Men and Magic pg. 10

[cooper]

EDIT check my next post down for my revised opinion thanks to 18 spears.




It just occured to me what this means. Previously I had read that this rule implies you can swap points out of other abilities and put them into your prime requisite.

eg. a player who wanted to play a Cleric with a wis 14 and a str 17 can lower their strength by 3 points to 14 and raise their wisdom to 15.

But this isn't what it means at all. The operative term here is, "...for purposes of gaining experience only."

This is a way to acknowledge that even basic classes use abilities other than their prime requisite and that a high score in a secondary ability can count towards your prime requisite for purposes of getting your main stat high enough to warrent a +10% XP bonus.

Lets look at the magic-user Gygax used as an example:
str: 6
dex: 9
con: 12
int: 11
wis: 13
cha: 8

adds 11 int +6 (wisdom on a 2:1 basis) = 17 int for purposes of determining xp bonus.


This may seem that almost every character gets +10% xp bonus, but I remind you 0d&d is 3d6 in order no dropping lowest or anything like that. The chance of rolling a 15+ or even a 13 for 5% in the stat of the class you want is quite low!

Am I missing anything from MM? Perhaps I'm overlooking some paragraph somewhere? My PDF copy is missing lots and lots of text unfortunately it's hard to read in sections.

Later on it states:



To me this reads that you may opt to actually increase your prime requisite stat using the above ratios (beneficial for spell learning, strength damage, etc) but may not lower your secondary score lower than 9. So really there are two rules here.

So here's an example:
str: 6
dex: 9
con: 12
int: 13
wis: 9
cha: 8

Now we have an int of 13 and a (13+4= 17 int) for purposes of xp bonus.

follow up question:

Clerics can choose str on a 3:1 or int on a 2:1. Can they use both or do they only use the one which gives them the greater bonus?

[18 Spears]

Jan 28, 2011 11:30:12 GMT -6 cooper said:

It just occured to me what this means. Previously I had read that this rule implies you can swap points out of other abilities and put them into your prime requisite.

But this isn't what it means at all.

In his Q&A on Dragonsfoot, Gary said your first explanation is indeed how he meant that rule to read and even apologized for the poor wording. He then went on to say he never used that rule anyway.

Your free to interpret the rulebook in any way you wish, of course, but I thought a word from the author himself might be apropos.

[cooper]

Thank you,

Perhaps the sentence, "for purposes of experience only" meant "getting your prime requisite up high enough so you don't have a penalty, but would not grant any ancillary benefits.

str: 6
dex: 9
con: 12
int: 11 (13)
wis: 9
cha: 8

so our magic user has an 11 int for purposes of learning languages, but gets a +5% xp bonus. A fighter who raised his strength from 13 to 17 from swapping out abilities would get a 10% xp bonus, but would open doors as a str 13 character. This seems the more logical reading and a more balanced trade off. You get xp bonuses for the loss of languages et al. Otherwise it seems too attractive to always swap abilities.

[18 Spears]

That seems a reasonable interpretation. Like he, I never really liked that rule and allowed players to instead swap the rolled prime requisite score for their desired class with any other roll. (dryly) Naturally, they all picked the highest score to swap for their prime! I didn't allow any other changes to chargen die rolls, except for rerolling a result of "1" for first level hit points. Gygax reportedly allowed players to use 4d6/drop lowest when ran OD&D, though I'm not clear on when he started using that system.

Don't take my half-remembered quotes by Gygax too seriously, btw. Not only is my memory imperfect, but he often gave two different answers to the same question!

One example of this was his declaration that "as I created them, there are no good drow save for the insane" or something close to that. In different thread he allowed that, just as humans ran the gamut of alignment from good to evil, so might some drow be of good alignment. Their numbers would be few and their lives fraught with danger; but they might be out there.

[Finarvyn]

I've done it both ways. The key, to me, is that OD&D had very few plusses and/or minuses for stats so you would have to make a big change before it mattered much, so which interpretation you choose won't make much of a difference.

If you use the B/X attibute scale (-3 to +3) then this becomes more significant, so the interpretation becomes more critical.

Personally, I like the idea of tweaking stats for experience but keeping them intact and unchanged for regular play.

[cooper]

While there are no real bonuses to stats themselves (a good thing imo) there are lots of side benefits gained. Most surprisingly is how beneficial even slightly above stats are in 0d&d. In Ad&d benefits really aren't accrued until 16+ but in 0dd the benefits start kicking in at 12+ which is where it really aught to (the high point of average+)

int 11+: extra languages for each point above 10.
wis: nil
dex 12+: +1 to hit with missile weapons, breaks initiative ties and spell casting duels.
str 13: +1 hit
con 13: 100% chance to survive shocks to your system (makes sense 13 is above average!)
cha: 13 +1 to loyalty (again 13 is considered a high stat on 3d6 die roll)
prime req: 13+ 5% xp bonus.

...OD&D had very few plusses and/or minuses for stats so you would have to make a big change before it mattered much, so which interpretation you choose won't make much of a difference.

following the statistical model of 9-12 being the average roll, it is nice to see real bonuses being given for even moderately high stat of 13.

[18 Spears]

Jan 28, 2011 13:22:47 GMT -6 cooper said:

str 13: +1 hit

May I assume you're referring to a house rule here?

[cooper]

On this one I cheated and looked at supplement I greyhawk.

[18 Spears]

Jan 28, 2011 13:57:53 GMT -6 cooper said:

On this one I cheated and looked at supplement I greyhawk.

Ah! Well, I know I quote EGG in absentia but he is reported to have used that as a house rule, though for fighters (oops! Fighting-Men!) only.

I feel it's a good rule, not because of the above reason but because it fits well with the other ability score bonuses without giving the farm away.

[talysman]

Jan 28, 2011 11:30:12 GMT -6 cooper said:

It just occured to me what this means. Previously I had read that this rule implies you can swap points out of other abilities and put them into your prime requisite.

eg. a player who wanted to play a Cleric with a wis 14 and a str 17 can lower their strength by 3 points to 14 and raise their wisdom to 15.

But this isn't what it means at all. The operative term here is, "...for purposes of gaining experience only."

This is a way to acknowledge that even basic classes use abilities other than their prime requisite and that a high score in a secondary ability can count towards your prime requisite for purposes of getting your main stat high enough to warrent a +10% XP bonus.

It's how I now interpret that rule, although back in the '70s, I first encountered the rule in Holmes, which explicitly described it as a point-buy, so that's the way I interpreted it for a long while.

Supplement I muddied the waters. The new rules for thieves use a slightly different wording that's easier to interpret as a point-swap.

"Thieves use dexterity in the pursuit of their chosen profession. They 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."

follow up question:

Clerics can choose str on a 3:1 or int on a 2:1. Can they use both or do they only use the one which gives them the greater bonus?

I'm assuming it's always both, unless one score is below 9.

I've reworded the original rule as calculating an advancement rate; experience bonus/penalty is based on the advancement rate, not directly on the prime requisite.

* FIGHTER: Strength + Intelligence/2 + Wisdom/3
* MAGIC-USER: Intelligence + Wisdom/2
* CLERIC: Wisdom + Strength/3 + Intelligence/2
* THIEF: Dexterity + Intelligence/2 + Wisdom

Secondary abilities are only used in these calculations if they are 9 or more.

[coffee]

And for more discussion on this matter, we take you back to 2007:

odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=menmagic&action=display&thread=352

[cooper]

I just occured to me. The cleric has no other benefit than an XP bonus to his prime requisite. For the sake of game balance then, the fighting-man and the magic-user can raise their scores but cannot gain the ancillary benefits of extra carrying capacity or extra languages as these are advantages from the PR compared to which the cleric has nothing. Therefore, nobody gets anything except +xp must have been the rational.

[talysman]

Hunh? Everybody gets extra languages for high Intelligence. That's not a class thing. Similarly, if you're using Strength adjustments to carrying capacity from Supplement I, everyone gets that.

I don't understand what you're saying in your revised opinion.

[cooper]

Hunh? Everybody gets extra languages for high Intelligence. That's not a class thing. Similarly, if you're using Strength adjustments to carrying capacity from Supplement I, everyone gets that.

Yes, but only the fighting man and the magic user can raise those two abilities.

When the cleric lowers his other stats all he gets out of it is +% XP.
When a mu lowers his other stats he would get +% XP and more languages.
When a fm lowers his other stats he would get +% XP and better carrying cap. or open doors.

I'm saying that gygax created the rule, ..."for purposes of experience only" so that the only reward a mu or fm gets for raising their prime requisite is an experience reward and not the added benefits of raising your int/str for which there would be secondary benefits for them that don't exist for a cleric raising his wisdom.

[Falconer]

It’s improbable that a Cleric will have high Intelligence or high Strength.

[18 Spears]

Jan 28, 2011 20:59:12 GMT -6 cooper said:

The cleric has no other benefit than an XP bonus to his prime requisite.

House rule a bonus 1st level spell at first level for high WIS.

[Zenopus]

Jan 29, 2011 5:06:39 GMT -6 18 Spears said:

Jan 28, 2011 20:59:12 GMT -6 cooper said:

The cleric has no other benefit than an XP bonus to his prime requisite.

House rule a bonus 1st level spell at first level for high WIS.

The 1977 D&D Player Character records sheets have a mysterious "Wisdom Adj" entry. I just bumped a previous thread discussing this.

odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=menmagic&action=display&thread=3210

[18 Spears]

ISTR at one of the GenCons back in the day hearing one of the TSR luminaries explain to a fan-boy that WIS was going to be used to adjust saving throws or some such. Or, perhaps the WIS Adj. was just an error!

[talysman]

Jan 29, 2011 1:13:59 GMT -6 cooper said:

Hunh? Everybody gets extra languages for high Intelligence. That's not a class thing. Similarly, if you're using Strength adjustments to carrying capacity from Supplement I, everyone gets that.

Yes, but only the fighting man and the magic user can raise those two abilities.

When the cleric lowers his other stats all he gets out of it is +% XP.
When a mu lowers his other stats he would get +% XP and more languages.
When a fm lowers his other stats he would get +% XP and better carrying cap. or open doors.

I'm saying that gygax created the rule, ..."for purposes of experience only" so that the only reward a mu or fm gets for raising their prime requisite is an experience reward and not the added benefits of raising your int/str for which there would be secondary benefits for them that don't exist for a cleric raising his wisdom.

I agree with the raising ability scores for experience purposes only part, but I don't think you're actually supposed to lower any stats. You're supposed to get an effective increase to your prime requisite for experience if one or more supporting abilities are above 8.

[cooper]

Jan 29, 2011 5:06:39 GMT -6 18 Spears said:

Jan 28, 2011 20:59:12 GMT -6 cooper said:

The cleric has no other benefit than an XP bonus to his prime requisite.

House rule a bonus 1st level spell at first level for high WIS.

Clerics don't get any spells at 1st level! Clerics are literally "normal men" when they start out (d6 hit points and fight as "man").

Although I understand your point. However, since the int. bonus languages are available to everyone and the benefits of strength are available to everyone, any secondary ability granted to a high wisdom score should be available to Fm and Mu alike. This is why I don't like the idea of an extra cleric spell for high wisdom (unless using greyhawk of course). Perhaps this is what the "wisdom adj." was going to be, before gygax decided 1st level clerics needed a spell.

agree with the raising ability scores for experience purposes only part, but I don't think you're actually supposed to lower any stats. You're supposed to get an effective increase to your prime requisite for experience if one or more supporting abilities are above 8.

tough to reconcile with the "note", but certainly a very usable interpretation of the rule.

[18 Spears]

Jan 29, 2011 15:29:52 GMT -6 cooper said:

Clerics don't get any spells at 1st level! Clerics are literally "normal men" when they start out (d6 hit points and fight as "man").

Hence my prefacing the suggestion with "house rule". (shrug) No offense intended but I suppose my weak effort highlights the old saying "free advice is usually worth the price!"

I'll bow out and let the smart ones who post here give you a hand with this.

[18 Spears]

Here, you may find this thread from a few years back helpful ...

odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=gygax&action=display&thread=3906