Okay, so a lot of us (if not all of us) hate the D&D WBL, and how you have to spend so much of your wealth on flat enhancement bonuses to weapons, armor, and attributes. I see a lot of posts around giving effects like +1/4 level as enhancement bonus to Saves, Attack/Damage, and Armor/Shield Bonuses, but one flaw that is relatively consistent among most of them is that they try to fix ability scores in the same way (ie something along the lines of +2 to an ability score every X levels), which tends to strongly favor SAD characters, which gimps basically any class below tier 2, which I feel is very counter to what should be happening.
So I'm going to present my alternative for ability score enhancement, which is aimed to provide free level appropriate ability scores across the board, and hopefully help the MAD classes a bit.
First, all characters use point buy for character generation. At every level beyond first, the characters get +1 point they can spend on their attributes using normal point buy rules. The character gains a bonus +1 at level 20, so they have 20 points total by level 20. They may choose to spend this point immediately or save it until a future level up. They may raise an attribute above an 18 after level 1 via point buy, doing so continues following the normal progression rules (so going from 18 to 19 costs 4 points, from 20 to 21 costs 5 points, etc). This replaces the normal +1 to an attribute gained at every 4th level.
In this way a character's maximum base attribute would be a 22 (spending 18 attribute points via level up with a base of 18) with 1 points left over to be spent somewhere else. A character who started with a 16 would be able to raise this to 21 (spending 19 attribute points via level up). A character who started with a 14 would be able to raise this to a 20 with 1 point leftover.
This progression encourages spreading stats out a bit more, and helps MAD characters a lot in catching up with their SAD counterparts at higher levels.
Second, provide an enhancement bonuses to attributes at every even numbered level. At 2nd level, and every even numbered level after, you gain +1 to 1 stat. Starting at 6th level, you begin getting +1 to 2 stats every even level. At 10th level you begin to get +1 to 3 stats. At 14th level you begin getting +1 to all stats.
So in the end, you get +10 Enhancement to 1 attribute, +8 to 1, +6 to 1, and +4 to the other 3.
In exchange for these two attribute progressions, I eliminate all attribute enhancement items, including tomes. Wishes may still be used to increase an attribute, but it is now used to increase the enhancement bonus to an attribute, and may not exceed your highest enhancement bonus. (So you could use 2 wishes to bring your secondary stat up to a +10 as well). Most buffs via spells and other similar effects that directly affect stats are changed to enhancement bonuses, and thus overlap with the enhancement bonuses. The exception to this are Size Bonuses. Class features that give either permanent or temporary boosts to attributes continue to function as normal. Racial Bonuses are also unaffected by this, and do not affect point buy costs, just like at character gen.
So using this system, a typical character starting on a 32 point buy might look like: 18/14/14/12/8/8. Add in favorable racial modifiers to make that: 18(+2)/14/14/12/8/8(-2)
By level 20, he has 20 extra point buy points to play with, and the enhancement bonuses. So his base stats go up to:
22(18)[+2]/14/14/14(2)/8/8[-2]
Then with Enhancements and racial adjustments that goes to 34/22/20/18/12/10
Alternatively he could have:
20(8)[+2]/18(10)/16(4)/12/8/8[-2]
Which with Enhancements and racial adjustments that goes to 32/26/22/16/12/10
Ultimately this gives stats similar to what is capable with gear, without the need for all of the boring +x gear. It also gives a constant feeling of progression to the characters, which I feel is a definite plus. Instead of having attributes being mostly static, with this system your attributes are constantly rising as you level, which gives a good feeling to the players.
These ability enhancement rules should easily slot into any campaign seeking to reduce reliance on gear for their characters, so either a low magic campaign, or just a campaign where the DM doesn't want to worry about dropping enough headbands of intellect to keep all of his wizards happy.
