I have a handful of AD&D 2e books I've inherited from my parents. Used to play them when I was younger, but these days have moved on to mostly Pathfinder. Have been looking through them again and thinking about the fact that they pretty much expected all characters to be rolled for, which I always remember feeling a bit unfair because you'd often have maybe one player getting higher stats than normal, and other players getting lower stats than normal, no matter what rolling method you used.

One of the methods recommended in the book though, for being able to guarantee a particular character, involves starting each ability score at 8, and then rolling 7d6. You can assign any number of dice to add to an ability score, as long as you assign all of the value of each die, and the ability score doesn't go above 18.

Hypothetically speaking, if you say that every player should do this, but instead of rolling 7d6, is given the stat array of 1,2,3,4,4,5,6, would that make an ideal point buy system for AD&D 2e? I've tested around with what combinations of ability scores it can give you, and it appears that every class *is* playable under it, even the ones with four ability score prerequisites (the Paladin and Ranger, though you have little room to optimize them). I think some people might think it breaks the spirit of the games, but I think you can still enjoy the grittiness of older D&D with consistent character builds. What say you, /tg/?