Sometimes, I like to post on this blog in a fashion that is more along the lines of thinking-out-loud than having a coherent message or purpose. This is one of those occasions.
You may recall that long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, The Simpsons was funny, and nobody had yet heard of Baby Shark, there was a thing called d20 Modern. It was not, I think, a great success - I played in a few games of it, but the marriage of D&D mechanics and modern/cyberpunk/superhero aesthetic didn't quite work. Hit points, which are ok in the context of a fantasy game, feel odd in a setting with guns, and I thought the way it handled wealth was plainly and simply loathsome badwrongfun. It certainly felt like a step backwards from, say, Cyberpunk 2020, which itself at that point was already very old and outmoded.
But there was something that was interesting in the system, which was the idea of character class deriving directly from attributes. Those who played the game more extensively than me may remember this better, but the system was predicated on the existence not of fighters, thieves, or what have you, but Strong heroes, Intelligent heroes, Wise heroes, Charismatic heroes, and so on. The idea here I think was that it was less hide-bound. Instead of being tied to particular roles (a hit man, a scientist, a burglar, or whatever) you had freer rein: in a game set in the modern developed world, as an Intelligent hero you could be a scientist, or a computer programmer, or a businessperson, or even a hit-man for that matter depending on how you shaped the character; as a Tough hero you could be an MMA fighter, an endurance runner, or a scuba diver; etc. By defining roles very broadly, you gave the players room to get creative.
I am not sure if this would have any usefulness being directly translated into old school D&D. 'Fighter', 'Magic-User', 'Cleric', etc., are already loose enough concepts; D&D players have no problem with the idea that a 'Cleric' could look like a Knight Templar, Van Helsing, a Tengri shaman or a Zulu witch doctor and still be mechanically the same, or that a 'Fighter' could be a viking, samurai, conquistador or Sioux warrior or something else entirely. However, there is something interesting about making attributes more salient and more choice-bearing than simply being prime requisites that define what class you are.
Consider: imagine that instead of just picking a class (Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, Dwarf, etc.) players also picked a prime requisite that had a mechanical consequence. So instead of just being a Fighter, you would be a Strong Fighter, an Intelligent Fighter, a Quick Fighter, and so on; instead of just being a Dwarf, you would be a Charismatic Dwarf, a Wise Dwarf, a Tough Dwarf; instead of just being a Magic-User you would be a Quick one or a Tough one; you get the drift.
This would have an aesthetic impact, obviously, and would help add flavour to a character, even setting aside mechanical considerations. What does a Quick Dwarf look like? What about a Wise Fighter, or a Tough Elf? But the option to assign a highest score to a suboptimal attribute exists already, and most players already tend to visualise their PCs in accordance with whatever their stats are. The question is whether it coul be made to have an impact on the actual game itself without doing too much violence to the way old school D&D is played.
One way of doing this might just be to free up prime requisites and separate them from class, so that any class could be given any prime requisite. Consider: you roll up a character, Simon the Sorcerer, and you parcel out his attributes as follows:
STR 9, INT 13, WIS 8, DEX 11, CHA 6, CON 16
You want him to be a Magic-User, but his highest stat is CON, so you make him a Tough Magic-User with CON as his prime requisite. Because his prime requisite is 16, he gets the 5% XP bonus (or whatever it is for the ruleset you are using). He also gets the relevant bonus to his hit points each time he levels up. Now, would this affect how he is played? Would you, consciously or subconsciously, steer him towards situations in which having a higher CON mattered? At the margins, it might make you less risk-averse than you would be playing a 'regular' Magic-User?
Consider: you roll up a different character. Pippy Longstockings, and you parcel out her attributes as:
STR 10, INT 9, WIS 17, DEX 12, CHA 10, CON 7
You decide she is going to be a Wise Thief. She, again, gets the XP bonus from a high attribute, and also perhaps magical resistance and better saving throws depending on the ruleset. Whether this would affect how she is played I am not sure - it probably would change how you would evisage her during play, which may itself have a certain impact on things.
I'm not sure whether this tweak would make a huge amount of difference to the price of tea in China. You may have your own views. But it certainly would at least add some variety. I did warn you I was thinking out loud. What did you want, coherence?
