Do you use the Greyhawk Exceptional/Extraordinary Strength bonuses in your Holmes/OD&D games? See this thread on DF for discussion of this:
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=88&t=75579
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=88&t=75579
I like the damage bonus rule, but to hit bonuses belong to high Dexterity folks.
ReplyDeleteI think Gygax's rationale for the to-hit bonuses for strength has to do with the particular AC system of D&D, in which "misses" include both actual misses as well blows that contact but cause no damage. A Fighter with high strength is more likely "to hit" (cause damage) on some of these otherwise glancing blows.
ReplyDeleteSTR has always been overvalued in the later editions IMO, although 5E has fixed this. Even when we incorporated bits of AD&D into our games we never liked exceptional STR. Wasn't 18 exceptional? And, if not, why not exceptional DEX for thieves, etc.?
ReplyDeleteThe bonuses for high strength make sense to me. Legendary fighters are almost always famous for being extraordinarily strong, not extraordinarily accurate or agile. The only exceptions I can think of are archers like Robin Hood and Odysseus... and even Odysseus' prowess with a bow is emphasized in terms of the strength needed to string his bow. Real-world combat sports are often divided into weight classes where size gives a significant advantage. A priori you might think that in, say, boxing being particularly dexterous could easily make up for being smaller, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I do try to tie STR and size together; nothing mechanically explicit usually, but I assume that high STR is also large except under unusual circumstances. A tiny person might be a lot stronger than they look, but when it comes to lifting and carrying large weights or applying leverage they're going to be at a disadvantage.
ReplyDeleteI'm not particularly sold on the 18+x% system, but it's one way to allow for people to be more than 3 sigma out on the bell curve if you want to keep a hard cap of 18 for humans without magic. If you want that, there's no particular reason to limit it to just STR, except maybe that tests of the other stats don't come up as often.
Zach, your explanation of Gygax's system makes good sense. The rules for exceptional strength seems to send the game into a world of super heroes. When your fighter reaches a high enough level, he is effectively as "strong" a fighter as Conan or Achilles.
ReplyDeleteChris Holmes: didn't Warlock also define exceptional ranks for all of the PC attributes, not just STR?
ReplyDeleteAllan Grohe The 1975 Warlock doesn't have any 18/% stats, even for strength. Instead, Strength goes from 1 to 44, with a supplemental table going up to 191 (!). The 1975 Warlock doesn't have an y monster details, but looking ahead to the Warlock's Menagerie, it looks like these high strengths were intended for use with monsters, who are given STR scores. The other 1975 stats don't have any entries over 18, although Wisdom has an entry for "18 or more". The 1978 Complete Warlock looks similar.
ReplyDeleteI don't think our version of Warlock had exceptional stats,but then none of our characters had anything higher than 16. I don't like the idea of a team of heroes with one exceptionally powerful member. I don't like Super Man and I don't like the Vision, though I do like his cape.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, we use the extraordinary strength table in our Holmes/OD&D game. The party fighter only has a Strength score of 17, but the magic-users often cast "Strength" from the Holmes rulebook on him, prior to a big battle. I then get the player to roll on the % table to see how much the spell has juiced up his character.
ReplyDeleteDemos Sachlas Sounds like fun! Good use of a rulebook table to generate random results during play.
ReplyDelete