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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7186967" data-attributes="member: 6775031">That assumes dead characters are immediately dropped and the player is free to immediately bring in a new randomly-rolled character (rather than, for example, promoting a henchperson to PC status). It also assumes that the difference in stats is enough to span the gap between death and survival, such that a fighter with 18/00 is likely to survive indefinitely where a fighter with 14 is likely to die quickly.In my experience, neither of those two are true. When I played AD&D, individual deaths were rare and TPKs were much more common. We also didn't fight a lot of monsters in the narrow region where stats would make much of a difference; most monsters were either strong enough to kill the party outright, or weak enough that a +2 to hit or damage weren't necessary to prevail. The difference between strong characters and weak characters is that strong characters would experience slower attrition, so they could get more done before calling it quits.That assumes you will eventually encounter a dragon or powerful spellcaster who wants to kill you, which isn't necessarily the case. You could just fight orcs forever. That's only a slight exaggeration.In my experience, maximum HP was not that important of a number, because whoever had the most HP left became the tank (within certain margins), and everyone healed back at the same rate. If you were a fighter with a ridiculous Con score and you had 90hp, then that just meant you got to be on point longer until the other fighter with 60hp took over. Eventually, everyone would more or less even out, and you'd rest as much as you could get away with. It's not like the party was going to wait around while everyone else was ready to go, just because you were down 30hp.Ideally, at least. Hopefully you weren't using that terrible "critical hits" optional rule, which meant anything that needed a 20 to hit you would always deal double damage. High Dexterity combined with good armor could lead to extremely volatile fights, especially since the fighter with high Dex was unlikely to also have high Con.Not that my experience is universal or anything. I mostly just meant to convey that AD&D could vary significantly between tables, to an extent unlike anything we've seen since.</blockquote>

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