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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9043140" data-attributes="member: 7023840">[USER=7036985]@andreszarta[/USER] First, thank you for your provocative thesis. I always appreciate people who put thought into their posts!That said, I have to agree with [USER=694]@Jack Daniel[/USER] and will add some additional thoughts. As has been correctly noted, I do not think that "rolling under your ability score" was widespread. It's very hard to make general pronouncements about OD&D given the widespread differences in styles of play at that time, and also because of how OD&D was, itself, so incomplete. That said, the first official mention of that method in any "core" rulebook was an offhand remark in Moldvay (1981) that was buried at the end of the book; in addition, it was after Moldvay first discussed using percentiles to resolve issues. The use of "rolling under" was certainly not a part of AD&D until 1986 and the Survival Guides, which were not widely adopted in play AFAIK (and contrasted with the OA system) and, regardless, only existed until 2e (1989). Instead, the early period of D&D had a plethora of different adjudication methods. A lot of it assumed that there would be specialized and bespoke methods for common issues (such as breaking down doors or lifting items- such as the AD&D tables for strength). Others preferred more free-flowing methods, but there wasn't any common way of dealing with them; everything from percentiles to rolling under using d20 to rolling under using 3d6 to opposed rolls to "DM Decides" could be, and was, used. While my anecdotal experience is just that- anecdotal- I don't recall seeing "roll under ability score" used until the 90s. It's more common in OSR than it was at that time. So the first issue is that I don't think you can say that this was a deliberate design decision.The second issue is that I also don't think you can ascribe the change in rolling ability scores to this, either. Instead, it has a much more simple explanation. Well, two. First, people like to be special. While the OD&D had some perks for higher ability scores, they weren't that good. By the time of AD&D, high ability scores got you everything from XP bonuses to massive modifiers (percentile strength, anyone?) to the ability to play the class you really want.And that gets to the second issue. As I've written before, the trouble with the Gygaxian gatekeeping method was pretty self-evident. In order to keep people from getting into a class (for example), it was gated by high ability scores. For example, to play a 1e Paladin, using the 3d6 method you had a less than .01% chance of rolling the abilities. If you wanted to play a UA Paladin, you had a .0002% chance. In effect, the game system itself quickly made it such that people were looking for alternate ways to make characters, because the "3d6 in order" would keep people from playing classes they wanted to play, and would result in such diametrically different powered characters- something that wasn't that much of an issue in OD&D.</blockquote>

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