The Probable Age Of A Wishing Arch MageBriefly, here is an analysis of the age a human magic user could hope to attain in a standard Finally, I will discuss in more detail some aspects about the Wish spell in regards to its power. I still use the 1st edition rule that a Wish ages the caster 3 years. Also, a longevity potion is assumed to be pretty much top notch stuff - considering what it takes to make such things. Finally, it was decided a Wish would be powerful enough to reach into the game mechanical world, so to speak. That is, a Wish could affect the outcome of a die roll in the game. Naturally, what the mage is actually wishing for isn't to alter some "roll," but something else more in line with his character and not an out of character, player manipulation. Thus, if he Wished for maximum beneficial effectiveness of the longevity potion, he would get back 12 years but age 3 for a net gain of 9 years. However, he can't afford to risk potion reversal of the longevity and must also first Wish for the potion to succeed. This is because it was also decided that if more than one roll was needed, so too would more than one Wish be required. And of course, the standard longevity potions will fail if one rolls 1d100 and gets less than or equal to the number of previous longevity potions consumed, thus restoring all the age all previous potions had erased. So using 2 Wishes, the mage has aged 6 years and got back 12 for a net gain of 6 years each time the mage does this. Since it is impossible to roll above a hundred - and you must roll above the number of longevity potions you have consumed in the past - he can do this trick at best one hundred times. This will net the magic user 600 years - assuming he can even make it to arch mage status to begin with. Naturally, a really smart mage - or one who somehow had inside knowledge of such things - might realize that only the Wish for the potion to succeed and not fail would be required, and the Wish to maximize effectiveness could be left alone. The reason for this is simple. The average roll, over many rolls, on a d12 will be 6.5. Thus, using Wishes to make it 12 but losing another three years will only gain 6 years instead of an average of 6.5 years for the attempt. This will add only another 50 years after 100 such attempts, but your GM may rule the mage has no inside knowledge that longevity potions are based on d12's and therefore may not allow the PC to mini max in that fashion. Naturally, before making such a high-level, he will have to rely on luck and could easily do this - conservatively - about 10 times before making it to arch mage status - and therefore, not lose 30 years to Wishes since he initially relied on luck. And, of course, he will probably live, naturally to about 100 years. So, in the final analysis, 100 + 30 + 600 = 730, and giving a bit more lee way for conservative error, a human magic user may be expected to live to the ripe old age of 750 years. Not bad. If nonstandard magic can be found, perhaps even further, but I'd kind of like to think it isn't easy to come by so it doesn't happen often enough to bother considering. Also, the suggestion a mage could Wish to be younger may work, but under conventional wisdom, they would get back less than the 3 years they spent on the Wish, so this is futile. Still, most magic users a). won't achieve arch mage status, b). won't be able to find 100 longevity potions, or c). may tire of life long before then and welcome death. Being a deity, a Lich, a Vampire, or of a race like the elves may circumnavigate that last problem, but then deities, Liches, Vampires, or elves don't have to worry about such things, and I'm not talking about them anyway. Also, in case I haven't mentioned it, a Wish ages a human 3 years under first edition rules, but if an elf somehow manages to obtain that level - as they now can under second edition rules - a Wish actually ages the caster about 3% of their normal life span. That would be about 30 years for an elf, assuming they live about 10 times longer than humans or to about 1000 years or so. This helps balance the game again and makes perfect sense, so it has been adopted as standard in my world - and hopefully yours, too. Finally, as this is a theoretical application, one might expect it to be possible that an arch mage is still around who saw the beginning of the Alodarian Empire about 750 years ago. This simply isn't so - unless you count gods or Tranu or mages who haven't live that long but were subject to time-stops or temporal imprisonment. The oldest living NPC human arch mage on the planet is the Arch Mage Quality, an ancient mage who lives in the Crystal Mountain Range on a continent I've yet to see a PC on. He does, however, occasionally visit Nahecha for reasons of his own. Quality is nearly 600 years old. The Tapering Off Of Awarded Experience PointsOne may come to believe Quality must be of fantastic level, since he is 600 years old, but I think not. Oh, to be sure, he may be approaching 30th level for all I know, and that's fantastic in many people's eyes, but that's actually pretty bad for 600 years, isn't it? You see, when you consider your typical PC - under the assumption one plays maybe 6 hours a week or so, or maybe 18 to 20 hours a month - they may be involved in a game for just a real world year or so - perhaps only 2 or 3 game years - while they increase from 1st to 11th level - unless it is a munchkin or Monty Haul campaign, but I'm discussing what are generally believed to be more realistic campaigns. Thus, every year of play a PC might accumulate enough experience points to go up another level. This is because 375,000 xp is required to get to 11th level or so, and after that, a similar amount is required to advance each level. This is an approximation, so don't bother checking the figures; it is close enough for this discussion. From this we see that maybe every year of real world play could bring a mage up another level, thus taking 7 years of real world play and maybe only 7 to 21 years of game world play to achieve arch mage status. The above estimation, of course, assumes the more powerful mage would continue to accumulate experience at the same rate. This seems unlikely to me since they will have more spells, more powerful spells, and the freedom to go practically anywhere they will. With a no error teleport or two, a stone skin, and a few other rather nice spells, a 14th level mage can begin to realistically adventure alone if they so choose. Their defense will usually prove adequate for them to teleport home should the odds suddenly look unpromising. Next, we consider their magic items and contingency spells. They have either found some damn nifty stuff in the way of magic items by this time or will begin making it. And with certain contingency spells, this makes it virtually impossible for a random encounter to kill a mage. About the only realistic way such a mage will die now is if a concerted effort is made by a group of adventurers who are almost as powerful as the mage is, and even then, they almost need to get surprise on the mage to seal the deal. All of this makes it all very unlikely mages of 16th level or higher will die on a fluke since they are too damn good at running away when they need to be. Naturally, one may say if the mage is stupid someone may get the better of them, but I find the suggestion a stupid mage can achieve 16th level or higher to begin with to be laughable. Stupid mages not only will probably die before then, but they'll probably end up killing themselves due to a poor use of spells. One common example is the Fireball spell in quarters that are too confining for the 33,000 cubic feet of the fireball, but there are others. I guess another common one would be playing around with demonic or diabolic forces and losing control. Still, the fate of the stupid mage is not what I am talking about here. And, considering a mage's power and rapid movement, they will likely gain experience points at a much greater rate than before, thus achieving levels faster and faster as they approach arch mage status. This mean, realistically speaking, that a human could actually go from 1st level to arch mage status in 5 years of real world time - munchkinism notwithstanding - and certainly in less than 10 years. This all means that after their first decade, a mage should gain about one level/year, so why wouldn't Quality be nearly 600th level by the time he is 600 years old? I think, for my part, the answer is that even though experience begins to be gained at a faster rate as one approaches arch mage status, soon after that it must die down considerably, tapering off to just a trickle. Why you ask? I'll tell you. What Is An Experience Point?If your PC kills an orc the book claims that is worth 15 experience points. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't. If your GM insists on awarding experience points like that - for killing monsters and for very little else - then the game takes on a nasty kill, kill, kill, hack and slash sort of feel to it. I don't like this and I find many others agree with me. Experience may be awarded for so much more than that. Talking to an orc, for example, would be worth more experience points since you might gain knowledge - and that is what xp is, knowledge. True, killing it provided knowledge of how to effectively kill orcs, but after you've done that a few dozen times there is very little you do not already know about killing orcs. Slipping by a sleeping guard is worth as much as killing him, if the goal lies beyond the guard. Avoiding a fight is worth nearly as much as the fight if the mission's goal requires one get by such a group. As for the orc example, I believe killing an orc may start out at 15 xp, but after a few years - perhaps even a decade or two - you have reached a limit of such knowledge, and killing more orcs will gain you nothing in the way of experience. The same theory would hold true of practically every creature. Not only that, but roleplaying with them - since they are rather limited - will also eventually hit the experience wall, that point when your chances of learning something important from an orc even from talking to them is virtually non existent. As this goes on, this tapering off of experience points as you get higher and higher really slows down the adventurer's progression. So even though an arch mage may be able to get to more places, it is frequently the same old stuff and the opportunity to learn is less and less. Eventually, there may even come a point when they can learn far more spending a few years in the lab than they can adventuring. This effectively means that "potential experience situations" get further and further apart and the accumulation of experience points slows down to a mere trickle. This may also have something to do with the fact that older brain chemistry changes and learns at a much slower rate than younger, fresher brain chemistry, but who knows for certain? Of course, it would have been far better had TSR simply not gotten lazy in their experience tables and provided a formula for levels past 20th - or even past 12th. Instead, they made it a cheap, LINEAR progression - that's was easier, wasn't it? They should have continued with a more exponentially increasing experience point table, then all of this wouldn't really be necessary, but I imagine they initially didn't really envision too many people playing past 20th level, anyway. Not that the PCs are the real problem, mind you, but the world's NPCs who have been around decades, centuries, or longer, should give anyone pause if they have the wit to consider the logical consequences of such things. I mean, if they can be around centuries - even a few decades of adventuring really ought to do it - and the xp table is linear, there should and will be 30th, 40th, 50th, or higher level NPCs running around. If it weren't for level limits on demi-human, it would get exceedingly ugly as elves, for example, could conceivably reach Nth level where N is, as an approximation, sufficiently close to their age so as to not make much difference, i.e. 1000 years old, 1000th level is about right, assuming no level limits and holding to the linear xp tables. Ick. Obviously, something should be done. So, conventional wisdom holds that after 20th level the xp either begins tapering off or the nonlinear nature of the xp table really reasserts itself. At any rate, this is how I like to envision what must be happening at the very high-levels. Otherwise, considering their longevity, I would think we would have more mages and perhaps other obscenely high-level characters as virtual gods running rampant within the game. So a big picture view, as it were, necessitates the tapering off of experience, and this will help justify the fact that we do not have hundreds or thousands of arch mages running around. There are, of course, other ways to do it. Severely limiting the number of longevity potions might do it. I considered this, but it seemed to do it that way would drive the price of such a potion through the roof and make anyone holding such a thing the easy target of an unscrupulous arch mage. I decided that limiting the number of potions would either not work or would make them unavailable to most normal PCs, and I didn't want to do that. So far, I have come up with no other reason that I like better as to why ancient arch mages wouldn't be hundreds of levels, so I'll stick to what I have. You may wonder what other things necessitated similar considerations on my world. The closest one was the Elven population. If Elves live to be about 1000 years old before they feel compelled to journey across the "waters," wouldn't there be a population explosion of Elves? I won't go into the details here, but it was similar to the arch mage problems and necessitated the rule that elves have one hell of a time conceiving - I guess it must be 10 times harder than for a human, just to keep things in balance. I like thinking about such things since it adds color to my game. For example, since it is so difficult for an elf to conceive, it is a much more joyous occasion when it does happen, and this is reflected in the Elven community as well as Elven PCs and NPCs. Furthermore, there was additional consideration given to Elven arch mages - they could not get there before in 1st, but with 2nd edition, it became possible, though unlikely, and with 3rd edition, it may be a practical certainty as they eliminate non human level limits. Suffice it to say, unless I want an army of long-lived non-human races as NPCs running around, one has to keep an eye on such matters. The Power Of A WishI will finish this essay with a brief look at the power of a Wish spell since its very nature was the cause of much of my concerns about arch mages in the first place. First, I must confess that I came into my knowledge of the relative power of the Wish by experience and not by virtue of the written word. To my dismay, I have subsequently found that the written word seems to have Wishes as less powerful, more commonplace, and more ephemeral than I have come to regard them. Naturally, my careful and considered opinion when this happens is to say "screw the book," so I have ignored it here as well since I felt having Wishes as more powerful, harder to obtain, and more costly, as well as more permanent things, to be desirable. So they are on my world. One of the most common uses of the Wish spell is to change one's statistic scores via a process known as STAT augmentation, so I think a few thoughts on that matter may help. The Wish spell doesn't clearly spell out what a Wish will do for stat augmentation, and many may assume +1 anywhere and everywhere to be reasonable, but I do not. I believe the higher the statistic, the less probable it is, the more valuable it is, and the more it should cost. I also dislike players trying to play stats that are so far above the player's own they can't help but play them badly. This is mostly for INT, WIS, and CHR rather than STR, CON, and DEX since the latter three are rolled for rather than roleplayed, more often than not, but I digress. As a house rule for my world, no statistic of any human (actually, for fairness, any member of the standard PC races) may ever permanently be raised beyond 20 - in 1e or 2e games. I simply don't believe the mortal human frame is capable of anything higher. Second, the effect of Limited Wish and a full power Wish on statistics is well documented in the biomagical journals. By that I mean players do not have to needlessly worry about how to precisely word the spell as it is assumed if they desire to use the spell for STAT augmentation, the prescribed way and wording is already crafted to maximize the spell's effectiveness. Now, a Limited Wish will raise any statistic straight to 14, then to 15 with another, and then to 16 with another. After that, a Limited Wish will raise said statistic only by +10% of an integer point each casting. Ten Limited Wish spells will take a statistic from 16 to 17; ten more will take it from 17 to 18. A Limited Wish will not help beyond that point. Of course, there is no game bonus advantage of a 16/20 over a 16/10, except in STAT vs. STAT rolls, and using the Limited Wish past 16 is virtually pointless, anyway, so it hardly ever happens, particularly since a Wish has the same effect on 16/10 as it does on 16/20, for example, so once 16 is attained, it's best to wait for the full power of a Wish if one desires to augment their stats beyond that point. NOTE: As an optional rule, it may be more realistic to think of very low stats, like 3, 4, 5, and 6, to actually represent some physiological problem or abnormality or injury. As such, it may take more power to raise those stats to average levels as the power of the spell overcomes the unusual impediment. Thus, GMs may insist stats that low first be augmented to normal or average levels with one Limited Wish before allowing them to proceed to straight to 14. A full power Wish is essentially the same but with different numbers. So, it is straight to 16 no matter where it started below that, then to 17 with another casting, then to 18 with another casting. After 18, each Wish is + 10% until 19 is attained, and then 10 more Wish spells will finally take one from 19 to 20, but not beyond. Other means such as books and tomes and manuals, etc., may raise a stat from 18 to 19 or 19 to 20 with a single use, but never beyond 20. However, certain items may raise a stat beyond 20 in an ephemeral way - that is, only as long as you use, are carrying, or wearing the magic item. Please note for stat dependent levels or skills, ephemeral magic will not count. For example, if your Elf - a warrior that needed a 19 strength to achieve levels higher than 15th - wanted to raise it, he could Wish his strength increased, and that would work, but a Girdle of Giant Strength would not. Such fleeting and non-permanent magic will never allow one to exceed normal level restrictions based upon one's statistic scores. NOTE: For various purposes, naturally rolled STATs may be in the format of X/YY, where X is the 3 to 18 integer (actually 0 to 25 integer) and YY is the latent % from 01 to 00. Thus, for example, GMs may secretly record PC percentile stats, like an intelligence of 15/45 or 17/88. Magic spells might help augment some stats faster, though characters (and players) would tend to be oblivious to exactly where their STATs started. Usually the only difference between X/YY and X/ZZ - where ZZ > YY - would be in contests of that STAT vs. that same STAT. The higher (ZZ) STAT would tend to win in the long run. When augmenting stats, however, attaining the next higher integer score does not normally entitle one to a latent 1d100 roll, and X/01 is assumed. So an augmentation from 17/NN to 18, even with a full power Wish would be to 18/01 and not 18/NN or even 18+1d100. Fighters work a little differently for the class dependent skill of EXCEPTIONAL STRENGTH, but those notes can be found below. NOTE: Unlike normal STATs that use integers - ( 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . 17, 18, 19, 20, . . . up to 25) - the fighter's exceptional strength (18/01 to 18/00) may not simply be more ordinary strength so much as an applied knowledge, or temporary strength, that surpasses their existing 18 strength, so it works like a skill or feat and not a normal STAT. The class dependence for exceptional strength is perhaps justified since fighter-classes alone learn how to properly use greater strength in combat, or in feats of power, endurance or stamina, and as such strength ratings in that particular range have a mental component. Improperly trained, greater strength could actually be used against one in combat, just as one's greater weight may be used against them in some martial arts. Just swinging harder could be more dangerous and leave oneself open to attack, so non-fighters do not do this since they'd probably miss anyway and almost certainly get clobbered for free if they did. Fighters, however, have better combat training, and a fighter's EXCEPTIONAL STRENGTH ratings in the 18/01 to 18/00 range could indicate greater skill and finesse using the 18 strength without opening themselves up to counter attack, as well as the proper mental conditioning required to temporarily overcome one's natural limits. At a STR rating of 19, however, most people can accomplish as much using brute strength rather than the finesse of applied knowledge or superior physical conditioning for greater endurance, and even fighters would opt to use such raw STR if they had it rather than the comparatively weaker exceptional strength. NOTE: Once a member of any of the fighter classes attains an 18 STR, they are entitled to a 1d100 exceptional strength roll, so if they start with 18 STR in character generation or come into it later by extraordinary means, they get the 1d100 roll, just as other class dependent abilities based upon high stats come into play or manifest after the fact. For example, attaining an 18 wisdom doesn't give just anyone bonus spell slots for clerical spells, but ONLY those who are already clerics AND already capable of casting spells of that level. So, too, attaining an 18 STR doesn't give anyone exceptional strength, but only those who are already fighters, rangers, or paladins. Thus, a Wish will take a 17 STR fighter to 18/NN, where NN is the 1d100 roll. It is not unusual they will finally be able to effectively employ a skill or feat they have trained for (at 17 STR) for quite some time, but only now have the prerequisite minimum STR of 18 to achieve meaningful bonuses. Thus, fighters are not skipping 18 but are merely finally able to employ a class skill, so they get the normal STR bonuses for 18 STR, as well as a few others due to the class ability stacked on top of that. They do not automatically simply attain 18/01, as most stats would work when achieving the next higher integer value, but the skill manifests itself as how effective a fighter is at employing the class ability. The fact there are 5 categories of bonuses in the 18/01 to 18/00 exceptional strength range, and that this appears to be almost random, is no cause for concern any more than the fact one's initial STAT scores seem to be random. It would probably be wrong to think of each category as greater and greater ordinary strength and a continuous increasing of ordinary strength in stages, but should be thought of as greater degrees of mastery and finesse and mental conditioning, and above all, natural aptitude for the EX STR training, in the class dependent EXCEPTIONAL STRENGTH feat. Thus, one doesn't normally work their way up from the lowest EX STR category to the higher ones, as if they were exercising and slowly gaining ordinary strength, but their natural ability and aptitude (randomly determined) is discovered, and the degree to which they are good at it is no more a mystery than other differences in natural aptitude (i.e. randomly determined stats). NOTE: Technically, fighters do automatically attain a normal 18/01 STR when augmenting from 17 STR, since all stats are formatted in X/YY format and all 18 STR is normally really 18/01. It's just all % for all STATs have no significant game differences, so we tend to ignore them, more often than not. GMs may not even roll them unless or until they are needed, but if they do bother to roll them, they should be secretly recorded for future use. But fighters, though they have an 18 real normal STR (18/01) also have an EX STR rating somewhere from 18/01 to 18/00. It's just sometimes confusing if one isn't mindful of the difference between 18/01 STR and 18/01 EX STR. In short, all ordinary 18/NN scores just have the same bonuses for 18 STR as all classes get, and while fighters do have ordinary STR scores that may be in the 18/01 to 18/00 range and have the normal 18 STR bonus any class enjoys, they also have an EX STR rating whose bonuses always supersedes the normal STR bonuses, or are effectively stacked on top of the normal 18 STR bonuses. Unlike any other classes, fighters, rangers, and paladins may opt not to Wish for +10% increments in regular strength, but instead Wish for greater class skill in EXCEPTIONAL STRENGTH. For simplicity sake, this is still +10% for each Wish spell, but it's not really a strength augmentation so much as a skill or feat augmentation. Just as there is no effective difference between an 18/60 INT and an 18/50 INT, other than INT vs. INT rolls, there is no effective difference between a 18/60 STR and an 18/50 STR, even for a fighter, and in particular for non-fighters. However, there is an effective difference between 18/60 EX STR and an 18/50 EX STR. This is a very subtle difference and one normally won't go too far wrong in thinking of EX STR as normal STR, as long as they are mindful of the fact they are different and non-fighters will not enjoy the STR bonuses of exceptional strength even if they Wish their STR somewhere between 18 and 19 in 10% increments. One must attain a full 19 STR to enjoy the bonuses due to that kind of brute force. Fighters, of course, will be limited to 18/00 if they use Wish spells to augment the class skill. If they ever hope to attain 19 or higher ordinary STR, they must use 10 Wish spells and not receive any bonuses for those 10% increments between 18 and 19 just like any other class, or they might employ a magic book, tome, or manual, or some magic item that grants such an augmentation from 18 to 19 in one shot, just like any other class. Such an item would take any STR rating from (18/01 to 18/00) straight to 19, so 18/01 or 18/00, or any score in between, it wouldn't matter, it goes to 19. Those items augment real and ordinary STR, so it would surpass the EX STR rating and the fighter could effectively ignore that class skill from then on since it would no longer be applicable. GMs might invent new tomes that only augment EX STR, too, under these ideas. NOTE: Unfortunately, even a Wish spell will not raise an 18/00 EX STR to 19 ordinary brute STR. Just like non-fighters, fighters would have to employ 10 more Wish spells to augment normal STR from 18/01 to 19/01, so unless they had a naturally rolled EX STR score that was quite high already, they'd probably be better off Wishing to augment their EX STR instead of their STR. Of course, since Wish spells are very rare and the likelihood of acquiring them in sufficient quantities is so low, most PCs should NOT normally be thinking in terms of attaining higher stats via 10-packs of Wish spells. I only include these optional examples to demonstrate the spell's power. In actual practice, a PC might acquire a Wish spell or two during the run of the campaign and that's about it - unless the campaign is played at epic levels and PCs actually become capable of casting 9th-level spells for themselves. A Limited Wish spell's approximate cost is 60,000 GP to 80,000 GP - aging the caster 1 year or 1% of their life span - and 120,000 GP to 180,000 GP for a full power Wish - aging the caster 3 years or 3% of their life span. This assumes you can find an agreeable arch mage to cast it for you. In my economic system, 1 silver piece is about equivalent to one U.S. dollar. With 100 SP per 1 GP, a full power Wish spell would cost an average of about $16,000,000. These things are by no means cheap or common. Aside from that, I try to limit the power of a Wish to something the character could nearly buy with that sort of money, to mimic another spell's functions and abilities, or to do some other reasonable thing. For example, if used to Wish for gold, it may produce 120K to 180K GP. If used to Wish for a castle or a keep, it may only build one that could be built for that sort of money - maybe less since it is built NOW. If used to mimic a spell, one may have a Wish work several times over. If they Wished to mimic a Teleport, for example, it may No Error Teleport the entire party to the desired location. This seems reasonable, provided the party has less than a dozen people and creatures in it and they are not going from one plane to another as well. A Limited Wish used to Wish for all of one's hit points back would almost certainly be able to mimic the 6th level clerical Heal spell in that regard, and would therefore be permanent, and not temporary like the book suggests. After all, it cost the caster a year of their life, does not cure disease or perform other actions the Heal spell may perform, and so certainly should be allowed to mimic but a portion of a lower-level spell in that fashion - granted, it is assumed 6th level clerical spells are more powerful than 6th mage spells, and 7th level clerical spells are on par with 9th level mage spells, but this is close enough for a rough estimate. I like to also consider what the Wish has to work with. For example, a Limited Wish used to double the effectiveness of an actual Heal spell by allowing multiple targets would work even better since the resources are right there. Thus, one Heal spell and one Limited Wish may become two full Heal spells or three "hit point only" healing spells. This is because it is assumed the further a Wish has to "reach out" to get what it needs, the weaker the results will be. That way, wishing for personal stat adjustments are higher than normal - within yourself is not so far to reach, or within one who allows a mage total access is similarly easy - altering the Heal spell already present is more powerful than mimicking one not present, wishing for a castle by a nearby rock quarry will have better results than wishing for one where the nearest suitable stones are hundreds of miles away, etc. You'd still get a strong castle, but it would be slightly smaller. All of this should make it clear, or at least start to make it clear, that Wish spells are perhaps capable of bigger and better and more permanent things on my world. But it may be a long while, perhaps even never, before you come across one or are capable of casting one yourself. In fact, it would be wrong to assume simply because I worked out the above rules that casting many Wishes for these purposes is almost commonplace on my world - it is not. If anything, despite being well beyond the power of your average PC, such rules still lend a sense of one's place and relative power to those around them, and thus they may better appreciate having a natural higher statistic or a magic item that augments, even in an ephemeral way, their stats. But I digress. I will now end this article with several concrete examples regarding STAT augmentation, since the subtle difference between STR and EX STR may take some getting used to. For a greater in-depth treatment or greater insight into the EXCEPTIONAL STRENGTH issue, follow the link below. EXCEPTIONAL STRENGTH (Learn More About EX STR) Sally, a female fighter, Wishes to augment her 17 STR and has an agreeable wizard do this for her. She attains an ordinary STR of 18/01, just like anyone of 17 STR of any class would so attain in similar circumstances. But for all classes, even fighters, ordinary STR anywhere from 18/01 to 18/00 just gets the same bonuses of +1 to hit, +2 to damage, +750 GP weight allowance, open doors on 1-3 on d6, and a 16% chance to bend bar/lift gates - (+1/+2/+750/(1-3)/16%). Unlike non-fighter classes, however, since Sally is of the fighter class, she also automatically gets a 1d100 EXCEPTIONAL STRENGTH roll. In 1e she is still limited to 18/50, but in 2e she is not. If her 1d100 roll is 51 or higher, her EX STR rating will be 18/50 in 1e. However, such limits may be considered only for character generation or initial rolls, so she may still exceed 18/50 later using another Wish or magic item. Let's assume Sally's player rolls 86, that this is a 1e game, and so her EX STR is 18/50. An EX STR rating of 18/50 is +1/+3/+1000/(1-3)/20%). Thus, using mental training, Sally can surpass her normal 18 STR limits and gain a further +1 to damage, +250 GP more weight allowance, and+4% greater chance of bending bars/lifting gates. This channeled energy, this chi, this mental focus, stacks with her normal ordinary STR, and the bonuses written for 18/50 are the total bonuses, though one can derive what comes from ordinary STR and how much more is gained via the mental training and conditioning of the EX STR feat. Sally has occasion to use another Wish spell, so she may opt to augment her normal STR of 18/01 or opt to augment her class skill of EX STR. The former gains no immediate bonuses, aside from being slightly better in STR vs. STR rolls, so the latter is obviously the better option. Therefore, she has this done and her EX STR of 18/50 goes to 18/60, putting her in a higher category and even one normally beyond human female natural limits. This is O.K. since it was done in a decidedly unnatural way (a Wish). After decades of adventuring, Sally acquired 4 more Wishes and used them to take her EX STR rating up to 18/00. If that wasn't good enough, she acquires yet another Wish, but it won't help since 18/00 is the limit for that class feat. She cannot Wish for 19 ordinary STR since her real STR rating is still 18/01, and it would take 10 Wishes to do that. Thus, she Wishes for something else. Bob, a male fighter, naturally rolled an 18 STR during character generation, and rolled an 81 on 1d100 and had an 18/81 EX STR rating as well as an 18/81 ordinary STR rating. The 18/81 ordinary STR doesn't give better bonuses or anything, but it might put Bob in striking distance of an ordinary 19 STR. So if Bob ever has some Wishes, he may think long and hard if he wants to augment his real ordinary STR or his EX STR class skill. To augment the class skill would return immediate bonuses, the first taking him to 18/91 EX STR and the second to 18/00 (the limit) but a third or more would be stopped. To augment the ordinary STR, however, would not return immediate bonuses, but might be a better investment, as his ordinary STR would go from 18/81 to 18/91 (no change in bonuses) and a second would go from 18/91 to 19/01, a huge change in bonuses resulting from brute STR, bone, muscle, sinew augmentation well beyond normal human limitations (but we are talking about the power of a Wish here, so it's plausible). Alfred, another male fighter, has a natural 18/02 EX STR and found a Manual of Gainful Exercise. Reading it and following the instructions, his STR becomes 19 STR, bypassing most of the EX STR range. Well, he was lucky, I guess, in finding such a powerful book. It may seem unfair in some ways such powerful magic items can do in one shot what it takes 10 Wishes to accomplish, but it's really no less fair than many other randomly determined things, such as one's initial STAT score, or one's 1d100 EX STR roll. In any case, the GM may control the frequency of Wishes or powerful magic items, so this is not really a problem. Finally, Donald, an 18 STR cleric of Thor, may have a hidden latent 1d100 roll. GMs, if they use this optional format for all STATS, should NEVER allow players to see these latent rolls, lest the players base their PC's decision on OOC (Out Of Character) information. Let's assume the GM rolled those, and he rolled an 69 for Donald the cleric. Thus, Donald has a real STR of 18/69, but since he isn't a fighter, he only enjoys the normal bonuses all 18 STR non-fighter characters enjoy. Unbeknownst to him, however, it would only take 4 Wishes, not 10, to reach 19 STR. Of course, one powerful magic manual would do that, too, but he never finds one of those. Donald later decides to dual class and becomes a fighter in addition to being a cleric. Since the GM already determined the latent 1d100 rolls, Donald would have a real STR of 18/69 and an EX STR of 18/69, but now also enjoys the bonuses found at 18/69 for EX STR. His player does not roll 1d100, however, since the GM, when opting to use the X/YY format, may have taken the responsibility to roll and record such information already. Hopefully, Donald's player won't feel cheated. Of course, it might be best if the GM never bothered to determine such latent rolls unless or until something came up where it mattered, and so Donald's player might be allowed to roll the EX STR roll himself when his cleric dual classes and becomes a fighter, as well. © July of 1999 |