D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?

[Celebrim]

The thing is, penalties are relative. Sure, the fighter with Str 14 is at a massive penalty compared to the one with Str 18, but if you're both rolling straight down the line then one of you ends up with a 10 and the other gets a 14, which isn't all that significant.

Stats in AD&D were fine as long as everyone stayed under 15, or everyone had a 16+ in their primary stats. It was only bad if some people had a 17 while others had a 12.

Agreed. But the random nature of chargen guaranteed this would happen eventually, and the longer groups played, the more they realized that if you weren't playing one of those characters with a 16+ in a primary stat, you were basically playing into a dead end and therefore wasting your time.

 

[Hussar]

But when you make the argument in the over the top manner you just made it, based on feelings and crap - instead of for example the very nicely argued essay earlier that noted that D&D combat was not granular enough to provide for physical gender differences that aren't unfair (and I agree) - I basically tune you out as offering an argument mostly meant to stoke the flames of your own self-righteous outrage, and not one that is reasonable or rational.

Fair enough. It is a knee jerk response to some degree.

But, again, apparently the granular argument doesn't carry any weight, for some bizarre reason. AFAIC, that's the end of the conversation, pretty much. Why don't we have gender based max's? Because the system is not granular enough to make such distinctions.

I am rather curious why you would call FR sexist though. AFAIK, and I'm certainly not a big Realms lore guy, the setting seems pretty even handed.

OTOH, a little self righteousness isn't uncalled for here when people are making claims that are so far outside the pale. Like I said, "Oh, you can play whatever you want, so long as you want to follow gender dictated norms forced onto the game when they don't make any actual logical sense" isn't something that deserves a reasoned response.

 

[Celebrim]

But, again, apparently the granular argument doesn't carry any weight, for some bizarre reason.

It does with me. But I think it is important to point out that different people in this thread are arguing entirely different points. For example, while I totally agree that - among other things - mechanical limitations of D&D make playing a realistic female warrior largely uninteresting, and that the core gameplay of D&D is promoted more by gender equality than it would be by gender differences, and that the realistic strength cap on women is generally higher than starting characters are allowed to be anyway, and therefore it makes no sense to have a strength cap in D&D, I don't feel that this argument can be applied to every other RPG - real or hypothetical - because it's mostly specific to D&D. And I feel quite strongly that if you apply it to every RPG both real and hypothetical, that both there is something that is fundamentally dismissive in that attitude toward real women, and that it would put an unwanted chill on experimentation in game design. For example, I'm fairly sure that under this standard, Pendragon - one of the most innovative games ever published - would be deemed too sexist to publish. Yet I don't perceive the slightest intention to be sexist in Pendragon's creation or design, nor do I think its creators actually are sexist, nor do I feel the design is the product of unconscious sexism.

I am rather curious why you would call FR sexist though. AFAIK, and I'm certainly not a big Realms lore guy, the setting seems pretty even handed.

I'd rather not engage in gossip, but feel free to do the research.

OTOH, a little self righteousness isn't uncalled for here when people are making claims that are so far outside the pale. Like I said, "Oh, you can play whatever you want, so long as you want to follow gender dictated norms forced onto the game when they don't make any actual logical sense" isn't something that deserves a reasoned response.

That's an attitude I'd be very careful with. If that becomes the standard, it's likely everyone is going to stop thinking anyone deserves a reasoned response. I fully believe in objective good and objective truth, but I don't believe in my objective reasoning so I'm inclined to give others the benefit of the doubt even when they seem like complete idiots.

 

[cbwjm]

A lot of people say this, and for most of my AD&D career, I would have felt the same. But that's a feeling, and it was largely based on ignorance, and whether you felt it or not you were massively penalized. Looking back, it is even more obvious.

It took me years of playing before I realized how imbalanced the game was and how favored a good build could be over one that wasn't. Contrary to you intuition, having high stats in 3e is generally less important than good stats in 1e, because in 3e a 14 is actually a pretty good number and the gap between a 14 and an 18 is there but its not infinite. In 1e, the gap between a 14 and an 18 is mind-blowing. The fighter with 14 strength is barely playing the same game as the fighter with 18/XX strength. The fighter with 14 Constitution is barely playing the same game as the dwarf fighter with 19 Con and an average of about 11 hit points for HD, doubly so because the Dwarf bonus to saves that makes a low level dwarf so potent also scales with Constitution. You're playing an elven fighter/M-U with no ability scores above 14 and thinking you are cool for the first couple of levels, until the someone else with 16+ in Strength and Wisdom transforms his fighter into a dual-classed human fighter-cleric build and gains like 8 levels of spell casting faster than you can gain your next level, and on top of that you realize you are level capped at 5/9. Or someone does a Bard build and suddenly gains like 16 levels while you are gaining 2. Pity you if you are playing a single classed thief or if you wasted your decent stats playing a monk because it sounded cool.

It's not that odd in 1e to find parties where certain individuals can by themselves carry 5, 10 or even 15 times the weight of other party members in combat because of gaps in ability scores and optimization. You don't feel picked on, until you start doing in the math and realize that your thief will probably never have the combat ability of even a 5th level fighter, nor will his abilities out of combat ever be as reliable and useful as a wizard or clerics.

It's not based on ignorance. You can see those stat bonuses and who doesn't want to be one of those 1/21600 warriors with 18/00 strength, a +3 hit/+6 damage is amazing, but if you look at the bonuses below that, they aren't exactly huge as they split to hit bonuses from damage bonuses. Fully half of every warrior who rolled an 18 would only have a +1 hit/+3 damage, that isn't really all that impressive a difference compared to a fighter with a strength between 9-15 who has nothing.

Extra hit points are nice, sure, they may let you survive at those lower levels, but once you hit 5th level (for me, 5th level in 2e felt like the level that PCs started to become truly powerful), you generally have enough hit points that you can survive well enough without them.

Dexterity definitely helps your AC, no denying that, but once you start getting those magical +'s you become hard enough to hit as is and if you run into something that is easily smacking you, that extra 1-4 AC from a 16-18 dexterity probably wasn't going to help much anyway.

My feelings on 3e were mainly for casters, in this it was similar to 2e which did need a high enough stat for those higher level spells but was more forgiving since you still gained the spell slots in 3e which could be used for lower level spells. I've heard that higher level play in 3e with all of the bonuses and the enemy ACs etc made it so that you needed a maxed stat but, as I mentioned, I only ever played low level in 3e so it's mainly a feeling or second hand info.

 

[cbwjm]

Fair enough. It is a knee jerk response to some degree.

But, again, apparently the granular argument doesn't carry any weight, for some bizarre reason. AFAIC, that's the end of the conversation, pretty much. Why don't we have gender based max's? Because the system is not granular enough to make such distinctions.

I am rather curious why you would call FR sexist though. AFAIK, and I'm certainly not a big Realms lore guy, the setting seems pretty even handed.

OTOH, a little self righteousness isn't uncalled for here when people are making claims that are so far outside the pale. Like I said, "Oh, you can play whatever you want, so long as you want to follow gender dictated norms forced onto the game when they don't make any actual logical sense" isn't something that deserves a reasoned response.

Although it still won't might not be enough, I think if odd and even stats gave a bonus it would be a step in the right direction if you wanted to use race based maximums. I can't recall who on these boards does this (If it is you then I'm going to feel kind of silly explaining it), but they have split the ability checks/saving throw bonuses from the hit/damage bonuses so that a 13 stat gives +2 ability checks/saving throws and +1 hit/damage/hit point bonus, etc. I think if we wanted to take the ability bonuses that races get, add it to an 18 to provide their race maximum that something like this would be needed. Those odd numbers have to give something to make it worth a high elf wizard raising their intelligence to 19.

 

[Celebrim]

Fully half of every warrior who rolled an 18 would only have a +1 hit/+3 damage, that isn't really all that impressive a difference compared to a fighter with a strength between 9-15 who has nothing.

So, all other things being equal, you think that hitting 75% of the time for 4.5 damage is not much less impressive than hitting 80% of the time for 7.5 damage? It's nearly double the damage starting out is what it is, and though the relative size of the advantage might decrease, it's still there and the one with 18 strength as a fighter also gains 10% more XP than his less advantaged peer, and can in general gain more immediate advantage by investing wishes in wishes for higher strength, or by the use of manuals of gainful exercise, than could a character with 9-15 who has nothing. If built as a Cavalier, your training special ability gets massive and immediate return on investment compared to a Cavalier of minimum strength.

Extra hit points are nice, sure, they may let you survive at those lower levels, but once you hit 5th level (for me, 5th level in 2e felt like the level that PCs started to become truly powerful), you generally have enough hit points that you can survive well enough without them.

Not at all. Front line characters without Con bonuses simply cannot survive for long in 1e/2e AD&D. Generally speaking, 90 hit points is considered a good safe amount, though more is achievable and desirable. Among other things if you don't have that, you'll sooner or later run into a dragon or spellcaster where even on a successful save, you'll still die from half damage. And that's assuming your DM isn't of the RB school and isn't trying too hard - see my DM's guide to challenging high level AD&D characters. Meanwhile, if you play a 19 Con Dwarf fighter, you'll have about 77 hit points at just 7th level - something a fighter with 14 Con can't expect to achieve until about 17th level (which he will never survive to reach anyway).

Dexterity definitely helps your AC, no denying that, but once you start getting those magical +'s you become hard enough to hit as is and if you run into something that is easily smacking you, that extra 1-4 AC from a 16-18 dexterity probably wasn't going to help much anyway.

First of all, if you have a high Dexterity, chances are you are building a specialized archer in order to get the double damage within 30' bonus and to be able to decimate just about anything before it can close with you. It's possible you are going to multiclass or dual class into thief, but the straight archer build (particularly as a ranger because you aren't forgoing the XP bonus and you have advantageous surprise mechanics) is very viable. It's not just the extra AC. Other than the attack adjustment, one of the biggest advantages that high dexterity gives you is it lets you dominate the surprise mechanics as an archer, peppering enemies with massive amounts of arrows before they can even react - and then hitting them again before they can react even if you lose the initiative. High dexterity archers are bad news, and if you haven't seen one pump out 60-100 damage during a surprise then you need to go back and reread the surprise rules.

But beyond that, you aren't really thinking through how AC functionally works in D&D. If something needs a 19 to hit you, then if you can squeeze one more point of AC into your build, you take half damage because needing a 20 to hit you means they hit you half as often. If something needs an 18 to hit you, then if you have 2 more points of AC, then you think only 1/3rd damage. And this is the secret weapon of PC's in 1e/2e AD&D - because most monsters don't have bonuses to hit, and because monster THAC0 is effectively capped, it's not that hard to get negative AC and then, just about nothing can actually smack you. The differences between an AC of say 2 and getting hit 1/2 the time, and -2 and getting hit a 1/4 of the time, and an AC of -6 and getting hit 1/20th of the time is enormous. As you close in on the foe needing that 20, the advantage gets greater and greater in a non-linear fashion.

The advantages of an 18 Wisdom over say a 13 Wisdom for a cleric are likewise enormous - higher effective cap on your level, much more bonus spells, faster leveling owing to bonus XP, and on top of that a +4 saving throw versus mental attacks. The same is true for 18 Intelligence versus say 13 Intelligence of a Magic-User. Intelligence Table II is harsh on those which it finds wanting. If you are used to 3e and the rules being fair, AD&D is going to come as a shock.

The result of all of this is again, if you didn't have a viable stat array, you rerolled until you got one. If your DM frowned on that, you took all the risks for the party until you did get a character worth keeping - or you managed to wheedle the DM into allowing a chargen system that reliably produced viable stat arrays. Or you cheated.

 

[cbwjm]

So, all other things being equal, you think that hitting 75% of the time for 4.5 damage is not much less impressive than hitting 80% of the time for 7.5 damage? It's nearly double the damage starting out is what it is, and though the relative size of the advantage might decrease, it's still there and the one with 18 strength as a fighter also gains 10% more XP than his less advantaged peer, and can in general gain more immediate advantage by investing wishes in wishes for higher strength, or by the use of manuals of gainful exercise, than could a character with 9-15 who has nothing. If built as a Cavalier, your training special ability gets massive and immediate return on investment compared to a Cavalier of minimum strength.



Not at all. Front line characters without Con bonuses simply cannot survive for long in 1e/2e AD&D. Generally speaking, 90 hit points is considered a good safe amount, though more is achievable and desirable. Among other things if you don't have that, you'll sooner or later run into a dragon or spellcaster where even on a successful save, you'll still die from half damage. And that's assuming your DM isn't of the RB school and isn't trying too hard - see my DM's guide to challenging high level AD&D characters. Meanwhile, if you play a 19 Con Dwarf fighter, you'll have about 77 hit points at just 7th level - something a fighter with 14 Con can't expect to achieve until about 17th level (which he will never survive to reach anyway).



First of all, if you have a high Dexterity, chances are you are building a specialized archer in order to get the double damage within 30' bonus and to be able to decimate just about anything before it can close with you. It's possible you are going to multiclass or dual class into thief, but the straight archer build (particularly as a ranger because you aren't forgoing the XP bonus and you have advantageous surprise mechanics) is very viable. It's not just the extra AC. Other than the attack adjustment, one of the biggest advantages that high dexterity gives you is it lets you dominate the surprise mechanics as an archer, peppering enemies with massive amounts of arrows before they can even react - and then hitting them again before they can react even if you lose the initiative. High dexterity archers are bad news, and if you haven't seen one pump out 60-100 damage during a surprise then you need to go back and reread the surprise rules.

But beyond that, you aren't really thinking through how AC functionally works in D&D. If something needs a 19 to hit you, then if you can squeeze one more point of AC into your build, you take half damage because needing a 20 to hit you means they hit you half as often. If something needs an 18 to hit you, then if you have 2 more points of AC, then you think only 1/3rd damage. And this is the secret weapon of PC's in 1e/2e AD&D - because most monsters don't have bonuses to hit, and because monster THAC0 is effectively capped, it's not that hard to get negative AC and then, just about nothing can actually smack you. The differences between an AC of say 2 and getting hit 1/2 the time, and -2 and getting hit a 1/4 of the time, and an AC of -6 and getting hit 1/20th of the time is enormous. As you close in on the foe needing that 20, the advantage gets greater and greater in a non-linear fashion.

The advantages of an 18 Wisdom over say a 13 Wisdom for a cleric are likewise enormous - higher effective cap on your level, much more bonus spells, faster leveling owing to bonus XP, and on top of that a +4 saving throw versus mental attacks. The same is true for 18 Intelligence versus say 13 Intelligence of a Magic-User. Intelligence Table II is harsh on those which it finds wanting. If you are used to 3e and the rules being fair, AD&D is going to come as a shock.

The result of all of this is again, if you didn't have a viable stat array, you rerolled until you got one. If your DM frowned on that, you took all the risks for the party until you did get a character worth keeping - or you managed to wheedle the DM into allowing a chargen system that reliably produced viable stat arrays. Or you cheated.

I dunno, man, I guess my group and I just had different ideas to what was good and fine in 2e than you did.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Agreed. But the random nature of chargen guaranteed this would happen eventually, and the longer groups played, the more they realized that if you weren't playing one of those characters with a 16+ in a primary stat, you were basically playing into a dead end and therefore wasting your time.

That assumes dead characters are immediately dropped and the player is free to immediately bring in a new randomly-rolled character (rather than, for example, promoting a henchperson to PC status). It also assumes that the difference in stats is enough to span the gap between death and survival, such that a fighter with 18/00 is likely to survive indefinitely where a fighter with 14 is likely to die quickly.

In my experience, neither of those two are true. When I played AD&D, individual deaths were rare and TPKs were much more common. We also didn't fight a lot of monsters in the narrow region where stats would make much of a difference; most monsters were either strong enough to kill the party outright, or weak enough that a +2 to hit or damage weren't necessary to prevail. The difference between strong characters and weak characters is that strong characters would experience slower attrition, so they could get more done before calling it quits.

Not at all. Front line characters without Con bonuses simply cannot survive for long in 1e/2e AD&D. Generally speaking, 90 hit points is considered a good safe amount, though more is achievable and desirable. Among other things if you don't have that, you'll sooner or later run into a dragon or spellcaster where even on a successful save, you'll still die from half damage.

That assumes you will eventually encounter a dragon or powerful spellcaster who wants to kill you, which isn't necessarily the case. You could just fight orcs forever. That's only a slight exaggeration.

In my experience, maximum HP was not that important of a number, because whoever had the most HP left became the tank (within certain margins), and everyone healed back at the same rate. If you were a fighter with a ridiculous Con score and you had 90hp, then that just meant you got to be on point longer until the other fighter with 60hp took over. Eventually, everyone would more or less even out, and you'd rest as much as you could get away with. It's not like the party was going to wait around while everyone else was ready to go, just because you were down 30hp.

But beyond that, you aren't really thinking through how AC functionally works in D&D. If something needs a 19 to hit you, then if you can squeeze one more point of AC into your build, you take half damage because needing a 20 to hit you means they hit you half as often.

Ideally, at least. Hopefully you weren't using that terrible "critical hits" optional rule, which meant anything that needed a 20 to hit you would always deal double damage. High Dexterity combined with good armor could lead to extremely volatile fights, especially since the fighter with high Dex was unlikely to also have high Con.

Not that my experience is universal or anything. I mostly just meant to convey that AD&D could vary significantly between tables, to an extent unlike anything we've seen since.

 

[Hussar]

It does with me. But I think it is important to point out that different people in this thread are arguing entirely different points. For example, while I totally agree that - among other things - mechanical limitations of D&D make playing a realistic female warrior largely uninteresting, and that the core gameplay of D&D is promoted more by gender equality than it would be by gender differences, and that the realistic strength cap on women is generally higher than starting characters are allowed to be anyway, and therefore it makes no sense to have a strength cap in D&D, I don't feel that this argument can be applied to every other RPG - real or hypothetical - because it's mostly specific to D&D. And I feel quite strongly that if you apply it to every RPG both real and hypothetical, that both there is something that is fundamentally dismissive in that attitude toward real women, and that it would put an unwanted chill on experimentation in game design. For example, I'm fairly sure that under this standard, Pendragon - one of the most innovative games ever published - would be deemed too sexist to publish. Yet I don't perceive the slightest intention to be sexist in Pendragon's creation or design, nor do I think its creators actually are sexist, nor do I feel the design is the product of unconscious sexism.
/snip

Oh, this I agree with. I can see a system where gender differences could be expressed. I was only speaking to D&D, not making a broader statement.

 

[Shasarak]

The result of all of this is again, if you didn't have a viable stat array, you rerolled until you got one. If your DM frowned on that, you took all the risks for the party until you did get a character worth keeping - or you managed to wheedle the DM into allowing a chargen system that reliably produced viable stat arrays. Or you cheated.

Thats pretty harsh, it took me all night to roll up that character!