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stevekensonIt occurs to me that ability scores in D&D are largely redundant, and have been almost since the beginning of the game.
In OD&D, abilities served something of a purpose: they were a sort of “natural selection” in that you rolled them randomly (much like an accident of birth) and they helped to shape the choices you made about your character. A high-Strength, low-Intelligence character was clearly destined for a career as a Fighter, not a Magic-User, for example. This made ability score requirements (as opposed to mere bonuses for high Prime Requisites) more significant: if being a Paladin required you to randomly roll a 17 Charisma, along with the Paladin’s other requirements, or being a Ranger required a broad number of above-average abilities, then those characters would be correspondingly rare in the game; playing one was a bit like winning a lottery.
In the evolution of D&D, player choice has displaced random determination of abilities, starting with being able to arrange rolled scores in any order (so you can put your high score in the ability important to your desired class), then variants like 4d6 and drop the lowest die, multiple sets, and various other mulligans designed to ensure nobody is stuck with a character they don’t want to play. D&D 4e has eliminated the final vestiges of randomness in character generation, going with a point-buy system for ability scores and even standardized hit point progression.
This approach renders abilities largely moot: after all, does the system really need support for weak fighters, dumb wizards, clumsy rogues, and foolish clerics? Sure, such characters might exist in the world as NPC plot devices , but it’s fair to say the vast majority of player characters follow a certain mold when it comes to what Castles & Crusades calls the “Prime” of their chosen class. “Strong” and “Fighter” are virtually synonymous, as are “Smart” and “Wizard” and “Nimble” and “Thief” (sorry, “Rogue”). Indeed, C&C almost goes far enough in recognizing this fact, but not quite: they still retain ability scores and modifiers, even with their clever system of Primes.
“But what about character individuality?” some cry. A system wherein all fighters are strong and all wizards are smart means everybody is the same. Personally, I think this is more of an issue of perception than anything else, but I think it can be addressed with a combination of secondary and tiertiary traits alongside descriptors, like the “Aspects” in FATE or specialties in the forthcoming A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (SIFRP). Sure, fighters are all strong, but in what way? Big? Brawny? Savage? Forceful? Apply some modifiers encouraging players to play up their characters’ unique strengths and you get a wide range of differentiation with very little in the way of added mechanical complexity.
In OD&D, abilities served something of a purpose: they were a sort of “natural selection” in that you rolled them randomly (much like an accident of birth) and they helped to shape the choices you made about your character. A high-Strength, low-Intelligence character was clearly destined for a career as a Fighter, not a Magic-User, for example. This made ability score requirements (as opposed to mere bonuses for high Prime Requisites) more significant: if being a Paladin required you to randomly roll a 17 Charisma, along with the Paladin’s other requirements, or being a Ranger required a broad number of above-average abilities, then those characters would be correspondingly rare in the game; playing one was a bit like winning a lottery.
In the evolution of D&D, player choice has displaced random determination of abilities, starting with being able to arrange rolled scores in any order (so you can put your high score in the ability important to your desired class), then variants like 4d6 and drop the lowest die, multiple sets, and various other mulligans designed to ensure nobody is stuck with a character they don’t want to play. D&D 4e has eliminated the final vestiges of randomness in character generation, going with a point-buy system for ability scores and even standardized hit point progression.
This approach renders abilities largely moot: after all, does the system really need support for weak fighters, dumb wizards, clumsy rogues, and foolish clerics? Sure, such characters might exist in the world as NPC plot devices , but it’s fair to say the vast majority of player characters follow a certain mold when it comes to what Castles & Crusades calls the “Prime” of their chosen class. “Strong” and “Fighter” are virtually synonymous, as are “Smart” and “Wizard” and “Nimble” and “Thief” (sorry, “Rogue”). Indeed, C&C almost goes far enough in recognizing this fact, but not quite: they still retain ability scores and modifiers, even with their clever system of Primes.
“But what about character individuality?” some cry. A system wherein all fighters are strong and all wizards are smart means everybody is the same. Personally, I think this is more of an issue of perception than anything else, but I think it can be addressed with a combination of secondary and tiertiary traits alongside descriptors, like the “Aspects” in FATE or specialties in the forthcoming A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (SIFRP). Sure, fighters are all strong, but in what way? Big? Brawny? Savage? Forceful? Apply some modifiers encouraging players to play up their characters’ unique strengths and you get a wide range of differentiation with very little in the way of added mechanical complexity.
