re: Anyone here ever play Dungeons and Dragons? (DnD)

The modifier will be used more than the ability score and finding ways to get it higher is always in your best interest.

To get the short of it before the long, the modifiers are going to be what matter the most, but the ability score is your prime number. It represents the overall "health" of a character in that field.

THE TL;DR

Raising the ability score is one of the best ways to get a constant higher modifier and on the other side your character can be hit with poisons, spells, diseases, and just outright crippling attacks. These can vary from permanent to temporary effects and also cause some serious consequences.

Losing all your strength can render a person unable to move be it from too many broken bones or simply have the movement of their their lungs stopped by a lich. Either way, dead.

Drinking that glass of wine intended for a noble may inflict a poison that drains your constitution which can slowly end you life as your body withers from the inside out.

Getting smashed by a boulder from a giant may cause you to get a little softer in the head, costing you precious skill points upon level or taking enough, simply brain dead.

But ability score comes into play when you want to brute force something.

Sometimes you'll be called to or can call it for yourself a stat check. STR and CON are going to be your big ones.

So the rogue in the group probably has some points in the relevant skill for lock-picking and escaping bindings.

The paladin spending all his time honing knowledge of war and religion and none for subterfuge simply attempts to break the chain/door and start/continue smiting.

If you're having to make a CON check it's usually because your HP is below 0 and you're having a bad time, once your negative HP hits your CON score, you're dead.

So CON of 12 and you hit -12HP, goodbye Sir Solaire, Praiser of Suns.

Other things can be derived from it, like how long you can hold your breath in smoke or underwater is usually a CON score.


One thing I'm noticing by the character sheet is 5e took a hammer to skills in an effort to consolidate them, that's nice and is going to make those skill points worth more.