Strength was a better ability than the other five, by far. If you played a Warrior (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin) and had 18 strength, you got to roll an additional d100 which were more ranks of Strength you had available. Essentially, instead of getting a score between 3 and 18, if you played a Warrior you could go up to a practical 23 in Strength. Those weren't minor either. The difference between a Priest, Rogue or Wizard's 18 Strength and a Warrior's potential 18/00 Strength is actually greater than the difference between having 18 Strength and having 6 Strength.

Except of course that you need to strike gold on your d100. If you were playing with rules like Baldur's Gate's, which allow you to switch your ability points around, getting an 18 isn't such a big deal, but you still need to roll that 100 on the d100. So your best bet is just to skip the whole thing and go directly to 19 Strength. Play a Half-Orc or other race that gives you a +1 bonus to Strength and you can get all the bonuses of Strength 18/00 and more without depending on luck. Strength 19 is effectively a 24, if this were some other stat.

So at this point, you could have a 19 Strength Half-Orc Warrior at level 1 who can swing a two-handed sword for - nothing else considered - 3d6+7* damage every round. I won't say what a level 1 Priest, Rogue or Wizard can do at level 1, even given a 19 in their specialised ability (or even a theoretical 24).

*[EDIT] Actually, that's "only" 1d10+7 damage. When I checked the tables, I mistakenly assumed the first column was for small characters and the second for medium as in 3rd Edition, but they're actually for Small/Medium and Large, respectively. Not sure why, since none of the core races are large and quite a few are small, but tying in with my overall point, I avoid asking questions of Second Edition and just roll with it. Probably involved a build that abused Enlarge or something.



They do exactly the same thing. The progression is even the same. THAC0 is just harder to use. As a DM I used to just give my players the monsters' AC during fights because trying to keep it hidden was more trouble than it was worth. In retrospect, that wasn't necessary, but it did facilitate things a lot.

Fun fact, when I first played Baldur's Gate, I noticed that my heavily armoured characters had lower AC than my lightly armoured ones. I figured that had something to do with the iron crisis and unequipped everyone. I went through the Nashkell Mines completely unarmoured on my first run. Kobold Commandoes slaughtered my guys.

One of the most incomprehensibly arbitrary things in 2nd Edition to me were the Saving Throws. Both the categories and the numbers within them. It's just the sort of thing you had to accept and roll with.