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

[Corpsetaker]

I loved the racial restrictions from old. It made selecting race a bit more interesting.

 

[Sunseeker]

I do not miss them and they add nothing of value to the system.

 

[Arilyn]

The problem with the old racial restrictions was the restrictions. Why could everyone be unlimited as thief,
but dwarves were limited as fighters, and elves as magic users? And those poor halflings could only get to decent levels if they picked thief, which led to the race warping into untrustworthy vagabonds lurking on the edges of human cities.

Racial restrictions were a poor way to balance the game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No, he's not necessarily right. He's only right if you want to view the Strength score as measuring everything equally.

I don't, just as I don't see the Intelligence score measuring everything equally. I would consider A 5 int beast to be magnitudes less intelligent than a 5 int humanoid, for example.

Now you're inferring information that isn't there. Your Strength score doesn't measure everything equally; it only measures equally those things which it was intended to measure. The amount of force which you can impart upon an object, for example, is purely a function of Strength. The amount you can carry is a function of both strength and mass.

Likewise, your Intelligence score doesn't govern everything that could possibly be associated with the word. It covers how well you remember things, and how good you are at figuring out how stuff works. It probably covers how good you are at math. Even with all of that being equal, though, a horse with Intelligence 10 is still a horse. That's why a character who has been polymorphed into a horse is still a playable character, even when an actual horse is not; you still have the mind of a person while your Int is reduced to 2.

 

[Sacrosanct]

T

Racial restrictions were a poor way to balance the game.

Not necessarily, because depending on what the goal was for the game, balance can mean different things. AD&D was actually very balanced from a macro level. I've played it as my preferred edition for 35 years, and there were just as many magic user PCs as rangers or thieves, or clerics. So in that context, they were very balanced classes. If you were to break them down on a per level basis, and look at only the math, then you'll find lots of things that would make you consider the game not balanced. However, the game isn't played only at X or Y levels, but intended to be played over an entire campaign. So that weak wizard at level 2 was very powerful at level 9. It balances out that way.

With regard to racial limitations, the game was designed intentionally to be human centric. So those limitiations were there to balance out the game to that objective, not necessarily to have race X be mechanically balanced with race Y.

What is or isn't balanced relies greatly on the level of micro vs. macro perspective you have, and what the goal of the game is.

 

[Arnwolf666]

I liked them a lot, especially the 17 charisma requirement for Paladin.

 

[Libramarian]

Not to be pedantic, but what the heck. I wasn't looking at the 1980 results because I said when the game was written, and the game wasn't written in 1980.

The 1976 results are not meaningfully different.

Secondly, I was also looking at similar weight classes, not the strongest man vs the strongest women regardless of weight classes.

We're talking about strength maximums, not modifiers, so I thought strongest vs. strongest would be the most pertinent comparison.

And the clean and jerk results of a modern 75kg woman weren't that far behind the results of a 1976 75kg man.

You must be comparing the 75kg men (i.e. less than 75kg) with the 75kg+ women (i.e. 75kg and over). Obviously that's not a fair comparison. If we look at the previous category (men 67.5kg, women 69kg) the man in 1976 clean and jerked 170 kg, and the woman in 2015 clean and jerked 143kg. Still a 19% difference pound for pound, which is extremely large in athletic competition.

But either way, that's not really the point. It was only an interesting side observation that a modern day woman was much stronger than her 1975 counterparts, so if you time traveled such a woman to when the game was being written, she would blow them all away and Len would have to completely re-evaluate his premise of just how much more weaker women were, because pound for pound, there wasn't that great of a difference.

Women didn't compete in weightlifting until 1987, so that comparison is meaningless.

Again I don't support sex-based ability score modifiers or maximums either, but I have to call out people who are making stuff up to support their view. This cavalier attitude to factual reality is to some degree why there's a real sexist in the White House right now.

 

[Yaarel]

An other thread splits the Strength score into two scores.
• Athletics score: attack bonus
• Size score: damage bonus



The discussion about the strong Small Halfling makes me feel this ability score split is a good way to go.
• Yes, the Small Halfling can fight accurately and jump far.
• No, the Small Halfling cannot have Large Ogre strength nor damaging impact, nor throw boulders.

 

[Arilyn]

Not necessarily, because depending on what the goal was for the game, balance can mean different things. AD&D was actually very balanced from a macro level. I've played it as my preferred edition for 35 years, and there were just as many magic user PCs as rangers or thieves, or clerics. So in that context, they were very balanced classes. If you were to break them down on a per level basis, and look at only the math, then you'll find lots of things that would make you consider the game not balanced. However, the game isn't played only at X or Y levels, but intended to be played over an entire campaign. So that weak wizard at level 2 was very powerful at level 9. It balances out that way.

With regard to racial limitations, the game was designed intentionally to be human centric. So those limitiations were there to balance out the game to that objective, not necessarily to have race X be mechanically balanced with race Y.

What is or isn't balanced relies greatly on the level of micro vs. macro perspective you have, and what the goal of the game is.

In terms of classes, this is averaging, not balance, and in terms of races it is demographics. Most important, how does it average out if the magic user dies at 2nd level? How is it balanced for the halfling fighter to stay at 4th level when the rest of the party is 12th?

It should be viable to play any race since they are in the game. Players should not suffer because Gygax wanted to limit people's choices. To quote Kenneth Hite, "That's crazy talk."

 

[Caliban]

Oh, but yeah.I find the weight and carrying capacity rules and the like to be kind of awkward.

But I can live with it since it means I'm not wasting my time halving the carrying capacity stats from their medium size baseline and then halving the weight of all my gnome's gear.

I can just pretend that's happening without bothering to change the numbers, and when I'm DMing I can just say to the players "nah, your hobbit isn't really carrying the same amount of weight, his suit of plate isn't actually the same weight as the goliath's suit of plate; we're just not dealing with the math which really just works out (like in 3e) to dividing everything by 2."

Which makes sense for equipment, but falls apart when you have to lift or move something extremely heavy that can't be handwaved as "having been smaller all along". Lifting a heavy portcullis or rock, etc. Both the 20 str gnome and the 20 str human can lift 600 lbs. (Goliaths and Large creatures double that, Tiny creatures halve that.)

I think Small creatures get lumped in with Medium creatures for this (i.e. they can carry the same amount) simply because there are Small player races and the designers wanted to avoid extra math.