I can see two reasons.
For every two points of damage you take to a single ability, apply a –1 penalty to skills and statistics listed with the relevant ability.
This means that you don't care if you have an odd or even ability score; damage effects you at the same rate. Assuming you modify the ability score, if you have an even Dex score and take one point of dexterity damage, your AC decreases by one. It doesn't decrease if you have an odd score.
I'd actually see that as an argument against this version of the rule, since it removes one of the few advantages of having an odd stat.
The other is probably simplifying how you calculate the effects of ability damage. Consider a fighter who has Strength 15 and 10 feats that have Power Attack as a prereq. If he takes 5 strength damage and that actually reduces his strength to 10, he no longer qualifies for Power Attack or any of the other feats. Possibly, he also no longer qualifies for his prestige class(es). Rather than "subtract 2 from these rolls", you can argue that he needs to spend the next hour figuring out what his character can (and mostly can't) do without all of those feats.
The wording for strength is also not quite accurate.
Damage to your Strength score causes you to take penalties on ... weapon damage rolls (if they rely on Strength).
By a strict reading of the rules, a character with a strength of 22 and 12 ability damage (nominally, strength 10), gets a net bonus of +3 to damage rolls with a two handed weapon (1.5*6 - 6 = +3) and a net penalty of -3 with his off-hand weapon (0.5*6 - 6 = -3).
But is also says
Modify all skills and statistics related to that ability. This might cause you to lose skill points, hit points, and other bonuses.
Are the details given for each ability supposed to be inclusive, or just examples that cover most of the cases? The more I read this, the more confusing it becomes.
During the playtest it was mentioned that ability damage slowed down the game, because you'd have to change a bunch of stats instead of just one. This might be the solution for that problem.
|
During the playtest it was mentioned that ability damage slowed down the game, because you'd have to change a bunch of stats instead of just one. This might be the solution for that problem.
That's what I was thinking, (or similar things), but am not sure if this would actually help or not. I don't have my book to check up on it.
|
Doesn't everyone use a computer now to track this stuff, though?
Using MapTool to handle all of my encounters -- and the PC's stats -- means that when damage is done to an ability score, it automatically propagates to anything based on that score.
Qualifying for feats and PrC's is something I hadn't considered, but it doesn't make sense anyway. Just because someone loses 1 point of Str, does that mean they don't have any of the PrC features? That's silly, IMO. Now the issue with Power Attack I can understand, and I think it's completely reasonable to say a feat is lost if the creature can no longer meet the prereqs. (Hmm, MapTool doesn't track that currently. Sounds like I need to tweak some of my existing macros!)
During the playtest it was mentioned that ability damage slowed down the game, because you'd have to change a bunch of stats instead of just one. This might be the solution for that problem.That's what I was thinking, (or similar things), but am not sure if this would actually help or not. I don't have my book to check up on it.
I think it helps to manage the info on the fly. You don't have to look at the original creature's stats and determine if the 1 point of strength damage knocks him down a bonus level - you just wait until the second point of damage is done and mark down -1 to hit/damage, -1 Str checks next to where you're tracking hp.
|
|
I think it helps to manage the info on the fly. You don't have to look at the original creature's stats and determine if the 1 point of strength damage knocks him down a bonus level - you just wait until the second point of damage is done and mark down -1 to hit/damage, -1 Str checks next to where you're tracking hp.During the playtest it was mentioned that ability damage slowed down the game, because you'd have to change a bunch of stats instead of just one. This might be the solution for that problem.That's what I was thinking, (or similar things), but am not sure if this would actually help or not. I don't have my book to check up on it.
That's kind of what I thought. But, so far, (still haven't delved into it yet), it just sems different rather than better. Not bad, just different.
|
|
also, online character sheets such as at thetangledweb.net or myth-weavers.com have nice auto calcing features that quickly modify many things dependent on ability score.
I'm actually in the process of modifying TTW's D&D Profiler sheet for use with PF.
It will have the same features as the existing d20 sheet (links to spells, feats, and skills, for example) but I plan to add a lot of additional automation. For example, I'd like to auto-fill the weights of recognized weapons and armor (perhaps general inventory as well). All lists of items (skills, feats, spells, weapons, etc) will be dynamically sized so that the users can always add "just one more entry".
I'm also fixing some misconfigurations of the existing sheet, such as always using a page width of 7 inches when that should only apply to the printed form (the screen-based form should be 95% of the window width, for example).
I started a thread in their "General Discussion" forum about my plans, if you'd care to review it and offer suggestions for other things you'd like to see. My username over there is 'Elordan'.