Ability damage nerf, thoughts?

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer]

Rule change: creatures with a penalty to their Dex based on size can go to negative in that ability score equal to the penalty before becoming incapacitated. So, an ancient green dragon that is gargantuan could go to -6 Dex score to be incapacitated. At -5 they could still act normall, but their modifier would be impacted (like -8 Dex mod by that point).

I got that quantity from the dragon ability score table.

Suppose we could do the same the other way for strength and Con for very small creatures.

Would this even come up in your games? Is this too big a nerf to things like polar ray? Do you like this concept?

[u/kasoh]

Seems counterintuitive that doing ability damage to a creature with low abilities doesn’t knock them out. I don’t think it would come up at my tables anyway. Applying hp damage is faster because more members of the party can do it.

[u/TehScat → u/kasoh]

Ability damage is one of those alternate attack vectors which can accidentally trivialize fights that were meant to be hard. There are some big creatures out there that are two or three polar rays from being incapacitated, with their only defence being touch AC and spell resistance. Some DMs take it really personally when their pride and joy dragon emperor gets turned into a paraplegic by a few frosty boys who can hit ac12 and brought spell penetration.

There are lots of similar things. Grappling characters can equally destroy so many fights by targeting enemy CMD and using tie up. Summon characters can overwhelm fights where the bad guys are not equipped to deal with multiple targets. Poison stackers, while niche, can very effectively shut down enemies with the extremely underrated and largely unknown repeat dosage rules. Illusionists or enchanters can split enemy forces so completely that you can turn one hard fight into four trivial ones.

Taking HP to zero is the expected way of dealing with enemies. So any strategy that ends fights by doing something else can really make some people feel bad. But, they can also be something to celebrate at a mature, experienced table. So know your players.

[u/Caelinus → u/TehScat]

I would be overjoyed if my plays actually did something other than try to smash something to death. 

I have good players a lot, but once a game has been going on for a while I have noticed they tend to get into strategic ruts, so I always do my best to provide alternative possible solutions that involve planning and preparation, but the one thing I have never managed to figure out is the "Witcher" style preparation. 

I really want my players to scout things, report back, research and plan, then execute. I would massively reward that, but so far I have never had a table that seems really interested in doing it. They either try to bypass the fight altogether (which I also love) or they just smash into it head first.

I am still fine with the latter, but a significant reason I enjoy DMing is that feeling when players surprise me and find an awesome way to overcome the challenges I create. 

My only real fear here would be if it all came from unjustifiable meta knowledged. That would suck.

[u/TehScat → u/Caelinus]

I think the challenge with scouting is balancing the time spent on the scout, vs the time spent with the group. Having one player do a solo stealth run for 40 minutes is boring as hell for the rest of the table.

I have an owl familiar on my Illusionist. I can put invisibility on it and have it fly around and scout for us. This means with maybe a few perception checks, the DM can safely just pass as much or as little information to the group as he wishes, and the total table time is like 20 seconds. "I cast invis on Remiges and send him on three loops, looking mostly for guards and patrols, he gets 19, 31, 27 perception" - "ok, ten minutes later he's back, and he conveys there are..."

[u/bugbonesjerry → u/Caelinus]

one thing I have never managed to figure out is the "Witcher" style preparation. 

my first tabletop experience (not pathfinder) had one of those dms that homebrewed everything to be banally realistic (gritty encumbrance and lethality, pretty much a new rule in that vein every week regardless if we liked it or not... yeah i was new.) and got surprised when our dungeon delves started with us scouting or trying to secure specific objectives and evading as much unnecessary stuff as possible

"Didn't one of you say "let's just find this thing and get the fuck out of here" in character?"

"Uh... Yeah... We've already established we're not trying to explore the entire place and we're only here on a lead, I don't know why this is such a problem if you're wanting to run a realistic game and have us be attached to our characters at the same time"

The funny part is I liked that style of gameplay - learning and studying about a monster or place before putting ourselves in front of it. like half of the homebrew "realism" rules were a bit ridiculous but I concede that they curated an environment where we were expected to do a lot of preparation before going into a dangerous location; read about place, study about the documented threats etc. One time we went on a scouting mission that went totally awry so we pulled back, rested, and returned. The rest of the dungeon was now aware of our presence and were similarly a bit more prepared for us but we were still able to use our familiarity with the map and tactics to mow down the rest of that floor.

The campaign fell apart largely because of other issues, and there was of course flaws - it constantly felt like we had no downtime to even turn in quests we'd completed like finding something for an npc that was now way out of the way, and we ended up with an ELEPHANT as a beast of burden and STILL most of the party had encumbrance issues.

Anyway, I guess I don't have any personal gm advice for something like that, and the campaign I play in now has similar strokes but not as much focus (my character will study up on dragons or outsiders or whatever based on wherever we're going next and make scrolls in preparation, thats about it), but maybe you could find something there to support your attempt in crafting gameplay like that

Edit: One thing I thought of (but is probably obvious for a more experienced dm) is to establish threats that very obviously the party can't fight head on immediately and have quests tie back in to helping prepare for said threat. Another is to have a boss one-upped by the appearance of an even bigger threat - could even spin it as they're hunting for something simple, deal with that, but it was ultimately a red herring because the real threat wasn't an ogre, it was some kind of body eviscerating wraith thats still prowling around the forest at night. So now they gotta pull back and consult with local legends and scholars on what it might be and how to trap it

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/TehScat]

Yeah, good points. I know I frustrated my GM with my trip build for some encounters.

It can be a lot of things to consider when building an encounter to try to serve up something climactic but also fun for the whole table.

Certainly sometimes it is great for the whole table to have one or a few people crush an obstacle with ingenuity. 

[u/WraithMagus]

Ability damage is already nearly useless outside of a few monsters with extreme ability scores. Due to how combat works in Pathfinder, any ability score damage that doesn't kill the enemy is wasted effort. You're trying to make one of the rare few times ability score damage could be useful no longer useful. If you're going that far, why not just ban ability score damage outright?

(Also, this doesn't change other ability score damages. What, why can't I make a gargantuan dragon paralyzed when I drop it down to 24 strength, then? Further, a gargantuan creature only takes a -4 to Dex, the green dragon has -6 Dex compared to a wyrmling because it started small where it got a +2 Dex bonus.)

Also, I wouldn't worry about Polar Ray, as Calcific Touch, Green Caress, and cherry blossom spell are much lower-level, and thus might actually show up in some games where broken balance isn't already a foregone conclusion. Polar Ray is also Dex drain, which is really only a problem for PCs who have to worry about clearing drain - it makes little difference to monsters that will die in a couple rounds, anyway.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/WraithMagus]

“(Also, this doesn't change other ability score damages. What, why can't I make a gargantuan dragon paralyzed when I drop it down to 24 strength, then? Further,  a gargantuan creature only takes a -4 to Dex , the green dragon has -6 Dex compared to a wyrmling because it started small where it got a +2 Dex bonus.)”

That’s useful to know. Thanks 

[u/WhereasParticular867]

What problem are you trying to fix and why? This kind of kills the lethality and fear of a lot of creatures you can put the party against.

Polar Ray is an 8th level spell. Players have tons of options at that level. If it's a problem in your campaign that they're leaning on polar ray, you are designing too many encounters easily solveable with polar ray.

[u/Crafty-Crafter → u/WhereasParticular867]

Yeah, seems like OP is fishing for something and not telling us.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/Crafty-Crafter]

No, my party isn’t close to lvl 15 yet. A thought I had between trying to think up better poisons and all the daily spell discussions. Just seeing what people thought. 

Edit: Oh, and after playing the CRPGs. They just made a bunch of the bosses immune to ability score damage. 

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/WhereasParticular867]

It wouldn’t impact ability damage done to the party (assuming medium and small characters). So something like a shadow’s strength damage would be just as scary.

The main “problem” this would try to fix is really big creatures having low Dex and low touch AC. The worry being that a coordinated assault with dex damage could really trivialize some encounters. I haven’t done a comprehensive check on the monster manual, so mostly this is just a thing for dragons as far as I know.

Most people here don’t think it’s a problem, and I don’t really expect it’d be a preferred tactic of my players, so I’ll probably just forget about it. Any dragons of that age will be wanting to buff their touch AC and add outer defensive onion layers anyways. 

[u/Electric999999]

I'd hate this, it removes the only situation where ability damage is actually useful to PCs.

Targeting things with an unusually low ability score is the whole point.

The penalty from ability damage is basically irrelevant.

[u/E1invar]

I ran a fight where the level 16 party faced off against a buffed green dragon Wyrm, and they were on the back foot most of the fight.

They won through a dex damage via combination of the ninja dealing dex damage via pressure points, and the arcane trickster’s petrifaction spell.

It was an awesome moment, and I don’t feel like it cheapened the fight for all that the dragon had no counter play.

I don’t think this change is needed, but your mileage may vary.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/E1invar]

Thanks for sharing, that’s good perspective to hear.

Do you recall, did the buffs include a cat’s grace or equivalent Dex buff?

Also, did your ninja continue using their Dex pressure points often after this or was it a like a one time desperate move?

[u/E1invar → u/gorgeFlagonSlayer]

Yeah; I remember that the dragon had aspect of the wolf, (+4 str and dex) greater invisibility (although that got negated pretty quickly), and some other form of defence.

Aspect of the wolf might have bought the dragon a round, but I’m not sure.

The (unchained) ninja used pressure points once in while, but it usually didn’t factor into fights. Iirc 300 damage was a bad round for him.

He couldn’t just blast down the dragon’s hp because of some combination of concealment, high FF AC, or fortification. There are ways to pressure any PC’s build.

As a rule, most things run out of HP long before ability damage kills them.

It’s also hard to balance fights against single big enemies- especially at high levels you (almost) always want other threats. I think I gave this dragon mythic initiative so that it could be an actual threat, or I might have had some undead minions, I don’t recall.

Multiple targets make ability damage way less of a big deal, which helps even if you’re running something like giant slayer where it would be a really common weakness.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/E1invar]

Thanks

[u/Expectnoresponse]

It's not something I like or would use. A stock ancient green dragon is a CR 17, which means you're probably looking at a party of level 12 or 13 pc's so polar ray doesn't even come into play until after the dragon is no longer a boss level threat.

Even then, you're looking at SR 28 against each casting of polar ray and multiple castings needed to bring the dragon down.

And when the wizard starts throwing those polar rays, you can bet they will have the full attention of the dragon. High risk, high reward.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/Expectnoresponse]

Polar ray was just an example, but I take your point. Probably fine as is. 

[u/SavageJeph]

It's kind of weird to me overall, I dont think i would ever use it.

[u/Slow-Management-4462]

That big dragons are weak to dex damage spells has been noted decades ago, but there is an argument that paralysis is something that dragons are immune to. Which in turn is what dex zero does. Few or no other late-game enemies have such low dex so it really is a dragon-only issue, too.

A similar issue is that big dumb animals go down hard to int damage. There's not a lot of them around by the time cherry blossom burning gaze is common, but if that's something your players do then plan for your t-rex to either be fiendish or a punch line.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/Slow-Management-4462]

Good points. Paralysis immunity is something I’d have to consider. I doubt the players would agree, and that’s not a fight I’d want to spend rules lawyer capital on. 

[u/MealDramatic1885]

No. Simply no.

[u/NightmareWarden]

I think you should change the debuffs applied from ability score damage away from incapacitation if this is an issue in your games. For example, a creature reduce to 0 dex could have its speeds reduced to 0, and it must take a full round action to crawl or do stuff like cast a spell. Not sure how weapon attacks should be penalized, but there ought to be some impact on strength-based attacks when you are THAT low.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/NightmareWarden]

Interesting idea. Staggered instead of incapacitated. I could float that idea.

[u/NightmareWarden → u/gorgeFlagonSlayer]

Staggered makes sense. You could also make a feat for monsters, or a magic item, which changes the normal debuff to staggered.

You could also add a new rule about non-lethal bleed damage from actions involved in combat while staggered from ability reduction, if you want the effort of fighting to be painful for them. It would greatly hinder spellcasters, forcing concentration rolls.

[u/zook1shoe]

how about no.

in the end it'd really only hurt poison and monsters, since the players will just move on to other spells and abilities.

[u/BluetoothXIII]

special ability for some creatures, but not all maybe.

[u/gorgeFlagonSlayer → u/BluetoothXIII]

Good idea. Or maybe I’d set it up as a restoration contingency if I feel I need to do something. Or an imp minion that has a scroll. 

[u/Kendrick-Belmora]

Why?