OSR Must OSR = Deadly?

[Michael Linke]

Attributes scaled different in ad&d. It wasn't until like 6 in most attributes thst yiu got a -1 then 15 for the +1. There were some percentage things but those were just how big or small the bonus was generally if that bonus even applied to you .

BECMI D&D has two overlapping bell curves happening. If you rolled a hypothetical 1d16+2 for ability scores in becmi, you'd still get a bell-curve for ability bonuses: you'd have a 1-in-16 chance of a +3, a 2-in-16 chance of a +2, 3-in-16 chance of a +1, etc.

AD&D (and I think OD&D) don't bother with a bell curve for bonuses since you already, in theory, have the bell-curve from your die rolls, though that bell-curve is heavily skewed if you use any of the more generous attribute assignment methods.

I personally prefer the double-bell-curve of BECMI when we're rolling stats, though the simpler bonus progression used since 3rd edition makes more sense if you're doing point-buy or standard array.