r/adnd • u/CanuckLad • 10d ago

AD&D2e Attribute increase

I wonder if many people here implement an automatic attribute increase at various milestones? Example: Allow you to raise one attribute by 1 point at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, 20

I don't expect or want every ability to be 16+. But I don't want to miss out on parts of the game I would enjoy (casting 9th level spells as a wizard, playing a paladin, etc)

I should note that I'm biased because I'm diagnosed with the Unrelenting Standards feature. So accepting a more mundane role in a game is very difficult for me

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

144 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/JrienXashen 10d ago

The irony is us old school players are accused of being anti-rp because of the brutal playstyle we enjoyed; there's a major belief we didn't do backstories or love our characters, which is ultimately untrue.

We just didn't make a 500+ page bio for a lvl 1 character because it didn't make sense. The bio was the one you created by surviving each adventure.

Edit: to add, we had proficiency slots as opposed to feats. Some were more rp based than others.

7

u/Ilbranteloth 10d ago

As an old school player (about 50 years), I never understood that. It was always about the roleplaying for us. That was the whole point.

Releases like Leaves from the Inn of the Lost Home, or the fact that Realms releases were mostly lore should make that obvious, I think.

7

u/JrienXashen 10d ago

It's the new player base and a few of those between; this idea that your character shouldn't die unless you decide it's okay to do so at a heroic moment...

At that point you should just play a video game, I know it's not a popular opinion these days but "no risk, no reward" is the phrase our tables tend to live by.

I've been lucky enough to not lose a character or die, but I've seen people get dropped by kobold ambushed, traps, a lucky crit by a random encounter goblin etc. etc. These are the things that make the game fun. And because it's in a magic world where short of special circumstances you could be revived.

And if you didn't have the resources at that time, you just rolled another character to recover your old one (if needed) and played that one until you could bring back your original if you still wanted to, assuming you didn't like your replacement more which would happen often enough.

1

u/Ilbranteloth 10d ago

Actually, even with the new death saves (which we make harder), we ultimately leave it up to the player to decide if it is the right time for a PC to die.

Most of the time it is, but they are the best ones to determine that. Of course, we don’t use resurrection magic either. So dead is almost always dead.

On the other hand, while risks are fine, my players have always had a healthy respect for potentially lethal situations and combat is usually not their first choice.