It sucks being strong

My new DnD campaign started last night with a stark reminder that being strong is the worst.

Given the raw choice between being strong and weak, you might as well be strong, but that isn't how the game works.  Generally if you care about being strong at all you have the choice of being strong, wearing heavy armour and using big weapons, or you can be quick and use light weapons and light armour.  This sounds like a reasonable tradeoff, but the real issue is all the extra benefits of being a Dexterity character instead of a Strength character.  Dex characters get to be stealthy, go first in combat, and have excellent ranged weapons.  Str characters get to be noisy, go last in combat, and have pathetic ranged weapons.

This is why I keep on building Dex based characters.  I hate being stuck with my thumb up my butt while the rest of the party has fun.  If I can't sneak, and I can't do ranged attacks, and I have no other powerful abilities, I just stand there like a brick until we need to do the frontal assault plan.  Yuck.

Our party consists of a Dex fighter using a crossbow (me), a Dex rogue, a wizard, and Str based paladin.

The first mission we were on was a scouting mission.  We could have fought things, but the enemy was extremely strong so frontal assault was right out.  As such, me and the rogue scouted, the wizard helped by making us invisible with magic, and the paladin sat there like a lump.  After much scouting and information gathering occurred, we went back to town and got our reward.  The paladin, having done literally nothing, collected his 1/4 share of the loot.

Next in line was a more serious scouting mission to the heart of enemy territory.  The only sensible thing to do was to leave the paladin behind and have the rest of us do everything.  We needed to be quiet and avoid detection, so a clanking clomping tank was not useful.

I insisted that we had to take the paladin with us.  Not because it was a good idea, but only because it would be crappy to be sidelined for the entire adventure just because your character is only good at one thing.

We got into enemy territory with our clanking friend in tow, and finally got ourselves into a fight.  Huzzah, a place where a Str character isn't just a liability!

Hah, just kidding.  The enemies could fly, so the Str character sat there like an idiot.  He threw a couple of javelins for trivial damage and was sad.  Eventually the enemies beat him unconscious.  I, on the other hand, playing a character using the good stat, blasted damage into the enemies from range.  I rolled horribly, and even though I only needed an 11 or greater on a d20 to hit I still missed 15 of my first 16 shots.  The rest of the party was so weak at range though the fight kept on going and I eventually did about 2/3 of the total damage to take the enemies down.

It must have felt pretty terrible to be that Str character.  He built his character the way the book said to, and that build made him a liability for scouting, and a one trick pony in combat.  He is good at slugging his way through tons of melee enemies, but a Dex character would be just as good at that but also effective at range with a bow and stealthy and go first!

DnD really needs to shake this nonsense.  Dex is just too good for everything and there is no reason for it.  Why is it that Dex makes you go first in combat?  Why not Intelligence, or Wisdom?  Why isn't heavy armour better?  Dex characters get to be quick and sneaky - they should at least be squishier to compensate.  If a Str character was actually really tough and tanky then while they would still be only good for one thing, at least they would be good for that thing.

It isn't like my friend did something crazy to be bad.  He did the default build, did it quite reasonably, and it sure *feels* like a Paladin with high Strength, Constitution, and Charisma should be good.  It just isn't, and that is a failure of game design, not character building.

This is something I have taken as a lesson when building Heroes By Trade.  If a thing looks like it obviously should be good, make it good!  Back in DnD 3.5 I remember laughing about how if a person said "I will make a fighter!  I will have high strength, and hit things with a sword" they would be basically worthless.  Someone with a bizarre combination of prestige classes and feats from expansion books would be five times as powerful.  I made it a point that there should be ways to optimize, but reasonable choices like the fighter above should be solid - at least 80% as good as a perfectly optimized character. 

DnD 5th is much better this way, because at least the Str fighter is solid in combat.  It isn't good enough though.  Dex is just the better choice, and that isn't the way the game should be.