I must be missing it in one of my rulebooks. If you have a half-orc Fighter and roll an 18 strength, what becomes of his +1 racial bonus? I assume it was the +10% deal we see everywhere else, but I wanted to see it in writing.
It's not written anywhere, but based on other bonuses, and talking to Gary about it, it would get bumped up one strength category from the natural % roll, i.e 18/35 would become 18/51.
agree. no written rule. also no rule as to when to apply the racial bonus. either a) if have 18 then roll % score for str or b) roll % since have an 18 then apply racial bonus and move up to bottom of next % group. all up to the dm.
The first fix I remember for that is on the 2nd Boxed set of Dark Sun where a totally new STR table show how to manage it, but I personally do not like that. As a DM while creating a character in Dark Sun I used to skip a line AFTER determining exceptional strength (if needed) for every "+1" racial bonus modifier. This does not explain how we managed exceptional strength while determining abilities with 4d4+4 instead of 3d6.
My preferred response to the 1/2 orc fighter that rolls and puts 18 on strength is to then simply allow a roll of 5d10, +50 which would give the character a spread of 55-100% automatically. For females of the race, I'd just max them out.
(So what happens if you roll an 18 for STR, pick a half-orc, and then go with either a thief or cleric? I guess that you are stuck at 18 flat, with a waste of a +1 racial bonus.) Thork, using the 5d10 for a 1/2 orc fighter will tend to bunch the STR scores up at about 18/77 and 18/78. The 5d10 make a bell curve with little chance at either end. A 1d100, or here a 1d50, gives equal probability for each. So the chance of getting 18/57 is the same as getting 18/77. In your system the 18/77 is more likely than the 18/57 (6% chance vs. less than .1% chance). To use your system but with an equality probability, you could use (1d100/2)+50. Or you could use the straight up roll 1d100 where any rolls from 18/01-18/50 are to be re-rolled. Roll for exceptional STR and then bump up a level method has the best chance of getting the highest benefit from STR for a half-orc fighter. Roll 1-50 means that you have 18/51: 50% chance Roll 51-75 means that you have 18/76: 25% chance Roll 76-90 means that you have 18/91: 15% chance Roll 91-00 means that you have 18/99: 10% chance (since 18/99 is the limit for male half-orcs) Bump up one slot method: you have 50% chance of +2/+3, 25% chance of +2/+4, and a 25% chance of +2/+5 vs. Thorkhammer's method: you have 38.125% chance of +2/+3, 59.873 chance of +2/+4, and a 2.002% chance of +2/+5 vs. +10% to 1d100 method: you have 40% chance of +1/+3, 25% chance of +2/+3, 15% chance of +2/+4, and 20% chance of +2/+5 vs. Thorkhammer's method (revised by me to provide equality chance rather than bell curve): you have 50% chance of +2/+3, 30% chance of +2/+4, 20% chance of +2/+5
We always played the +10%, going on the 2nd-level MU spell Strength and it's effect on percentile strength, but years later I changed it to exactly what Scott mentioned.
I always thought half-orcs should have the edge on Strength over other races, so as a DM, I consider their max to be 19, not 18. I do the same bump-up-to-the-next-category-with-the-bonus-ability-modifier-thing, but with an 18/00 equaling 19. After 25 years of playing, I finally rolled an 18/00 and my DM allowed it. And, in the same character, I rolled an 18 for Con, the first time I've ever rolled two 18s for a single (non-NPC) character. I'm not a min/maxer, but Golbagai has been one of the most fun characters I've ever run. He's pretty stupid, though, so those stats have had to save his ass on many an occassion. (Wow, another few months and I'll have been playing 30 years? Hard to believe.)
Golbagai remains on the top of the character PC to DM note chart for this one: "I use the ESP amulet to know what the whores want and when."
