Ability Score Increases

Wizards of the Coast has recently changed how ability score increases work in D&D when creating your character. Instead of the race you choose granting you specific ability score increases, the player gets three points with which they can spend toward any ability score of their choosing, increasing one score by 2 and another score by 1, or they increase three different scores by 1. This rule makes sense from a storytelling standpoint because a player can increase stats based on their backstory, such as a druid scholar getting a plus 2 to Intelligence because they were a scholar, but it gets problematic from a gameplay standpoint because it allows for some considerably overpowered builds.

These changes revamp the original ability score increase system into one that combines your character's background and class to determine your ability score increases. When making your character, your class and background determine the stats that you can increase. As normal, you can increase one stat by 2 and another stat by 1 or increase three different stats by 1. For example, if you make a artificer soldier, you can increase your Stength, Constitution, and Intelligence scores, but you cannot increase your Dexterity, Wisdom, or Charisma scores because neither artificer or soldier allows for you to do so. If your class and background combination only allows for 2 different ability scores to be increased, then you must increase one of those scores by 2 and another by 1, you cannot increase three scores by 1. Check the table below to determine the ability score increases that you were to get. For simplicity's sake, only the backgrounds available in the Player's Handbook are shown here. Talk with your DM to determine your other available ability scores if you are using a background from another source.

To give you a better understanding of how this is supposed to work, here are a few examples.

Humans

This rule is actually quite drastic to humans specifically. When you decide to play a human character, you decide whether you want to be the base human or a variant human. If you choose variant, you get additional benefits, but only two of your ability scores increase by 1 rather than all six scores increasing by one. When using this change, there is no reason to pick normal human over variant human because the only feature that normal humans get is their ability score improvement and this rule takes that away from them. When using this rule and playing a human character, the player can also choose to increase a free ability score even if their class/background combination doesn't allow for it, but this does not apply to variant humans. For example, if you are playing a human wizard with the sage background, you can increase Dexterity and Intelligence from wizard and sage, but by playing a human, you can add any of the other ability scores to this list. So if you're Charisma is a little lower than you'd like it to be, you can now increase your Charisma score because you are a human even though your class/background combination does not allow for it to be increased.