AD&D 1E What is the best way to generate ability scores for 1e AD&D?

[Celebrim]

Btw did any of you ever experience a 18/00 or 3+ 18 scores rolled on the table in front of others?

No.

I've seen two 18s rolled fairly, but that was with Method V that was allowing up to 9d6 take the best 3. I've never seen a 18/00 claimed fairly or unfairly. I've seen some 18/96 ranges claimed that were probably cheating and not rolled in front of anyone. I think I have seen no more than an 18/48 rolled in front of me.

 

[Coroc]

Adjacent to this topic, was there ever a Dragon or other third party publication that provided rules for "18/00" for the other abilities besides Strength?

I have seen this somewhere, but i cannot tell you where anymore. Could it been some supplement or so?

 

[TwoSix]

I did once see an 18/00 rolled at the table, using 4d6 drop lowest. This was more than thirty years ago, during 2E. The player HAD been intending to play a wizard...

Nope. We used 4d6 drop lowest for my years playing 2e. Prior to Skills and Powers, I only saw one 18 Strength, and they got a 18/12. With Skills and Powers, I saw a few 18 Muscle characters, but the highest I ever saw rolled was an 18/91.

 

[Coroc]

I haven't converted the Monk yet in these threads, and I've never allowed them in my games (except in my open table public games). One of the many many reasons for that is the class is optimized for leaving the rest of the party to die, and the players that play it tend to be asking the right questions ("How can I die?") but with a general solution being letting other characters die. If I do convert the Monk it will end up a very different class than the one people are familiar with.

How so, dunno 1e monk, or forgot about if i ever read it up, could he shadowstep out of danger?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Btw did any of you ever experience a 18/00 or 3+ 18 scores rolled on the table in front of others?

Edit: with 6x3d6

Never. Even with our go-to back then being 4d6 drop the lowest, I've seen 17s rolled, but the only 18s I ever saw on character sheets were from people that rolled privately.

Once a player showed up with an existing character, a Paladin that had 18s in every stat. Rather than behave like a mature adult (I was a teenager at the time) and tell him that he would have to re-roll his stats in front of me, or just that he couldn't bring that character into my game, let's just say I let him play the character and solved an out-of-game problem in-game.

He later admitted that he had never played that high-level character before and had made everything on the sheet up.

 

[Celebrim]

How so, dunno 1e monk, or forgot about if i ever read it up, could he shadowstep out of danger?

In most editions of the game, one of the Monk's main abilities is faster movement rate. Very quickly their movement rate becomes faster than most monsters. As a DM I've repeatedly had problems of Monk players deciding to split the party or abandon a combat that was going against the party because they knew they could run faster than any other PC. Granted, the sample set here is "tables of strangers playing together", but Monk signals to me now "not a team player".

 

[billd91]

Btw did any of you ever experience a 18/00 or 3+ 18 scores rolled on the table in front of others?

Yes. Two of us did it, in succession, in a 2e game we were playing.
The stat generation was a little different in the sense that we rolled 4d6DropLow until we got at least a 16, then we took the 5 rolls after that. So getting that first roll to be an 18 wasn't as hard as usual.

But with 3d6 x 6? No. That said, that's not even the recommended rolling method for 1e AD&D where the /00 first appeared for strength, so I think that method of rolling drifted into the minority.

 

[Mulciber]

a) Method III: 3d6 six times, take the best one, done six times in order
b) 5d6 take the best 3, six times, arrange to taste.
c) 6d6 take the best 3, six times, in order
d) Take the array 18, 17, 14, 13, 12, 10; arrange to taste.
...

Which method would you prefer?

And, how to you handle ability score generation in 1e/2e AD&D?

For strong characters.. of course I would like method D if i had a class I really wanted to play, or C if i wanted the dice to sway my decision.


For ad&d we typically use 4d6 drop lowest, arrange to taste.. sometimes change it up DTL/down the line.

of note ad&d 2e Skills and Powers has some alternative stat methods, we used method 7 due to rampant stat cheating.. as we had our own living campaign within our group of 20 friends.

pg8. Method VII: Each player has 75 (we did 85) points to divide among a character's six ability scores. No score can be lower than
3, and none can be higher than 18.

I would personaly alter the stat generation based on my plan, a one off game, id go with higher stats gen. assign as you wish.

Long term/western marches sytle, I tend to be more stingy and use DTL to get hopefully more diverse classes, but also allow multiple secondary characters in case death/or boredom.

 

[Coroc]

Never. Even with our go-to back then being 4d6 drop the lowest, I've seen 17s rolled, but the only 18s I ever saw on character sheets were from people that rolled privately.

Once a player showed up with an existing character, a Paladin that had 18s in every stat. Rather than behave like a mature adult (I was a teenager at the time) and tell him that he would have to re-roll his stats in front of me, or just that he couldn't bring that character into my game, let's just say I let him play the character and solved an out-of-game problem in-game.

He later admitted that he had never played that high-level character before and had made everything on the sheet up.

 

[Coroc]

In most editions of the game, one of the Monk's main abilities is faster movement rate. Very quickly their movement rate becomes faster than most monsters. As a DM I've repeatedly had problems of Monk players deciding to split the party or abandon a combat that was going against the party because they knew they could run faster than any other PC. Granted, the sample set here is "tables of strangers playing together", but Monk signals to me now "not a team player".

Ah now, that was the shtick. So monk died last, just before ranger, right?