I know when I build or mod a rules set, I tend to default to a list of eight or ten attributes that includes Agility and Coordination. AGL for full-body movements (such as acrobatics and martial arts) and CRD for fine control (such as marksmanship and surgery). It helps.

Also have a look at this you guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise#Categories_of_general_physical_skills

Another thing to remember is that keeping your game from getting one-dimensional is often key for maximum enjoyment. That guy who sacrificed everything for that 25 DEX? Doesn’t he have a 5 CHA for his dump stat? So what’s he doing in the social environment or diplomacy you set up? Giving the other players a shine is usually the correct answer. High stats don’t help you with problem-solving, seeing that plot twist coming, or finding satisfaction for your character in other ways outside of “the Monster Stat”. So sprinkle a bit of this and that in your game (not too much, or you’ll end up punishing the stat-monger unfairly) and you can bring some parity back to the game.

A good solution to an abused stat is to go with “screws” instead of “nails,” as was said. Doors that are jammed or physically barred vs locked doors, puzzles that require some thinking vs just doing Acrobatics, etc.

House rules might help… but I get the feeling that making such alterations would simply piss off the player with the extreme stat. It would be pretty obvious whom you’re penalizing (and that you are, in fact, penalizing that person) if you change a Rogue’s or Ranger’s attack bonus to Wis instead of Dex.

Yeah, the Archer and the Hunter with maxed dex can hit anything they can see, and don’t get hit too often – but their max damage per hit with a bow is 8, whereas the high-str Man-at-Arms and Berserker’s /minimum/ damage with greatswords is 8, and they hit most of the time in melee. Those two might get hit a lot more themselves, but they have the HP to soak it up, thanks to their high con. And depending why you need to get into whatever’s behind that door, a greataxe or an arcanist’s fire spell can get you there just as easily as a lockpick.

Perhaps it’s the melee smasher in me, but I just don’t see being able to dodge and having ranged accuracy as “overpowered” when they’re a trade-off for being able to do far less damage. I’ve always seen it as skilled in combat vs all around skilled, and the high dex characters usually tend toward the latter, which is fine with me. They don’t get to take on ogres single-handedly, so why should my glory feel diminished because they’re the ones who can pick a lock?

If you need to get through a locked door, and need to do it without breaking the door down, sounds like you’re running a stealthy-type campaign, and of course it makes more sense to have high dex. If your campaign involves a lot of thiefy stuff, of course the thiefy (ie, high dex) characters get to show off more. If your campaign were set in a school of duelling wizards who needed to research more and more powerful spells, that dex would be a whole lot less useful than int. If everything were about politics and negotiations, without much fighting, dex would still be useful, but not nearly as much as cha. (Incidentally, fighters who think cha is useless are totally overlooking the benefits of the Intimidate skill.)

The “start using screws” paragraph seems to restate in a different way the common (if sometimes hard to implement) advice of “give every player a chance to shine.” Which kind of raises the question, why was only the high-dex guy getting a chance to shine to begin with?

I like Sarlax’s cookie jar analogy. If any stat seems broken, stop having tons of challenges that can be overcome best by that stat.

I don’t think Dexterity is the problem, but the idea of a general measure of agility is unrealistic. I don’t expect many Olympic gymnasts are also expert locksmiths, for instance.

I think the problem is in designing challenges that are vulnerable to being easily overcome by a single quality that is otherwise valid to select. It’s like putting cookies on top of the fridge. Sure, it keeps out your little kids, but the teenagers can get them with no problem. Is “height” broken, or is the cookie security system inadequate?

IE, if Dexterity is enough to overcome a lot of challenges in the game, it’s time to come up with other kinds of challenges.

Some games are going to set up different expectations for challenge types, of course. In D&D, for instance, one expects a certain quota of pits to cross, locks to pick, and fireballs to dodge. But a difference of Dex 10 between two characters only represents a 25% chance of success difference. In 3E, the most Dexterous PC (at first level) will have Dex 20, but they’ll also likely have max ranks in Tumble, etc. By second level, their skill bonus is already as important as their natural talent. By 3rd level, their training is more important. In 4E, the “problem” isn’t going to be stats as much as it will be the training bonus in these skills.

In World of Darkness, bumps in stats mean something else. Each die have a 0.3 chance of giving you a success, but since you need only one success, an extra die means a lot more to a low stat PC than a high stat PC. For instance, if I’m working with a dice pool of 1 against a standard difficulty task of 1, I have a 30% chance of succeeding. If I have two dice against the same difficulty, I have a 51% chance. If I have three dice, I have a 65.7% chance. The biggest jump you can get is in going from 1 die to 2.

WoD has other things going on that change the analysis, though. For one, you almost never roll a raw stat like Dex on its own; it’s almost always paired with a skill, which, if you don’t have, makes you suffer a big penalty on your rolls. Drive is a Dex + Drive roll, but if you don’t have Drive, you take -1 to your pool – which means that your first dot of Drive is actually worth 2 dice.

With 5 Dex, you should have at least 4 dice for most Dex-related tasks, which means about a 76% chance of succeeding on simply difficulty tasks. Of course, as difficulty ramps up, you lose dice, and the odds slip back down.

As an Dex 4 athletic mage in Martin’s Las Vegas Mage game, I can see that Dex isn’t the be-all-end-all of stats. It’s nice, but I could have just as much fun and be just as capable (although in a somewhat different role) with any other stat at the same level.

I think this issue gets to how one defines “broken.” Is something broken only for allowing players to overcome challenges with greater than expected frequency?

OF course, other games do the same thing with a different stat– Coyote Trail rolls 90% of your skills into Fitness. It’s pretty hard to put a low score in core values like that, unless it’s a big part of the character concept or you need the stat/build points elsewhere.

That is such an excellent point, John. I’m of the opinion that it’s a GOOD thing for players to max out on Dex and Dex skills, because it keeps d20 games (esp. d20 Modern) running smoothly. By the same token, it behooves the DM to adjust the challenges periodically to force them to consider other solutions.

As you say, Str and Wis are excellent counters to Dex. Don’t overlook magic. Effects that cause half-damage even when the Dex/Reflex check succeeds is another one. None of this is fatal to a character, but it’s usually enough to make them think twice on their next move.