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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6627232" data-attributes="member: 42582">This was my AD&D experience, yes. In 1st ed AD&D with weapon specialisation the fighter's multiple attacks overshadow the cleric even at 1st level, but 2nd ed AD&D had various options that allowed clerics to get specialisation-style benefits also.A mace in AD&D does 1d6+1 points of damage, which is as good as a longsword's 1d8, and has arguably better weapon vs armour mods if those are in use. Pre-Unearthed Arcana and weapon specialisation, the cleric has as many attacks as the fighter until 7th level. And in 2nd ed AD&D, there are options that allow the cleric to get specialisation benefits.The difference in "to hit" is not tremendous at low levels (eg a 4th level cleric needs fewer XP than a 4th level fighter and has either the same to hit as a 4th level fighter or one worse, depending on which THACO/table option is in use), and the difference between a 16 STR (on the fighter) and a 17 STR (on the cleric) can make up for it or even allow the cleric a better chance to hit.But this is not a reason for me to want to roll stats, given that I am a person of different preferences which I have set out pretty plainly in several posts upthread. Likewise [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION].And if I wanted to I could achieve the aim of playing a paragon of human ability by letting everyone have an array of (say) 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13.As I posted upthread, I regard D&D as a leisure activity, not a class in the school of hard knocks.I also don't see what "variety and realism" have to do with anything. I don't need random stat rolls to inject variety into my game - the desires of the players to play different sorts of PCs will do that. (Your table may have a "cookie cutter" problem. Mine doesn't, as illustrated by my post upthread of the stat spreads in my 4e game.)As far as realism is concerned, in what way is it unrealistic that all the PCs are roughly equal in mechanical capability?I also posted about this upthread. The fact that goods are distributed by way of an unbiased die roll is not a sufficient condition of the resultant outcome being fair.A simple example. If we were both stuck in the desert, and between us had enough food for two people for one week, we could roll dice to determine that one of us gets all of it and the other none - thereby guaranteeing one of us two weeks's survival while the other is sure to perish. The fact that the lottery is unbiased does not suffice to make this a fair scheme for distribution of the food.Other, less toy, examples could be given, but would be contrary to board rules. But there is an extensive literature on the issue, easily accessible, primarily inspired by Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness".In the context of a FRPG, until you have established some facts about the purpose and context of the game you can't say whether or not random distribution of mechanical effectiveness via unbiased rolling is fair. In my case, the additional facts about purpose and context are that the point of the game includes the players using their PCs to mechanically impact the shared fiction, and that there is no reason why any player should have a head-start in this respect over the others. That purpose and context means that random determination of PC mechanical effectiveness is not fair, as it has the potential to give some players an unwarranted advantage in achieving one of the purposes of play.For other FRPGers the purposes of play may be different. Hence things that are not fair in my game might be fair in theirs. That doesn't change the facts about my game, though.The notion that unfairness makes life interesting is one that is hard to tackle within the confines of board rules. I'll go as far as saying "Tell that to the mother whose child is dying of cholera" - or to the child, for that matter.In the context of RPGing, you continue to conflate PC building and action resolution. For you they may not be interestingly different; but has it never occurred to you that others might see them as different processes (to again borrow [MENTION=9053]SteveC[/MENTION]'s phrasing, "prologue" vs "actual play")?Whether or not this is true, it is completely irrelevant to the rolling of stats. PCs built via point buy or array can still be confronted with long odds. And a GM can still balance encounters against PCs with rolled stats - and indeed, in this very thread, some posters have advocated doing so as a response to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s concern that rolled stats upset the basic maths of the game.Also, rolling stats is not somehow less metagame-y than choosing them. It's all human decisions and human agency, in the service of writing up characters to use as vehicles for a roleplaying games. You might imagine that rolling stats mimics, in some way, the crucible of life in which your PC has been cast. But actually it's just you sitting at a table manipulating some tools and writing down some numbers. No one underwent any trials, or achieved or earned anything.This one only has to be quoted for its absurdity to stand out. It's like saying blowing up a city is a necessary condition of constructing it, or that murdering someone is a necessary condition of saving his/her life. That is, utterly implausible.</blockquote>

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