Gary Comments on Ability Score Trading

[philotomy]

In this EN World post, Gary answers a question on what Men & Magic meant when it talked about using ability scores on a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 basis:

Originally Posted by king_ghidorah
Hi, Gary,

In a fit of nostalgia, I unpacked my copy of the original 3-booklet boxed set and found a reference in book I (Men and Magic), page 10 under the ability section that stated:

"Clerics can use strength on a 3 for basis in their prime requisite area (wisdom), for purposes of gaining experience only." Likewise, ther is a comment under Intelligence that "Both fighters and Clerics can use it in their prime requisite areas... on a 2 for 1 basis." Similar comments are made about wisdom for fighting men (counting 3 for 1) and magic users (2 for 1).

What the heck does that mean? That, for instance, clerics can add Wisdom + 1/3 of their Strength to determine their experience bonus?

Doug

You got it.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, this substitution enabling the 10% XP bonus to PCs with high abilities assocoated with but not their prime one, such as the cleric using 3 Str to equal 1 Wis.

DMs didn't think it was a particularly useful rule, so it was dropped.

Cheerio,
Gary

Thought that was pretty interesting.

[foster1941]

Gary's either misremembering or he misread the question. The note on p. 11 ("Units so indicated above may be used to increase prime requisite total insofar as this does not bring that category below average, i.e. below a score of 9") and the description of thieves increasing their dexterity in Supplement I (p. 8: "[thieves] may use 2 points of intelligence and 1 point of wisdom to increase their raw dexterity score so long as they do not thereby bring the intelligence and wisdom scores below average") make it clear that the references are to point-trading (as also seen in the Holmes Basic set) and not simply "bonus points" for having high non-prime stats. E.g. a fighter who starts with Str 13, Int 13, Wis 13 could trade up to 4 points of intelligence and/or 3 points of wisdom to raise his strength, making his final stats potentially Str 16, Int 9, Wis 10 (not Str 16, Int 13, Wis 13; and certainly not Str 23, Int 13, Wis 13!).

[philotomy]

foster1941 said:

Gary's either misremembering or he misread the question.

That's what I suspected. I'd used point trading with Holmes (and with Mentzer), and when I started using OD&D rules, I never even thought to question this: I just assumed it was talking about point trading.

Nevertheless, I've made mistaken assumptions about the way things work in OD&D, before, so I thought I'd throw this out here to see what everyone else thought.

[Finarvyn]

Foster's right on this one, or I've been playing it wrong for 30 years. I suspect that Gary just mis-read the question.

I think that the notion of trading stats was interesting when everything was rolled in order because it gave the players some customization and choice in class, but is worthless when you allow players to roll and arrange stats. Getting to arrange and then trade just encourages players to burn the "dump" stats (INT, WIS, CHA).

Also, with a straight 3d6 roll it was always rare that anyone had enough high stats that they were willing to lose 2 or 3 points off of one for any reason.

[Falconer]

I summarized it thus:

It is possible to raise a character's scores in a prime requisite by lowering the scores of some of the other abilities. This recognizes that one can practice and learn feats of fighting, intelligence, etc., but must take a penalty in another area by so doing.

Cleric:
3 Strength --> 1 Wisdom
2 Intelligence --> 1 Wisdom

Fighter:
2 Intelligence --> 1 Strength
3 Wisdom --> 1 Strength

Magic-User:
3 Strength --> 1 Intelligence
2 Wisdom --> 1 Intelligence

Thief:
2 Intelligence --> 1 Dexterity
1 Wisdom --> 1 Dexterity

In no case can any ability be lowered below 9. Regards.

[foster1941]

falconer said:

Thief:
2 Intelligence --> 1 Dexterity
1 Wisdom --> 1 Dexterity

By my reading of the rules that should actually be:

Thief:
2 Intelligence + 1 Wisdom --> 1 Dexterity

You've been giving your thieves too easy a time! (though considering the haplessness of low-level OD&D thieves, I suppose they can use all the help they can get...)

[Falconer]

Good catch! Thanks for pointing that out.

Though I'll be following you in discontinuing the class in my games, anyway. ;-) Regards.

[coffee]

I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you guys on this one.

I think Gary's remembering it correctly, but only as applied to the 3LB.

After much wrestling with this issue, over the course of years and many careful re-readings, this is how I had determined it was supposed to work as written. I'm glad to finally see that Gary backs me up on this. (Of course, this method was changed soon after, as evidenced by Holmes and those who followed, but at the time, this was the way.


For me, the phrase "for purposes of gaining experience only" is the key here.

Let's use as our example the character Xylarthen from the book. He is a magic-user, with Int 11 and Wis 13. He could boost his Int, for purposes of gaining experience only, by 1 for every 2 points of Wis, so long as that didn't drop Wis below 9.

Another way of saying that last is that he can only use the points OVER 9; i.e.; he can only use Wisdom that's above normal.

So, 10-11 is one point, 12-13 is another. Xylarthen's Int, for purposes of gaining experience only, is effectively 13 -- thus he rates the 5% bonus.

His actual Int doesn't go up. His actual Wis doesn't go down.


Anyway, that's the way I've been reading it for many years now.

[Finarvyn]

Coffee, I'm not sure of your interpretation on this. Seems to me that with all of those "phantom boosts" to the stats (from an experiemce point of view) then very few characters will ever NOT get the XP bonus unless their stats are all really average.

I'll have to run some numbers on my own just to see what happens, so maybe my knee-jerk reaction is totally off. It just seems strange, that's all.....

[coffee]

Yeah, it does seem to be a kind of flaky system. I guess that's why the other DMs thought it was too much bother.

Regarding average stats, the whole reason I went with the example character Xylarthen from the book was because I sat down and rolled up a few characters. None of them had high enough stats to grant any bonus, phantom or not, as far as experience goes. I saw that our old buddy Xylarthen did, so I used him.

Honestly, dice hate me when it comes to character creation. (Although I did get one with a 16 charisma!

[ant]

I ended up just allowing the ability score trading to work pretty much as Falconer summarised. The players appreciated it (particularly those not really prepared for the "3d6, roll in order" ability score generation).

It didn't end up making a great deal of difference mechanics-wise (I think only one or two players managed to boost their prime req. high enough to get any kind of bonus) but the players had fun tweaking their characters, even if only a little.