high stats at Character creation

[vonpenguin]

So this has been bugging me and I'd like to get some opinions. Say I'm making a Tal'Vashoth, I get lucky on my stat rolls and end up with a 4 in strength. Add in the background bonus and that's a five, ok good. But what happens then if I roll a twelve on the benifits table for another +1 strength? Is that a 6 to start with or is it six advances in the stat meaning I still need to spend a seventh to get a 6?

[shonuff]

What happens if you're also a Grey Warden at level 1, and you choose strength?

That's why I am not using ability advancements.

[vonpenguin]

Not really the same. Warden specifically says it's an advance not a flat increase.

That's fine. Different tastes. But I do like them since it discourages people from pumping a million points into say... magic or whatnot.

[shonuff]

That's because they changed all ability increases to using the ability advancement system. Personally, I think the system is not only overly complex but also overly delays advancement. You have to gain 4 or 6 levels to get a +1 to die rolls (and you don't get anything else in the meantime)?

No thanks. IMO, ability advancements are just a stop-gap fix to a problem introduced in Set 1 -- you cannot give 20 ability advancement points in such a low numbers game when so many stats aren't that worthwhile.

A hard cap or limiting consecutive ability advancements still allows for decent player growth while limiting one-trick pony PCs.

[Arimmus]

I prefer something to the advancements. Most other games have them in one way shape or form. The way I see it, is you you get 6 points at character start, that is 6 advancements. That's how I see it. so a starting strength is 5 (6).

[Loswaith]

So this has been bugging me and I'd like to get some opinions. Say I'm making a Tal'Vashoth, I get lucky on my stat rolls and end up with a 4 in strength. Add in the background bonus and that's a five, ok good. But what happens then if I roll a twelve on the benifits table for another +1 strength? Is that a 6 to start with or is it six advances in the stat meaning I still need to spend a seventh to get a 6?

Personaly this is incredably unlikely, so if it did happen I'd let the Tal'Vashoth start with the 6 in strength as I see no reason for the especially lucky player for being penalised. Though that said I dont include the set ability bonus a character gets as part of the background in the scalling either so all Qunari can get 6 strength before paying increased stat gains, as do other backgrounds for their respective abilities.

[shonuff]

Incredibly unlikely, yes, but still possible. And I know very few people who would stick to RAW for someone lucky enough to start with a 6, and that's the problem.... as soon as you deviate from RAW, you have a situation of preference/unfairness. IMO, they should have just popped in a hard cap and been done with it.

[Balgin Stondraeg]

So this has been bugging me and I'd like to get some opinions. Say I'm making a Tal'Vashoth, I get lucky on my stat rolls and end up with a 4 in strength. Add in the background bonus and that's a five, ok good. But what happens then if I roll a twelve on the benifits table for another +1 strength? Is that a 6 to start with or is it six advances in the stat meaning I still need to spend a seventh to get a 6?

Personaly this is incredably unlikely, so if it did happen I'd let the Tal'Vashoth start with the 6 in strength as I see no reason for the especially lucky player for being penalised. Though that said I dont include the set ability bonus a character gets as part of the background in the scalling either so all Qunari can get 6 strength before paying increased stat gains, as do other backgrounds for their respective abilities.

Same here. Additionaly if a Qunari is fortunate enough to have strength 6 it won't be a 7 untill at least 4th level (and if he can survive that long without increasing any of his other ability scores like constitution then he's got a pretty amazing support network of party members).

[shonuff]

Same here. Additionaly if a Qunari is fortunate enough to have strength 6 it won't be a 7 untill at least 4th level (and if he can survive that long without increasing any of his other ability scores like constitution then he's got a pretty amazing support network of party members).

Possibly 2nd depending on whether or not the Qunari becomes a Grey Warden. Splitting hairs, I know, but IMO you have to look at the extreme possibilities (regardless of how likely) to determine how fair the system is. And if GMs are making special rules to benefit certain characters, then it's not a fair system.

[empyrien]

Personaly this is incredably unlikely, so if it did happen I'd let the Tal'Vashoth start with the 6 in strength as I see no reason for the especially lucky player for being penalised.

Incredibly unlikely, yes, but still possible.

While it is unlikely if you are using the 2d6 method for background bonuses, if you are using the option where the players get 3 background advancements they can straight out choose the +1 Strength. What does one do then? Then the situation becomes messy and is the reason I dislike the ability advancement system.

In principle, before the introduction of Set 2, a really lucky character who rolled 18->+4 for a stat (e.g. Dexterity) and then got a +1 from background (e.g. City Elf) could have started with a 5 and technically gotten to +7 before they hit level 5. Once Set 2 was introduced, the GM would have to deal with a character that is no longer legal according to the set 2 rules, even though they were fine as defined by Set 1.

The advancement system was a shoddy, non-backwards compatible hack. It makes sense in a point buy system, not in a level based system.

[shonuff]

And while most GMs would house-rule an a workaround for the lucky character who rolled the score initially, they wouldn't allow that same workaround for a character who rolled the same number of attributes, but with a different allotment who progressed normally.

Eg, a party has two qunari. One rolls a 6 str/3 con and the other 5 str/4 con. At level 2, qunari 1 increases con to become 6/4, while qunari 2 increases str to become 5.5/4. If I were qunari 2, I'd put up a stink, and depending on GM reaction, the rule easily goes out the window.

[Loswaith]

...
While it is unlikely if you are using the 2d6 method for background bonuses, if you are using the option where the players get 3 background advancements they can straight out choose the +1 Strength. What does one do then? Then the situation becomes messy and is the reason I dislike the ability advancement system.
...

Though if using the advancements method for background tables its most likely that the group is also using purcahse points for ability scores too, so a character would be unable to get a 4 starting ability for it to matter.