Anyone else have a hard time adjusting to Str, Dex, Con

[Blue]

I am much more troubled by the abbreviation CHR for Charisma.

Ah, I still use that all over the place. It's how I learned. CHA feels odd for me.

 

[Jer]

The original grouping of abilities always felt to me like it was organized by character class - Fighter, Magic-user, Cleric, Thief. With CON coming in next because it was for hit points and CHA (NEVER CHR TSR - NEVER CHR) coming up last because it was the stat that was needed to hire hirelings but didn't lock you out of any classes. So if you were rolling your character with 3d6 down the line or 4d6 drop 1 down the line you'd know in your first four rolls what character you were going to play. Having them in that order sped up random character creation to a small degree.

When the game shifted away from "down the line" ability assignment and towards "place rolls in any order" the order stopped making sense and just became that order because that's the order they always were. When abilities didn't matter much at the table it was fine, but as the game shifted towards abilities mattering a lot grouping them into Physical vs. Mental starts to make some sense. As you're looking at the attributes that might apply in a situation scanning down the list of physical attributes for physical challenges and mental attributes for mental challenges makes some degree of sense.

 

[fba827]

Wasn't there an iteration of D&D (I want to say BECMI), where the order was Str, Con, Dex, Int, Wis, Cha instead of Str, Dex Con, Int, Wis, Cha? Because I keep wanting to switch Dexterity and Constitution around, and I could swear that's why.

Whether this is what you’re thinking or not, that’s how it was listed on 4e sheets: str con dex int wis cha ( the pairings how the affected the different defenses)

 

[Voadam]

official game accessories tho:

View attachment 153580

Where is that from? It has a big entry for honor which I think is only from Oriental Adventures. It also has CMS which corresponds to Comeliness which were in Unearthed Arcana and then later in OA, but which I normally saw abbreviated to COM.

 

[Stormonu]

Interesting it's always been STR first, though.

Con, Dex, Str, Cha, Int, Wis should be the order (physical/mental, alphabetic), or Cha, Con, Dex, Int, Str, Wis if you wanted to go purely alphabetic.

 

[John Quixote]

I started playing with Classic D&D (which still used the SIWDCΧ order) and AD&D 2e (where the SDCIWΧ order originated), and I always liked the latter better. It made sense to block the stats into three physical and three mental, and I didn't really understand at the outset where the Classic arrangement had come from (namely, it was ordering the prime requisites of the classes from commonest to least common — the backbone of an adventuring party is supposed to be fighters, followed by magic-users, then clerics, with thieves least important of all, and finally the two stats that weren't core primes). Plus, the rearranged order has been consistent throughout every edition of D&D since 2nd (except 4e/13a) and also the Pathfinders and C&C.

But now that I'm playing an OD&D/AD&D mash-up with a system of nine base classes, I'm arranging the stats in a different order — Str, Wis, Cha, Dex, Int, Con. I'm doing this for largely the same reason that the original game used its order: to help conceptually organize how the character classes fit into an adventuring party. The first three stats — Str, Wis, Cha — are the prime requisites for the commonest character classes, Fighter, Mage, and Cleric. The next three — Dex, Int, Con — are for the more support-oriented classes, the Thief, Artificer, and Monk. And the stats pair off for the remaining three rare classes — Str & Wis for Rangers, Cha & Dex for Minstrels, and Int & Con for Psionicists.

 

[billd91]

Where is that from? It has a big entry for honor which I think is only from Oriental Adventures. It also has CMS which corresponds to Comeliness which were in Unearthed Arcana and then later in OA, but which I normally saw abbreviated to COM.

Only OA? No, but it did come after OA and incorporated spaces for it. It was my absolutely favorite AD&D character sheet product. It was followed up by the butt-ugly green ones.

 

[Voadam]

Only OA? No, but it did come after OA and incorporated spaces for it. It was my absolutely favorite AD&D character sheet product. It was followed up by the butt-ugly green ones.

I don't remember honor points being in AD&D besides OA. Did they show up in a Dragon article or something else?

 

[James Gasik]

I believe you're right, Voadam, but the 2e sheets still had room for odd things like that, for reasons I never understood. Note "Social Class, Race/Clan, Status, and # of Siblings".

EDIT: oh and Birth Rank too.

 

[Voadam]

I believe you're right, Voadam, but the 2e sheets still had room for odd things like that, for reasons I never understood. Note "Social Class, Race/Clan, Status, and # of Siblings".

EDIT: oh and Birth Rank too.

A lot of 1e holdover stuff.

Social class was from 1e Unearthed Arcana page 82 and were a big deal for the cavalier class, Honor and clan were big 1e OA things.