[AiF] Book I - Basic Game Player Characteristics

[hedgehobbit]

Well spotted! Wow, that is really not alot of HP....

The average of the formula method will be 10 or 11 depending on how you round. It doesn't sound like much but Greg Svenson noted that in Dave's Blackmoor games, a Hero had 14 hit points. So 10 isn't that bad in comparison.

[aldarron]

Following that is a listing of definitions for the basic game player characteristics that include Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, Stamina (noted as optional and there is also a note about AKA Constitution), and Health.

It seems to me that the cleanest route, going forward, is to accept the above list as definitive, simply ignoring both of the details that you have given in parentheses. Hence:

1. Strength
   
2. Dexterity
   
3. Intelligence
   
4. Charisma
   
5. Stamina
   
6. Health
   

Sounds good - I second the motion!  8)

That seems to be what the rules are meant to say... however the one published product doesn't agree.  The 1981 Thieves World box set 2nd edition by Chaosium has a chapter written by Arneson and Snider with page after page of characters adapted to the AiF rules.  I have to think, being written up and stated by the AiF designers themselves, that these characters reflect what an AiF character is supposed to look like, considering especially that the character stats are consistently presented in the same format:


STRENGTH:
DEXTERITY:
INTELLIGENCE:
CHARISMA:
CONSTITUTION :
STAMINA:
HEALTH: 

So that's 7 total  with Constitution really being the difference (personally I agree that it seems redundant). Now funnily enough, while the main characters are consistently presented, a roster of gang of thugs called the Hell Hounds are also stated out with the same list except (optional?) STAMINA is missing, taking us back to 6 stats. LOL!

For reference the other stats listed are
AGE: 
STATUS:
EXPERIENCE: 
REPUTATION:
HIT DICE:

[NeonNecromancer]

Here's how I interpret it these days:

The basic player characteristics are:

1. Strength
2. Dexterity
3. Intelligence
4. Charisma
5. Health

With the optional characteristic being:
6. Stamina

Though, I don't know how optional a stat is if it's required to calculate hit points...

I used to think Knowledge was an optional stat that just wasn't detailed, but after rereading the education section, I think it's just a catch-all term for a character's skills.

The only reference to Constitution in the books is in the first book where it is only described as another name for STA.

My hypothesis is that CON was in the list originally (per D&D), but then later separated into separate STA and HLT characteristics. That's why STA (an optional characteristic) is required for hit point calculation: CON was naively replaced with STA there, but really the hit points should be using HLT.

However, Thieves' World throws a wrench into all of that if we consider it correct. Weirdly it has a separate CON stat and this stat appears totally unrelated to the other two (it's a separate rolled stat, not an average or sum of STA and HLT). Running the HP calculation with the values listed for different characters shows that STA appears to still be the one they use, not HLT or CON.

As noted, the Hell Hounds are the only ones without a STA score. So what are the hit points if we run it with both CON and HLT.
Well... they mostly have CONs and HLTs that are too close together to register a difference, but two differ:

(Name: HP with CON, HP with HLT, listed HP)
Bourne: 18, 19, 18 (CON matches HP)
Quag: 20, 20, 19 (neither matches HP)