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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8459960" data-attributes="member: 2209">This seems to me only a quantitative difference and not a qualitative one. Many such issues were fairly clear in the early AD&D books on the face of it. I feel many such issues were spotted by people who read the rules and looked at them with a consideration of the mechanical aspects of the game and player power in mind.The <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17003/Players-Handbook-1e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">1e PH </a>shows the big power benefits of being a ranger over a fighter (giant class enemy bonus, enhanced surprise, spells), with tiny tradeoffs of a good alignment requirement, gear limited to personal stuff you could travel with, d8 versus d10 HD (but even then starting at 2d8 instead of 1d10), bigger xp requirements and stat prereqs. If you rolled well enough and were going to be good anyway the mechanically superior power choice was fairly clear.From the stat charts it was clear that if you had options in stat generation that an 18 strength percentile fighter was mechanically a huge reverse bell curve mechanical power boost over a baseline fighter.It was clear to many in the late 80s that hey, <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/170096/Unearthed-Arcana-1e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">Unearthed Arcana</a> weapon specialization is way better than base proficiency and that double specialization is even better. Looking at the options in the UA book the rate of fire and damage bonus made a fighter double specialized in darts a machine gun for attacks and damage output. I threw in such an NPC adversary at one point when running the Slavers modules. UA underdark races had clear mechanical bonuses over basline ones, deep gnomes compared to forest gnomes were pretty striking in the mechanical power boost for all the good extras a deep gnome just got.In the 2e <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16885/PHBR1-The-Complete-Fighters-Handbook-2e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">Complete Fighter's Handbook</a> there was an explicit section on continuing punching specialization where you can continue to get +1 to attack and damage per proficiency added in, which can add up quick as a strong build choice. My brother tried it out and his deep gnome got ridiculously good at punching out giants rapidly, accurately, and for lots of damage that could not be matched with a flail.It was clear from the numbers in 2e <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16863/Players-Option--Skills--Power-2e?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">Skills and Powers</a> that a cleric starting off with more class points as they did could spend them in appropriate areas and make a stronger specialized warrior class than a warrior or a better specialized spellcaster than a mage.</blockquote>

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