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<blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9045194" data-attributes="member: 7023840">Okay, so here's the thing. The first mention I can find of &quot;ability checks&quot; as a term in Dragon Magazine is ... 1987. And that's not for D&amp;D- it's for Top Secret. Next is in an article about the Jester, discussing punfighting (yeah), and that's not regarding ability scores --- that's a percentile check. Again, it's easy to read our current knowledge back into the game. Informal methods were all over the place- if anything, there is a supposed use of 2d6 (Blackmoor) and 3d6 methods.That said, if you're looking at what is published, this is the AD&amp;D DMG-There will be times in which the rules do not cover a specific action that a player will attempt. In such situations, instead of being forced to make a decision, take the option to allow the dice to control the situation. This can be done by assigning reasonable probability to an event and then letting the player dice to see if he or she can make that percentage. You can weigh the dice in any way so as to give the advantage to either the player or the non-player character, whichever seems more correct and logical to you while being fair to both sides.That's percentiles. It's not that it didn't exist at all; I would just say that the obviousness of it that we think of it today cannot be used to assume that it was a common house rule in the 70s and early 80s, given the lack of contemporaneous evidence.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Snarf Zagyg, post: 9045194, member: 7023840"] Okay, so here's the thing. The first mention I can find of "ability checks" as a term in Dragon Magazine is ... 1987. And that's not for D&D- it's for Top Secret. Next is in an article about the Jester, discussing punfighting (yeah), and that's not regarding ability scores --- that's a percentile check. Again, it's easy to read our current knowledge back into the game. Informal methods were all over the place- if anything, there is a supposed use of 2d6 (Blackmoor) and 3d6 methods. That said, if you're looking at what is published, this is the AD&D DMG- [I]There will be times in which the rules do not cover a specific action that a player will attempt. In such situations, instead of being forced to make a decision, take the option to allow the dice to control the situation. This can be done by assigning reasonable probability to an event and then letting the player dice to see if he or she can make that percentage. You can weigh the dice in any way so as to give the advantage to either the player or the non-player character, whichever seems more correct and logical to you while being fair to both sides.[/I] That's percentiles. It's not that it didn't exist at all; I would just say that the obviousness of it that we think of it today cannot be used to assume that it was a common house rule in the 70s and early 80s, given the lack of contemporaneous evidence. [/QUOTE]

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