Replacing OD&D Abilities with Perks
One of the first things players usually notice about OD&D is the way abilities are de-emphasized relative to later editions. STR, INT, & WIS have no mechanical effect other than providing a bonus or penalty to experience gained as a fighter, magic user, or cleric, respectively. CON provides a small boost to HP, DEX to ranged attacks, and CHA affects how many classed followers you can have (something I suspect gets hand-waved a lot anyways).
In most cases (excluding CHA), benefits & drawbacks are only applied for those outside the typical 9 to 12 range, so the fictional interpretation is usually that characters with high/low scores are extraordinarily gifted with the range of variation among average people being irrelevant.
This gets overhauled very early in the history of D&D. Some of the first pages of Supplement I: Greyhawk make ability scores more granular and add to the number of mechanics they interface with. Moldvay Basic would soon be (AFAIK) the first to explicitly suggest using ability scores directly to resolve situations (with a roll-under mechanic). Whether or not this trend was mostly good or bad is contentious.
Some have made the case that ability scores aren't really necessary at all. FMC Basic is based on OD&D and eschews ability scores. This post by Tom Van Winkle argues that abilities represent a case where stated OSR principles exist in contradiction to the OSR's focus on TSR D&D over other games:
The ability scores in old D&D rules are so useless that I think they are not needed at all. Just drop them. All of them. Characters have class and level abilities and equipment. That's all they need, if you take the "players skill" and "DM just decides anyway"--I mean "rules not ruling"!--principles seriously. But you probably don't take those principles too seriously. I know you guys love your ability scores. You get high off knowing that your Magic-User has an Intelligence of 18, even if it matters scarcely at all in the game. Feeling potent or powerful is one of the appeals of role-playing, and just writing a high score on your sheet may accomplish that, even if it never involves a roll of dice.
Abilities as Perks
If you squint at the 0E ability rules (and bracket out how they're handled in later editions), you could say that they're really just a way of randomizing perks and drawbacks in order to add some variation to generic Chainmail figurines. ('Perks' sounds suspiciously non-OSR, dangerously close to 'feats', but isn't that basically what we're dealing with here?) As a thought experiment, what would OD&D & spinoffs look like if we were instructed to write down only the effects of ability scores rather than the scores themselves?
My modest proposal is that character creation could be simplified by bypassing '3d6-down-the-line' and just rolling directly for a random perk (or several).
Classic version
This table could be used if one wanted to stick very close to OD&D. Players could either roll 1 perk or 2 perks and 1 drawback (with perks & drawbacks canceling out).
| d6 | Perk | Drawback |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | +10% FM xp | -5% FM xp |
| 2 | +10% MU xp, +1 language | -5% MU xp, illiterate |
| 3 | +10% C xp | -5% C xp |
| 4 | +1 HP/HD` | -1 HP/HD |
| 5 | +1 to missile attacks | -1 to missile attacks |
| 6 | 5 hirelings, +1 loyalty | 3 hirelings, -1 loyalty |
This would result in more balanced parties (everyone gets at least one perk), but the characters themselves would all be valid results of the usual ability score system (thus cross-compatible with other 3LBB campaigns).
Expanded list (d66)
The fun of ability scores is in the tails -- the possibility (however slight) of winding up with a character that is either gifted or impaired along multiple dimensions (and in the latter case there's fun to be had in seeing how far one can advance in spite of it). Some of this could be preserved by lumping perks & drawbacks together on the same table and letting players roll, say, 0-4 times on it (committing to the number of rolls up front).
I threw this table together for fun -- I'm not sure I'd use it but I think it could be dropped in to an OD&D game pretty easily. It's limited to the types of simple mechanical bonuses and penalties offered by the ability score system, so it a bit boring by modern standards but unlikely to break one's game.
| d66 | Perk/drawback |
|---|---|
| 1;1 | +1 HP/HD |
| 1;2 | -1 HP/HD |
| 1;3 | +3 HP |
| 1;4 | -2 HP (minimum 1) |
| 1;5 | +2 languages |
| 1;6 | Illiterate |
| 2;1 | +1 ranged attacks |
| 2;2 | -1 ranged attacks |
| 2;3 | +1 melee attacks |
| 2;4 | -1 melee attacks |
| 2;5 | +1 melee attacks, -1 melee damage |
| 2;6 | -1 melee attacks, +1 melee damage |
| 3;1 | +1 followers, +1 morale |
| 3;2 | -1 followers, -1 morale |
| 3;3 | +1 to opening doors |
| 3;4 | -1 to opening doors |
| 3;5 | +1 to finding secret doors |
| 3;6 | -1 to finding secret doors |
| 4;1 | +250 carrying capacity (or +1 slot) |
| 4;2 | -250 carrying capacity (or -1 slot) |
| 4;3 | +5% fighter exp. |
| 4;4 | +5% MU exp. |
| 4;5 | +5% cleric exp. |
| 4;6 | +1 to turn undead rolls |
| 5;1 | +3 vs. poison/death rays |
| 5;2 | -2 vs. poison/death rays |
| 5;3 | +3 vs. wands |
| 5;4 | -2 vs. wands |
| 5;5 | +3 vs. petrification |
| 5;6 | -2 vs. petrification |
| 6;1 | +3 vs. dragon breath |
| 6;2 | -2 vs. dragon breath |
| 6;3 | +3 vs staves & spells |
| 6;4 | -2 vs staves & spells |
| 6;5 | +1 to all saves |
| 6;6 | -1 to all saves |
Final Thoughts
- I think it's better not to name perks & drawbacks. I'd prefer players write the effects directly on their sheet so that there's no need to look up a perk mid-game, and I'd want to deter the kinds of inferences that ability scores usually prompt ("well if my character has [17 STR / the "beefy" perk], shouldn't she be able to do X?"). Better to let players draw their own conclusions from the mechanics. (Maybe +3 vs. dragon breath is due to agility, or draconic ancestry, or because one was born under the sign of the Burning God, or...)
- In terms of representing characters, I prefer using very specific bonuses over 'rating' general abilities. The idea of assigning measurable, rank-able scores to humans is always troubling, even though it's probably unavoidable to some degree. "+1 to melee damage" is more interesting & true to human diversity than "+1 to everything strong people are supposedly good at".