Hacking 2e: Dexterity

Now that I’ve dissected Strength beyond recognition, I’ll move onto Dexterity.

The PHB states that this ability affects reaction speed, ranged attacks, and dodging. Dexterity also affects a rogue’s “professional skills,” which the book leaves for yet another table.

As with Strength, we’ve got another eight-range dead zone, this time between 7 and 14 – though this is minimized on the thieving skills table. The low hanging -1 AC bonus at a score of 15 makes Dex the obvious 2nd choice for most players that rolled well, while possibly even being a better choice over Strength for the fighter that rolled a 13 and a 15. Why not get the AC bonus if Strength gives you nothing for your trouble? Yet for the thief with a 13 or 14 in Dex, there’s nothing here; the score becomes an empty space, good only for ability checks. Dexterity is both too strong and too weak.

Adjusting Strength should help with the first issue, but for the nerf let’s look at these columns. 

 

Column 1: Reaction Adjustment

This modifies the surprise roll, which I find an odd bonus. Not being caught off guard strikes me as a mental skill, rather than being a function of quick reflexes. Really, this should go into Wisdom.

All versions of Basic use this bonus to adjust the PC’s initiative, which I think is the right call. I also agree with starting the bonuses at 13, but that’s not isolated to this adjustment.

To ensure that I’m clear, I hold this opinion: In a system where (depending on the generation method used) the average score is between 11 and 13, your bonuses should start at the high end of that. They don’t need to be massive, but they need to be something. By extension, very high scores should get some meat on their bonuses. Basic does this very well, and I plan to steal many of its ideas along the way.

Anyway, the surprise adjustment is slightly weaker in 2e; it keeps 1e’s values but not the die 1e uses for surprise. I’ll switch this to adjust initiative.

 

Column 2: Missile Attack Adjustment

You can smell the Chainmail in this title. Here’s your ranged attack bonus, starting at 16. I’ll pull it down to 13 and spread the bonuses.

At least the description explains what the bonus affects. Strength says it affects the attack roll, period. We’re left to find out what it doesn’t affect in the combat section, which is a great way to misplace a bonus. Did you know that thrown weapons stack attack bonuses from both Dexterity and Strength? You deserve some guidance on how you use these bonuses in the same place that they’re listed.

Safely nestled halfway through the Combat chapter.

 

Column 3: Defensive Adjustment

I don’t hate this placement. -1 to AC and ‘attacks that can be dodged’ at 15 is a sweet buff and probably deserves to be a bit out of range of the PC with 13 Dex.

This marks the first instance in the PHB of AD&D’s wishy-washy approach to Saving Throws. There is no saving throw for ‘attacks that can be dodged,’ but you’re expected to apply this to any saving throw where that stipulation may apply. This is an added complication to the roll. Why are we giving players a situational modifier to remember instead of adjusting a static saving throw value on the sheet? Most of the responsibility lies in the specific grouping of saving throws themselves; there should be a ‘Dodge’ save instead of ‘Breath Weapon,’ amongst many other changes. But that’s a story for another day.

Almost done. Let's jump 34 pages to find that thief Dex table. 

 

Table 28: Thieving Skill Dexterity Adjustments

Finally, those professional skills. It’s a bit of a brutal table, making 13 the cutoff to not take a hit to skills and only giving a measly 5% bonus to Open Locks at a score of 16. The staggered penalties/bonuses don’t add anything more than complications; any benefit derived from these 5%-10% differences is offset by having to reference this dumb chart. 

The values don’t make sense, either. A clumsy cutpurse is 20% worse at moving silently, but a paragon of human agility is only 10% better than the average sneak thief? Why does high Dexterity increase lockpicking skills at a faster rate than sneaking?

This whole table needs to be gutted. Simplifying this shouldn’t break anything (right?) so let’s just turn it into a flat adjustment to all skills and snap it onto the main table, similar to how other classes see their adjustments.

 

Final Table

To summarize: I want earlier bonuses, adjustments to Initiative rather than Surprise, untouched defensive adjustments (with clarity on how to apply them), and simpler thieving skill bonuses. Here’s my version.

Dexterity	Initiative	Ranged Attack	Defense	Thieving Skills
1	+6	-6	+5	/
2	+5	-5	+5	/
3	+4	-4	+4	/
4	+3	-3	+3	/
5	+2	-2	+2	/
6	+2	-2	+1	/
7-8	+1	-1	–	/
9-10	–	–	–	-10%
11-12	–	–	–	–
13-14	-1	+1	–	+5%
15	-1	+1	-1	+5%
16	-2	+2	-2	+10%
17	-2	+2	-3	+10%
18	-3	+3	-4	+15%
19	-3	+3	-5	+15%
20	-4	+4	-5	+15%
21	-4	+4	-5	+25%
22	-4	+4	-6	+25%
23	-5	+5	-6	+25%
24	-5	+5	-6	+35%
25	-5	+5	-7	+35%

 

I think that’s a fair spread. Mid-tier Dex gets a small increase to speed and aim, no AC bonus, and a slight skill bump. High-tier sees a real boost to their function without completely abandoning the original values; we’re talking 5% adjustments here. The changes to initiative line up with Basic, though at a bit of a nerf since you’ll use a d10 in 2e, rather than Basic’s d6.

If we work to convert all checks and attacks into roll-low mechanics, we can merge the Initiative and Ranged Attacks column into a single group. If desired, we could also reimplement an adjustment to the surprise roll using these same numbers.

I’ll leave off for now. Let’s do Constitution.