Should characters even have different combat numbers?

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:34 am

If you gave everyone all 18s on their stats would it really have that much of an impact?

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 11:08 am

I think it's a good thing for the most part. Many characters in fiction seem to have high stats in many areas and it opens up more options for multiclassing.

But you might want to houserule that you don't get to stack more than two ability modifiers to the same thing.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Jul 31, 2015 11:41 am

It's probably worth noting a few things.

In 3.x that would be a big deal, so yes it would have an impact.

I'm assuming you just mean "The PCs, and maybe some important non-monster NPCs".

To a large extent it would be a good impact, making characters and adventurers more heroic and versatile in good ways.

Some people will condemn that as a bad thing.

From anecdotal experience, a huge proportion of 3.x games already pretty close to do this with stupidly generous attribute generation by hook or by crook to end up with characters with at least one 18, nothing EVER under a 12, and rarely more than one or two stats under 16 anyway. 3.x edition characters averaging out to about 16 on everything are probably about as common as 2E 18/00 Str fighters, which is to say VASTLY more common than they are remotely supposed to be if someone somewhere wasn't cheating their tits off.

The people playing like that are essentially doing so because of the benefits of pretty much uniform and noticeably more heroic attributes.

Though they may not realize that.