Experience option

[Maouse]

Alex,
   I understand that they are limited by their native rolls, but fail to
see how this is "helped" by making it so everyone can have maximum
multipliers.  It simply means characters (like me?) will begin to put Int
5th on their list instead of 5-8th (if they are allowed to change locations
of rolled stats, which is typically how ours are done).  I prefer to think
of it all this way;
1. your character begins like every other human, maybe a little stronger
than average, maybe smarter than the average wench
2. they get their maximum multipliers assigned based on what the player
wants them to excell at (being a 4x)
3. then they get their previous stat points which designates what they have
been doing lately and or if they have ever "worked out" lifting hay, or
dueling (expertise used as stat increases as well as stat points gained
from the table).
At this point the adventure begins.  They are slightly more experience than
the average person, may know a few spells, may know how to use a sword.
(and if you are like me they usually know both, but I digress).

Now they adventure and get Experience (and a bit older if the GM pays
attention).  But wait, in as little as two game years they are maxed out,
having cleared a good section of the Elder mountains of Kototh Creatures.
So now you would suppose that Indiana Jones should be allowed to make a
sequal in which not only does he get to use his wip and pistol, but
suddenly (presuming he can find a lair of 80 or so great apes) he can buff
up to Swartzenager proportions?  NAY!  He is still the same old Indiana
Jones.  Yeh, the sequal may have him use a wip a pistol and a knife, but
it's still him.

I fail to see how more experience can change you physically BEYOND your
maximum.  Based on what you are saying everyone should be able to "ascend"
simply because they can find enough badies to kill (and I would note, this
is whether they are easy to kill badies or not!).  2-20 creates such a
better and more realistic variety of people when it has to get multiplied
by 1.5 to 4.  think of it.  You are taking away one of the spices of the
game.  This "rule" is saying "instead of 3-80, we only want 8-80", this is
nearly a 10% decrease in varience.  Once again I point to OG.  He is a
dimwit 3 Int.  Now he can become an 8.  Instead of not being able to cast
magic, he now can cast magic at EL2 (because let's face it, he'll get to
MEL2 soon enough, and he already knows every language available thanks to
that giant spider he killed way back when he was CEL 16).  And I know that
EL2 doesn't seem that high, but it's not even about that.  It's about the
fact that we just turned a "no way in the land of the living dead" is he
ever going to be a magician into a decent mage (he'd be able to kick 1/2
the mages in the Darkland's BUTT!).  So you see, it IS a bad idea.
IMHOOC (IMHO Of Course)

-Marcel