No Attribute Cap, right?

[Supplement Four]

Coming from AD&D 2nd Edition, and pretty much ignoring D&D 3+, Conan is the only real exposure I've had to the d20 system (besides when it has been used in some video game)

So...there is no level cap anymore, correct? in AD&D 2E, a character could not take his stat over 18 (there are a few exceptions).

In Conan, I see that racial bonuses can take a character to stat 20. But, there's no hard cap, correct? If some other benefit comes the characters way (such as a stat increase at 4th level), then going to 21 or higher is allowed.

Correct?

 

[Jacek]

It's not clearly forbidden but is it worth the effort? You might want to recall this discussion ("Beyond the 20th level" - sorry, have some problems with pasting the url at the moment).

 

[Supplement Four]

It's not clearly forbidden but is it worth the effort? You might want to recall this discussion ("Beyond the 20th level" - sorry, have some problems with pasting the url at the moment).

I'm talking about stats, not level. STR 20+

 

[Jeffreywns]

With the HP cap, I've felt that no Attribute Cap is a good way to represent "Mythical" abilities of higher level characters and NPC"s.
With lvl 13 characters being legendary and "Earth Shakers" around 16 to the average man/Commoner it seems to fill the Magic-Void that allows truly Heroic actions in this setting.
Just an opinion of course, but we're only looking at a bonus of 2-3 in a stat or two in most cases. And in my experience it was the Mega- Hit Points that were an issue with 10+ characters, and the silly Magic items/ spells/ abilities carried by everyone and thing.
Would be interesting to know for real though. My guess is there isn't one, for the above reason.

 

[Jacek]

I'm talking about stats, not level. STR 20+

Sorry, my bad.

Now, about the matter at hand. I agree that there's no such cap. The table on the 2nd ed rulebook's p.10 (Ability modifiers) suggests there's an infinite stat level you can go to.

 

[Supplement Four]

Now, about the matter at hand. I agree that there's no such cap. The table on the 2nd ed rulebook's p.10 (Ability modifiers) suggests there's an infinite stat level you can go to.

The reason I ask is that, in AD&D 2E, the STR table goes on past STR 18 too. It does that for monsters and giants and things like that. Also, magic items can lift STR higher. But charcters are typically limited to a Stat 18 cap (in some cases, like Elven DEX, it's a Stat 19 cap).

So, this made me curious about the Conan RPG. It looks, though, as if there is no Stat cap.

A Barbarian could have a STR 18, then raise that to 19 at 4th level, and raise it again to STR 20 at 8th level. Then, at 12th level, it's raised to STR 21.

There's no cap, right? That can be done?

 

[Jacek]

Looks so.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Sure they can. Nothing to lose sleep about.

Note that AD&D and D20 attributes/abilities scale differently. In D20, the modifiers scale linearly by the formula Mod = (X-10)/2. In AD&D, pretty much nothing happens in the range 10-14, then the real bonuses start at values around 15, with a bonus increase for every point.

Also, AD&D Str 19 is NOT the same as D20 Str 19!
In AD&D, 18 is the maximum a human can attain, and 19 is "Hill Giant", 20 is "Frost Giant" or something along those lines.
To depict extraordinarily strong humans, they introduced the 18/XX format. I forget how exactly it scaled, but I vaguely remember that the Dragonlance character Caramon was supposed to be the strongest human ever, at a Strength of 18/64 or something like that. The absolute theoretical maximum by that system would be 18/99 (or 18/00?).

In D20, and thus also in Conan, Strength values >18 are pretty common. The theoretical maximum is STR 29 at 20th level -- start with Str 20 (only some races can do that) and put every increase into Str. It's not magic.
My Barbarian has Str 22 at Level 12. If I continued to play him through to 20, he'd have Str 26 in the end.

You can get an idea what a Str score means in D20 if you look at the carrying capacity tables. Basically it boils down to: the actual physical strength doubles every 5 ability points. Str 15 is twice as strong as Str 10. Str 18 is twice as strong as Str 10.
So at Str 22, my Barbarian is about 5 times as strong as the average commoner.

Oh and for that matter:
If you start at Str 18, and put your bonus points into Str at levels 4, 8 and 12, you will have Str 23 by then because every ability goes up by 1 at levels 6 and 10 etc. in Conan.