Not that I disagree with what you said in its entirety but how is 1e's potential for death any different than today?
It's meaningfully more difficult to kill single PCs without resulting in a TPK. This is mostly a consequence of the changes to death rules, and save-or-die effects being mostly removed.
Not that I disagree with what you said in its entirety but how is 1e's potential for death any different than today?
It's meaningfully more difficult to kill single PCs without resulting in a TPK. This is mostly a consequence of the changes to death rules, and save-or-die effects being mostly removed.
Exactly.
Note that Pantagruel said “mostly a consequence of” rather than “entirely a result of.” There were many ways to die in 1e. If I had to give a third reason, I might say that spells were, in general, more powerful (beyond there just being more ‘save or die’ spells). Or, I might say that PCs had far fewer hit points generally speaking, particularly as compared to damage dealt (the wizard and the monk had d4 hit die, while the two-handed sword did 3d6 damage) and PCs stopped gaining hit die when they hit name level (about 10th level).
Not that I disagree with what you said in its entirety but how is 1e's potential for death any different than today?
It's meaningfully more difficult to kill single PCs without resulting in a TPK. This is mostly a consequence of the changes to death rules, and save-or-die effects being mostly removed.
Not that I disagree with what you said in its entirety but how is 1e's potential for death any different than today?
It's meaningfully more difficult to kill single PCs without resulting in a TPK. This is mostly a consequence of the changes to death rules, and save-or-die effects being mostly removed.
Exactly.
Note that Pantagruel said “mostly a consequence of” rather than “entirely a result of.” There were many ways to die in 1e. If I had to give a third reason, I might say that spells were, in general, more powerful (beyond there just being more ‘save or die’ spells). Or, I might say that PCs had far fewer hit points generally speaking, particularly as compared to damage dealt (the wizard and the monk had d4 hit die, while the two-handed sword did 3d6 damage) and PCs stopped gaining hit die when they hit name level (about 10th level).
This. I think sure in either system a DM can scale an encounter to kill the PCS. But in 1e even a encounter scaled to be weak could and frequently did kill a PC. 2e added the death at -10 optional rule and I think that was so common of a rule it became the rule for most tables. But still a single hit from kobold could kill quite a few level 1-2 pcs back in 1e. I moved a lot, played at a lot of different tables at low levels especially characters died a lot. And the thing is if it was the fighter who went down back then the whole party might go down soon after as they just did not have the AC or hit points to survive. But even if it was the wizard or the rogue, that is 2 less daggers getting thrown, fights would turn quick once someone dropped.
Not that I disagree with what you said in its entirety but how is 1e's potential for death any different than today?
It's meaningfully more difficult to kill single PCs without resulting in a TPK. This is mostly a consequence of the changes to death rules, and save-or-die effects being mostly removed.
This is soo true, I had to turn to reddit to figure out how to challenge single PCs without being in TPK territory and thankfully they had a couple dozen monsters to use but your forced into this corner where 20 kobolds arn't a threat and 100 kill the party. Its the most frustrating thing I find with 5e over other RPGs.
And with the new rules, the designers have decided to double down, triple down, on "it is not fun when PC's have to deal with resource management", as opposed to altering rules to make that more important to the game.
Honestly, D&D would be a better game if they gave up on the resource depletion model. They've been trying to cram the multi-encounter day down gamers' throats since 3e, and it's been failing to work for just as long (the five minute workday has been a problem since Basic D&D, but prior to 3e there weren't encounter building rules, and thus nothing was specifically balanced around resource depletion). If you really want to have resource management be a thing, don't base it around a time-based resource, base it on a non-replenishing resource (money, experience points, etc).
Or the DMs who those assumptions don't work for can use a variant recovery model, like Gritty Rest. One combat per day when you can only recover your big stuff 1/week becomes a lot more threatening.
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Exactly.
Note that Pantagruel said “mostly a consequence of” rather than “entirely a result of.” There were many ways to die in 1e. If I had to give a third reason, I might say that spells were, in general, more powerful (beyond there just being more ‘save or die’ spells). Or, I might say that PCs had far fewer hit points generally speaking, particularly as compared to damage dealt (the wizard and the monk had d4 hit die, while the two-handed sword did 3d6 damage) and PCs stopped gaining hit die when they hit name level (about 10th level).
This. I think sure in either system a DM can scale an encounter to kill the PCS. But in 1e even a encounter scaled to be weak could and frequently did kill a PC. 2e added the death at -10 optional rule and I think that was so common of a rule it became the rule for most tables. But still a single hit from kobold could kill quite a few level 1-2 pcs back in 1e. I moved a lot, played at a lot of different tables at low levels especially characters died a lot. And the thing is if it was the fighter who went down back then the whole party might go down soon after as they just did not have the AC or hit points to survive. But even if it was the wizard or the rogue, that is 2 less daggers getting thrown, fights would turn quick once someone dropped.
This is soo true, I had to turn to reddit to figure out how to challenge single PCs without being in TPK territory and thankfully they had a couple dozen monsters to use but your forced into this corner where 20 kobolds arn't a threat and 100 kill the party. Its the most frustrating thing I find with 5e over other RPGs.
Or the DMs who those assumptions don't work for can use a variant recovery model, like Gritty Rest. One combat per day when you can only recover your big stuff 1/week becomes a lot more threatening.