prime req and experiance.

[spacemonkeydm]

could some someone explain to me how prime req xp and the secondary ones work?

[James Maliszewski]

What do you mean by "secondary ones?"

[spacemonkeydm]

on page ten. Where it stats for example how clerics can use strength on a for to bases for gaining xp, and intelligence on a 2 to one for bases of gaining xo

[waysoftheearth]

One common interpretation is that high "secondary" abilities can be used to raise the primary ability for the purposes of determining XP bonus only.

In other word, if you had a fighting-man with 12 strength, he would not normally get any XP bonus.

However, if he also had 11 intelligence it would increase his "effective strength" (for the purposes of determining XP bonus only) by 1 for every 2 points of intelligence above 9 (see bottom of page 11).

Thus a fighting man with 12 strength and 11 intelligence is entitled to 5% XP bonus, exactly as if he actually had 13 strength.

[apeloverage]

My interpretation is as follows:

Fighters can lower their Intelligence and/or Wisdom at character creation, and gain 1 Strength for each 3 points of Wisdom or 2 points of Intelligence they lose. However, they can't raise their Strength above 9 by doing this.

Magic-Users can raise their Intelligence, and Clerics can rise their Wisdom, in a similar way.

[Finarvyn]

It's a tricky discussion.

1. There are two interpretations, both explained already in the thread.

2. In the old days (with the boxed set only) stats didn't mean as much as they do today. The modern rules sets give greater bonuses, have more things connected to stats, and so on.

What this means is that early on the two interpretations weren't that far apart. If you used the stat change only for XP purposes or used the stat change forever, either way there weren't many bonuses to be had so the results would have been pretty similar. Once you start to tie more and more things to stats (to hit bonus, damage bonus, missile bonus, bonus spells, "stat checks" or whatever) then the two interpretations have a greater and greater difference in game effect.

[James Maliszewski]

Jul 11, 2010 5:41:39 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

What this means is that early on the two interpretations weren't that far apart. If you used the stat change only for XP purposes or used the stat change forever, either way there weren't many bonuses to be had so the results would have been pretty similar. Once you start to tie more and more things to stats (to hit bonus, damage bonus, missile bonus, bonus spells, "stat checks" or whatever) then the two interpretations have a greater and greater difference in game effect.

By the time of Holmes, the second interpretation seems to have taken hold, since he talks about "reducing" one ability in order to "add to" a character's prime requisite. Moldvay follows suit, although the formulas are less arcane, being a straight 2:1 conversion for all classes.

[makofan]

In OD&D I use the first (more strict) interpretation

[tombowings]

Personally, I favor the first interpretation over the second for it creates characters that have more than just a high strength or a higher wisdom, or a high intelligence. But that's just me.

[Morandir]

You know, I had always just assumed that the second interpretation was the way to do it - the first interpretation would never have occurred to me. I just might start using that!

[spacemonkeydm]

thinking I like the first, but the second seems to be what became common and what I thought at first from reading moldvay.

[Finarvyn]

The thing is this:

1. Allowing characters to move stats around for XP purposes only allows characters to keep numbers as rolled instead of creating artificial "dump stats". After all, if a fighter doesn't need INT already, there is no incentive not to drain it as much as possible. The net effect of this method (I suspect) would be to give pretty much every character an XP bonus so you might as well just re-do the XP charts and scrap the rule.

2. Forcing characters to actually re-arrange stats is most useful when you get some of the non-standard dice rolling methods. If you roll 3d6 in order, most characters won't have high enough rolls to be able to trade many points on a 2:1 or 3:1 basis. If you allow for "roll 4, keep 3" or other models, suddenly those "dump stats" become a cheap resource to burn so you can pump up your other stats.