Increase the Charisma cap for elves to 21. Any Charisma score over 18 may automatically frighten monsters via being so unnaturally beautiful.

If you are only getting one attribute restored from a potion of restore ability, it selects the one that is the most points below its former maximum, rather than picking randomly. Or else you just get to pick the stat you are restoring.

Wearing a blessed ring of sustain ability lets you exercise attributes, but not abuse them. A cursed one lets you abuse attributes, but not exercise them. It continues to block all other sources of ability score change. If wearing two rings of sustain ability, determine what happens by averaging the beatitude of the two.

It gets increasingly hard (maybe even exponentially hard) to raise a stat through exercise as the stat approaches its racial maximum.

Stat shuffling through self-polymorph should be slightly biased towards reducing stats.

You can wish for attributes, which increases whichever attribute you wish for. Maybe a d4 or d5 increase so it’s not inferior to a blessed potion of gain ability.

Amulets of change shuffle your stats the same as polymorphing into your own race, without risk of a system shock. Possibly, the stat-shuffling process should be a bit more limited primarily to attributes; it probably shouldn’t affect experience level (and thus HP, Pw, or skills), reset your nutrition, or cure most illnesses like a self-polymorph would.

The blessed potion of gain ability still only grants one attribute point, but it allows the player to choose which.

Define a new set of ability score maximums which represents the highest the score can reach via exercise. These caps are always equal to or higher than the existing maximums, which represent the highest a stat can be increased to through potions of gain ability or other stat-boosting effects. In some cases, the exercise maximum should stay the same and the non-exercise maximum may need to be decreased.

It’s an open question on whether restore ability should be able to restore points to their exercise-only maximums, or just up to the gain-ability maximums.

Restore ability sources (including unicorn horns) only restore stat points up to their starting values, not to the highest values reached. Alternatively, restore up to the average of the starting and maximum value, rounded down.

If you are lifesaved after dying from attribute loss, it restores the attribute to its base value instead of 3.

Merge the rings of sustain ability and slow digestion into a “ring of stasis”. Double-edged effects: slows down digestion like normal, but also slows down healing, energy regeneration, timer effects like confusion and sickness, any timing-out intrinsics, prevents exercise from happening, blocks or reduces to 1 effects that directly change attributes.

Kicking down doors exercises Str and not Dex.

Cursed potions of gain ability give you an ability point in something by taking it away from one of the other scores.

Reduce gnomes’ Str and Con caps, but ensure they get decent Dex and Int. They should be obviously different to play than humans (rather than being mostly superior). Dwarves should have a Wis cap of 16. Elves’ Dex cap should be higher than humans’.

If attribute changes from exercise and abuse are blocked due to the ring of sustain ability, they accumulate, and once you take the ring off they will all gradually apply over the next few exercise cycles.

Getting lifesaved has permanent detrimental effects. Perhaps it reduces the stat maximum for an attribute as well as the attribute’s current value, like Wis or Con (Con is preferred, because it hits both carrying capacity and regeneration), and if the attribute it would reduce is 3 or below, life saving does not work at all. It could also possibly drain 1d3+1 levels.

A “morale” stat which replaces charisma, and decreases when you die and get lifesaved, eat terrible food, and so on, but it needs effects other than making you lose the will to go on if it gets low enough.