Quote from: Horace on March 02, 2025, 01:30:14 PM

Quote from: Venka on March 02, 2025, 12:26:55 PMAD&D 1e removes the penalty for female human strength

It doesn't. Strength Table I on p. 9 of the PHB states that 18/50 is the "Maximum strength possible for a female human or male gnome character."

That's a limit, not a penalty- that stuck around through AD&D 1e and was removed in AD&D 2e (which I stated on the next sentence, but I guess you wanted to "actually" me even though I was correct). 


Here's the line from the AD&D 1e PHB: 

QuoteYou will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma, no ponderous combat systems for greater "realism", there isn't a hint of a spell point system whose record keeping would warm the heart of a monomaniacal statistics lover, or anything else of the sort.

There's multiple places of commentary which make it clear that the PHB is essentially a work of gathering information into one place and also sort of like patch notes.

Anyway, one of those things that it brings up is "no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength"- obviously, the limit in the book (18/50) is not considered baseless nor arbitrary.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on March 02, 2025, 01:55:30 PMPerhaps reacting to Len Lakofka's ill-conceived "Women in D&D" rules in The Dragon #3: "Only as fighters are women clearly behind men in all cases ... Strength 18 [sic] sided die and 1 six sided die." Since the article goes on to say "Any woman scoring 13 or 14 in strength may add one to her constitution score," I suspect it's supposed to say "1 8-sided die"--and maybe does; the DRAGON Archive I'm using has numerous scanning errors.

Now this absolutely could be something that Gygax was referring to when he called it out.  Bonus: I'd never seen this before, so you have 1000% made my night. 

QuoteI suspect it's supposed to say "1 8-sided die"

That is exactly what it says.  Each die is specified first in quantity and then in type.  Look at how the other scores are written.
"Wisdom, Intelligence, Dexterity and Constitution all use 3 6 sided dice."
"Instead of Charisma BEAUTY is rated on 2 20 sided dice numbered 1-
10 (so the range is 2-20, not 2-40."

So this woman section has human females with a triangular distribution strength, ranging from 2 to 14, with an average of 8.  I don't know how fair it is to call this official, given that it's a set of rules in Dragon magazine, and there could well be something else that had some other way of assigning strength scores to female humans, but suffice it to say, AD&D 1e's limit of 18/50 is very generous compared to this.

Bonus funny stuff: the level-based titles in here are great.  The magic-user table is totally on par with the one for men, but the thief titles, oh man.  Check this out:
Level 1: Wench
Level 2: Hag
Level 3: Jade
Level 4: Succubus
Level 5: Adventuress
Level 6: Soothsayer
Level 7: Gypsy
Level 8: Sibyl

This is quite the ride for our thiefess, title-wise!

The article is nowhere near done with its gifts, featuring this image (Dragon Magazine 3, page 7, for when this image host inevitably disappears):


Ok anyway, on to the rest of the thread!

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 02, 2025, 05:38:05 PM- Removing ability score penalties
Like flipping to ascending AC, just having adding to a base number is an easier mechanical expression.

No, a penalty is a much bigger deal.  First, the game is generally balanced around numbers that aren't penalized or given a bonus, so being given a penalty often hurts you more than being given a bonus.  Second, if a human can start with a Dex of 18, and Elf 20, and a Dwarf 16, that's a very large difference between dwarf and elf.  Penalties do a lot more to shut you out of a class than a bonus does to shut out everyone without that bonus.  Penalties also really suck for point buy, because you normally can't buy very high, and buying as high as you can has much more cost.  In games where you have a -2 penalty to intelligence, being a wizard is going to be mechanically punishing, and that's such a significant thing that if you make that choice, it's in some way because of that penalty in most cases.

Walking away from penalties is a very large step, mechanically.  It was probably done for mechanical reasons initially, but by the time they were removing it from orcs (not normally a player race in 5e) it was being done politically.  Making elves not have a Con penalty and such was almost assuredly done just to make it easier to roll or point buy characters in 5e, especially given the way that 5e "ability score increases" work.

I think part of it is timing.  WotC is trying to move D&D to a live service subscription model with microtransactions at the same time that many consumers are soundly rejecting that model.  A lot of people are just fed up with this sort of thing. 

Short of rampant cheating, who ever rolled 18/00 for character generation, anyways?  The only realistic way for most players to get that would be to beeline for a belt of giant strength, which I think would get anyone to 18/00 regardless of sex or race anyways.  It's basically a complete non-issue, as the odds of a given character rolling an 18 to begin with, much less over 50 on a subsequent percentile die, are slim at best.

Quote from: Valatar on March 03, 2025, 12:15:49 AMShort of rampant cheating, who ever rolled 18/00 for character generation, anyways?

Hold on, why jump all the way to 18/00?  The values in AD&D 1e for 18 and 18 / exceptional strength are (just hit and damage here):
18: +1 to hit, +2 to damage
18/01 to 18/50: +1 to hit, +3 to damage (this is the maximum for a female human or gnome male)
18/51 to 18/75: +2 to hit, +3 to damage
18/76 to 18/90: +2 to hit, +4 to damage
18/91 to 18/99: +2 to hit, +5 to damage
18/00: +3 to hit, +6 to damage

If you use method I, over 9% of characters have an 18 to put where they want.  That means that around 0.1% of characters who choose to put it into strength (a great use for an 18) will have that 18/00, but a full 4.5%+ will have something higher than the human female maximum strength. 

So while it's not a super rare thing to come up, rolling 18/51 or higher is something that most tables will expect to see over a few games- and if your character gets it, you probably want to play a man, not a woman, because of the max (in many cases of course, a DM would simply waive that limit, but the limit is at least present to be waived).

But wait, we aren't done with easier ways to get an 18/51 through 18/99- you can also, of course...
drumroll....
Roll a 17, then make a half orc, who has a +1 and gets percentile rolls.  It's true, he can't be 18/00 (his limit is 18/99), but that's still really strong!  The odds of seeing at least one 17 on those six 4d6-drop-lowest rolls are a bit over 30%.  So most tables using Method I have a good chance of having at least one character that can be into percentile strength.

Quote from: Valatar on March 03, 2025, 12:15:49 AMShort of rampant cheating, who ever rolled 18/00 for character generation, anyways?  The only realistic way for most players to get that would be to beeline for a belt of giant strength, which I think would get anyone to 18/00 regardless of sex or race anyways.  It's basically a complete non-issue, as the odds of a given character rolling an 18 to begin with, much less over 50 on a subsequent percentile die, are slim at best.

I saw it happen twice, in front of the entire table.  However, that's because of the sheer volume of characters we were producing at the time in my "Killer GM" phase. 

It wasn't uncommon for us to go through 5 or 6 parties in one weekend of almost non-stop gaming (2-4 hours sleep a night, plus meals, everything else was game time).  That's often 6 or 7 players, too, using 4d6 drop lowest, arrange to suit.  I don't recall the 18/00 fighters lasting much longer than any of the others, especially since neither have them had a particularly high Con.  I do remember the players working extra hard to keep them alive.

There's a reason AL doesn't let you roll for stats.

Quote from: Man at Arms on February 28, 2025, 09:08:11 PMWorse than nothing at all?

So they didn't even recover the money they invested into the creation and marketing of the new edition, that nobody asked for?

I don't know that for sure, it's possible they're into profit, but if so it appears to be far less than they were doing before. Considering the costs of making the new edition, they might have been better off just making some alternate covers or something like that for 2014 edition.

Quote from: HappyDaze on February 28, 2025, 11:56:39 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on February 28, 2025, 10:03:30 PM4E was the woke edition of D&D and it failed hard.

How was 4e woke?

I didn't care for 4e because of how it played with my group, but our complaint wasn't that it was "woke" in any way.

Yeah, I don't think 4e was particularly woke. It was just horrible design for what was supposed to be a core mainstream product, that alienated two-thirds of its potential player base.

Quote from: yosemitemike on March 03, 2025, 12:05:14 AMI think part of it is timing.  WotC is trying to move D&D to a live service subscription model with microtransactions at the same time that many consumers are soundly rejecting that model.  A lot of people are just fed up with this sort of thing. 

Never mind the fact that their intended subscription service (the VTT) is not up and running, and is now closing on a year overdue.

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 05, 2025, 10:22:40 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on March 03, 2025, 12:05:14 AMI think part of it is timing.  WotC is trying to move D&D to a live service subscription model with microtransactions at the same time that many consumers are soundly rejecting that model.  A lot of people are just fed up with this sort of thing. 

Never mind the fact that their intended subscription service (the VTT) is not up and running, and is now closing on a year overdue.

Is this just a character builder for now then?   I saw mentions on my youtube feed that it was open to the public but haven't tried it myself.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1919-what-is-sigil-d-ds-new-immersive-3d-vtt#how-do-i-start-using-sigil

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 05, 2025, 10:22:40 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on March 03, 2025, 12:05:14 AMI think part of it is timing.  WotC is trying to move D&D to a live service subscription model with microtransactions at the same time that many consumers are soundly rejecting that model.  A lot of people are just fed up with this sort of thing. 

Never mind the fact that their intended subscription service (the VTT) is not up and running, and is now closing on a year overdue.

So, basically exactly what happened with the 4E digital tools.

Color me surprised.

What's today's equivalent to Silverlight c. 2010? Whatever it is THAT will be what they make whatever vestigal bits run on... because past performance by WotC IS indicative of future results.

Crawford is probably excited to finally be in charge, but puzzled as to why they aren't making more money. 

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 05, 2025, 10:18:45 AMConsidering the costs of making the new edition, they might have been better off just making some alternate covers or something like that for 2014 edition.

IMO, this is what they should have done. If they wanted to commission new interior art and do a new layout, that would have been fine too. They would have sold a lot of books, and the player-base wouldn't be divided like it is now.

All 5.5E really did was create a need for a 6th Edition to clean the slate.

Quote from: Horace on March 05, 2025, 06:57:57 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 05, 2025, 10:18:45 AMConsidering the costs of making the new edition, they might have been better off just making some alternate covers or something like that for 2014 edition.

IMO, this is what they should have done. If they wanted to commission new interior art and do a new layout, that would have been fine too. They would have sold a lot of books, and the player-base wouldn't be divided like it is now.

All 5.5E really did was create a need for a 6th Edition to clean the slate.

We'll see in two years that this was the goal all the time.

Quote from: JasperAK on March 05, 2025, 07:34:19 PM

Quote from: Horace on March 05, 2025, 06:57:57 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on March 05, 2025, 10:18:45 AMConsidering the costs of making the new edition, they might have been better off just making some alternate covers or something like that for 2014 edition.

IMO, this is what they should have done. If they wanted to commission new interior art and do a new layout, that would have been fine too. They would have sold a lot of books, and the player-base wouldn't be divided like it is now.

All 5.5E really did was create a need for a 6th Edition to clean the slate.

We'll see in two years that this was the goal all the time.

An unfortunate reality is that sometimes a flawed product makes more money. From what I understand, New Coke was a failure on its own, but it ended up giving Coke more marketing and more market share once they reverted to Coke Classic.

The reality of the tabletop RPG market is that putting out a great product that people like for many years means that there are no sales. DM-only products like adventures have much smaller profit margins, and more settings just fractures the marketplace further. The only model that has worked for RPG companies is the edition treadmill.


In general on this thread, I don't really know RPG marketing and I don't have strong opinions on what will work. I'm not an industry insider and I know that my personal tastes aren't the most popular out there - I like a lot of niche RPGs. From what I do know, I don't think that much of WotC - but I'm also really skeptical about a lot of the marketing ideas here, like just putting out books with alternate covers. Of people out there, I'd be more inclined to listen to people who have run multi-million-dollar Kickstarter campaigns or other major mainstream efforts.

The edition treadmill and the network effect have been dominant reality in the RPG market for decades. I'm not saying there can't be a better way to work, but I'd be skeptical until the results were shown.