Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7186863" data-attributes="member: 4937">A lot of people say this, and for most of my AD&amp;D career, I would have felt the same.&nbsp; But that's a feeling, and it was largely based on ignorance, and whether you felt it or not you were massively penalized.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; In 1e, the gap between a 14 and an 18 is mind-blowing.&nbsp;&nbsp; The fighter with 14 strength is barely playing the same game as the fighter with 18/XX strength.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Or someone does a Bard build and suddenly gains like 16 levels while you are gaining 2.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7186863, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]

Verification