Opinion: Strength for BAB?

[Sinfire Titan]

This came across my mind last night. My logic behind it is A) It improves survivability slightly at the very low levels (it would affect enemies too) and B) it slightly alleviates the need for a high Str score as Str would only help on attacks (and would allow Finesse-users to not worry about Dex to damage).

[ImperatorK]

Why not having both?

[Eldritch_Lord]

From a gameplay perspective, it makes things better at low levels but worse starting at mid levels when monster HD starts outpacing CR (for instance, the Athach, the first MM bruiser, has +8 Str but +10 BAB at CR 8, and that's with 3/4 BAB) and most high-level enemies become full-BAB outsiders and dragons.  That can have some bad side effects, like devaluing DR even more and making monsters who rely on more attacks rather than stronger attacks more dangerous.

From a character building perspective, why even have Str at that point?  Take Weapon Finesse for Dex to attack, you get BAB to damage, and Str only matters now for encumbrance, Climb, Jump, Swim, and breaking things, all of which basically cease to matter past level 5 or so.  Congratulations, Dex is now even more of an awesome stat than before, and people who invest in Str are suckers.

This kind of thing would be great for a fix whose explicit goal was to remove dump stats (ditch Str and Cha, fold their stuff into Con and Wis respectively for a GURPS-ish four-stat system), but just on its own replacing Str to damage with BAB to damage doesn't really work.

[veekie]

It does have it's merits, if you do away with iteratives(and interfere with at the same time. Consider the damage formula being : [W]+level(BAB)+Enh+misc vs the health formula of level*([W]+Con) being more consistent than the jerky increases of iteratives screwing everything up with anything from damage adders to accuracy increasers.

Strength does need a role though, but it is too easy to increase. Maybe if you put it in as determining the effective weapon size. Maybe.

[betrayor]

I would say that by itself it is not a good choice because of the low levels....
Now if you combine with strengnth or if at least the user is able to use whatver is better,then it would be better....

[Sinfire Titan]

Strength does need a role though, but it is too easy to increase. Maybe if you put it in as determining the effective weapon size. Maybe.

Having Str increase the weapon's damage die size would be interesting, although it would be confusing for new players.

It's annoying who Str's only real roles are carrying capacity, attacks, and special actions (grapple, etc).

[veekie]

I had a wacky scheme where Strength controlled access to combat gear like weapons and armor. Have accuracy run off Dex alone, then Str determines your damage and damage resistances.

[Bozwevial]

As a side effect, it makes War Hulks less useful.

[Eldritch_Lord]

Having Str increase the weapon's damage die size would be interesting, although it would be confusing for new players.

I had a wacky scheme where Strength controlled access to combat gear like weapons and armor. Have accuracy run off Dex alone, then Str determines your damage and damage resistances.

I've tried something similar to these two before: all weapons and armor have Str minima to use them (based on size, heaviness, and some other factors), you can reduce ACP and ASF and increase max Dex based on your Str, and for each point of your Str bonus you can either add a weapon damage die (just one, so a d6 for greatswords and so forth), increase the effective size category of your weapon for combat maneuvers, improve crit threat range, or increase crit multiplier, with caps for each based on level.  My players liked it, but it was a lot more fiddly than would be good for new players.