Just read a post on Dragonsfoot that posited characters with below average stats should be awarded extra XP for survival. Never thought about that before, but I sort of like idea. Stat pluses are their own reward. And maybe receiving compensation for playing, say, your low DEX fighter incentivizes it a little (or makes the stat seem less of a problem),

So how about a % bonus for low Stats? Assuming the campaign is typical old school, with the typical lethality, where would the XP bonuses be, and how much should they be?  Would all abilities count in the %? Or would it be based on playing a character lower in their prime stats?  What are your suggestions?

Personally I don't see any reason for any bonuses due to stats. Why? What's the logic behind rewarding you for already having advantages? I could maybe see giving a bonus for low stats, but my position is roll your scores, play that guy, get your XP from play, no bonuses for lucky or unlucky rolls.

Id rather have no bonuses or penalties in either direction. We rarely played BX with the high stat XP bonus unless the character was playing solo.

Quote from: Matt;826722Personally I don't see any reason for any bonuses due to stats. Why? What's the logic behind rewarding you for already having advantages?

In the earliest editions of D&D, an XP bonus was the advantage provided by high stats.  They gave no, or nearly-no (+1 if you have 16-17 or better, IIRC), direct bonuses.  You just leveled faster and that was pretty much the only mechanical effect of high stats.

Then later editions came along and got to be more generous with giving out direct bonuses on die rolls for having high stats.  The XP bonus was, I suspect, mostly just grandfathered in as "the way it's always been done".

We play BFRPG, and already have a houserule regarding XP's--the amount needed to level is reduced by 10% if you play a human (that's our incentive). We also have 3 d6's handed out each session that can be used at any time to grant a bonus to any roll. For every dice not used in a session, the entire group gets a 1% bonus to earned XP's (with 4 players, that's +12%, if no one burns a die).  We don't use bonuses from high prime stats, but I could see us giving some minor % bonuses for low stats, especially since we have a pair of players who I'm pretty sure used 4d6 drop the lowest in chargen instead of 3d6, as I had asked (it's not a huge deal, but it is irksome--I think one of them truly doesn't believe you can play without bonuses).

Quote from: Matt;826722Personally I don't see any reason for any bonuses due to stats. Why? What's the logic behind rewarding you for already having advantages?

You learn more quickly.

Smart people do better at uni. Agile people do better at gymnastics. Etc.

Them's the breaks.

There's an important detail to keep in mind: in old-school play, particularly at lower levels, you're likely to cycle through several characters in quick succession.  If you keep that in mind, rewarding the fortune of having high stats makes sense, because the characters are still vulnerable regardless. It makes more sense, at least, than if you're thinking in terms of more new-school games where the default assumption is that you're very likely to keep playing a single character throughout a campaign barring some huge disaster.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;827032You learn more quickly.

Smart people do better at uni. Agile people do better at gymnastics. Etc.

Them's the breaks.

Also a couple of fallacies.