Unlike the Ability Points from character creation, a player can save these to buy a more expensive increase, and they can increase ability scores to a maximum of 22. When a character levels up, they gain Ability Points at each level, as shown on Table 4–2: Ability Points Gained.

Increasing Scores at Higher Levels Source Gamemastery Guide pg.

Flexible Ability Points: Each character gets 15 flexible Ability Points, plus any gained for voluntarily lowering ability scores below 10 in Step 1.

Each character also gets 2 dedicated Ability Points for one of their background’s choices of predetermined ability scores, and 2 dedicated Ability Points for their class’s key ability score. Human characters, or those with another ancestry that grants two free ability boosts, get 2 more flexible Ability Points instead.

Dedicated Ability Points: A character gets 2 dedicated Ability Points for each ability score their ancestry gives predetermined ability boosts to.

Any Ability Points not spent during character creation are lost. Raising a score costs 2 points more than the listed value if the score started at an 8 after Step 1, or 1 point more if the score started at a 9. The maximum score a player can buy at character creation is 18. The total number of Ability Points spent determines the character’s starting ability score, as shown on Table 4–1: Cost for an Ability Score.

These Ability Points replace all the ability boosts a character would normally get. Dedicated Ability Points can be spent only on specified ability scores, but flexible Ability Points can be used to increase any scores. Ability Points come in two categories: dedicated and flexible. Now that each player has set their minimum scores, they’ll spend Ability Points to increase their ability scores. Step 2: Spend Points Source Gamemastery Guide pg. They gain 1 Ability Point for lowering an ability score to 9, or 2 Ability Points for lowering a score to 8. A player can also voluntarily lower any ability score to below 10 to gain more Ability Points to use in Step 2. If the PC’s ancestry has ability flaws, decrease those ability scores to 8. 182Īll of a character’s ability scores start at 10. Step 1: Decrease Starting Scores Source Gamemastery Guide pg. Table 4-1: Cost for an Ability Score Total Ability Points Spent These give players more customization in their ability scores and can allow a player to really prioritize their favorite ones, but the system is significantly more complicated to use. Players determine their ability scores by investing Ability Points into each score, as seen in Table 4–1: Cost for an Ability Score. This alternative ability score generation method replaces ability boosts and flaws with a number of Ability Points. Chapter 4: Variant Rules / Ability Scores Variants

5e character builder point buy