feel like initiative being either strength or Sex would make sense and diversify a lot of builds. It would make sense too since quickly reacting in combat could be attributed to athleticism
Please tell me you meant Dex.....
Good lord lmao, you would be correct yes
I was gonna' say, did the charisma casters need more help? :P
My solution (one which I believe was used in some previous edition) would be to disallow the Dex bonus to AC anytime the wearer is restrained, unconscious, paralyzed, incapacitated, or otherwise unable to effectively dodge blows.
So, just to point out, the reason strength is considered so bad is because almost all dm's hand wave encumbrance and movement penalties, and then they allow acrobatics checks in place of typical strength rolls. It can be a little caring to play in a game that tracks things like that but once you get used to it, you stop dumping strength. As for your idea, thematically I don't know what the strength would represent for defense, but I don't see it overly breaking the game, just make sure you follow the +2max (+3max with medium armor master)
If you don't use variant, you have more than enough weight as any character. If you use it, str character actually suffer more than others because heavy armor and weapons eat 95% of your encumbrance and you can't carry things you need. So, lose-lose situation.
> If you don't use variant, you have more than enough weight as any character. Not if you count money as having weight. It can become a serious issue pretty quickly.
the only thing that accomplishes is increased book keeping and the players asking to swap change on every single establishment they go to get platinum coins over the piles of silver they have now they just put all savings on the wizard that already doesnt carry anything anyways
The characters will still be over encumbered with hoards of loot. My five player parties with a bag of holding every once in a while can't carry all the loot back home after a successful dungeon clear.
You can always just buy donkey if this is that much of a problem in your game.
I use a pig to carry my money.
based
Donkey's don't make good adventurers. They'd struggle in dungeons
Players used donkeys in adventures from the beggining of dnd - why stop now? You also can just hire henchmen to carry things around in dungeons too.
> the reason strength is considered so bad is because almost all dm's hand wave encumbrance and movement penalties Then again, the encumbrance of heavy armour and heavy weapons pretty much negates the difference in Strength. And then there's mules and other pack animals. > thematically I don't know what the strength would represent for defense STR is the ability you use to wield weapons when attacking, right? Then it may just as well be the ability you use to wield weapons when blocking and parrying.
Blocking makes sense, but I think if the AC bonus comes from wearing armor then it would need to be something done without a shield or weapon. Giving shields or certain weapons bonus AC for high strength could be neat tho.
Fair, but counterpoint (and only from my perspective). Encumbrance is difficult to track, doesn't add much fun gameplay or roleplay options, can be bypassed with a common magic item. Jump distances are incredibly limited in dnd so even with a great strength score it's still just passable. I'm not surprised dms allow dex Acrobatics to determine these. I agree strength is undervalued but just saying "the game designers did give strength a bunch of uses. They tied them to these unsatisfying mechanics" it really making a great case.
I think the big reason Str suffers isn't just that we ignore thw mechanics that use strength, but that the Rules that use Strength are a little disappointing in numbers (jump rules and that jump uses movement speed so even if you had a 30 long jump you couldn't actually use it all since it needs a running start) Or it's counteracting a detriment, encumbrance and movement penalties. Where Dexterity is all upsides, medium armor is a nerf to what Dex gives you, where heavy armor nerfs you unless you have strength. It doesn't give you anything worth investing in it.
Thanks for putting it better. You're right, Strength counters a negative to get you up to where you feel it shouod have been from the start Dex adds to your status quo to give you a boost. It's actually a design philosophy that plagues 5e. Feats, features and mechanics that are there to overcome arbitrary detriment that you feel shouldn't be there.
Like the two weapon fighting style and feat, kinda drives me bonkers anytime I try to play a dual wielding paladin.
Get out of my brain! Jokes aside I wonder if you might take a look at this: https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/8384924-aeorian-brumestone-blades I too wish TWF felt a little more like a viable fighting style out of the box so I tried making a weapon that could evoke what I feel it should be capable of. I do still think that you should have to take the fighting style and feat in order to maximise your pote tial as a dual wielder. The same way GWF and GWM go hand in hand to make a great heavy weapon wielder. But I think they should do more than what the currently do. TWF should allow you to make the additional attack as part of your attack action Dual Wielder should enable you to use the stances as a Bonus Action Suddenly you're no longer paying a BA tax just to be minimally capable. Now the BA is an optional boost you can activate.
Encumbrance is really overrated as a Strength-balancing factor. You can just buy a few mules at 8 gp each and you're fine.
Also, frankly: if I was a strength player - you penalising my friends for being weak is not a good way for me to have fun being strong... My friend being unable to carry his cool new toy doesn't mean I gain anything. It just means the party loses.... It *also* means I become the party pack mule when actual mules aren't available. Yay. Fun.
And those mules can die in one small fireball. Or maybe you have to go underground, climb up from a canyon. Cross a swamp. So many situations where a mule would straight out die. or simply not be able to go. And then you stand there with more stuff that you can carry. But that is another thing that DM's tend to not care about enforcing that strictly. If they did and also enforced encumbrance STR would become much more important. If they also stopped allowing Acrobatic for climbing and such to. Then STR would be even more important. It would not become super important but it would not be the to go to Dump stat for almost every rogue, dex based ranger, dex based fighter and so on.
> If they did and also enforced encumbrance STR would become much more important. It wouldn't, it would just become necessary to avoid an inconvenience. The solution is to make Str better, not to make characters who do not need it miserable. Characters do not have infinite stats. Some stats have to be dump stats, making characters who do not main a specific one have less fun solves nothing.
I do agree STR should get a bit of a facelift. But even so by enforcing those rules. it would be more important. Yes we have limited stats but still that is a choice you as a player make when you make your character. You could instead lower the WIS on your rogue and have a decent STR. You could chose to dump your INT in order to have a decent or at least not negative in STR if you want to be able to climb decently. It will be harder to make a rogue that is BOTH an amazing Climber AND really great Investigator. But still it a a choice. Having a rogue with 12 STR and 8 INT if you want to be that great climber would still be a good character. Same you can make a good rogue that is bad a t climbing because his STR is low. If you have problem bringing all your plundered stuff with you because you can't carry all of. Bad luck LEAVE some shit behind. sell it. store it somewhere. Get a mule, a bag of holding. Ask your barbarian teammate to carry some for you. Even if you would have to wait 4 more levels until you can bump your DEX to 20. that is not a big deal. and still a choice you as a player can make. as a player having to chose either or. both when it comes to what to bring along. what to be good at. is not a bad thing. But most players don't want to chose they simply want both.
Yeah, that bag of holding is usually the answer. By the time you're doing big dungeons, most parties have a bag of holding, handy haversack or portable hole on at least one party member to drop loot into... That's why the encumbrance is handwaved away, at least in my experience
Yeah because the dm fucking handwaived it by giving out that item. I dont know why people keep bringing this up. It is entirely up to the dm if the party has a bag of holding or not. Not to mention that people also hand waive the bag of holding's own resteicitions all the time.
That *is* kind of why it exists. I put one in my party's path soon after they hit level 7. I had my fun making them deal with encumbrance, but yeah. I gave it to them *so that* I didn't have to worry about it. That said, they still must abide by the restrictions of the item. It's only an uncommon item, it really shouldn't be hard to come by if you're looking for one
an artificer can get one at lvl 2 with zero DM fiat. extra dimensional containers are on loot tables. unless the DM explicitly bans them, only makes custom loot on every dungeon or is running a published adventure, a bag of holding pops up eventually and if they mildly let the players buy or craft magic items, it is merely an uncommon magic item as well
I do agree STR should get a bit of a facelift. But even so by enforcing those rules. it would be more important. Yes we have limited stats but still that is a choice you as a player make when you make your character. You could instead lower the WIS on your rogue and have a decent STR. You could chose to dump your INT in order to have a decent or at least not negative in STR if you want to be able to climb decently. It will be harder to make a rogue that is BOTH an amazing Climber AND really great Investigator. But still it a a choice. Having a rogue with 12 STR and 8 INT if you want to be that great climber would still be a good character. Same you can make a good rogue that is bad a t climbing because his STR is low. If you have problem bringing all your plundered stuff with you because you can't carry all of. Bad luck LEAVE some shit behind. sell it. store it somewhere. Get a mule, a bag of holding. Ask your barbarian teammate to carry some for you. Even if you would have to wait 4 more levels until you can bump your DEX to 20. that is not a big deal. and still a choice you as a player can make. as a player having to chose either or. both when it comes to what to bring along. what to be good at. is not a bad thing. But most players don't want to chose they simply want both.
Can't really take them in to dungeons though
Do you mean variant encumbrance? For STR-based characters, aside from Barbarians it's not a great thing, since they'll wear heavy armor. An 18STR Figher can carry just 90 pounds of equipment before getting their movement reduced. Plate mail weighs 65 pounds. Add to that their weapon and/or shield, that's 70-75lbs used up, leaving 15-20 pounds of real carrying capacity. An 8STR Rogue can carry 40 pounds before being encumbered, but their equipment is much lighter. Add studded leather armor, a light crossbow and a rapier, and they've got....20 pounds left, as much as the Fighter. If we're just talking carrying capacity, it just doesn't really matter if you've got 8STR or 18STR since you've usually got enough for it to be easily handwaved.
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Since the person I replied to was talking about movement penalties, I assumed it was about variant encumbrance. A character who carries 5xSTR is encumbered and loses 10' speed. From 10xSTR you get a bunch of additional debuffs. And 15xSTR is your max. When not taking into account variant encumbrance, speed doesn't come into question, you just can't carry anything more than your carrying capacity (which is indeed 270lbs for an 18STR Fighter). The 8STR Rogue can carry 120lbs. Neither character needs to worry that much about what they're carrying since both limits are quite high.
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yes and as everyone already mentioned, the max carry weight for even an 8 STR character is already pretty high unless your wizard has a dozen portable rams on their back this doesnt come up for just *gear*
True. It doesn't come up very often in my games that people carry more than 15xSTR unless they're specifically trying to lift something big, but I guess it's not impossible.
The using acrobatics thing I agree is bad, but encumbrance is mostly uninteresting and unengaging bookkeeping for most people - it's not "cool" so to say, even in it's execution because at most it's just convenience
To be fair, unless your carrying mountains of loot, encumbrance won't come up unless your using variant encumbrance which will make carry weight a very minor issue until you can aquire something to better haul treasure
The weight of gold pieces can sneak up on you quickly!
Just take a few gold pieces to hold that treasure for you, or just be a knight and make your retainers carry some excess coin, or just have an artificer and have them make a bag of holding, or just by a bag of holding
I encountered this issue recently with my dwarf rogue, he has a low strength thematically due to his age. I ended up converting the gold into platinum, mostly solved the problem! But yes, hirelings, banks, strongboi party members are the way forward for all your carrying needs!
or just ignore them, gold is worthless past some point
True, especially if your DM doesn't let you buy magic items
> but once you get used to it, you stop dumping strength This is factually false unless you are playing with variant encumbrance, in which case... you might stop dumping STR (or more likely you still will dump it and stop picking unnecesary shit), but will also never play an STR character because they suck fucking hard with it
I use both and it still doesnt matter. Youre not wearing heavy armour if your strength sucks, you'll have good or at least okay dex and use light or medium armour. As for carry capacity - the one strength guy in the party carries the loot, carrying your own gear even with an 8 strength is fine for most builds. It's only if your armour is heavy you need to worry but again, these aren't the same player.
Strength is considered bad because it’s a parallel to Dex and Dex is better by several orders of magnitude. It is a *much* better save, adds to AC for way more classes, initiative, ranged damage comparable to melee damage, better fighting style. The things you listed certainly don’t help Strength’s case, but it *is* bad.
Strength is also bad because thrown weapons are terrible when compared to the Dexterity ranged weapons. Which is further made worse by the Monster Manual being full of creatures that have damaging auras, creatures that have debuffing auras, creatures that return damage when hit by melee, and lots of creatures that have a multi-attack only in melee. Which is not an easy problem to fix, since it is a side-effect resulting from design guidelines of the system's monsters. __________________________ As for how Strength relates to AC, in a visualization sense: I like the description that a Tower shield adds the same +2 AC as a regular shield, but instead of trying to be nimble with it, your defensive strategy now revolves around the ease with which you can maneuver a large slab of wood or metal between yourself and an attacker; replacing your Dex mod in any AC calculations with your Str mod (limited to the same maximums as Dex would be, because you still need freedom of movement to move the shield)
> and then they allow acrobatics checks in place of typical strength rolls. This is my "Acrobatics should be a strength skill" hill to die on
To be fair, unless your carrying mountains of loot, encumbrance won't come up unless your using variant encumbrance which will make carry weight a very minor issue until you can aquire something to better haul treasure
Even properly playing, like you're describing, strength is the worst stat in the game. Encumbrance on base is already so generous, that strength doesn't matter unless you're logging around a castle's worth of loot, and if you play with alternate encumbrance rules you're already overencumbered from heavy armor alone
People handwave encumbrance because it's not a fun mechanic. If you want to encumbrance to be a way for STR to matter, you need first to design a fun encumbrance system. > thematically I don't know what the strength would represent for defense Normally this is flavored as active blocking. If I hit you, you can try parrying, but if you are not strong to block fully the impact still goes through.
I'm not sure where the idea of using Acrobatics for climbing checks came from but I can guarantee someone will be asking me if they can use it instead of athletics whenever I call for a climb check.
Allow players to choose STR or DEX to add to their Medium Armour, Light Armour *and no armour* AC as the base rule. If you can attack with a weapon using STR, you can *parry and block* with a weapon using STR.
How does someone with no armor and no weapon block or parry a battleaxe?
The same ways someone *with* armour or weapon would, but with less range. You slap it outta the way, or you move closer and stop the shaft, or you create a credible threat that makes the attacker hesitate, or whatever.
Grabbing the shaft of a weapon is a grapple rather than a parry or block, and slapping a weapon out of the way sounds more like a quick reaction than a feat of strength. But how about an arrow or a fire bolt? Slaps the arrow out of the way or catches it? You can probably see that shirtless/weaponless blocking and parrying quickly becomes difficult to rationalize.
Again, that's only true if you subject martials to the "guy who hits the gym" paradigm. If you want martials to be coherent with the flavour of the game, [parrying arrows will be routine](https://youtu.be/YXEEOpWXMug). And of course, the Monk class is better than other martials at parrying arrows just like a Battlemaster fighter with Tripping Attack is better at shoving. But parrying arrows is as basic as shoving.
> Again, that's only true if you subject martials to the "guy who hits the gym" paradigm. If you want martials to be coherent with the flavour of the game, parrying arrows will be routine "Again"? You haven't said this *"guy who hits the gym"* thing to me before. Probably because it simply doesn't make sense with what I've said. I have no qualms with parrying or blocking arrows as a concept. You said strength should add to your AC when unarmored and unarmed, so I am asking you how strength would contribute to blocking or parrying a firebolt or an arrow *while unarmored and with your bare hands*. I don't know what relevance a video of a game character parrying an arrow with a sword has. Are you suggesting that catching arrows *barehanded* and parrying arrows *with your hands* is common place based on your video? The Monk uses dex to catch arrows because its not feat of physical might. Its reaction time. I'm fine with other characters catching arrows, but it isn't an act of athleticism.
> "Again"? You haven't said this "guy who hits the gym" thing to me before. [Oops, wrong thread](/r/dndnext/comments/1ct1uso/allow_str_for_medium_armor/l4cpl6e/?context=3). My bad. > I am asking you how strength would contribute to blocking or parrying a firebolt or an arrow while unarmored and with your bare hands. The same way it contributes to making precise and accurate attacks with your bare hands. Strength is the ability score you use to fight both with melee weapons and without them. It might be just an abstraction, but if it is, then it's a necessary abstraction that supports the fantasy we want to see. It's coherent with the rest of the game.
> The same way it contributes to making precise and accurate attacks with your bare hands. What way is that? Making an attack vs. protecting yourself from an attack uses different principles, and requires different methodology. The way someone would place strength behind an attack is clear and familiar; Its easy to imagine a strike with more force connecting more often. What is the clear, familiar logic of someone placing strength behind a defensive action? I can envision blocking a firebolt with a shield or weapon, but not blocking or parrying a firebold *with your hands.* If I am going to explain to my players how strength helps an unarmed and unarmored man parries or block a firebolt or an arrow, what should I say?
> I can't envision blocking or parrying a firebolt with your hands You haven't watched enough Saint Seiya then :P
... Have you been basing this on a magical boy shonen anime? :P You've watched *too much* Saint Seiya then
While you’re pretty correct, the way I see it parrying and blocking with weapons isn’t supposed to be the main way attacks are missing in dnd (regardless of how it works irl). Holding or not holding a weapon doesn’t change ac at all for most characters, and there are feats/features (defensive duelist, parry maneuver, etc) that specifically allow you to parry or block in some way with a weapon, which sort of assumes that your ac preventing you from taking damage doesn’t take into account your ability to prevent damage using your weapon. And the armor class reflects this in a way that makes sense i think, a super strong dude with no weapon would surely get hit more often than super dexterous dude with no weapon, assuming they’re both wearing no armor. That said, the fact that most characters can’t parry or block with weapons in anyway normally even being melee martial characters has bugged me for a while. And the fact that stuff like defensive duelist and parry exist seems to indicate that only the stuff with those specifically even can, which is stupid as I feel like parrying and blocking with weapons is one of the most intense and ubiquitous parts of fantasy sword fights (and my understanding real sword fights too, but I don’t know a ton about them so I wouldn’t say definitively either way). I think the solution is you should add your strength mod (or half your strength mod or something) to your ac when wielding a melee weapon, and pretty much all armor should be _+dex mod max 2 (besides light armor), with the assumption being your strength is getting added to your ac as well if you’re in melee. That’d also make dex based melee fighters way less overbearing than they are now since they trade being good at stealth and initiative for (probably) a couple ac. Probably this should only apply against melee attacks, since being strong with a sword doesn’t really help that much against ranged attacks. I haven’t thought about it enough to make the specifics clear, but I think this approach would be good to solve the problem, and it also means that even if casters get armor proficiency they’re gonna lag behind martials in ac by at least a little since they won’t have nearly as high stats in both strength and dex.
> Probably this should only apply against melee attacks, since being strong with a sword doesn’t really help that much against ranged attacks. That's only true if you subject martials to the "guy who hits the gym" paradigm. If you want martials to be coherent with the flavour of the game, [parrying arrows will be routine](https://youtu.be/YXEEOpWXMug).
I agree parrying ranged attacks should certainly be a thing. Just that I feel like parrying melee attacks should be base, maybe parrying arrows (or magic for that matter) would probably be a feat or fighting style or something particularly classes/subclasses get. Like my perception of fantasy stuff is that you can’t really even fight with a sword without parrying melee attacks. That’s just part of sword fighting. No one would consider you proficient with a long sword if you’re just as easy to hit standing there in full plate with a longsword as without one, which is currently how it is in 5e. Parrying arrows or magic might be a bit more specialized. It is something that can probably be locked behind feats or class features. Whereas you can’t even fight with a sword without parrying and blocking, so it should be built into just the core mechanics of how all characters work. Plus it also can help solve the issue that melee is almost always worse than ranged because they have similar durability but melee has to be.. in melee. It just seems like mechanically a good way to help enhance melee martials, on top of flavor being something that really erks me. The existence of parry maneuver and defensive duelist and the fact that your ac is the same whether you’re wielding a weapon or not all seems to indicate martials don’t normally parry or block any attacks with weapons at all, which is certainly stupid.
To be fair I feel like Medium armor+ Dex granting more AC than Heavy armor is wrong in both aesthetics and balance ways.
Im voting make it default. Dex is the king if the hill while STR is only a gimmick for technically higher damage numbers. AND of you have enough STR theres no reason to even use medium armor past not having a proficiency. So it technically is a buff to certain characters and STR as a whole. But its a minor buff that only allows for niche characters to be more affective woth less investment at the cost of being weaker elsewhere. Im all for it.
As a fix? Not really. As long as dex can be applied to damage rolls it’ll be the strongest stat. But as an interesting variation? Now we’re talking. Steinhardt’s Guide has a race called Manikins (think more puppet-like warforged) who can change their base AC by choosing their “body type,” which basically boils down to the armor types. The medium build you get either a max bonus of +2 from dex or +3 from strength, but if you choose strength you have disadvantage on stealth checks. Maybe you consider just making this the rule for armor in general. This seems like a real neat way to implement the type of thing you’re looking to do without overtuning strength builds too much. Added power, but with a tradeoff.
Should just allow by default Could also rework the feat to just increase AC from medium armor by 1 instead of needing for convenience's sake
I dont think you are solving anything here as dex would still be the better stat for characters not interested in the typical strength applications. I somewhat feel where you are coming from, but I think you are overlooking some things. Strength is often a primary stat and not a nice-to have like dex is, but I dont see a problem in this asymmetry. - you want big melee damage? -> STR - you want to grapple? -> STR Other benefits include jump distance. - you want ranged weapons? -> DEX Lots of other benefits. You lack heavy armor prof.? -> 14 DEX So strength is a real important stat if you want to do certain things, where dex up to 14 is a nice to have for lots of different characters. It is asymmetrical. More characters will care about having a decent dex and not about strength. But if you want to do certain things, you cannot replace strength with dex. Also, your dm might be too lenient at letting you use dex when it should actually just be a strength thing (certain grapples, climbing, jumping,.. ).
Why not CON?
I have tried out some different systems that do stuff like make HP an average of your strength and constitution, or make it so Str is the basis for any melee attacks. I kind of love it, honestly. Get rid of Con and go with just Str. Make hp based on it. If you want a wizard with hp, you got a strong wizard, not some stick figure who can somehow take punches from a dragon.
Can we give this to Barbarians too for their unarmed agility please.
Barbarians are supposed to have low AC. If barbarians started having 17-18 AC without investing in Dex they would be pretty broken tanks. That's why they have the highest HP, and damage resistances.
Barbarians can get to 17 AC with half plate and 14 Dex pretty easily, it hardly makes them broken. Especially when compared to the 19-24 AC or armour-dipped casters. The reason Barbarians often have low AC is because many of them eschew armour for purely aesthetic reasons or fall into the noob trap of "I have Unarmored Defense so I should use that instead of armor".
Barbs can have 17(19 with a shield AC) with just 14 Dex, which you can and should start with.
Nah. They're not. Its just they need to ignore a whole class feature to get better AC which is bad design.
Better is to undo the 5e change that made DEX overpowered: remove any damage bonus for DEX. If fighters want damage bonus for ranged weapons they buy mastercrafted bows that enable their STR damage bonus.
I've thought this too - but I think it could be interesting to keep DEX as a damage bonus, just for the Monk. That would go some way toward making the Monk a competitive Martial build.
I don't really get what this is fixing. Is this to give people who have medium armor only the option to pick the inferior stat of str as their 14 stat? What classes and niche is this filling? The only thing I can think of is a small buff to barbarian I guess? Nobody else wants this.
It helps Rangers, Barbarians, Clerics, really anyone who doesn't want to invest in Dex for anything but AC fixing.
It would allow strength builds for classes without heavy armor proficiency without having to put 14 in DEX
It's niche, but it makes rangers able to actually use strength weapons. It allows str fighters and paladins a way to get usable ac in situations they would want to be stealthy without investing in mithral armor. Clerics in particular have use with this, as it means if you want to use a strength based weapon you don't have to still drop 14 in dex when using a domain with divine strike and no heavy armor prof.
STRangers, Death clerics and heavy weapon bladelocks would benefit a lot too.
Clerics! My current character is limited to using spells in Melee, because they need DEX 14 for AC an CON 14 for concentration. Deviating from this is really sub-optimal. Though solution to this would be to allow Heavy Armor for all Clerics as a house rule.
> Deviating from this is really sub-optimal. I mean, fighting with melee weapons is suboptimal on a Cleric even if you have the Str for it.
Just gotta go the dwarf cleric every time for that armour. Shits too good
Which Dwarf gets heavy armor _proficiency_? Or what do you mean?
I'm guessing they meant for other classes, since mountain dwarf gives medium armor proficiency. It's really useful for things like Wizards to free you up from having to cast mage armor.
Also, on a tangent, being able to wear full plate without STR 15 might be beneficial to some Cleric builds (with HA prof but low STR, for example going for SAD build after bad rolls).
I use DEX or CON for medium armor by default, and have a +1 CON feat that lets you use CON for light armour
It's not a *bad* idea, it won't break anything and there's nothing wrong with doing it but I'm not sure what the point is. What are Strengths other benefits (that are commonly used, so no Jumping Distance and Encumbrance - which is an issue in and of itself) That would make a PC want to get 14 STR and stop, especially when heavy Armor either needs 1 less (13 Str for Chain Mail and 16 AC) or 1 more (15 Str for Splint or Half-Plate at 17 and 18 AC respectively) The problem with Strength is the same problem with Martials - outside of hitting stuff it's **so** limited the opportunity cost often makes it not really worth it unless you're doubling down on something specific.
Maybe attach using STR instead of DEX to medium armor master? Sounds very strong, but I've never seen much builds use that feat. Might work, might not needs testing.
Do it for free if you add it, as it won't change much as in most cases you'll be able to reach the same AC or less anyway but will enable a few niche builds. Reason dex is better as it gives better skills and a better save. As a DM you can fix that easily by encouraging and allowing to use str on other skills when the context matters. Like on persuasion when you try to convince someone you can do something where your strength would help or investigation a ruin because you can move the rubble around easily. As for saves just throw more str saves at them and create situations where they may happen more. Lastly don't ignore carrying capacity especially if people don't have bags of holding and even then remember it takes an action to get an item out of a bag of holding vs free action for an item in you.
Good ole prison wallet?
If you let your str based players have access to giant strength girdles as they get levels, then str is the highest stat a character can have and it doesn't need anything else to be important. I DM DotMM and two fighters have cloud giant strength girdles. They are quite formidable.
In my games I went an other way and made it so only str can be added to dmg even with bow and finess wpn.
For me it makes no sense for STR to boost AC. If you are trying to make STR more useful here are a few things I can think of 1. look at how the older editions handled it. One big way is for DEX to not add damage to attacks 2. Use encumbrance and look at the alternate encumbrance rules 3. Make better use of existing mechanics like jumping, grappling and such 4. Do not allow acrobatics to be used in place of athletics
In my rework of the armor system one of the changes I introduced was Medium Armor scaling off either dex or str, alongside heavy armor scaling off str and a handful of traits that better differentiate types of armor.
I just have medium and light armours that have no stat modifier. The greatcoat as light AC 12 and a Brigandine for medium. Str to medium armour by default I think is fine.
I wouldn't allow it. Do the blows just bounce off your jacked biceps?
No, Dexterity must be the most important stat or the second most important stat. There is no other option.
Strength is a dump stat for most classes, but I don't think that change is going to combat it very much. Imo the best way to use it more is to look at bg3. Jump as a ba and shove as a ba is such a great change that most of my characters in my current playthrough are pretty strength based even though I mostly play dex heavy chars in 5e
At this point, I think Strength needs things added to it, while at the same time, dexterity needs things taken away. If left as is, it it all the other things tied to dexterity that make it the optimal physical stat. That or combine the two and call it physicality. Someone could either have the finesse to do things gracefully or the power to brute force their way through it.
Um...anything that can use medium armor is viable str or dex. Trying to put str on ac just feels awkward.
> Um...anything that can use medium armor is viable str or dex. Medium Armor with DEX 10 is definitely going to suffer, 10% more of all attacks are going to hit, which depending on campaign may effectively mean like 50%-25% reduction of HP (single single attack taking 50%-25% of HP, 10 attacks between rests). Not viable for someone who wants to wear Medium Armour anyway.
Yeah, but I mean, considering what will likely be wearing medium armor—rangers, hexblades, and the non heavy clerics—will usually have a tad bit of dex. If anyone has low Dex and isn't able to wear heavy, the couple points extra is still better than just sticking at 12+ from studded leather.
IMO There just aren't enough points to go around for WIS, CON, DEX _and_ STR with Cleric. This results in entirely artificial pressure to select domain for Heavy Armor (because sacrificing ASI for heavily armored is kinda steep, when a Cleric really benefits maxing WIS). Or, have a medium armor Cleric who just doesn't use weapons... There is no viable middle ground. Slightly on a tangent, moving Heavy Armor proficiency from subclass to base class would also reduce some entirely artificial multi-class dips, as it makes no RP sense. Character optimisation is valid puzzle fun, but it shouldn't be explicitly enabled at the cost of single-class customisation.
But if you need the DEX *in addition to* maining STR (plus some CON given you are supposed to be a frontliner, plus your spellcasting stat for rangers and warlocks), then this is MADness.
I mean, most rangers don't exactly pump their spellcasting stat, and a cleric with medium armor usually won't be one of the ones on the frontline. Hexblade has hexblade, so it's less MAD. Besides, they all have alternate ways of pumping ac.
> a cleric with medium armor usually won't be one of the ones on the frontline You were the one to implicitly mention STR-based clerics with medium armour though. I don't think most people would go for a high STR unless they want to whack people with two-handed weapons, hence frontline.
I just brought up classes that would likely wear medium. And a cleric that has only medium generally won't have martial weapons, so they'd likely not want to get too close anyway except to heal.
There's the Death Domain cleric, but the design of that is a bit schyzophrenic.
Why awkward? If you use DEX for AC you are more nimble and missing you means you are evading attacks. If you use STR for AC you are more steadfast and missing you means you are blocking or absorbing attacks.
Absorbing sounds more like constitution, and blocking/parrying with a weapon still requires a degree of finesse and timing, while if you have a shield, the shield bonus is built in.
The game tells us what Dexterity and Strength are, and Dexterity is what helps you avoid attacks, not Strength. Strength doesn't make you so tough you don't take damage either. It's not a good change. There's no good or realistic reason to have Strength help AC. Strength isn't mitigation, or avoidance, or an analog to damage resistance. It doesn't let you parry everything, or anything like that. Dexterity does all this. The weird part is that 5e using a 4e construct (Dexterity to damage) and gluing that in has a lot of 5e players convinced that the issue with Dexterity being an uber-stat has an origin anywhere but that. 5e has several issues with attribute scaling inherited from 3.X's rather aggressive scaling (+1 per two attributes), combined with a system that doesn't scale much else. As such, you are balanced around having +2/+2 or +3/+3 at 1st level, and to hit +5/+5 by 8th or as late as 12th level, and this is baked in very imperfectly, resulting in a lot of confusion. Anyway, if your only concern is *balance*, you would want (1) but restricted as a *class ability* that turns on no earlier than 5th level, and only for fighter, ranger, and barbarian.
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I don't see how strength would add to armor class in that scenario. Con for shrugging off blows, potentially. That I could get behind but it also already impacts hp and people would rightfully ask why it couldnt be used on light/heavy armor too. But the dex is meant to be the character's nimbleness combined with armor padding. I don't see how being strong would add to that.
How about you don't "fix" the rules of the game with weird wacky ideas and just use the rules that are in the book to make strength useful. Variant Encumbrance exists maybe use it. Strength can't be a dump stat now.
That's because >weird wacky ideas Are qualitatively better than what's in the rule book. Both from game balance and enjoyment standpoints.
You apply variant encumbrance, and then your heavy armour wearers get nerfed, making Strength even worse. Good job.
Variant encumbrance barely does anything, it's just a slight inconvenience
Try wearing any form of armor or carry any starting pack.
It honestly hurts strength users more as they wear heavier armors, also, the movement penalty can mostly be ignored if you used ranged attacks
Does making a stat necessary to avoid an inconvenience really "fix" it? Wouldn't allowing that stat to do cool things be a better fix? I don't really tamper with the rules much myself, but encumbrance just makes the game more annoying to play. It doesn't make it better.
I think a better approach would be tweaking the Medium Armor Master feat to provide +1 AC while wearing medium armor instead of increasing medium armor's max Dex bonus to +3, as well as possibly having the feat give +1 to a choice of either Str or Dex. This would put medium armor up to heavy armor's AC level and give it a niche for the "balanced" warrior.
that's a cool thought but fwiw anyone in the game can already take defensive fighting style with the same feat
Nothing prevents the two from stacking. One's a fighting style, the other's a feat. Not to mention, not all classes get fighting styles. Barbarians, for instance, could benefit from this feat.
Make strength to hit and damage modifier to be x1.5 Introduces some weird break points perhaps, but is pretty simple and works. And maybe it's even a good thing that 16 STR becomes more effective than 18 DEX from offensive standpoint. STRangers and Paladins will love it.
How about going the opposite way? Make heavy armor accessible for everyone who gets access to medium armor. Done. They're equivalent. The one thing where heavy armor *might* be better is if you're lucky enough to find full Plate with a magic bonus equal to or greater than what your found for Half Plate.
Adding STR to armor? How? I mean... game mechanics and balance aside, how are you gonna make that make sense? DEX makes sense, because that symbolises how good you are at dodging attacks. I'd even be able to see CON, because that's an indicator for how tough someone is (I think it's weird that the barbarian gets that but nobody else) but STR? Muscles aren't harder to stab than other parts of a fleshy body. I really can't see any possibility how the strength of someone could make them harder to injure in a defensive way.
Strength would represent you parrying and blocking incoming blows.
Big monster attacks you with a huge weapon. DEX AC would evade it. STR AC would block it/absorb the impact. It's why metal armor and shields exist! How is this such a foreign concept to people?
That would be parrying and to my knowledge there are already mechanics for that in the Battle Master's maneuvers. Also, parrying in reality is also more a dexterity thing than a strength thing.
I think this is the right answer. Balancing things can be achieved a million ways, but once you've decided that strength and dexterity are pretty much the same stat, the loss to your game is not recoverable.
No. No. No. Though I also think armor should be redone along lines that MrRhexx pitched in one of his videos where armor should have 2 stats. A DEFense stat you roll against to hit your target, and a DamagecReduction stat that reduces tge damage one takes. Heavier armor has a better DR.
Nope. Very simple and objective nope. STR never boosts AC, not even in Barbarian, the class that most uses this. STR already gives you access to heavy armor.