As most of you grognards out there know, WOTC is releasing the original Little Brown Books and Greyhawk is already out. Well, I sat back when I had a moment and reread mine. These were some of the first Dungeons and Dragons book that I ever bought and there’s some fond memories around those books especially Greyhawk. It gave us “variable” weapon damage and Hit Dice.
While reading through Greyhawk a little idea popped into my head and chances are that there’s someone out there who might have thought of this already. Looking at the section for the additions and changes to abilities there’s a column under Strength for chance to “Open Door”. Heck why not that and extrapolate it out as a check for any ability score. A simple x in d6 roll for all your ability checks. Jump over that barrier. That’s a Dex check. Talk your way out of trouble. That’s a Charisma check. And so on. So here’s the break down.
Score:
3 to 6 (1 in 6)
7 to 15 (2 in 6)
16 (3 in 6)
17 (4 in 6)
18 (5 in 6)
That’s it. Quick simple and really old school.
They Might Be Gazebos! 
Great idea. It could also be expressed as -1 for 3-6, +0 for 7-15, +1-3 for 16-18, if you want to apply it to other sized dice rolls. This is also pretty close to some of the other bonuses in Greyhawk:
Damage bonus – matches except at 5-6, which get +0 instead of -1.
Con bonus per HD – matches except at 15, which gets a +1 instead of 0.
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Good concept. We don’t use the actual scores enough in DnD, and gives a way for minor point differences to be important. Additional idea: Produce a series of “result charts” kind of like Crit and Fumble charts, which go as high as the attribute score. Higher your score, more cool effects possible. If you wanted to throw some curve-balls in there. 🙂
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Both great ideas! Keep DIYing stuff.
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