D&D 5E Roleplaying the opposite gender

[Ganymede81]

Yeah, but it's weird when there's a whole extra ruleset that only matters for 1/216th of rolled characters. Unless the proportion is actually a lot higher than 1/216.

Back in 1e, Unearthed Arcana released a special way to roll stats for human characters that made 18s much more common. You could be rolling as many as 8d6, drop the lowest 5, as a way to generate a statistic. But yeah, that edition rife with the idiosyncrasies of its designers.

(1) AD&D was not designed purely with gamism in mind. Some rules were invented to increase realism for the sake of realism, not strictly just for PCs. Consider the AC adjustments by weapon type tables.

Yeah, Gygax, et. al., had this bonkers, misguided vision that the character creation rules should work as a socioeconomic simulator that explains why the game world is what it is. They felt the character creation rules must show why the game world is human-dominated (and, to a lesser extent, human male dominated).

Tolkien didn't need that jargle.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yeah, Gygax, et. al., had this bonkers, misguided vision that the character creation rules should work as a socioeconomic simulator that explains why the game world is what it is. They felt the character creation rules must show why the game world is human-dominated (and, to a lesser extent, human male dominated).

To give 5E's designers their due, 5E accomplishes the exact same thing without level limits or stat limits or anything complicated, just by giving (variant) humans flexible stat boosts and an extra feat.

 

[Mercule]

Back in 1e, Unearthed Arcana released a special way to roll stats for human characters that made 18s much more common. You could be rolling as many as 8d6, drop the lowest 5, as a way to generate a statistic.

My pre/early teen group missed the "take three" part of that method. It was awesome while it lasted, but someone eventually re-read it. Nothing is quite so broken as a 1E Barbarian with a 25 Strength, 23 Constitution, and a 22 Dexterity.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Wow. Just wow. No, elitism is what you're doing here: self-righteous condescension in the guise of erudite social criticism all with the world's biggest stick stuck up one's [EnWorld is too elitist for me to finish this sentence]

Yes, I teach by example.