TSR's "subliminal" message about PC power level

[Quasqueton]

AD&D1 DMG page 11:

GENERATION OF ABILITY SCORES
As AD&D is an ongoing game of fantasy adventuring, it is important to allow participants to generate a viable character of the race and profession which he or she desires. While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to quirks of the dice. Furthermore, these rather marginal charcters tend to have short life expectancy --- which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do wtih some character of a race and/or class which he or she really can't or won't identify with. Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used. Four alternatives are offered for player characters:

Method I is 4d6 drop lowest, arrange as desired. Methods II through IV are rolling more and more dice.

AD&D1 DMG page 11:

Non-Player Characters: You should, of course, set the ability scores of those NPCs you will use as parts of the milieu, particularly those of high level and power. Scores for high level NPC's [sic] must be high --- how else could these figures have risen so high?

Quasqueton

 

[Melan]

This round I'm going to breakdown the "Original Tournament Characters" listed in Against the Giants (listed as being for characters levels 8-12. Excuse the names, they are pretty horrible.

Gleep Wurp, the Eyebiter
Cloyer Bulse, the Magsman
Roaky Swerked
Frush O'Suggill
Fonkin Oddypeak
Flerd Trantle
Redmod Dumple
Faffle Dwe'o-mercraeft
Beek Gwenders of Croodle

No argument from me on the topic of high ability scores - in most AD&D games I have known, such attributes were commonplace. In my neck of woods, character generation was usually handled by distributing 80, in some rare cases 90 points among the six abilities (resulting in an average of 13.33 and 15, respectively). I was considered a skinflint for giving 70 points to new characters (avg. 11.66). It is my opinion that Basic D&D handled ability bonuses better in that period:
03 -3
04-05 -2
06-08 -1
09-12 +0
13-15 +1
16-17 +2
18 +3
Straight bell curve, 18 means a lot but not as much as a 18/00 in AD&D; you don't need super-high stats to succeed. Too bad we didn't have BD&D at the time. Note that Castles&Crusades uses this system as well. The 3e method is likewise sensible, although (IMHO) it doesn't "protect" the higher ranges enough.

On the other hand, I flat out disagree on most of the names (except Faffle, for some reason). They are whimsical, but very cool - they wouldn't look out of place in a Vance novel.

 

[Ron]

I also prefer BD&D ability bonuses as they use a normal distribution. In the other hand, AD&D ability bonuses are pretty messy as they usually don't mean anything if less than 15, which is a pretty high number to obtain by the standard method. This feature estimulated many people to devise new ways to generate ability scores, such as 5d6 or, more common in my experience, re-rolling any 1.

A funny thing is that guy I met that played BD&D exclusively. To him, ability scores were of little importance. A few weeks latter, he started playing AD&D and became obsessed with getting higher and higher ability scores.

This only one of the many things where AD&D should have followed BD&D lead.

 

[Mycanid]

Now just a minute! I have to defend these stupendous names from the G series. What self effacing gamer would bravely walk around with such a great name as Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter or Beek Gwenders of Croodle nowadays? I LOVED these names when they first came out. Especially because they seemed to me to be so REAL. Heroes don't always have super flashy names ... sometimes it's the "humble" names that are the best, especially when they are so obviously not "real world" duplications like Fred or Hank or Bill. Thank you Melan for also defending these names!

But this is just an aside - it was pretty interesting for us as players and myself when I would DM to gather the players for a tournament (or what not) and hand out the character sheets randomly. For our gaming group this always was a catalyst to do some serious rp and background work on the characters and we loved it! In fact ... if I remember right I wound up being Fonkin Oddypeak.

As for the character stats comparisons ... these things could be controlled easily. Our group (still!) uses the 4d6 method, after which you can re-roll one stat and re-arrange two stats only. It worked well in all editions it seemed. For the main emphasis was on rp'ing after all!

 

[Quasqueton]

Isle of the Ape is crazy powerful, though (not too suprising, given the level).

The ability scores of the various pregenerated PCs in Isle of the Ape:

Six Human PCs, levels 14-19
Two 19s
Fourteen 18s
Four 17s
Seven 16s
Five 15s
One 14
Two 13s
One character is missing a constitution score. No ability increasing magic items.

Quasqueton

 

[LiKral]

Gosh! You are not suggesting that the grand old men of D&D nudged the dice when rolling their characters, are you? Perish the thought!

It does suggest that the point buy totals are a little low for creating truly memorable characters. The point-buy generation method is a little stingy compared to rolling for stats.

 

[Mycanid]

By the way - as I mentioned in another thread - I always thought the pre-genrated character's stats in the back of the U series was a good reference point for what pc's should be like. Good balance I thought....

 

[Rhun]

Not to bring up 3.x in an old skool thread on abilities, but this still goes on with NPCs in some books. Look at the named NPCs in the Forgotten Realms Campign Setting...those characters are anywhere from high 30s point buy up through 60+.

As far as AD&D goes, once I had the Unearthed Arcana, we started using the rolling methodology that allowed 9d6, 8d6, 7d6, 6d6, 5d6 and 4d6 for ability scores. We had a lot of characters with high ability scores back then.

 

[SWBaxter]

And did the Giants really have pregens of 13th and 14th level for an 8-12 module?

Going completely by memory here (which could easily be wrong), but I think the original tournament characters for G1 and G2 were different, the compilation used the G3/D-series characters. So yeah, those pregens were too tough for the early adventures in the series.

 

[Erik Mona]

Does anyone know if Jean Wells is the maiden name of Jean Rabe, author and former head of the RPGA? I've never been sure if they're the same person.

Not the same person.

Jean Wells was one of the first women to write for the game. She wrote "Palace of the Silver Princess," or at least the first version of that adventure, and later appeared on "The 700 Club" denouncing Dungeons & Dragons as "eeevul."

There's a profile on her in an early Dragon. I've got it in my file at home, but alas I am at Origins, so more info will have to wait.

--Erik