TheWriterFantastic™
Explorer
I kept looking for something to invalidate this admittedly-cheesy tactic, but I didn't find anything in the books I had access to. Are you sure that 99 wasn't the maximum for exceptional Strength, with 19 being non-exceptional and thus perfectly allowed?
I mean, there were a lot of books and I wouldn't be surprised if they contradicted each other in places, but I know that I created a half-orc with Strength 19 when I tried to play Baldur's Gate.
Baldur's Gate was in the 2E era - in 1E, they had capped all scores at 18, especially as listed in racial min/max tables. 2E was a bit more lax on it, especially once all the "Complete" books started releasing.