Stats Have Suffered From Inflation

[Quasqueton]

Mordenkainen, the quintissential archmage of D&D.

as listed in Rogue's Gallery (AD&D1, 1980) - earliest published stats.
Str 10, Dex 17, Con 17, Int 18, Wis 12, Cha 18

as listed in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure (AD&D1, 1984) - at 12th level; EGG claims this was the most accurate published stats of the time.
Str 10, Dex 17, Con 17, Int 18, Wis 15, Cha 18 [No stat boosting items]

Straight points = 95 points!
Point buy = 68 points!

Quasqueton

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Oddly enough, my experience has been the reverse. Stats have gotten more reasonable. In 1e, it was not unusual to see characters with at least one stat over 18 and no stats under 15. I recally wishes generally being the reason for this, but I'm sure that there was a little bit of dice-fudging going on.

In 3e, stats increase as you level, and skills and feats can improve your chance of success outside of that. In C&C, it's your choice of primes that really help. In 1e, it was mostly just your stat that mattered, excluding thief abilities.

 

[Henry]

...high level characters in 3e are EXPECTED to have stats in the 30s, while a 1e character never gets much better than what he rolls at character creation.

Oddly enough, when rebuilding a lot of my old AD&D characters for 3E a few years back, most of the stats went DOWN, not up. If my 6th level cleric of Helm really had a 17 STR (as he did back then), then he'd have a +3 strength bonus, not the +1 he had. So I set him at 12 to model the character.

In AD&D, a 15 STR fighter was considered a weakling by every group I played with from 1987 onward. (I never played 1st edition before 1987). To be worth the name FIGHTER, you had to have at least an 18. Now, if you wanted to say that WotC designed the game more for groups like mine than groups like yours, I could get behind, and I can even say that an AD&D fighter with 12 STR could be effective, AS LONG AS none of the other characters were outshining his STR level. But by virtue of the stat tables in AD&D themselves, they encouraged many gamers of the day to auto-inflate their own power scores in order to get a small bonus, instead of just "playing by the numbers."

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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).

Yet, strangely enough, every DM I've ever played under allowed it. At 20th level, our current DM assumed that our resources, contacts and ability to travel almost anywhere at will allowed up to buy any item in the DMG up to 1/4 of our gp value for 20th level. This allows us to buy anywhere up to about 190k items, with a total of 780k gold to spend.

This isn't extremely unrealistic, if you use the tables in the DMG. In Oerth, Greyhawk should support an economy capable of selling these sort of items. After all, the entire Circle of Eight needs someplace to sell and buy magic items, plus any number of powerful planar travellers, kings, etc. Plus, any number of high level adventurers who may or may not exist in your world (I tend to assume they do, and if adventurers exist and there is money and a market for something, it will create SOME place to get the items). Lastly, it is always possible that there isn't enough market on ONE world to support this, luckily, people of this power have the ability to all gather somewhere in another plane to trade these items.

Rather than role play this all out, though, we simply say "you had all of this before you got to level 20". Still, I have a game where the characters are approaching 13th level, and they have stats around the 26 range in their primary. They will likely have 30s by the time they get to 20th level.

3rd Edition D&D really is designed so this is the baseline. I do understand that some campaigns will be higher or lower.

 

[tarchon]

Yeah, I remember that rule of thumb (Int = IQ/10) from my 1E days...but I've recently discovered that it just doesn't mesh with reality.

On a straight roll of 3d6, one out of 216 people would wind up with an 18 intelligence. (That's roughly 0.5% of the population.) According to that rule of thumb, it means that 0.5% of the population would have an IQ of 180.

If you use (Int-10.5)*5+100, that gives an IQ with the correct distribution.

 

[kenobi65]

If you use (Int-10.5)*5, that gives an IQ with the correct distribution.

Errr...I thnk you have an error in that equation somewhere...as it assigns an 18 INT an IQ of 38, and a negative IQ score to anyone with an INT score under 11.

 

[tarchon]

Errr...I thnk you have an error in that equation somewhere...as it assigns an 18 INT an IQ of 38, and a negative IQ score to anyone with an INT score under 11.

Ah yeah, +100.

 

[Darkness]

Errr...I thnk you have an error in that equation somewhere...as it assigns an 18 INT an IQ of 38, and a negative IQ score to anyone with an INT score under 11.

+100, maybe?

 

[der_kluge]

To those who don't like the stratospheric stats, perhaps you should check out Castles and Crusades. It uses a more simple ability score model, and even reduces the modifiers downwards slightly from 3rd edition. An 18, for example, is only a +3, not +4. Abilities are rolled 3d6 (by RAW).

While this does create more "gritty" characters in the sense that they aren't uber powerful, it also greatly exaggerates those with really high stats from those with really poor stats.

That is, I find that a 3rd edition character with mediocre stats can still be quite effective, but isn't horribly overshadowed as much by someone with great stats. I think this is less true in a system like C&C.

FWIW.

 

[diaglo]

The fault lies with the players and with the DMS. Now that a 12 grants a stat bonus unlike any of the earlier editions lower stats now mean more then they ever did before. But for some reason the players and DMs aren't really seeing this and they encourage and demand high stats.

13 granted something in OD&D (1974)

5% bonus to experience when in your primary stat.

roll 3d6 six times.

str
int
wis
con
dex
cha

d6 for hps.

3d6 x 10 for gold

done.

no racial bonus or penalty