one of my campaigns had a new player show up so we gave him a pretty beefy warrior with good stats and an 18/90something str (wtf was with % str anyway) who later switched to magic user, he didn’t get mad warrior skills with the daggers but he picked up some weighted daggers to get the str bonus on thrown weapons, basterd was more dangerous throwing daggers for the first couple levels than he was with spells.
such a strange game.
Even without the percentile strength, he could have gotten a similar effect by using all of his spell slots on the Strength spell. The spell just gives a buff directly to the base score, ignoring percentile strength… but because all of the tables were designed with percentile strength in mind, there’s a huge jump from 18 to 19. See also Gauntlets of Ogre Power. And the Girdle of Giant Strength is even worse, since it doesn’t matter what your original strength score was: You could have started with a 3, and still smash face.
Untrue. Just checked my 1st Ed PH to be sure, but the Strength spell gives you 10% increments once you’re past 18, you don’t go from 18 directly to 19.
Quite true. Note however that these items don’t work for straight MUs so the DM would be within his rights to argue that a dual-class F to MU who had not yet overtaken his fighter level would count as pure MU for these items and the spell above, and couldn’t get the full effect from either unless he was willing to forego all experience from the current adventure.
Mainly to give some fighters an extra edge over the 18-strength clerics and thieves. Secondarily to give the feminists something to whine about.