Hey Holmesians! I'm curious to find out what you guys do with Strength. Do you use any Strength modifiers to hit, to damage, for encumbrance, or for opening doors? Do you do ability checks based on it? Or do you play by the book and just have Strength as the prime requisite of Fighting-men?
In the latter case, what does the Strength spell do in your games?
As the book says, just the XP bonus (which, in practice doesn't do that much either). My strength spell is a dexterity spell.
ReplyDeleteWe use a strength modifier to give a bonus to the fighter's combat roll. We didn't like that at first and second level, the fighter fought just as well as other characters.
ReplyDeleteI use Greyhawk's proto-AD&D strength modifiers chart. I'm still debating whether to use percentile strength with 18 scores. I just read a post from the last week or two about the wonky Ray of Enfeeblement & Strength spells. I increase the ray's power to 50% strength reduction, but use Strength as written. Using the strength mods from GH, the Ray & Strength fits the game better - ie, they make sense as written.
ReplyDeleteIf you're familiar with Mazes & Perils, that does a whole host of things to make Holmes more like 3LBB + Greyhawk.
ReplyDeleteIn my heavily modified, Holmes-inspired game, I use an across-the-board attribute bonus chart (score of 14-16: +1, 17 or 18: +2) and no prime requisite XP bonuses (way too fiddly). Monsters and powerful PCs (or those under a strength spell) may have stats above 18 so the chart continues upward (score of 19: +3, 20: +4, etc.). Opening doors and other feats of strength is handled by a universal action mechanic I based on "Holmes' Other Game," the sample RPG that Holmes created for his book Fantasy Role Playing Games.
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