One Thing That AD&D Got Right

[Tequila Sunrise]

This is a shameless narcissistic self-promotion, in which I talk about why boosting abilities beyond 1st level is bad. (Because of balance, ironically.)

Discuss, or better yet, discuss at my blog!

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

"And what I’ve realized is that AD&D did ability boosts right, by not having any."

I'm inclined to agree. Though it was fun get boosts to ability scores in AD&D through acquired items, I now believe ratcheting up abilities through leveling has brought another instance of the problem with the discrepancies between good and poor saving throws at high levels.

I'm not a fan anymore.

Another thing I'm appreciating more with AD&D 2e (and earlier) was that hit points slowed down at higher levels. I want to get off the hit point inflation mini-game more often than not nowadays. *shrug*

 

[the Jester]

Clearly you never dealt with cavaliers.

That said, I pretty much agree with you.

 

[tenkar]

I was a bad lad. I house ruled ability stat gains for all classes after the cavalier appeared in UA. Overall, didnt have much of an effect as stats never got bumped more then 1 in a campaign, and that was usually fairly far into it.

Would I use it today in AD&D or one of the clones? Probably not. Simplicity does have value.

But as Unearthed Arcana introduced stat gain to AD&D, it's hard to say it got it right for omitting it

 

[ExploderWizard]

In many games (and D&D in particular) stat creep is kind of the worst offender in the power balance department.

Even 1EAD&D before UA was a little bit nuts with stat bonuses. The huge gap between average and best possible starting was enough to get the seed of " best possible is the only playable" mentality that we see so much of today. An 18 in AD&D was supposed to be really awesome. How many of you have at one time or another, encountered a player who wouldn't play a fighter type without an 18/% ?

18/00 granted a 15% hit chance increase and a whopping +6 to damage. Just knowing that such an apple was higher up on the tree was enough to make you want to ball up your 16 STR weakling and throw it in the trash.

A 16 was supposed to near tip-top. The gap between that and actual tip-top was too ludicrous to ignore. What that did was make what was supposed to be an awesome score for a hero into something more suitable for a scutboy torch bearer. Keep going with this train of thought and it will eventually lead to generation methods all but guaranteed to produce an 18 in a desired stat to common fudging just to get a "playable" character all the way to saying to hell with average lets start with demigod and buy our way up from there.

What you end up with is the bloated numbers we have today.

What if the maximum normal benefit gained from a stat was a +1 or +2 at the extreme? What if the largest boost to actual ability came from gaining levels and devoting resources towards the skills the character wants to excel at?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

How many of you have at one time or another, encountered a player who wouldn't play a fighter type without an 18/% ?

Guilty for feeling aggrieved at the DM for making me take my 17 rolled STR and go with it.

 

[MerricB]

However, the trouble was in AD&D was that those stat-bonuses *did* exist. Wish spells, magic items (girdle of storm giant strength, gauntlets of dexterity) and the like, and all of them were inconsistently applied.

oD&D - before supplement I came and mucked it up - had a nice small set of stat modifiers. +1? That was as much as you can expect. After that... they appeared in much greater quantities and for greater amounts.

Cheers!

 

[ggroy]

If the stat bonuses are negligible to nil in practice, then why bother having character ability stats in the first place?

In principle, it's possible to play the Holmes basic D&D box set without any character ability stats with some minor modifications (ie. initiative). One DM did that for a few evening pickup games I played in, which used the Holmes basic D&D box set.

 

[pawsplay]

I always thought it was insane that name-level characters, with buttloads of hit points and spells and stuff, had the same ability scores as anyone else (accounting for survival rates, of course). As soon as I saw Dark Sun's high level rules that gave rogues increases in Dex, I was like, "Yeah, that totally makes sense." I mean, if you watch Zorro or Willow or Batman Begins or virtually any movie where the heroes level up, you can tell they gained a couple of points of ability scores.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I suppose it depends how you see "stats" in particular (in this case, the usual six suspects, whatever one's preferred order might be).

If they are thought of as "biological", "hardwired", that kind of thing, then it's perfectly acceptable for just about anything else to increase (magical abilities, fighting skills, non-combat expertise of whatever kind. . .), while they remain static.

But if they are thought of as a sort of hybrid genetic/learned/developed thingy, well, why not then.