(no subject)

I've been thinking about some house rules for AD&D, and I may be re-inventing things;

• Rather than it being a completely random roll or completely points bought, maybe a good compromise could be borrowed from 4e Gamma World. Everyone gets one 18 and one 14, but the other four attributes are 4d6, discount the crummiest roll. Beyond that gets into asking the DM to swap out points on a loose basis, but your chances of playing what you'd like are good and if you can't get that you're still playing a pretty good character.
  
  
• Rather than really get into encumbrance limits or discard them completely, there are three categories, and it's assumed that bulk and weight kind of make items equivalent. I think this is still on the generous side, eyeball it from here. Being unencumbered for players works like this;
  
  Cerebral characters (Strength 03-08) can carry normal clothing and jewelry, a light suit of armor, two weapons or the equivalent (staff and up to 3 wands), and about 5 items as full wineskins, backpacks, or belt pouches (where 1 item might be a week's worth of rations, a full set of spell components, four spells in a scroll case, a traveling spellbook, a lantern, or 25 gp).
  
  Average characters (09-15) can carry normal clothing and jewelry, a medium suit of armor and a shield of any sort, 4 weapons or the equivalent, and 6 items as full wineskins, backpacks, or belt pouches.
  
  Strong characters (16-18) can carry normal clothing and jewelry, a heavy suit of armor and a shield of any sort, 4 weapons or the equivalent, and 7 items as full wineskins, backpacks or belt pouches.
  
  
• There's no Strength limit on females. Not unless you choose to impose a corresponding Constitution limit on males, which might be an interesting game.
  
  
• There's no chance to fail at learning spells, and characters can learn up to the maximum that their Int score permits. I like the idea that the magic-user adventures in search of lost knowledge and don't want to limit that.
  
  
• I like the idea that doing magic is this arcane blend of reason and artistry, and like the idea of spell components. I hate the idea of spell components slowing things down so I'd want to put in the house rule that basically 20 gp gets you a full compliment of components, if you don't use all your spells you spent the equivalent of 10 gp each time, and if you specify slowing down to collect things that might work there's a 40% chance of finding enough to take you up to full.
  
  
• I've been playing with the idea of; what if class advancement was the same sort of thing for all metahumans, where they were unlimited in one class, could get up to 10/8/6 in other classes, and the remainder were off limits or NPCs only? For instance, PC gnomes might be unlimited Thieves able to get up to 10th level as Illusionists (or the other way around?), up to 8th level as Fighters, up to 6th as Magic-Users, and that's it. This might be unbalanced given the inconsistent level advancement costs - in AD&D, a 12th level Illusionist isn't gauged the same level of power as a 12th level Druid.

(no subject)

I see a White Dwarf on the horizon under a bargain bin that hides the sun
So bring me my dice bag and clear understanding...