Jon Peterson posts Mordenkainen in 1974

Look at those stats, talk about a munchkin!

 

[Ratskinner]

The AD&D tables were... problematic. They were highly messy and uneven.

Strength, for instance, didn't net you anything until you had a 16, and even then it didn't hold a candle to the awesomeness that was exceptional Strength.

IMO the real problem that AD&D had was how some stats *really mattered* (exceptional Strength I'm looking at you...) and others were pretty meh.

Personally, for these reasons, I'm always completely and utterly baffled when an old-schooler derides the later editions as stat-dependent. I've seen AD&D parties break up over the distribution of stat-based items particularly Strength-based ones. Similarly, the temptation to get 18 Str was just too great. I know guys now who just can't fathom playing a AD&D fighter without exceptional strength, and pull all sorts of shenanigans to claim that it was "legit".

Watching the PCs scrabble over stat-changing feature-traps or other gizmos first, though, that was always precious.

Does anyone else remember an AD&D adventure with, I think, a magical waterfall or fountain that basically let you pick your stats if you went through it enough times?

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Personally, for these reasons, I'm always completely and utterly baffled when an old-schooler derides the later editions as stat-dependent.

Me too. I'm not sure I like the linearity of the 3.X and later table, which is highly stat-dependent, but the AD&D ones were a mess. As I said in the original post, I think the BESM progression has a lot to say for it: You get benefit for having a high stat and start getting bonuses at 13 or penalties at 8, but it didn't get over the top either way. It wasn't enough to overwhelm the benefits of experience (in the form of level advancement).

I think that 5E would have benefitted from that for making bounded accuracy work better. It mostly works, although it starts to get wonky at high levels due to things like Expertise doubling proficiency bonuses or some of the DC creep that happens in saving throws.

I've seen AD&D parties break up over the distribution of stat-based items particularly Strength-based ones. Similarly, the temptation to get 18 Str was just too great. I know guys now who just can't fathom playing a AD&D fighter without exceptional strength, and pull all sorts of shenanigans to claim that it was "legit".

Heh, yep, especially the much-vaunted 18/00. The Strength spell helps a lot because it really made it possible for an 16 or 17 Strength character to "move on up" (a la George Jefferson). Our house rules smoothed out the table a bit, but even so the tables were goofy, with Strength being THE big offender.

Does anyone else remember an AD&D adventure with, I think, a magical waterfall or fountain that basically let you pick your stats if you went through it enough times?

Hmmm, not ringing any bells but that kind of thing was common.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Personally, for these reasons, I'm always completely and utterly baffled when an old-schooler derides the later editions as stat-dependent. I've seen AD&D parties break up over the distribution of stat-based items particularly Strength-based ones. Similarly, the temptation to get 18 Str was just too great. I know guys now who just can't fathom playing a AD&D fighter without exceptional strength, and pull all sorts of shenanigans to claim that it was "legit".

Watching the PCs scrabble over stat-changing feature-traps or other gizmos first, though, that was always precious.

Does anyone else remember an AD&D adventure with, I think, a magical waterfall or fountain that basically let you pick your stats if you went through it enough times?

Sounds like you have more of an immature player issue, rather than a game design one. I've played AD&D as my preferred edition from 1981 to 2012 when 5e came out. Almost never saw those problems you describe, and the only times they did happen, was when the player was immature and selfish.

Simple answer: don't play with immature and selfish players.

And yes, I will argue that AD&D is less stat dependent. For one, WotC editions are literally designed with the assumption that players will have X amount of bonuses to their key stats. It's built into the game design itself. AD&D doesn't have that. Just from that alone, later editions are more stat dependent because it's literally a factor into the game design itself. Secondly, it is entirely possible and plausible to have an effective PC in AD&D with lower stats and harder in later editions. Most of you bonuses like ability to hit your enemy were more heavily influenced by level and not stat. For example, a 1e fighter gained roughly a +1 to hit every level gained, and the difference between a 17 strength and a 9 strength is only a +1 difference to hit. So a 10th level fighter could have the stat bonus only be 10% of the total bonus to hit. Compare that to say, 5e, where your level might give you a +3 bonus to hit at that level, but the difference between a 17 and a 9 is 4 points--more than 50% of your hit bonus is based on stat, not level.

Then you've also got the shift from saving throw tables to saving throws based on stats. And then add in skills. So yeah, it seems pretty obvious to me that AD&D is much less stat dependent than WotC editions.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Sounds like you have more of an immature player issue, rather than a game design one. I've played AD&D as my preferred edition from 1981 to 2012 when 5e came out. Almost never saw those problems you describe, and the only times they did happen, was when the player was immature and selfish.

Simple answer: don't play with immature and selfish players.

Certainly player maturity is an issue, but wow did exceptional strength make a 1E and 2E character WAY better. I played a lot of 1E and, especially 2E, and there's just no question that exceptional strength was teh awesome. There were ways around it, such as the Strength spell, which took your lesser fighter with a decent strength to exceptional strength pretty easily, but especially at low to medium levels, the fighter was super, duper stat dependent. A fighter with exceptional strength just beat the living snot out of anyone else. This was particularly true with two weapon fighting, even the much more limited version used in 1E. God help us all when specialization and multiple attacks showed up.

And yes, I will argue that AD&D is less stat dependent.

I'd agree with that in total, although there are times when AD&D's lack of stat dependence is sometimes pretty goofy the opposite way. I mean, what's the benefit of having, say, a Wisdom of 14? It's pretty rare for most characters to value having a stat like that, except for a cleric.

There were some saves that were stat-dependent in AD&D, too.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Certainly player maturity is an issue, but wow did exceptional strength make a 1E and 2E character WAY better. I played a lot of 1E and, especially 2E, and there's just no question that exceptional strength was teh awesome. There were ways around it, such as the Strength spell, which took your lesser fighter with a decent strength to exceptional strength pretty easily, but especially at low to medium levels, the fighter was super, duper stat dependent. A fighter with exceptional strength just beat the living snot out of anyone else. This was particularly true with two weapon fighting, even the much more limited version used in 1E. God help us all when specialization and multiple attacks showed up.

Exceptional strength made it a lot more easy mode for the fighter, but unless you had a bunch of cheaters, it was extremely rare. 'Oh Bill, so all of your fighters not only have an 18 strength, but they all miraculously have at least a 74% in them? Because just listing a 00% would seem like the cheating was too obvious?"

Statistically, half of all fighters with an 18 strength will still only have a +1/+3 bonus. Hardly gamebreaking or a huge impact when 90% of your bonus to hit is coming from your level instead.

I'd agree with that in total, although there are times when AD&D's lack of stat dependence is sometimes pretty goofy the opposite way. I mean, what's the benefit of having, say, a Wisdom of 14? It's pretty rare for most characters to value having a stat like that, except for a cleric.

There were some saves that were stat-dependent in AD&D, too.

Well, any time you were asked to make an ability check, it was important. All ability checks were pretty much roll under on a d20, so having a 14 WIS whenever the DM asked you to make a wisdom check was pretty valuable compared to a 9 WIS.

 

[Yardiff]

And there were Tomes that permenantly increased your stats by +1 or +2.

In AD&D 1e & 2e manuals and tome went from +1 to +5 also if you have found and use a +2 book you would need a +3 book to increase your again. They didn't stack, if you had a +1 and a +3 book of the same stat you would only benefit from the +3, using the +1 as well was a waste.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Exceptional strength made it a lot more easy mode for the fighter, but unless you had a bunch of cheaters, it was extremely rare. <snip> Statistically, half of all fighters with an 18 strength will still only have a +1/+3 bonus. Hardly gamebreaking or a huge impact when 90% of your bonus to hit is coming from your level instead.

It was indeed extremely rare if one were truly rolling. On 3D6 an 18/00 it should happen pretty infrequently (1/21600!) but... it was way more common than that, as were the general upper reaches of exceptional strength. People used lots of higher stat generation methods such as "roll 4D6 seven times, drop the lowest one, arrange to taste". With the relative frequency of stat bumps in older modules I'd argue that it wasn't actually all that rare even if people were rolling.

The upper reaches of exceptional strength were pretty bad. It really unbalanced the party and had big potential for that character to consistently outshine the others. Of course, the DM could "fix" this by handing out Gauntlets of Ogre Power or similar items, but that didn't really fix anything, it just made the overall balance problem worse. Relying on "oh it's rare to roll that" to fix a problem isn't really a fix. It's just hoping luck handles it.

Well, any time you were asked to make an ability check, it was important. All ability checks were pretty much roll under on a d20, so having a 14 WIS whenever the DM asked you to make a wisdom check was pretty valuable compared to a 9 WIS.

That was common by 2E, but wasn't really a thing in 1E much, at least it's not in the rulebook. I don't have any 1E books besides the DMG anymore but it's not in there that I can see. I do have 2E books and by then it'd become official (though optional) with the proficiency system. Then, yes, it would matter, although quite unevenly due to how unevenly applied those were.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

In AD&D 1e & 2e manuals and tome went from +1 to +5 also if you have found and use a +2 book you would need a +3 book to increase your again. They didn't stack, if you had a +1 and a +3 book of the same stat you would only benefit from the +3, using the +1 as well was a waste.

I can categorically say there are no such items in the 1E and 2E DMGs---I have one of each near at hand and just checked. The various tomes raised your stat by +1 and you could never benefit from another such manual in the same stat.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It was indeed extremely rare if one were truly rolling. On 3D6 an 18/00 it should happen pretty infrequently (1/21600!) but... it was way more common than that, as were the general upper reaches of exceptional strength. People used lots of higher stat generation methods such as "roll 4D6 seven times, drop the lowest one, arrange to taste". With the relative frequency of stat bumps in older modules I'd argue that it wasn't actually all that rare even if people were rolling.

The upper reaches of exceptional strength were pretty bad. It really unbalanced the party and had big potential for that character to consistently outshine the others. Of course, the DM could "fix" this by handing out Gauntlets of Ogre Power or similar items, but that didn't really fix anything, it just made the overall balance problem worse. Relying on "oh it's rare to roll that" to fix a problem isn't really a fix. It's just hoping luck handles it.




That was common by 2E, but wasn't really a thing in 1E much, at least it's not in the rulebook. I don't have any 1E books besides the DMG anymore but it's not in there that I can see. I do have 2E books and by then it'd become official (though optional) with the proficiency system. Then, yes, it would matter, although quite unevenly due to how unevenly applied those were.

Ability check rules appeared as early as the first issues of Dragon magazine. So while not in the official books, they were around from pretty much the start.

 

[Yardiff]

I can categorically say there are no such items in the 1E and 2E DMGs---I have one of each near at hand and just checked. The various tomes raised your stat by +1 and you could never benefit from another such manual in the same stat.

Your right, getting editions mixed up as well as online D&D.