Dungeons & Delvers: Splitting Stats

A criticism that I’ve heard about ability scores in Dungeons & Dragons is that Dexterity is a “king stat”, or something along those lines. I suppose it varies by edition but I think it wasn’t that bad in 3rd Edition since armor for some reason capped your Dexterity, though it didn’t penalize Reflex saves, and in terms of combat only affected ranged attack rolls (and melee with light weapons and the Weapon Finesse feat).

In 4th Edition it got worse, as Dexterity could then add to your attack and damage rolls with certain attacks. I’m not sure if this still persists in 5E, or if it’s more situational, but I know armor still caps the modifier for no discernible reason beyond “it’s how we’ve always done it”.

In Dungeons & Delvers 2E Dexterity affects all attack rolls, but never damage rolls since that doesn’t make any sense. Instead, very accurate attacks can inflict bonus damage, reflecting a very precise strike.

Also, armor doesn’t cap Dexterity because why would it, unless I suppose it was poorly made? Instead, you have to give a fuck about weight because if you lack the Strength it can encumber you, which does impose penalties (beyond reduced Dexterity).

Now, Dexterity saves are quite common, it affects all attack rolls, and isn’t arbitrarily throttled by armor. It also affects some useful skills such as Stealth and Tinkering, so if anything we’ve made the whole “king stat” thing a bit worse, and this plus what Wisdom affects was kind of strange prompted us to consider changing/splitting some of the stats.

The current roster is:

• Might (replaces Strength)
• Toughness (replaces Constitution)
• Agility (partially replaces Dexterity, affects Defense, Dexterity saves, and all attack rolls)
• Intellect (replaces Intelligence)
• Awareness (partially replaces Wisdom, affects Insight, Perception and ranged attacks)
• Resolve (partially replaces Wisdom, affects mental resilience and used to resist psychic damage)
• Presence (replaces Charisma)

The only thing that seems a bit odd is Awareness affecting missile attacks, but I like this setup more for statting out monsters because now, for example, I can give certain monsters a higher than normal Awareness without it also affecting their ability to resist charms and fear effects.

Plus, it takes a bit from Agility, which is still pretty useful but at least now it’s slightly less useful.

(For some additional reading, I responded to a ShadowSimp's moronic take on magic over on the other blog.)