BB - Background ability boosts inconsistent, it's possible to get a +5 (20) in an ability

[MartinB]

Has there been anything published about a possible errata/clarification on the ability boosts for the Acolyte, Criminal and Scholar background?

These both have restrictions on the ability boost of a specific race and class:
- Acolyte: Add +1 to your Wisdom. If you become a dwarf cleric, add +1 to your Constitution instead.
- Criminal: Add +1 to your Dexterity If you become an elf rogue, add +1 to your Wisdom instead.
- Scholar: Add +1 to your Intelligence. If you become an elf wizard, add +1 to your Wisdom instead.

These are obviously to prevent a PC with the same ability boost in their ancestry from hitting +5 (20) on the corresponding ability score. However, as a human can select these abilities, the wording doesn't prevent the boost for a human who selects the class - so it's possible for a human cleric, rogue or wizard to hit +5 (20) in wisdom, dexterity or intelligence, respectively.

Whereas the "Deckhand" background seems to cover this off by only specifying rogue, not elf rogue: " Add +1 to your Dexterity. If you become a rogue, add +1 to your Strength instead."

I'm guessing that Acolyte, Criminal and Scholar should have the ancestry reference removed? Anyone know if this has been discussed/mentioned somewhere?

Thanks and Happy New Year!

[CrystalSeas]

There's an official errata for that.

Statement by Mark Seifert, Design Manager

Mark Seifter wrote:

The Rot Grub wrote:

Or maybe it says somewhere that you can't raise a score above +4? I couldn't find that in my PDF

It did have that limit at one point, but I can't seem to find it right now. My guess, based on a recollection of a conversation, is that at some point there was an incomplete change to have them all be like the Str background where it just disallows picking your key ability regardless of ancestry, while that line about not going over +4 was removed (so that the limiter would be on the same page as the selection of backgrounds instead of elsewhere, at the cost of not being able to get +4 in some key abilities with some ancestries). You absolutely cannot go up to +5, but even if we were to make an errata page for Beginner Box, that's not a place beginners are going to check, unfortunately.

Emphasis added.

[MartinB]

CrystalSeas wrote:

There's an official errata for that.

Thanks so much. That was exactly what I was looking for. I'd searched for those background names, but nothing came up - it looks like things hidden in a Spoiler tag aren't found in a forum search.

Thanks again!

[LordVanya]

Posted this in the other thread too, but...

In case anyone is interested, I have a simple solution for the +5 boost issue.

Classes should all grant 2 Ability Boosts to their primary Ability instead of +3, and 4 free Ability Boosts instead of 3.

Then you can just ignore all the alternate Ability Boost text in the Background descriptions.

Saves a few lines of text and it makes it a bit closer to how things work in the CRB.

[CrystalSeas]

LordVanya wrote:

In case anyone is interested, I have a simple solution for the +5 boost issue.

The simplest solution is to remind players when they are creating characters that everything is available as long as no modifier is +5.

No extra rules, no new wording. Just a reminder that their build has to fit within that constraint.

It also has the benefit of being an official errata, not a homebrew solution, and thus makes the characters legal for play in Pathfinder Society games.

[LordVanya]

Welp then my solution is for the people that don't care about society play. And I think mine is cleaner and closer to the CRB anyway.

[LordVanya]

For posterity I'm going to post a revision to my idea.
This is what I did to my copy of the hero's handbook:

1) I redacted all mention of alternate ability boosts in the backgrounds section. They each grant whatever the first listed ability boost was.

2) In each class's description I altered the text to read as follows:

"Add +2 to your [Wisdom/Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence]. Then pick four ability modifiers and add +1 to each of those (D). You can't pick the same ability modifier more than once, and no modifier may exceed +4."

This is even cleaner than my previous idea and I'm pretty sure it is functionally the same as the normal rules, but without any need for alternate ability boosts to be called out for specific combinations of ancestry and class. And basically all I did was treat the now 4 free boosts granted by your class as a separate step as in the CRB.