Running Village of Hommlet in 1e, I noticed that Gygax's NPCs have pretty incredible stats, eg (from my blog, but I think unchanged) Fulnok of Ferd (Thief) ST 8 IN 14 WI 10 DE 18 (+3 -4) CO 15 (+1) CH 13 , Elmo the Ranger ST 18/43 (+1, +3) IN 15 WI 16 (+2) DE 16 (+1/-2) CO 17 (+3) CH 11. These are normal PC-equivalent NPCs and I got a pretty strong impression this is what Gygax expected PCs to look like.
D&D General On Powerful Classes, 1e, and why the Original Gygaxian Gatekeeping Failed
mach1.9pants
Hero
Most of the pre built PCs and also NPCs had super high scores. I've heard it that to survive to higher levels they had to have those great rolls, the crap abilities ones died
Recently I've been using 5e for more troupe style play (ironically, my original 1980s AD&D games were very much in the PC-centric play mode). There's very little in the 5e books to fight against this style; I just turned off the modules like Feats & Multiclassing that add PC complexity and tend to work against it; I use PC class NPCs (an option in the DMG), and every PC starts at 1st level. I find the challenges are purely in adjusting player expectations, not in the ruleset.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yup it's absolutely no wonder people started going with more "creative" generation methods and so on when you saw stuff like that. By 2E we'd got to the point where PCs were seemingly meant to be in the same general league as heroes in the various (then hugely popular) FR books and so on, and when you saw their stats they were eye-popping, and NPCs who got full stat blocks tended to look like pretty high-rollers.
I can believe that.
5E is heavier than old editions in terms of rules that apply to all PCs and if the players are playing smart the groups will be extremely well-rounded skill-wise and pretty damn hard to kill unless they make no effort to live (esp. with larger groups), but at lower levels it shouldn't be too different. How high have you gone with it? It feels like in the mid and high levels the proliferation of abilities, the fact that casters have more/better spells/day and so on might make an impact - it doesn't bog down like 3.XE and 4E did though, I've played as high as 15-ish in 5E, but that wasn't really troupe-style.
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I remember when 3e came out, the "standard array" 15-14-13-12-10-8 seemed laughably low to players used to 1e norms! 3e Point Built PCs would generally go for an 18. Rolled best-3-of-4d6 3e PCs varied hugely in ability, which only got worse with level up boosts. In hindsight I wish I'd used standard array in my 3e games, though class imbalance would have remained.
Then with 4e point buy became the norm, and had an assumed default start of 18 or 20 in the prime attribute. 5e really toned it down with a point buy max 15 (16-17 with race mods) which limited starting attribute mod to +3, same as an 18 in Classic D&D. I find this 5e approach works really well in play. When running 5e I normally assume the standard array or point buy represents pretty much peak ability; PCs and PC-equivalent NPCs use that while everyone else works down from there.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yup lol, I was like "Are you joking? What kind of schmendrick has stats like that?" coming off of 2E and various "generous" takes on 4d6-drop-the-lowest (I seem to remember allowing someone to roll an entire page full of 4d6DtL and just pick one because hey they were all real collections of rolled stats right?).
In 5E we've finally gone to standard array, which, and I hate to admit this, has resulted in more interesting characters. Albeit the level of "INT is our dump stat" in the parties in 5E is hilarious. So many classes use CHA, so few use INT...
Been running it since August 2020, average 2 sessions a week with different PC groups. Highest level PCs are now 5th. I use 1 week long rests but 1 hour short rests. which prevents the LR classes dominating play.
I haven't yet really faced the challenge of a PC group being too high level for a starting PC to adventure with, though some 1st level concepts have proven unviable in a group mostly 4th or so - the Fighter-1 PC half-elf who wore only a chain shirt, wielded a greatsword, and liked to take point in assaulting the ogre & orc lair, did not survive to level 2. Player came back with a half-orc Rogue, which worked fine. I think a level 1 axe & shield Barbarian-1 would have been viable, but a melee character with AC 15 & 12 hp was a step too far.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yeah I suspect at a point the level gap will become too big, to the point where virtually any first level PC is non-viable unless they sort of hide out and do nothing (and maybe not even then), because of the way monster damage scales in 5E, but I wonder how far it can be taken (further than 1E, given death saves and 1hp of healing getting you back up, I'd guess). Even in the OD&D/1E troupe games I've heard about it seems like people started coming in at higher levels after a certain point. I suspect you'll establish that organically though - if you get to a point where 1st-level PCs are just not viable if you go to 3rd or whatever.
The plan is that eventually there will be discrete higher & lower level PC groups adventuring at different times, but I expect this will be a challenge for me to implement. Players like having multiple PCs but I expect some resistance to 'you must be this tall for this ride'.
OTOH if players with high level PCs want to shepherd newbies until they're viable, I guess that's ok.
Weren't you supposed to roll a bunch of PCs and retire all the low rolling smucks early or recall them when you make a stronghold?Most of the pre built PCs and also NPCs had super high scores. I've heard it that to survive to higher levels they had to have those great rolls, the crap abilities ones died
Maybe te 9d6 rolling was just to skip rolling the other jerks by giving one PC all their dice?
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