We all know about AD&D's "Exceptional Strength". Whether you liked it or not, it's one of those things that makes AD&D stand out. Sufficiently strong fighters had a chance to get even stronger.

Stats in AD&D went beyond 18, though. It was possible with rules as written to go up to 25 in any stat. Some stats would give you special bonuses if you went beyond the "mortal limit" of 18. I've always been fascinated by this, because some of these bonuses seem really cool. These bonuses were reserved for the godlike and those lucky enough to get super high stats through magical boosts (or be unfortunate enough to be born on Athas).

Having a Constitution of at least 20 in 2e would grant minor regeneration, allowing you to automatically 1 damage per 6 turns (a turn was 10 minutes back then) with the interval decreasing by 1 turn until you get to 1 hit point regenerated per turn. You'd also be allowed to reroll 1s you rolled for hitpoints.

Intelligence above 18 would give you outright immunity to illusions, starting at 1st level and going up to 7th with 25 Intelligence. Wisdom gave you immunity to a variety of enchantment type spells and possession. And Death Spell. I can see having really high Wisdom giving a resistance to spells, maybe even spells that normally aren't mental. High wisdom giving you an increased chance to dodge a fireball, I can see.

Sadly, by 3rd edition these things went the way of the Dodo, mainly as a side effect of Wizards of the Coast streamlining stat bonuses via modifiers. Though I can easily see these being re-introduced in the current systems; for every CON modifier above five, you could have a point of natural armor or damage reduction. Within a limit, of course.

I'm not aware of many games that kept something like this. The Roguelike ADOM did have the example with Constitution (called Toughness in that game), going up to 50 or so. Other stats in that game also gave special bonuses; certain levels of Willpower or Mana would guarantee immunity to certain attacks like stat drains or confusion. Very handy, especially since Stat Drains were permanent in that game.

Anyway, does anyone have any thoughts on this? Experience? Usage in other games? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. 

AD&D (1st ed) was pretty stingy with stat bonuses. Most started at 15-16ish, depending on the stat.
Adding exceptional strength on top of that seemed superfluous. You're rarely going to  see an 18, much less an exceptional Strength. Unless you fudge.

2nd ed taking stats beyond 18 was useful for Dark Sun, but we rarely (I don't think we ever) used them beyond that.

AD&D1e assumed each player had a lot of characters, so while there was a fairly low chance any particular character would roll exceptional strength, there was a fairly high chance that you'd see it once in a while. There were also increased chances with half-orcs, and young characters (both +1 to Str), and later in the game the strength spell, potions, gauntlets, and girdles, and manuals weren't that uncommon.

Also, one way of looking at the 1d100 roll it's just the die roll made to reach the different tiers. You could always treat S 18/01-18/00 as S 19-23. In that case, rolling an 18 and then a 01 would mean you get a +1 to strength, or 19. Roll an 00, and that's +5, or S 23. The advantage of this is it allows the exceptional strength concept to be extended to all fighters, not just those that roll an 18. All fighters roll a 1d100, and use the result to boost their strength by 1 to 5 points. For instance, a S 15 character who choose the fighter class would also roll 1d100, and if the result is 99, that means a +4 to strength, for a final score of S 19 (the old S 18/01-50). That would require shifting the giant/divine strengths up, so the old S 25 titan would become S 30.

The cavalier in Dragon then UA also set the precedent for percentile Dex and Con, though in those cases there's no real difference between 18, 18/01, and 18/00. One curious not very compatible mechanic is barbarian Dex and Con, where barbarians gain double the AC and hp bonus for stats of 15+, i.e. +/-2 to +/-8 instead of the normal +/-1 to +/-4.

There were a couple of "exceptional" articles in Dragon, perhaps in the OD&D days but should apply to AD&D equally well. One was Dexterity and I forget the other one. (Intelligence? Not sure.) I think some of the "Giants in the Earth" characters had exceptional stats. That would be AD&D as well. Also, 1E Deities & Demigods had stats up to 25, and I think they addressed the "exceptional" issue.

Basically, what I used to do is take the basic chart for strength and apply it to any other stat desired. 18(00-50) was one number, then 18(51-75), and so on. My memory tells me that exceptional stats only apply in the "prime requisite" stat for any class, but one could house rule beyond that.

Quote from: finarvyn on November 02, 2021, 04:37:47 PM
There were a couple of "exceptional" articles in Dragon, perhaps in the OD&D days but should apply to AD&D equally well. One was Dexterity and I forget the other one. (Intelligence? Not sure.) I think some of the "Giants in the Earth" characters had exceptional stats. That would be AD&D as well. Also, 1E Deities & Demigods had stats up to 25, and I think they addressed the "exceptional" issue.

Basically, what I used to do is take the basic chart for strength and apply it to any other stat desired. 18(00-50) was one number, then 18(51-75), and so on. My memory tells me that exceptional stats only apply in the "prime requisite" stat for any class, but one could house rule beyond that.

I'm not talking about the "Roll for Exceptional Strength" thing, but rather how some stats beyond 18 would give you special bonuses.

One of the Rolemaster Companions had a bunch of special abilities for stats over 101, which got used by us in a few high-powered games. I don't recall any of the specifics, unfortuantely.

Quote from: PsyXypher on November 02, 2021, 06:17:39 PMI'm not talking about the "Roll for Exceptional Strength" thing, but rather how some stats beyond 18 would give you special bonuses.

AD&D is strange in this manner because in the original game stats were limited to 18, so Exceptional Strength was a way to expand beyond that. The values from 19 to 25 only came into the game in Deities and Demigods, which is the high level expansion book (really just a high level monster manual). So a 19 in AD&D isn't really just 1 more than 18, it is, by definition, beyond what a human being is capable of. So, effectively magical.

This is a long way of saying this I'm not sure exactly where supernatural bonuses should come into play if you are using an ability score system that goes beyond 18 normally, as games like D&D 3e or Runequest do.

Hmmmm... having only recently got back into playing 1st Edition AD&D (and slowly picking up some OSR products as well of late) i missed most of the
changes in WotC versions of D&D, i'd never heard they got rid of exceptional stats... learn something new every day.

I still use the Deities and Demigods book for the benefits of exceptional stats, which, as was mentioned above, were considered beyond normal human
maximums and were mostly just some chrome, other than a few 19's (which Demi-humans could get naturally) PC's would only get such stats by
powerful magic or using multiple wishes (hard to come by in any game i ran, wishes being a pain in the arse) and it was pretty rare, though i remember
back in the day many people rolled percentile dice for ALL their stats at 18, not just strength, as in the old DMG a wish could only raise a stat by 10%
once it was 16 or above.  Though unlike strength, there was no additional benefit to doing so, other than reducing the amount of wishes you'd need to
get your stats into the exceptional range.

Never pulled that off ever while playing the actual game, but playing Baldur's Gate (I and II) i'd always end with some stats in the 20's by the end of the
game due to abusing the machine of Lum the mad after scoring every tome in the first game... heh-heh.

3.0 started using "Modifiers" which is basically a value equal to (Stat-10) / 2. So when you were calculating how much damage you added to your axe swing, you'd add your Strength Modifier (18 would be a +4). It worked really well in some scenarios.

You could keep increasing your stats indefinitely, but there were no special bonuses for having high stats like how in 2nd you could have minor regeneration for having high Constitution. Same with resistance to Illusions and such.

AD&D was like a really great computer program that was patched countless times.  Gygax kept tacking on rule after rule.  Now there was some great shit in the 1eDMG, don't get me wrong, but Holmes and Moldvay hit the nail on the head with their range of stat bonuses.  I also liked the 10-second combat rounds and we used those in AD&D, along with a ton of other hiuse rules like piecemeal armor, hit location, a critical hit/fumble chart for different thoes of weapons.  Our group had a seperate binder full of house rules which had almost as many pages as the DMG.  All gleaned from Dragon Magazine articles. So many rules.... But fun times!

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on November 07, 2021, 10:58:54 PM
AD&D was like a really great computer program that was patched countless times.  Gygax kept tacking on rule after rule.  Now there was some great shit in the 1eDMG, don't get me wrong, but Holmes and Moldvay hit the nail on the head with their range of stat bonuses.  I also liked the 10-second combat rounds and we used those in AD&D, along with a ton of other hiuse rules like piecemeal armor, hit location, a critical hit/fumble chart for different thoes of weapons.  Our group had a seperate binder full of house rules which had almost as many pages as the DMG.  All gleaned from Dragon Magazine articles. So many rules.... But fun times!

That's a good analogy... as that's exactly what it was like, and many of the rules contradicted one another as well, to add to the delightful ambiguity.  I learned to play with Holmes and Moldvay and they've got a charm all their own, and they definately handled combat rounds better - 10 second rounds DID make a lot more sense.  It had a different feel to it as well, so b/x was always a separate campaign.  But i grafted plenty of what i liked from it onto
my old AD&D house rules (which i WISH i'd written down as it'd be helpful to remember them now, my DM skills are a touch rusty after years of wargaming)

Still using my old dragon magazine issues for my rules... and now i'm curious about the companion/master set rules for high level stats if only i could
find whatever box they're in to look it up. 

Quote from: Sanson on November 07, 2021, 11:25:46 PM
... and now i'm curious about the companion/master set rules for high level stats if only i could
find whatever box they're in to look it up.

Immortals Set.