Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9749662" data-attributes="member: 7052563">My old AD&D groups never really settled on a consistent method.  I think we sometimes used Method I (4d6, drop lowest, arrange as needed) or even a variant using 5d6, but I don’t think we even knew about the other three official PHB methods or the overpowered UA Method V.  In retrospect we did not actually know the rules as well as we thought we did.  My groups included older kids who had learned how to play from yet older kids who had graduated or moved away, so we used lots of B/X rules and house rules of unknown origin.  I liked to just peruse the books for fun when I got bored, and almost always discovered something strange and surprising.  Even though we often overruled the books when we disliked stuff like level limits or the RAW initiative system, we still could have solved lots of gaming questions if we had just RTFM <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😄" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f604.png" title="Grinning face with smiling eyes    :smile:" data-shortname=":smile:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />.At the time I compared the B/X rules with the PHB and noticed that the AD&D ability score system was much stingier with bonuses and much less consistent in general.  B/X and BECMI had that nice smooth bell curve seemingly designed for 3d6 rolls, easily memorized once you got used to it.  The pluses and minuses were consistent across the six abilities and you could get a +1 bonus from a mere 13, so characters did not really need super high scores.  In fact a B/X character with all 13’s could probably be pretty successful (can’t remember if you needed higher scores to qualify for classes).Whereas in AD&D even a 15 barely got you anything much, and the massive advantages for the highest scores and serious drawbacks for low or even medium scores created a perverse incentive to fudge or cheat.  For warrior classes percentile strength and +3 or +4 hit points for 17-18 CON were too tantalizing to give up.  Spellcasters needed very high INT or WIS if they wanted to get bonus spells, learn the highest level spells, or avoid getting locked out of good lower level spells by a failed attempt to learn.  Thieves really needed that high DEX boost for their mediocre chances to use their abilities.  And of course you had the “win more” XP bonus for high scores in prime requisites.I think that retaining the 1E ability score tables was one of the biggest problems with the 2E PHB, no doubt done in the name of backwards compatibility.  They then compounded the error by listing 3d6 down the line as the first of several methods.  The 2E PHB had a sample fighter character called Rath with a 14 STR and no other high scores, and we mocked that character and the accompanying instructional text as unrealistic given the demands of the game.  If I ever decide to run an “old school” D&D game again, I would probably use 2E with B/X ability scores and Method I.</blockquote>

Verification