Stats Have Suffered From Inflation

[tarchon]

Maybe when Alan Greenspan retires he can take over management of the D&D product line?

 

[jasper]

I remember playing D&D in the 80's and the players freaking out cause the brick of the party had a 17 Str. Now it seems that players are used to 20, 21 or even 22 Str and a fighter type with a 17 Str is merely laughed at for being weak. Is this just my group or is it in other places too?

Also, I remember when this was AAAALLLLLL farm land as far as the eye could see....

oh please it was only 2 weeks after Dieties and Demigods came out that I had people trying to get 19+ on their pcs since their was a chart in a book.
power gamers are the same % of population. They just get sillier as you age.

 

[Crothian]

I find it just the opposite. 3e DEMANDS high stats to be effective at higher levels. A 20th level fighter needs a 30 strength, while his AD&D counterpart can get by quite well with a 12.

Not even close to being true. Having play3ed many high level campaigns and never seeing anyone with a stat close to 30, its a myth. Or the DM is running a game that forces people to need high stats, the game though does not do this. A caster just needs to get a 19 by level 17 to cast all their spells and that's pretty easy to do even starting from a 15 or 14 at first level.

 

[Psion]

I remember playing D&D in the 80's and the players freaking out cause the brick of the party had a 17 Str. Now it seems that players are used to 20, 21 or even 22 Str and a fighter type with a 17 Str is merely laughed at for being weak. Is this just my group or is it in other places too?

17 strength too weak?

Not unless you are counting buffs.

And a belt of giant strength don't give you near as much as it used to. In AD&D 1e/2e, there was a huge difference between 18 -- and 19 strength.


In addition, in 1e/2e, almost anything less than 15 was irrelevant. That, to me, has also been a factor in stat de-escalation.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

At low levels a melee fighter should have Str around 15-16 in my experience.
At mid levels around 18-22
At high levels around 24-28
And towards the end of his career 30-32.
Assuming you play with standard magic items this isn't hard to see happen.

By levels 20 if you start them game with a 15 stength pump 5 ability points into it, buy a tome of strength (+5) and a belt of stength (+6) you can have a 31.

 

[wingsandsword]

By levels 20 if you start them game with a 15 stength pump 5 ability points into it, buy a tome of strength (+5) and a belt of stength (+6) you can have a 31.

There's your problem. Not many DM's just let PC's walk into a magic shop and buy a +5 Tome of Strength (136,500 GP and 36,000, those items are worth together as much as a small barony, you should not be able to assume any character could get a 100k+ item). Those aren't items you just arrogantly presume you can buy. In fact, in the 3e games I've played, the only time I see anything like that is in characters who were created outright at higher levels, not characters who actually got their treasure through normal treasure distribution, item creation rules and a reasonable economy).

If you don't get it through commerce (which a lot of DM's restrict purchased items to being much smaller than that 136,000), you'll have to find it through adventuring (and those are pretty dang hard rolls on a table), or get a PC to make it (wanna talk the party Wizard into creating over 30,000 xp worth of items for you, especially when everybody else in the party is going to be wanting their own boosters?).

There's a world of difference in a PC that started at 1st level and was played up to 20th level, earning their treasure, ended up with some things he might not used often, some things that are useful, and a few things they traded for, and a character who was created whole-cloth at 20th level with optimized and min-maxed equipment loadouts bought a la carte like shopping at the fantasy Wal Mart.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Not even close to being true. Having play3ed many high level campaigns and never seeing anyone with a stat close to 30, its a myth. Or the DM is running a game that forces people to need high stats, the game though does not do this. A caster just needs to get a 19 by level 17 to cast all their spells and that's pretty easy to do even starting from a 15 or 14 at first level.

Go check out the pre-generated pcs for any high level module. The ones in Bastion of Broken Souls had each character with his main stat at or near 30:

Jozan: Wis 30
Lidda: Dex 30
Mialee: Int 28
Tordek: Str 25, Con 24

They were 18th level, so still two levels of magic and one stat bonus to add, and they were hardly powergamed, no multiclassing or prestige classes. Also, I imagine they were 25 point buy, too. (I didn't check.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I believe someone earlier was quoting this article: One-Handed Lifts
One example:

The French Canadian Louis Cyr lifted 552.5 lbs with one digit. In the one handed deadlift, no doubt Hermann Goerner gets the award with a right hand deadlift of 727 1/2 lbs./330 kgs. On 8th Oct., 1920. Later Goerner, again using one hand, deadlifted a block of sandstone with a handle attached which weighed 734 1/2 lbs./333 kgs. Goerner, like Saxon, did many fine feats during his time with circuses, with both men being fine all around lifters.

The article also mentions a one handed bench of 418 1/2 lbs. John C. Grimek in 1961

According to this site,
Weightlifting

the current record in competitive weightlifting (combined weight of snatch, clean and jerk) is 472.5 KG, or 1041.67lbs.

And keep your dirty minds to yourself.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

huh? A 9 intelligence wizard in 3e can't cast ANY spells, while a 9 int wizard in AD&D can cast up to 4th level spells. Not very effective for a wizard, but a multiclass wizard could serve very well.

I find it just the opposite. 3e DEMANDS high stats to be effective at higher levels. A 20th level fighter needs a 30 strength, while his AD&D counterpart can get by quite well with a 12.

Really? You could get by with a 12 Strength in AD&D? Well, sure, if you're playing a campaign where the most dangerous thing you ever face is a declawed kitten and a talking bush...

 

[Crothian]

Go check out the pre-generated pcs for any high level module. The ones in Bastion of Broken Souls had each character with his main stat at or near 30:

Jozan: Wis 30
Lidda: Dex 30
Mialee: Int 28
Tordek: Str 25, Con 24

They were 18th level, so still two levels of magic and one stat bonus to add, and they were hardly powergamed, no multiclassing or prestige classes. Also, I imagine they were 25 point buy, too. (I didn't check.)

So, a module has character with stats this high so that means that all games of this level need stats this high? :\