A Crazy Idea

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not necessarily advocating the rule modification I'm presenting below. It's intended more as an illustration of a broad concept I've long wanted to make work, but that I've never quite managed to do so. Basically, the concept is this: high ability scores should be a double-edged sword. That is, they should come with benefits and drawbacks.

This is hard to do in D&D, since ability scores, as they have evolved over the years, have become ever more important to a character's effectiveness in play. Originally, though, the three "prime requisites" -- Strength, Intelligence, and Wisdom -- had (almost) no mechanical role in the game except providing an adjustment to earned experience. Thus, the only difference between having a fighting man's having a Strength 15 and a Strength 10 is that the former score grants a small XP bonus, presumably on the notion that a fighter with higher Strength has an easier go of his chosen profession and thus advances more quickly.

Recently, though, I started to wonder if perhaps its made more sense to give an XP bonus to characters with low prime requisite scores. The idea behind this is that a low Strength fighting man who survives, despite his inherent weakness, learns more than would his high Strength counterpart. Granted, this makes a lot of assumptions about the nature of experience points, not to mention the role that having a high ability score plays in gaining XP, but it seemed like a very elegant way to achieve what I wanted -- a negative consequence to having a high ability score. I just flipped OD&D's experience adjustment chart and got this:

Prime Requisite Score	Experience Adjustment
3-6	+10%
7-8	+5%
9-12	0
13-14	-10%
15+	-20%

I should add that, if I were to use this chart, it'd be in conjunction with Supplement I's expanded ability score charts. The whole reason I want there to be some negative effects associated with high scores in the first place is because Greyhawk makes certain scores so useful at high levels that it almost necessitates that every character of certain classes will now have high scores. I'm fine with that, but I want a trade-off of some kind, even if I'm far from convinced that this crazy notion I've presented here is the trade-off I'm looking for.