Low Ability Scores

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

We rolled 3d6 down the line back in the day, and we loved our weak characters. These days, your ability scores are cemented in and locked, with point-buy systems ensuring everyone has a balanced starting set of scores. Ability scores go up as you level as a part of character progression. The optimizers and 'make everything fair' crowd have taken over the hobby.

And it sucks.

Old-school games don't have ability score progression. This means we were free to hand out ability score points as a form of alternate advancement. Back in the day, I had a thief character (DEX 14, a great score) do a fantastic tightrope walk over a market filled with soldiers looking for that character. This was an incredible act of bravery and risk, and as a result, I awarded a point of DEX as a reward and reflection that moment added to that character's story and development.

No rule told me to do that.

No level chart told the player to expect it.

And there was no way to buy it with experience.

There is a consensus in Dungeon Crawl Classics that gods and patrons can award ability score increases as a reward for completing quests and tasks. This is also a great way to motivate players and create interest in serving an in-game power. The referee should ultimately decide, and this form of alternate advancement should be 100% under the referee's control.

For that matter, feats should also be 100% under GM control as an alternate advancement. Every character should have 6-9 "feat slots," the referee should award those as the character adventures, trains, and commits incredible acts of bravery and daring.

Did your level 4 character accumulate three feats through training and adventures?

Not a problem.

This is not unfair, unbalanced, or breaks the game. This is who the character is at this point. If that character is more powerful than the others, that is fine. When it purchased TSR, Wizards tried to 'balance' all the builds and create a unified power curve, trying to replicate the Magic The Gathering design model in the game, which destroyed the classic AD&D power curve and reward system.

D&D 3 was a complete takeover of the referee reward system, and this has been 20+ years of mess, and this 'designer knows best' mentality. The level charts were expanded, and 'game-balanced' rewards were attached. Before the third edition, the gaming group knew best and determined rewards—Wizards enshrined 'game developers' as the people who control your game.

Not you.

Your power was taken away by what's printed in the book. You must pay Wall Street for balance and rewards and buy the expansion books. The 'game designers' know best. You have now been monetized.

Today's games, from D&D 3 and beyond, take too many game design lessons from mobile games; it is all crap. As these companies increasingly try to 'monetize' tabletop games, we will see these 'mobile game design features' aimed at monetization creep in - and many of those with One D&D already.

This is why big companies are slowly killing Rule Zero.

As a referee, the best thing you can do to 'take your game back' is take control of advancement, powers, and rewards - throw away the charts made by paid game designers. Use a slot system for feats and grant ability score increases as rewards. This is much easier to do in OSR games than in 5E because they purposefully tangled up the power curves of anything past 3E to prevent you from modding and doing your own thing.