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<blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8512396" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I mean, that's the thing. Sure there is only a 1% chance on top of the likelihood of rolling an 18, but most players who played through the AD&amp;D eras saw hundreds or thousands of characters rolled (especially if obviously not-going-to-work characters are discarded, which is something I believe both AD&amp;Ds explicitly allowed for. They also both had multiple ways of rolling for attributes, some of which made rolling and placing* an 18. If the game never went past oD&amp;D supplement I (so you had 18/%% strength, but IIRC still rolled 3d6 down the line for attributes), then 18/00 would have remained quite rare.*and if you roll an 18, the best places to put it are in Str for a percentile strength check, Int if you want a MU who can learn all the spells per level, or maybe Cha to go paladin.There's the rub. Even if you get an 18/00, you can still roll a 2 for your fighter's starting hit points or all 1s on your starting gold and end up trying to survive your first dungeon in padded armor or heck just walk into an ambush. 18/00 was a wild enhancement in power for a martial character*, yet at the same time it doesn't erase all the ways that all the other dice rolls ('permanent' or immediate) and basic decisions determine game outcome.*So much that I'd call it bad design to have such a character-ability imbalance except that, well, gauntlets of ogre power just aren't that rare.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Willie the Duck, post: 8512396, member: 6799660"] I mean, that's the thing. Sure there is only a 1% chance on top of the likelihood of rolling an 18, but most players who played through the AD&D eras saw hundreds or thousands of characters rolled (especially if obviously not-going-to-work characters are discarded, which is something I believe both AD&Ds explicitly allowed for. They also both had multiple ways of rolling for attributes, some of which made rolling and placing* an 18. If the game never went past oD&D supplement I (so you had 18/%% strength, but IIRC still rolled 3d6 down the line for attributes), then 18/00 would have remained quite rare. [SIZE=1]*and if you roll an 18, the best places to put it are in Str for a percentile strength check, Int if you want a MU who can learn all the spells per level, or maybe Cha to go paladin.[/SIZE] There's the rub. Even if you get an 18/00, you can still roll a 2 for your fighter's starting hit points or all 1s on your starting gold and end up trying to survive your first dungeon in padded armor or heck just walk into an ambush. 18/00 was a wild enhancement in power for a martial character*, yet at the same time it doesn't erase all the ways that all the other dice rolls ('permanent' or immediate) and basic decisions determine game outcome. [SIZE=1]*So much that I'd call it bad design to have such a character-ability imbalance except that, well, [I]gauntlets of ogre power[/I] just aren't that rare.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]

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