Quote from: Windjammer;500534But then, real world history features great names like that - Pippin the Short One, Philip the Handsome, Joanna the Insane, to name but three.

I don't think these are quite as fourth-wall-y although Ethelred the Unre(a)d(y) comes close (even though it wouldn't have been used while he was alive).

Sure there are great ones, not just Peter/Alexander/Charles but prizes such as:

Pedro the Cruel
Ivan the Terrible
Charles the Fat
Charles the Bald
Louis the Pious (or better in French, Louis le Débonnaire, WTF did he go tapping around in top hat & tails?)

Can't really beat Charles Martel, though.

I really think both methods are good - I like sometimes playing with what Fortune gives me, and making a character concept to fit those stats, but I also sometimes like to make stats to fit my character concept.

(Incidentally, my wife hates playing magic-uses; I have seen her straight up roll a character that was made for magic-using and she's made it into a fighter: "Str: 10, Int: 17, Wis: 15, Dex: 08, Con: 10, Cha: 4.  Fighter it is then.")

Quote from: thedungeondelver;500951(Incidentally, my wife hates playing magic-uses; I have seen her straight up roll a character that was made for magic-using and she's made it into a fighter: "Str: 10, Int: 17, Wis: 15, Dex: 08, Con: 10, Cha: 4.  Fighter it is then.")

I once played a 10 Int wizard on point buy.

I won't say on whom I based it .

Quote from: thedungeondelver;500951(Incidentally, my wife hates playing magic-uses; I have seen her straight up roll a character that was made for magic-using and she's made it into a fighter: "Str: 10, Int: 17, Wis: 15, Dex: 08, Con: 10, Cha: 4.  Fighter it is then.")

My wife found out that she does not like magic-using classes because she just doesn't like to have all sorts of spells to deal with in the rules. She wants to play her characters and just "do" stuff. The fighter she played allowed her to do just that. Before, she tried playing monks, bards... I knew she'd love a fighter. That was a revelation to her.

But aren't fighters slaves to the arcane overlords in those terrible underpowered OD&D?

Ugh, I must get the stupid out of my system. All this talk about OD&D really makes me itch to just run a game in it.

Quote from: Rincewind1;500961But aren't fighters slaves to the arcane overlords in those terrible underpowered OD&D?

That is total bollocks in actual play. You know how long it takes to reach 5th level and fireball, assuming you die several times, you play back and forth between different characters (not all of them fighters, but some MUs too!), which in fact is the standard mode of play of this game? Months. And afterwards, trust me, Wizards still DO run out of spells, or have the wrong ones selected for the adventures, or do not have this or that magic item with them.

In fact, at 1st level, you'd better have fighters first. Then a cleric. And then, maybe, magic users. Not to mention, the fact that not every single can-do is codified by the rules means that fighters and other characters can actually do a damn lot of stuff in the game without being artificially limited by metagame thinking bullshit. You know, what we called bad fucking gaming from whiners in the past.

Dude. All this shit is just spherical cows bullshit coming from BNGs who've never actually played the game in the first place and think that the likes of Andy Collins and Skip Williams are the be all end all of D&D gaming. I mean. Come on. Seriously. These guys are losers.

Oh I know Benoist, I was joking, sorry.

I actually find DnD's magic system a bit too "bland" and actually not powerful enough for the type of fantasy I favour the most - Black Company's one of my favourite series, and though I am not finished with Malazan, it shapes up to take it's place. Hence why I wrote a proposal on alternative magic system (and almost actually finished the rules!) here, and will test it maybe in my Warhammer campaign.

Yeah, I knew you knew. That's the internet medium for you. If we had that conversation face to face, it would have been crystal clear I wasn't singling you out.

Quote from: Benoist;500971Yeah, I knew you knew. That's the internet medium for you. If we had that conversation face to face, it would have been crystal clear I wasn't singling you out.

I know, heh (this is turning into a deadly spiral of knowledge). Have a late - time laugh from that not so great joke on me, then . Anyways, going to get my DungeonCrawl on tomorrow, pal's hosting a classing DnD 3e game. It's been ages since I played and not GMed.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;500941Are the people who rail about die-rolling a D&D character ignorant of the fact that all the way back to OD&D there was a "point buy" system whereby you could swap points to and from stats at different ratios?  Or that AD&D offered no less than five ways to dice up a character, one of which literally borders on "pick the stats you like best, use those"?

That's actually a mis-reading of the OD&D rulebooks. Technically, you could swap points out but they would only apply for the purposes of gaining XP.

Or, to put it another way, the way OD&D is written your "prime requisite" is a separate score that starts equal to the class' prime requisite ability score. You could then reduce certain other abilities in order to increase your prime requisite -- but this would not affect the original ability score; just the prime requisite.

More info.

Does this system actually survive into AD&D in any form? It's been awhile since I read those books cover-to-cover, and glancing through now I don't see it anywhere.

Classic D&D explicitly allows you to drop scores to increase others.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;501017That's actually a mis-reading of the OD&D rulebooks. Technically, you could swap points out but they would only apply for the purposes of gaining XP.

[....]

More info.

That's just YOUR INTERPRETATION of the the rules as you clearly state in the the article linked. I don't know of any group that interpreted the rules that way back when OD&D was the only game in town. It's certainly okay to interpret the OD&D guidelines that way, but it in my experience, it certainly is not the way most people I knew or knew of interpreted the rules back then.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;501017Does this system actually survive into AD&D in any form? It's been awhile since I read those books cover-to-cover, and glancing through now I don't see it anywhere.

I forgot to answer this question: No, but the 3d6 in order method did not really survive into AD&D either. The following four methods of rolling attribute were suggested in the 1e DMG on page 11:

QuoteMethod I

All scores are recorded and arranged in the order the player desires. 4d6 are rolled, and the lowest die (or one of the lower) is discarded.

Method II:

All scores are recorded and arranged as in Method I. 3d6 are rolled 12 times and the highest 6 scores are retained.

Method III:

Scores rolled are according to each ability category, in order, STRENGTH, INTELLIGENCE, WISDOM, DEXTERITY, CONSTITUTION, CHARISMA. 3d6 are rolled 6 times for each ability, and the highest score in each category is retained for that category.

Method IV:

3d6 are rolled sufficient times to generate the 6 ability scores, in order, for 12 characters, The player then selects the single set of scores which he or she finds most desirable and these scores are noted on the character record sheet.

Quote from: RandallS;501027I forgot to answer this question: No, but the 3d6 in order method did not really survive into AD&D either. The following four methods of rolling attribute were suggested in the 1e DMG on page 11:

Method V, in Unearthed Arcana is an even more radical departure.  It's got you rolling handfuls of d6 and picking the best dice to build characters (IIRC it's for humans only though).  Drow* and Half-Ogre character stats are also figured differently.

*=for purposes of generating NPCs, I reckon...never had 'em as PCs...though I have heard of some pesky jerk who carried a couple of letter openers around...