![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackHelpful reading
Early on in the Player's Handbook is a chapter about character creation that explains how to calculate ability scores and modifiers.
Some of this is online, see the first section (not all of) at: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Ability%20Scores#content
Ability scores and ability modifiers
During character creation, you create six ability scores, strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma.
The standard array is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. These correspond to ability modifiers of +2, +2, +1, +1, +0, -1. But both of these will increase or decrease a little depending on your race, often enough to make a +3 ability score modifier somewhere it's important to your character.
An ability score of 10 is average. NPCs typically have 10 in every ability so it's easy for the GM to remember. 18 is "best human". 3 is as worse as you can possibly get. Most PCs have scores over 10.
The most common activity in DnD is rolling a d20, and adding an ability score modifier, or some other similar number with additional bonuses as well. If you're rolling out of 20, you can see how much a +1, a +3 a +5 or even more would make a difference.
The original ability score is written very prominently on your character sheet, but whenever someone asks about your strength, there's a 95% chance they mean your ability modifier, and whenever you add it onto a dice roll, there's a 100% chance it's the ability score modifier. But they will always just say "your strength" because life is just unnecessarily confusing.
Conversely, occasionally something will give you a bonus or penalty TO your ability score, e.g. "+6 to strength" from a spell. This alters the original score, and you have to work out what the new ability score modifier will be. In this case, +6 to the score would mean the modifier gets +3 more, whether that means going from 12 to 18 (+1 to +4) or 18 to 24 (+4 to +7).
Generating ability scores in character creation
When you create the character you can take the standard array, use point buy as described in the PHB or an online character creator such as DnDBeyond, or generate them by rolling, or some other method. Your GM should tell you which methods to use for a particular game. The numbers originally ran from 3 to 18 because they were generated from six sided dice, even though point buy is the most common now.
These also get slightly different bonuses depending on your race. Half-orcs are on average tougher than other races, and the toughest half half-orcs are tougher than the toughest members of other races, so when you work out your strength and constitution, half orcs then also increase their strength score by 2, and their constitution by 1. A human is an all-rounder, and would instead increase all ability scores by 1.
These additions are important because if you use the standard array or point buy, the ability scores that get a racial bonus can be 16 or more (getting a +3 modifier) but all your other ability scores can be at most 15 (only getting a +2 modifier).
Common techniques include choosing a race and class so you can have +3 in the ability modifier you use for attacks (e.g. STR for large weapon attacks, DEX for rapiers or ranged attacks, INT for wizard attacks etc). And choosing as many ability scores as possible to be even (ability scores of 12 and 13 both give you an ability modifier of +1)
Using DnDBeyond
This is not that difficult to understand using pencil and paper, but although DnDBeyond simplifies many steps of calculation it presents it in a really confusing way, so it can be hard to work out if you don't already know what you're doing. It's possible another online character creator would be better, but I haven't investigated (any suggestions?)
For ability scores generation, DnDBeyond has a column which doesn't exactly show how the rows relate to each other.
Basically, at the top of the page, you choose the ability scores from the standard array, or point buy, or type in what you rolled. Then each one, separately, has a bunch more details.
"Total score" and "Modifier" at the top are your actual ability score and ability modifier calculated from everything else in the table (e.g. 8 and -1, or 18 and +3).
"Base score" is the number you generated (that you chose from the standard array, or rolled).
Then there's a list of extra things that get added on to it to produce your total score. Some of these are permanent at character creation. Some might be from a magic item or a temporary spell. At first level you will usually have a racial bonus and everything else will be zero and have no effect.
But at the bottom, there's two more text boxes. One is "other modifier", say your GM made up a race, or a magic spell, that gives a bonus which DnDBeyond doesn't know about. If you put +2 here, it will be added on to the base score along with everything else to give your total score, which will be used to calculate your ability score modifier.
The other is "override ability score". If you worked out that your ability score should be 18 on pencil and paper, and don't want to mess with all the other options, you can put 18 here and DnDBeyond will ignore everything else, use 18 as your ability score, and give you an ability modifier of +3.
Early on in the Player's Handbook is a chapter about character creation that explains how to calculate ability scores and modifiers.
Some of this is online, see the first section (not all of) at: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Ability%20Scores#content
Ability scores and ability modifiers
During character creation, you create six ability scores, strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma.
The standard array is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. These correspond to ability modifiers of +2, +2, +1, +1, +0, -1. But both of these will increase or decrease a little depending on your race, often enough to make a +3 ability score modifier somewhere it's important to your character.
An ability score of 10 is average. NPCs typically have 10 in every ability so it's easy for the GM to remember. 18 is "best human". 3 is as worse as you can possibly get. Most PCs have scores over 10.
The most common activity in DnD is rolling a d20, and adding an ability score modifier, or some other similar number with additional bonuses as well. If you're rolling out of 20, you can see how much a +1, a +3 a +5 or even more would make a difference.
The original ability score is written very prominently on your character sheet, but whenever someone asks about your strength, there's a 95% chance they mean your ability modifier, and whenever you add it onto a dice roll, there's a 100% chance it's the ability score modifier. But they will always just say "your strength" because life is just unnecessarily confusing.
Conversely, occasionally something will give you a bonus or penalty TO your ability score, e.g. "+6 to strength" from a spell. This alters the original score, and you have to work out what the new ability score modifier will be. In this case, +6 to the score would mean the modifier gets +3 more, whether that means going from 12 to 18 (+1 to +4) or 18 to 24 (+4 to +7).
Generating ability scores in character creation
When you create the character you can take the standard array, use point buy as described in the PHB or an online character creator such as DnDBeyond, or generate them by rolling, or some other method. Your GM should tell you which methods to use for a particular game. The numbers originally ran from 3 to 18 because they were generated from six sided dice, even though point buy is the most common now.
These also get slightly different bonuses depending on your race. Half-orcs are on average tougher than other races, and the toughest half half-orcs are tougher than the toughest members of other races, so when you work out your strength and constitution, half orcs then also increase their strength score by 2, and their constitution by 1. A human is an all-rounder, and would instead increase all ability scores by 1.
These additions are important because if you use the standard array or point buy, the ability scores that get a racial bonus can be 16 or more (getting a +3 modifier) but all your other ability scores can be at most 15 (only getting a +2 modifier).
Common techniques include choosing a race and class so you can have +3 in the ability modifier you use for attacks (e.g. STR for large weapon attacks, DEX for rapiers or ranged attacks, INT for wizard attacks etc). And choosing as many ability scores as possible to be even (ability scores of 12 and 13 both give you an ability modifier of +1)
Using DnDBeyond
This is not that difficult to understand using pencil and paper, but although DnDBeyond simplifies many steps of calculation it presents it in a really confusing way, so it can be hard to work out if you don't already know what you're doing. It's possible another online character creator would be better, but I haven't investigated (any suggestions?)
For ability scores generation, DnDBeyond has a column which doesn't exactly show how the rows relate to each other.
Basically, at the top of the page, you choose the ability scores from the standard array, or point buy, or type in what you rolled. Then each one, separately, has a bunch more details.
"Total score" and "Modifier" at the top are your actual ability score and ability modifier calculated from everything else in the table (e.g. 8 and -1, or 18 and +3).
"Base score" is the number you generated (that you chose from the standard array, or rolled).
Then there's a list of extra things that get added on to it to produce your total score. Some of these are permanent at character creation. Some might be from a magic item or a temporary spell. At first level you will usually have a racial bonus and everything else will be zero and have no effect.
But at the bottom, there's two more text boxes. One is "other modifier", say your GM made up a race, or a magic spell, that gives a bonus which DnDBeyond doesn't know about. If you put +2 here, it will be added on to the base score along with everything else to give your total score, which will be used to calculate your ability score modifier.
The other is "override ability score". If you worked out that your ability score should be 18 on pencil and paper, and don't want to mess with all the other options, you can put 18 here and DnDBeyond will ignore everything else, use 18 as your ability score, and give you an ability modifier of +3.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-09 08:20 am (UTC)Several people pointed out that there are some important prerequisites that depend on odd ability scores: most requirements for feats, armour or multiclassing are 13 i think. But I think that's a fairly small part of the game and could easily be changed if they got rid of odd scores.
Alternatively, they could use halves in modifiers :) Or equivalently, double everything in the game :)