Ah. Well, as I've said, my experience in 2nd Edition is nearly exclusively 1st or 2nd level, so I can't help you there. I really don't want to try figuring out how I would accomplish such a thing either, since I can't say I remember that Edition's rules too well. But I can assure you that it is not a problem in later Editions, which are the ones I'd be playing.



In 3rd Ed, a fighter would get 1.5x his Str. bonus when wielding a weapon two handed, and because you get a bonus stat point at every 4 levels, he'd have better scores at 20th level than at 10th level. Dexterity bonus caps out at +2 for full plate and mail, so you couldn't benefit too greatly from that, so there would be a better differential in attack/AC that could be exploited further with Power Attack. But yes, the Constitution bonus would be greater benefit than the strength modifier. Still not enough to survive two rounds, I don't think.

Incidentally, I gave the guy a Tower Shield, but nobody uses them in 3rd Edition because they force a -2 to the wielder's attacks.



Hmm, but unless I misunderstand, isn't that precisely the point? I thought that ascension was the player's reward for surviving through twenty levels?



Maybe, but the way you describe it sounds like a lot of work to figure out as a GM. 4th Edition is ridiculously simple - that's its critical flaw in the rules as written, the reason every D&D player rightly says it sucks - so I can pretty much do anything I want with it. I can even dispense with the Class system entirely, without too much difficulty. Right now I'm not doing that, I'm making an all-Wizard setting that's basically a callback to earlier edition Wizards since they were so sorely misused in 4th Edition, but I was thinking of doing something like that for a StarCraft setting I occasionally tinker with.

Of course, D&D is based around the assumption of combat, so if I wanted to run something with a different style, like my current LotR game, or a mystery, then I'd probably have to use a different system. But as for settings, I have no problem.



And I've always managed to run my D&D games in that middle. So again, while I accept your preferences, you do realise they're just your preference, and not an actual flawed system?



Oh yeah, they had subgroups. Rogues included Thieves and Bards, Warriors included Fighters, Paladins and Rangers, Priests included Clerics and Druids, and Wizards included Mages, Abjurers, Conjurers (etc.).