Seriously, Have We Learned Nothing?

Raising Attributes as Characters Level.

In some games that I have played over the years, PC’s gain points to raise their basic attributes every so often. This has never sat well with me, even as a player. Raising an already high attribute doesn’t really show that a character has grown, as was the intention I suppose. Merely it comes off as a way to make your character even more powerful and munchkin. As said characters are going to need it because all of the monsters just got extra HP and crap too.

So one of my most common house rules is to allow characters to improve attributes as they level, but as you might have guessed, in the opposite manner. Each time a character levels the player increases that characters lowest attribute by one point. If the character has two or more attributes that suck equally, the player gets to choose which one goes up a point. This keeps players from maxing out stats and at the same time keeps them from playing a 10th level cleric with a 5 Intelligence. Who after gaining 10 levels from adventuring is just as stupid as they were the day they started. 

Rolling Attributes in Moldvay Basic

 A lot of people believe that 3d6 in order, a.k.a. the Iron Man method of attribute rolling is the standard method in Moldvay basic. Well, it’s not. It’s the Iron Man method followed by a limited point swap method. Which makes a difference, because you can raise and lower the first three attributes in order to raise the prime requisite score for your class.

Still this can be a bit limiting, or so my players often tell me, but switching to roll 4d6 drop the lowest and arrange to taste….just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Let’s be honest, it’s for the weak. The weak player I mean, because if you roll like that, none of their characters are going to be weak in anything.

So how do you bend the system so that it doesn’t get all munchkin but at the same time makes it so that your players don’t keep rolling “hopeless” characters?

Method 1

Roll 2d6+4 for each attribute in order. I have done this plenty of times and it works fine. Characters don’t have any score lower than 6, but they also have the tradeoff that they won’t have any attributes higher than 16. Due to this upper limitation many players don’t care for this method. After many years of method 1, I finally came up with method 2. Which, strangely enough players seem to like better.

Method 2

Roll 3d6 in order. Any 1 rolled is switched to a 2. Using this simple dice trick results in a lower limit of 6 in an attribute, while maintaining the upper limit achievable at an 18.