Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
Ooops...I knew that there was a reason Derek always played Magic Users.
MAXIMUM DEREK!!!!!!
Ooops...I knew that there was a reason Derek always played Magic Users.
MAXIMUM DEREK!!!!!!
Ooops...
So we look back at the Character Abilities section. In it, we see that Constitution and Charisma both talk about how they are for everyone. Then each of the other four abilities has a call-out to the core four; strength is the "major characteristic" of fighters. Wisdom is the "major characteristic" of Clerics. Dexterity is the "major characteristic" of thieves. And intelligence? Intelligence is the ... wait for it ... "major characteristic" of Magic Users.
So ignoring the post hoc Dragon sage advice by TSR employees interpreting the rules of the PH and just looking at the PH RAW there is another possibility.
So we have four classes with major characteristics. Clerics, Fighters, Magic Users, and Thieves.
So then it works out if you use the four AD&D classes' major characteristics as principal attributes.
So what about druids and paladins and assassins and so on?
They are all, with two outliers, explicitly subclasses of the four classes in their class descriptions. This is further carried out in saving throws and attack charts.
Monks are their own thing, not specifically listed in the thief class and not explicitly called a subclass of thieves even though they use thief attack and saving throw charts, have thief skills, low HD, and no spells.
And appendix bards which are sort of fighter/thief/druid subclass clerics but also their own thing at the same time.
Your analysis seems perfect to me.
In practice, I think a good house rule is to substitute in the words "Prime Requisite" on page 33 in place of "Principal Attribute". Which incidentally is how it was changed to work in 2nd edition.
I wasn't asking a question there.I literally just wrote pages on this. But to briefly answer your question, NO.
Fairly good point. None of the core four classes have two major attributes.That wouldn't work for the simple reason I referred to above ... that the text of the rule itself refers to "principal attribute(s)," which means that there will be classes with one, and classes with more than one.
So in addition to all the other problems with that analysis, you can't just grandfather in subclasses that way because then all classes would have one (1) principal attribute and would render the actual text of the rule invalid.
So the potential plural would be extraneous and inapplicable unless that brings in the appendix fighter/thief/druid subclass cleric bard.![]()