cowleyc says:
Carabas says:
I submitted my character. I still need to do her equipment, but its 1 am, so that'll have to wait.
I see that you have 19 Str from that 18+1. The way I understand it was that the you would roll for exceptional strength, and the bonus would pop you into the next category. Which is why it says you have a max 18 Str but 19 Con.
This isn't a hill I'm trying to die on, just thought I'd see what other folks have to say.
So... I thought a bit about it and read up a bit on it. Personally, I don't really care. This is just how we've always done it. If you want to rule this another way, I don't have any issues with that.
But here are three reasons why I think the way we did it is correct.
It entire issue seems to be an artefact of there not being a race with the STR bonus in the PHB, and the game later never establishing a ruling for this, and later writers in various supplements just made it up as they went along, in contradiction of each other.
Because various other later races, like the Sylvan Elf from the Complete Book Of Elves do get the max 19 Strength.
The Complete Book Of Humanoids also has the same table with the max 18 strength, but also gives a Half-Orc Fighters with strength 19 or higher a boost on their level cap.
So it doesn't seem like anybody writing for TSR took those ability caps seriously.
Finally, having my character merely jump to the next percentile increment penalises her for being a Fighter, because if she'd have been a Cleric with 18 strength (which is something I'd considered as an option), all that percentile strength stuff wouldn't even apply because that's a Fighter-only thing, and she'd just go 18+1=19.
