So that's why you like it

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The longer you play, the more gear you accumulate.

As PCs advance, I'd be surprised if their stat bonuses aren't exceeded by their bonuses from their class, spells and equipment.

As long as bonuses can stack at all, bonuses only stop mattering if against every conceivable monster you attack (under every conceivable situation) you need only a 1 to hit - And if every conceivable monster can be slewn with one strike. Just to state the extreme. Of course there is a cut-off point where it doesn't really matter, but that point is pretty far off in D&D. (Unless AD&D and OD&D were very different).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As long as bonuses can stack at all, bonuses only stop mattering if against every conceivable monster you attack (under every conceivable situation) you need only a 1 to hit - And if every conceivable monster can be slewn with one strike. Just to state the extreme. Of course there is a cut-off point where it doesn't really matter, but that point is pretty far off in D&D.

I'm not saying the bonuses stop mattering, just that as play progresses, the amount of your bonuses from stats decreases in importance relative to your other bonuses. If your PC has, say...+6 from strength, +4 from a weapon, +15 from his level and +5 in other bonuses, that strength bonus is 20% of his total bonuses.

Even assuming that initial stat roll was 4 points higher than the next best front line combatant, it provided an average of +2 better than that other PC. That seems huge at low levels. But if that PC paced him for Str and other bonuses as they leveled up, that's only a 6.7% difference in probabilities from one PC to another at the end. That's not a huge advantage over time.

And if you factor in the vast panoply of Str or combat boosts out there- the Kensai's +8 Str boost, Rage, Righteous Might, the Expansion psionic power, etc.- that +2 bonus derived from a better starting Str is almost miniscule.

(Unless AD&D and OD&D were very different).

They were- in older editions, Str didn't have a linear bonus progression. The difference between Str 17 and Str 18 wasn't so bad, but there was that bizzare stretch between 18 and 19 with the "/" mods... An 18/01 was RADICALLY weaker than an 18/99 or 18/00 in terms of damage output. On the upper end, you could 1-shot critters even at 1st level.

There were also far fewer opportunities to boost Str and other combat mods than in 3Ed/3.5Ed/4Ed- and NONE were level related.

IOW, in those days, there was no real disappearance of the importance of a really high Str.

 

[Ariosto]

(Unless AD&D and OD&D were very different)

Survival was not so nearly an entitlement, much less gaining levels -- and much, much less getting certain bonuses from treasure and so on. If you've got all those pretty much in carefully "balanced" lockstep, then of course they are unlikely to vary so as to "wash out" initial ability scores.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Why do people want to play drow or dragons, or half dragons or dragonborn? Or if you tell them to pick a standard race from the PHB, they want something nonstandard.
I don't see the appeal or understand.

If you're different from everyone, you're better! How can you be special if you're just another so-and-so.

Unless you've got a trenchcoat and katana(s). Then you're awesome no matter how many of you there are.

But honestly, take the player that's just gotta play a half-xorn or some other bizarre combo. Then stick the party in a half-xorn village for a few adventures. Watch the half-xorn fret about the loss of specialness. (Not only have I seen this many times, I've suffered from gotta-be-different myself.)

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Why do people want to play drow or dragons, or half dragons or dragonborn? Or if you tell them to pick a standard race from the PHB, they want something nonstandard.
I don't see the appeal or understand.

I am the sort of guy who either plays a human PC or an "exotic" race (though I note with approval the Fourth Edition trend to give "exotic" races more-or-less equal time with "traditional" races).

Partly, this is because I either want to play something familiar, or something foreign. If I'm going to play something familiar, why not a human? Nothing is more familiar than that. If I'm going to play something foreign, why choose something as close to humans as elves, dwarves, or halflings?

For all that elves, for instance, have their Tolkienesque roots where they're strange, magical, even alien creatures, they're fundamentally similar to humanity in a way that tieflings or shifters are not - despite the fact that both tieflings and shifters have human heritage as part of their racial background. It's not just the exotic look - though that doesn't hurt - it's also about the flavour of the race. Even Tolkien's elves are less exotic than a race with literally infernal power running in their veins.

It's also not a coincidence that most of the "traditional" races in D&D have a very Tolkienesque flavour (or at least used to, in prior editions) - and I am no fan of Tolkien.

 

[Doug McCrae]

accrue

Old school.

 

[Hussar]

Having played an oddball character fairly recently, I'll field the question as well.

I started the character as a priest of a very strict god who believed that fire=purity, thus all sinners should BUUUURRRRNNNN!. Lots of fun. He started as human. Then I picked up a Dragon magazine (Can't remember the issue) that had half-elementals broken down as racial levels. Next time my fire priest leveled up, he became a half-elemental. Fit perfectly with the concept. My priest then believed he was being specifically tapped by his god for greatness and started gathering followers where ever he could.

Great fun. Could I have done that with a straight up human? Yup. Would it have been as memorable? Maybe. But, whacking on a level or two of half fire elemental sure fit with the concept better than anything else out there.

My current character is a gnome binder. He's constantly getting morphed and mutated by the vestige's he binds - goats feet, forked tongue, extra pair of glowing eyes, extra mouth that grows out of his stomach and mutters, etc. etc. It's become a great hook for the character as he constantly weirds out the other PC's.

Granted, it's not a wierd race, but, it's a very similar idea.

 

[Ariosto]

Long ago (perhaps not before Anne Rice's books, but before their big influence on fantasy gaming), I had a player who read the comic book Jerry the Vampire and decided that he wanted to play ... you know what.

"Comic", as I recall, was in that context quite literal. (Who coined the equation Comedy = Tragedy + Time ?) A sitcom tends if anything to exaggerate flaws, foibles, vulnerabilities and Things That Can Go Wrong.

The player was far from disappointed to find that his career as one of the Undead was far from smooth sailing. If gaining experience levels was not quite out of the question (but difficult as no team of adventurers would let him join), neither was it a priority.

He just got a kick out of playing that character, raising heck and indulging in debauchery, setting the occasional fashion craze, and staying one step ahead of outraged burghers and fanatical Van Helsings. Of course, he also had liaisons with a Werewolf, a Mummy and a patchwork Creature!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm not saying the bonuses stop mattering, just that as play progresses, the amount of your bonuses from stats decreases in importance relative to your other bonuses. If your PC has, say...+6 from strength, +4 from a weapon, +15 from his level and +5 in other bonuses, that strength bonus is 20% of his total bonuses.

it is also a matter of scaling - most bonuses scale. Your weapon plus and your level bonus tend to scale with the defensive bonuses of monsters - assuming you engage more dangerous enemies.
But since you always use that d20, a +1 always has the same significance, regardless whether there is a +0 or a +99 to add to it from other sources. Again, the only real cutoff point is that you don't need to roll more than a 1 to hit. (Or rather more than a 2, since natural 1s are always misses.)

 

[Cadfan]

I'm not saying the bonuses stop mattering, just that as play progresses, the amount of your bonuses from stats decreases in importance relative to your other bonuses. If your PC has, say...+6 from strength, +4 from a weapon, +15 from his level and +5 in other bonuses, that strength bonus is 20% of his total bonuses.

Even assuming that initial stat roll was 4 points higher than the next best front line combatant, it provided an average of +2 better than that other PC. That seems huge at low levels. But if that PC paced him for Str and other bonuses as they leveled up, that's only a 6.7% difference in probabilities from one PC to another at the end. That's not a huge advantage over time.

And if you factor in the vast panoply of Str or combat boosts out there- the Kensai's +8 Str boost, Rage, Righteous Might, the Expansion psionic power, etc.- that +2 bonus derived from a better starting Str is almost miniscule.

Strength controls your "to hit" numbers, and those are cast against a random number from 1 to 20. What matters is absolute difference, not relative difference.

Ok, absolute difference matters for damage modifier. But that's all. For "to hit," the only thing that matters is absolute difference. A difference of 2 points of strength bonus is precisely as useful in terms of "to hit" if your comparing an attack bonus of +1 versus and attack bonus of +3, or an attack bonus of +1,000,001 versus an attack bonus of +1,000,003.