Its worth noting as well that with each new edition of the game, what you could find in the world, the intention of the design in that regard became a controlled infrastructure, a part of the forced balancing of the game. The system told DM's that you must restrict what players could find on their adventures. By 5e, the assumption is that despite just about every class wielding powerful magic even at early levels, magic items are extremely rare in the world.
When old school gamers say that contemporary D&D doesn't feel like D&D to them, this is among a list of reasons. Its upside down in comparison to the original setup of the game.
Comment from MusicScout:
I can attest to this in my current games. In one game our party consists of 7 PCs, 2 Paladins, 1 War Cleric, 1 Bard, 1 Wizard, 1 Ranger & 1 Rogue. The Rogue is a high elf so he gets a cantrip or a spell (I don't recall) so every PC has magic. And if you wish to set aside the Rogue then it is still 6/7, with three full-casters and three half-casters. In AD&D bards don't really exist even though they are in the appendix, and the paladins and ranger don't get to cast magic until about level 7, so it was much different then.
In my second game there are 4 PCs, 1 Paladin, 1 Bard, 1 Cleric & 1 Ranger. So all these players have magic with 2 full-casters and 2 half-casters.
I am playing the Bard in the first campaign and the Paladin in the second campaign. I would still play the Paladin in the second campaign if it were AD&D because I am playing the paladin for the RP reasons.
I wonder how popular the half-casters would be if their magic 'kicked in' at level 7 today? I'm sure the cry of BALANCE!!! would be heard throughout the land.
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Kotath, since we didn't just throw out the level caps on multi-class, we were playing different versions of AD&D (your group vs. mine). It is hard for me to imagine that you played in a group anything like mine. What other sorts of homebrew rules were common in your group?
Did you do these things you describe in your post, or is this more "theory crafting"? I can't imagine, especially in the AD&D days, actually playing a dragon in a party. Like I said, my brother mentioned it once in a conversation, but he never spoke about it like someone DID it.
Interesting discussion on this. One of the things I love about D&D in general (and it seems to be common through all editions), is how different groups interpret, play and home-brew in ways that work for them (the DM and the players).
Back in the 80's and through my teens playing AD&D I remember multi-class being common in our group - particularly one guy would go classic half-elf Fighter/MU/Thief any chance he could. We also honoured the race/level limitations and I always liked the approach as a balance to the racial bonuses. After all, without it why be human?
As far as early death and in particular the fragility of magic users, we would usually run a campaign playing two characters each (there were 4 of us; DM + 3 players). For us that gave us a number of advantages; we could have magic users to do their '1 thing' at 1st level, but still have, say, a fighter that could participate in the combat (and more likely survive). Plus if the MU/thief or 'second' PC died, the player was still 'in the game'. Over a campaign the '2 PC's' per player would tend to thin out. We didn't allow rolling a higher that 1st level character to join. On occasion if the party hadn't levelled up too far we would agree to allow a 1st level character to be rolled and join to replace the dead guys... but not really much beyond a 2nd/3rd level party.
At that time we weren't really so big on the role play which seems to have come much more to the fore in recent times, so it was an approach that worked for us.
As I started running the AD&D campaign for my daughter and her millennial friends I suggested they might want to consider the 2PC's each approach, but they are WAY more role-play centric than I ever was, so opted for 1 each... they've just made it to level 3 on what has been a narrative-heavy campaign thus far with minimal combat... their next adventure will be more of a test and more chance of Hp's being a factor. Whether they bring over their relative sense of invulnerability from 5e or realise their fragility and embrace the AD&D 'run for your lives' survival technique... we'll see 😏
Yes, I remember the two most popular multi-class options in the 70s in my group was F/MU/Th and C/F/MU. Actually, multi-classing as a cleric-something solves many problems of the Cleric only being a healing source.
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I started pre '80 with AD&D. I have most of my books on the shelf here in my computer room. I can't shake some of the ideas that were laid down in AD&D and when I see those tropes violated it bothers me. I would love to play in a game that didn't have all the new player races, that followed the narrative of AD&D and all that. But I like the ruleset of 5e as long as folks aren't trying to power game it to avoid any risk whatsoever.
I don't allow my players to play monster races in my campaign. Not even half orcs. Would alter the worlds norms. So I guess I am mixing some of the old ways of playing with the new via world building restrictions. I am also tempted to strip down the magic available in the campaign (future state). Too many classes have magic and healing, which makes those dedicated magic casters and clerics/druids less meaningful, which makes everything just a big pile of mush. Yea, yea, I know, "Player Agency" you claim. Bunch of malarkey!
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Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
My guys gave up playing with the charts of modifiers, since it bogged the game down so much. The current system is much cleaner, and easier to play.
One of the major concessions even most of the more hardcore OSR games make these days is to use ascending AC with the to hit # being the AC #.
Basically, they flip it. AC 10 is still "cloth/unarmored", but instead of going down to 0 and needing a 20 to hit that, they just go up from 10 to 20, and instead of "-10" being the best armor anyone could have, it just goes up to 30.
Similarly you can use something like the level based "proficiency bonus" to mimic going "up the table" from left to right, since it did kind of the same thing in AD&D.
Just those 2 things allow you to cut out like 3 pages of tables.
I guess the real truth is that Old School was not perfect, and some of the current game mechanics are better. But the current theme of "everyone gets a participation ribbon, everyone is special, no one should ever die" is awful.
I wish I could upvote this statement more. I have some really nice guys in my f2f group. A couple are super knowledgeable on most aspects of the game and I lean on them when there is a rule call or how something works. Speeds things along. But they are stuck in this 5e mold and can't seem to think outside of it. Any change to the rules (homebrew), or if you don't ascribe to the Coleville way of thinking, or you place any restrictions on what and how they can play (what is acceptable in your campaign world), then they get all testy and act like your limiting their creativity. *sigh*
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Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
I've never seen anybody dual class unless it was a campaign that gave the players an exp pool to build with. Starting at level 1 the restrictions on dual class were too harsh to play.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Back in the days when being a first level Bard was something you earned years after starting your character.. heh. I started a character in 1982, who became a 1st level Bard the summer of 1985. The game ended before I could reach third level in Bard because all the other Characters still alive had retired by then,
While I loved AD&D and still have pretty much all of my books.. (I gave an old pal my MM2 and my Oriental Adventures books,) I admit that I’ve become pretty fond of 5th edition personally. It is probably my favorite of the systems so far (even if the kids these day have it so easy being able to start a character as a bard!! Sheesh!!)
I was very happy when they updated some of the classic adventures to the new edition with Yawning Portal, Saltmarsh and such,,
I don't know who this Coleville guy is that people talk about, I'm making a guess he's like Matt Mercer?
1e has its place and charms, I met someone recently who told me their University D&D group (all 5e) had decided to run some 1e games to see what the fuss was about. I have no idea who's helping them with their rules, but the interesting point is that they felt they should explore it.
1e is like a good wine, for some people their wine when re-opened after years has matured well, and for others it's vinegar - maybe it was in the way it was brewed, who knows.
There was a lot of discussion on Dual-classing, it wasn't as common as people seem to think. Only Humans could do it, and the character had to have 17+ in the primary stat/s. The only successful dual class I ever encountered was a character that started as a Thief to 3rd Level, then moved to Magic-user. The XP awards for the Thief being lower and meant the character wasn't too far behind.
I rarely deviated from the rules (there may have been the occasional bend to fit my style, but as far as I am aware, I never broke any rules), Level limits, racial maximums, even the way that Magic-users gained spells.
There's a point, the Magic-user didn't suddenly gain more spells, the Character started with a handful of spells, then the only way to improve was to find, trade, or make their own. Then there were Intelligence limitations on maximum spells known. Magic-users became powerful, but there were still limits.
l sure miss them days.all them weekends spent playing the g and d moduals giants and drow.i had a 17th level cleric,with a necklace of prayer beads and psionics and i still got my but kicked lol.we used lead minatures back then late 70s early 80s.
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learned to play in jr high,played thru high school.class of 84.played maybe ten times since.still have original books,some leads and dice.im badillo on fallen sword https://www.fallensword.com/?ref=1573389 .have a look
In my opinion, 1e is a nice wine that’s been corked. It looks great on the surface but Gygax ruined it with the strangest rule set I’ve ever seen. Why anyone would play 1e is beyond me - male/female stats, 18/percentile strength scores, assassination tables, class combinations allowed for NPCs but not PCs (Dwarven Paladin), the weirdest ability score modifiers (bend Bars, loyalty base, system shock survival), weird attacks per round (3/2, 5/4???), an entire PAGE for a table with AC adjustments that has to be consulted constantly, poison being a death save and also having the most ridiculous “but if you use it you might nick yourself by accident and also die!” rules, bards only work with stringed instruments and are just an amalgamation of fighter, thief, and a weird assortment of abilities...
It is a book I look fondly back on, but I only open it for the comedy. Haha
People really get hung up on the maximum strength for a human female is 18/50.
That's actually really strong and only the top half percent of the strength of the population.
13 strength is a level that most people never achieve (you look up 130pound military press), 15 in a stat is the top 10% of the population. I think it's the players that get hung up on "oh man! If I don't have 18/00 strength I don't play!". A Ranger is almost superhuman with the stat requirements.
Limits based on gender were only on strength; like I said, people get hung up on the strangest things.
Why should a Thief, Magic-user, or Cleric have the same level of combat training to provide the additional Strength benefits (which is amalgam of fighting ability and raw power).
If a warrior in plate armour gets hit with a stick, should it be the same as being by a weapon designed to penetrate the armour?
Is it a product of it's time, yes. I also believe there no limits to the character unless the player brings them.
I used the character record sheets that had all the details on them, so my players had everything on them. I'm surprised the clunkiness of weaponless combat wasn't mentioned in the litany of sins - that was messy!
People really get hung up on the maximum strength for a human female is 18/50.
That's actually really strong and only the top half percent of the strength of the population.
13 strength is a level that most people never achieve (you look up 130pound military press), 15 in a stat is the top 10% of the population. I think it's the players that get hung up on "oh man! If I don't have 18/00 strength I don't play!". A Ranger is almost superhuman with the stat requirements.
Limits based on gender were only on strength; like I said, people get hung up on the strangest things.
Why should a Thief, Magic-user, or Cleric have the same level of combat training to provide the additional Strength benefits (which is amalgam of fighting ability and raw power).
If a warrior in plate armour gets hit with a stick, should it be the same as being by a weapon designed to penetrate the armour?
Is it a product of it's time, yes. I also believe there no limits to the character unless the player brings them.
I used the character record sheets that had all the details on them, so my players had everything on them. I'm surprised the clunkiness of weaponless combat wasn't mentioned in the litany of sins - that was messy!
Having racial modifiers and also limits to stats was overly complicated, and an entire stat score divided into 100 parts was also unnecessary. The male/female limits literally do nothing in a fantasy world other than try to say “hey women can’t be as good as men”. This is fantasy, not an edgy sexual biology class. Did females get better charisma for better empathy or something? Nope! Straight up demotion for trying to play a strong woman.
This isn’t getting “hung up on the strangest things”, it was just a blatant bad rule for literally no reason.
And why unnecessary adjustments to weapons at all? Does having a whole chart for each weapon really add that much depth to the game, or is it just a bad translation of basic DnD weapon specialization?
2e corrected 90% of these errors and was a far superior system overall. 1e is legit a hot mess.
Not to mention, the art style in 1e was very suitable - like it was drawn by children. Haha. (mostly in jest but partly not)
Of course there were strong female characters in the game. No one had limited anything of the sort. In terms of strength, female characters had a limit. That 'limit' still put them far beyond the normal human range.
A military press of 230 pounds (18/50) is well above the average man of about 110 pounds (an average woman is about 90 pounds). Where do you think 'weak' comes from
The percentile is a game mechanic to provide a benefit to Fighters in order to give them something the other classes didn't have.
2e went with: pierce, slash, blunt style weapons adjustment.
As a DM, I never had a problem with the weapon adjustments. They are an optional rule, so drop them if you like.
Racial modifiers were overly complicated? +1 Dex, -1 Con; that's not overly complicated at all, you want to bring complicated to stats, look to the Aging chart.
Part of the 1e thing is that there was more heavy lifting by the DM, players may not even know how many HP they have. The big clue is that the Players Handbook has no method of rolling up stats, that was the decision of the DM as to which of the 6 methods were being used.
I'm not here to convince people of anything, but 1e is a game -at its core - is a game that allows the players maximum creativity on their character.
Of course there were strong female characters in the game. No one had limited anything of the sort. In terms of strength, female characters had a limit. That 'limit' still put them far beyond the normal human range.
A military press of 230 pounds (18/50) is well above the average man of about 110 pounds (an average woman is about 90 pounds). Where do you think 'weak' comes from
The percentile is a game mechanic to provide a benefit to Fighters in order to give them something the other classes didn't have.
2e went with: pierce, slash, blunt style weapons adjustment.
As a DM, I never had a problem with the weapon adjustments. They are an optional rule, so drop them if you like.
Racial modifiers were overly complicated? +1 Dex, -1 Con; that's not overly complicated at all, you want to bring complicated to stats, look to the Aging chart.
Part of the 1e thing is that there was more heavy lifting by the DM, players may not even know how many HP they have. The big clue is that the Players Handbook has no method of rolling up stats, that was the decision of the DM as to which of the 6 methods were being used.
I'm not here to convince people of anything, but 1e is a game -at its core - is a game that allows the players maximum creativity on their character.
Not even close.
“no one had limited anything” vs “female characters had a limit”
Are you even listening to your own comments?
“The percentile is a game mechanic to provide a benefit to Fighters”
… which could’ve been done a million other ways instead of “roll percentile”. Some races couldn’t even have percentile scores so it ended up not being a fighter-exclusive thing at all.
An arbitrary limit to female strength is absolutely unnecessary and lame. We aren’t talking about percentage of people in real life, we are talking about a fantasy game where if you played a female you literally were told “sorry, you can’t have that high of a score because unfortunately your character is female”, when you rolled high. That’s just a big ol’ pile of poop.
The races had score adjustments and the classes had ability limits. So you had an adjustment AND limits to review before even picking a class.
Every player knew what their HP was. Don’t be daft.
Weapon adjustments didn’t have “optional” beside the table, unless you have a different book version than I do.
In every sense of the game, 2e improved on the mess of 1e. I can’t think of a single thing 2e didn’t trim from 1e that people lamented.
”I'm not here to convince people of anything, but 1e is a game -at its core - is a game that allows the players maximum creativity on their character.“
… except class choice because of a shitty roll, rolling too high for a stat and playing female, etc etc. Even 5e let’s you play a 6 int Wizard if you want.
Edit: Female characters could never benefit from Strength percentile bonuses for Fighters. Or imagine playing a Gnome or Halfling female and being excluded from the Prime Req XP for playing a Fighter because you literally couldn’t even have a 16 Strength. Hahaha. What garbage.
This isn't really germane to the discussion, but there's no such thing as taking biology out of the mix. If I could have trained ten times harder than Michael Jordan he'd still always have been a far superior basketball player than me. Michael Phelps physical build was perfect for swimming. Black athletes tend to be faster runners than Caucasians. Being taller is a significant advantage in many sports, and a disadvantage in others. Small nations often find it difficult to consistently compete at the highest levels in popular team sports because small populations are less likely to produce sufficient equally superior athletes to fill up teams than larger populations.
Having women compete against women doesn't take biology out of it. It tends to limit some advantages, absolutely, but hardly everything. Some sports have weight categories for the same purpose (weightlifting) and/or to protect athletes (heavyweights vs lightweights in various fighting competitions), but as long as things like more height, wider arm span, faster muscle genetics and a ton of other things are considered fair biology will remain the biggest differentiator in sports.
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Pangurjan, really? It was eminently clear that I was referring to the biological differences between men and women. This is the sort of thing that ruins open discussions.
I understood that just fine, and explicitly allowed that what I said wasn't really germane to the discussion. My point is that that's a pretty arbitrary line, all things considered. Somebody decided at some point to have women compete against women. Someone else came up with age categories, and someone else yet had the idea that weight categories would make for better competitions. Nobody's thought to implement height categories to give countries with on average shorter athletes a chance to compete in volleyball on a "level" playing field though, and if someone would suggest racially segregating track for genetic reasons that would go really badly for them really quickly (and rightly so).
Nonetheless, D&D 1st ed had exactly one sex-based limiter, according to you due to statistical limitations on extreme athletic performance. No similar limitations existed for endurance, speed or agility. It seems silly to include just that one rule then, especially since it only applied to extreme cases anyway. What good did it do?
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I have no idea how it impacted the wider community, because for one reason the D&D groups were few and small in those days. Based on many reasons, I think D&D was played by young "men" back then. I also would anticipate that any DM with a girl in the group would be willing to consider lifting the restriction on strength, but that would be an extreme outlier. Back in those days we rolled stats in order. If the player didn't roll an 18 strength it wouldn't matter. If the player wished to play a magic user or cleric class it wouldn't matter. So folks are getting worked up about an extremely niche case. Why not just note it but then move on?
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Its worth noting as well that with each new edition of the game, what you could find in the world, the intention of the design in that regard became a controlled infrastructure, a part of the forced balancing of the game. The system told DM's that you must restrict what players could find on their adventures. By 5e, the assumption is that despite just about every class wielding powerful magic even at early levels, magic items are extremely rare in the world.
When old school gamers say that contemporary D&D doesn't feel like D&D to them, this is among a list of reasons. Its upside down in comparison to the original setup of the game.
Comment from MusicScout:
I can attest to this in my current games. In one game our party consists of 7 PCs, 2 Paladins, 1 War Cleric, 1 Bard, 1 Wizard, 1 Ranger & 1 Rogue. The Rogue is a high elf so he gets a cantrip or a spell (I don't recall) so every PC has magic. And if you wish to set aside the Rogue then it is still 6/7, with three full-casters and three half-casters. In AD&D bards don't really exist even though they are in the appendix, and the paladins and ranger don't get to cast magic until about level 7, so it was much different then.
In my second game there are 4 PCs, 1 Paladin, 1 Bard, 1 Cleric & 1 Ranger. So all these players have magic with 2 full-casters and 2 half-casters.
I am playing the Bard in the first campaign and the Paladin in the second campaign. I would still play the Paladin in the second campaign if it were AD&D because I am playing the paladin for the RP reasons.
I wonder how popular the half-casters would be if their magic 'kicked in' at level 7 today? I'm sure the cry of BALANCE!!! would be heard throughout the land.
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Kotath, since we didn't just throw out the level caps on multi-class, we were playing different versions of AD&D (your group vs. mine). It is hard for me to imagine that you played in a group anything like mine. What other sorts of homebrew rules were common in your group?
Did you do these things you describe in your post, or is this more "theory crafting"? I can't imagine, especially in the AD&D days, actually playing a dragon in a party. Like I said, my brother mentioned it once in a conversation, but he never spoke about it like someone DID it.
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On magic users and multi-class...
Interesting discussion on this. One of the things I love about D&D in general (and it seems to be common through all editions), is how different groups interpret, play and home-brew in ways that work for them (the DM and the players).
Back in the 80's and through my teens playing AD&D I remember multi-class being common in our group - particularly one guy would go classic half-elf Fighter/MU/Thief any chance he could. We also honoured the race/level limitations and I always liked the approach as a balance to the racial bonuses. After all, without it why be human?
As far as early death and in particular the fragility of magic users, we would usually run a campaign playing two characters each (there were 4 of us; DM + 3 players). For us that gave us a number of advantages; we could have magic users to do their '1 thing' at 1st level, but still have, say, a fighter that could participate in the combat (and more likely survive). Plus if the MU/thief or 'second' PC died, the player was still 'in the game'. Over a campaign the '2 PC's' per player would tend to thin out. We didn't allow rolling a higher that 1st level character to join. On occasion if the party hadn't levelled up too far we would agree to allow a 1st level character to be rolled and join to replace the dead guys... but not really much beyond a 2nd/3rd level party.
At that time we weren't really so big on the role play which seems to have come much more to the fore in recent times, so it was an approach that worked for us.
As I started running the AD&D campaign for my daughter and her millennial friends I suggested they might want to consider the 2PC's each approach, but they are WAY more role-play centric than I ever was, so opted for 1 each... they've just made it to level 3 on what has been a narrative-heavy campaign thus far with minimal combat... their next adventure will be more of a test and more chance of Hp's being a factor. Whether they bring over their relative sense of invulnerability from 5e or realise their fragility and embrace the AD&D 'run for your lives' survival technique... we'll see 😏
Yes, I remember the two most popular multi-class options in the 70s in my group was F/MU/Th and C/F/MU. Actually, multi-classing as a cleric-something solves many problems of the Cleric only being a healing source.
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I don't allow my players to play monster races in my campaign. Not even half orcs. Would alter the worlds norms. So I guess I am mixing some of the old ways of playing with the new via world building restrictions. I am also tempted to strip down the magic available in the campaign (future state). Too many classes have magic and healing, which makes those dedicated magic casters and clerics/druids less meaningful, which makes everything just a big pile of mush. Yea, yea, I know, "Player Agency" you claim. Bunch of malarkey!
Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
I wish I could upvote this statement more. I have some really nice guys in my f2f group. A couple are super knowledgeable on most aspects of the game and I lean on them when there is a rule call or how something works. Speeds things along. But they are stuck in this 5e mold and can't seem to think outside of it. Any change to the rules (homebrew), or if you don't ascribe to the Coleville way of thinking, or you place any restrictions on what and how they can play (what is acceptable in your campaign world), then they get all testy and act like your limiting their creativity. *sigh*
Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
I've never seen anybody dual class unless it was a campaign that gave the players an exp pool to build with. Starting at level 1 the restrictions on dual class were too harsh to play.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Back in the days when being a first level Bard was something you earned years after starting your character.. heh. I started a character in 1982, who became a 1st level Bard the summer of 1985. The game ended before I could reach third level in Bard because all the other Characters still alive had retired by then,
While I loved AD&D and still have pretty much all of my books.. (I gave an old pal my MM2 and my Oriental Adventures books,) I admit that I’ve become pretty fond of 5th edition personally. It is probably my favorite of the systems so far (even if the kids these day have it so easy being able to start a character as a bard!! Sheesh!!)
I was very happy when they updated some of the classic adventures to the new edition with Yawning Portal, Saltmarsh and such,,
aaah fond memories of Thaco... first character a cleric died via failed posion save throw..
thats where it all started
I don't know who this Coleville guy is that people talk about, I'm making a guess he's like Matt Mercer?
1e has its place and charms, I met someone recently who told me their University D&D group (all 5e) had decided to run some 1e games to see what the fuss was about. I have no idea who's helping them with their rules, but the interesting point is that they felt they should explore it.
1e is like a good wine, for some people their wine when re-opened after years has matured well, and for others it's vinegar - maybe it was in the way it was brewed, who knows.
There was a lot of discussion on Dual-classing, it wasn't as common as people seem to think. Only Humans could do it, and the character had to have 17+ in the primary stat/s. The only successful dual class I ever encountered was a character that started as a Thief to 3rd Level, then moved to Magic-user. The XP awards for the Thief being lower and meant the character wasn't too far behind.
I rarely deviated from the rules (there may have been the occasional bend to fit my style, but as far as I am aware, I never broke any rules), Level limits, racial maximums, even the way that Magic-users gained spells.
There's a point, the Magic-user didn't suddenly gain more spells, the Character started with a handful of spells, then the only way to improve was to find, trade, or make their own. Then there were Intelligence limitations on maximum spells known. Magic-users became powerful, but there were still limits.
He runs The Chain, a popular 5th edition stream, and he has a youtube series Running The Game a lot of folks liked.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
l sure miss them days.all them weekends spent playing the g and d moduals giants and drow.i had a 17th level cleric,with a necklace of prayer beads and psionics and i still got my but kicked lol.we used lead minatures back then late 70s early 80s.
learned to play in jr high,played thru high school.class of 84.played maybe ten times since.still have original books,some leads and dice.im badillo on fallen sword https://www.fallensword.com/?ref=1573389 .have a look
In my opinion, 1e is a nice wine that’s been corked. It looks great on the surface but Gygax ruined it with the strangest rule set I’ve ever seen. Why anyone would play 1e is beyond me - male/female stats, 18/percentile strength scores, assassination tables, class combinations allowed for NPCs but not PCs (Dwarven Paladin), the weirdest ability score modifiers (bend Bars, loyalty base, system shock survival), weird attacks per round (3/2, 5/4???), an entire PAGE for a table with AC adjustments that has to be consulted constantly, poison being a death save and also having the most ridiculous “but if you use it you might nick yourself by accident and also die!” rules, bards only work with stringed instruments and are just an amalgamation of fighter, thief, and a weird assortment of abilities...
It is a book I look fondly back on, but I only open it for the comedy. Haha
People really get hung up on the maximum strength for a human female is 18/50.
That's actually really strong and only the top half percent of the strength of the population.
13 strength is a level that most people never achieve (you look up 130pound military press), 15 in a stat is the top 10% of the population. I think it's the players that get hung up on "oh man! If I don't have 18/00 strength I don't play!". A Ranger is almost superhuman with the stat requirements.
Limits based on gender were only on strength; like I said, people get hung up on the strangest things.
Why should a Thief, Magic-user, or Cleric have the same level of combat training to provide the additional Strength benefits (which is amalgam of fighting ability and raw power).
If a warrior in plate armour gets hit with a stick, should it be the same as being by a weapon designed to penetrate the armour?
Is it a product of it's time, yes. I also believe there no limits to the character unless the player brings them.
I used the character record sheets that had all the details on them, so my players had everything on them. I'm surprised the clunkiness of weaponless combat wasn't mentioned in the litany of sins - that was messy!
Having racial modifiers and also limits to stats was overly complicated, and an entire stat score divided into 100 parts was also unnecessary. The male/female limits literally do nothing in a fantasy world other than try to say “hey women can’t be as good as men”. This is fantasy, not an edgy sexual biology class. Did females get better charisma for better empathy or something? Nope! Straight up demotion for trying to play a strong woman.
This isn’t getting “hung up on the strangest things”, it was just a blatant bad rule for literally no reason.
And why unnecessary adjustments to weapons at all? Does having a whole chart for each weapon really add that much depth to the game, or is it just a bad translation of basic DnD weapon specialization?
2e corrected 90% of these errors and was a far superior system overall. 1e is legit a hot mess.
Not to mention, the art style in 1e was very suitable - like it was drawn by children. Haha.
(mostly in jest but partly not)
Of course there were strong female characters in the game. No one had limited anything of the sort. In terms of strength, female characters had a limit. That 'limit' still put them far beyond the normal human range.
A military press of 230 pounds (18/50) is well above the average man of about 110 pounds (an average woman is about 90 pounds). Where do you think 'weak' comes from
The percentile is a game mechanic to provide a benefit to Fighters in order to give them something the other classes didn't have.
2e went with: pierce, slash, blunt style weapons adjustment.
As a DM, I never had a problem with the weapon adjustments. They are an optional rule, so drop them if you like.
Racial modifiers were overly complicated? +1 Dex, -1 Con; that's not overly complicated at all, you want to bring complicated to stats, look to the Aging chart.
Part of the 1e thing is that there was more heavy lifting by the DM, players may not even know how many HP they have. The big clue is that the Players Handbook has no method of rolling up stats, that was the decision of the DM as to which of the 6 methods were being used.
I'm not here to convince people of anything, but 1e is a game -at its core - is a game that allows the players maximum creativity on their character.
Not even close.
“no one had limited anything” vs “female characters had a limit”
Are you even listening to your own comments?
“The percentile is a game mechanic to provide a benefit to Fighters”
… which could’ve been done a million other ways instead of “roll percentile”. Some races couldn’t even have percentile scores so it ended up not being a fighter-exclusive thing at all.
An arbitrary limit to female strength is absolutely unnecessary and lame. We aren’t talking about percentage of people in real life, we are talking about a fantasy game where if you played a female you literally were told “sorry, you can’t have that high of a score because unfortunately your character is female”, when you rolled high. That’s just a big ol’ pile of poop.
The races had score adjustments and the classes had ability limits. So you had an adjustment AND limits to review before even picking a class.
Every player knew what their HP was. Don’t be daft.
Weapon adjustments didn’t have “optional” beside the table, unless you have a different book version than I do.
In every sense of the game, 2e improved on the mess of 1e. I can’t think of a single thing 2e didn’t trim from 1e that people lamented.
”I'm not here to convince people of anything, but 1e is a game -at its core - is a game that allows the players maximum creativity on their character.“
… except class choice because of a shitty roll, rolling too high for a stat and playing female, etc etc. Even 5e let’s you play a 6 int Wizard if you want.
Edit: Female characters could never benefit from Strength percentile bonuses for Fighters. Or imagine playing a Gnome or Halfling female and being excluded from the Prime Req XP for playing a Fighter because you literally couldn’t even have a 16 Strength. Hahaha. What garbage.
This isn't really germane to the discussion, but there's no such thing as taking biology out of the mix. If I could have trained ten times harder than Michael Jordan he'd still always have been a far superior basketball player than me. Michael Phelps physical build was perfect for swimming. Black athletes tend to be faster runners than Caucasians. Being taller is a significant advantage in many sports, and a disadvantage in others. Small nations often find it difficult to consistently compete at the highest levels in popular team sports because small populations are less likely to produce sufficient equally superior athletes to fill up teams than larger populations.
Having women compete against women doesn't take biology out of it. It tends to limit some advantages, absolutely, but hardly everything. Some sports have weight categories for the same purpose (weightlifting) and/or to protect athletes (heavyweights vs lightweights in various fighting competitions), but as long as things like more height, wider arm span, faster muscle genetics and a ton of other things are considered fair biology will remain the biggest differentiator in sports.
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I understood that just fine, and explicitly allowed that what I said wasn't really germane to the discussion. My point is that that's a pretty arbitrary line, all things considered. Somebody decided at some point to have women compete against women. Someone else came up with age categories, and someone else yet had the idea that weight categories would make for better competitions. Nobody's thought to implement height categories to give countries with on average shorter athletes a chance to compete in volleyball on a "level" playing field though, and if someone would suggest racially segregating track for genetic reasons that would go really badly for them really quickly (and rightly so).
Nonetheless, D&D 1st ed had exactly one sex-based limiter, according to you due to statistical limitations on extreme athletic performance. No similar limitations existed for endurance, speed or agility. It seems silly to include just that one rule then, especially since it only applied to extreme cases anyway. What good did it do?
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Pangurjan,
I have no idea how it impacted the wider community, because for one reason the D&D groups were few and small in those days. Based on many reasons, I think D&D was played by young "men" back then. I also would anticipate that any DM with a girl in the group would be willing to consider lifting the restriction on strength, but that would be an extreme outlier. Back in those days we rolled stats in order. If the player didn't roll an 18 strength it wouldn't matter. If the player wished to play a magic user or cleric class it wouldn't matter. So folks are getting worked up about an extremely niche case. Why not just note it but then move on?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt