OSSR AD&D 1e Players Handbook

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 6:49 pm

Cyberzombie wrote:Fighter players have simple needs. All fighter players really need are a good set of noncombat skills and combat dominance. The biggest problem with the 3E fighter isn't that he's lacking in noncombat powers, it's that he sucks in combat compared to the spellcasters.

Bit of a simplification, as the 'scope' of combat becomes larger as the power level rises. You can't kill Freddy unless you can enter dreams or pull people out of them. You can't stop Alucard unless your attacks are best described as strategic. And so on.

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 7:36 pm

Cyberzombie wrote:You don't need to get very elaborate with giving fighters all kinds of planar teleportation powers or wide area nukes. People that play fighters don't want that stuff anyway.

False.
I enjoy weapon-wielding characters more than casters.

My favorite fantasy tropes are the guys that can run into 100 enemies and start swording them with fireballs, creating shockwaves with their feet and/or weapon swings. Very much "sword magic" blended with benders and anime tropes.

I also happen to know a lot of people that would think that's pretty sweet.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 7:38 pm

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 7:56 pm

and start swording them with fireballs

I just noticed that the Desert Wind Maneuver "Death Mark" from Tome of Battle does exactly this. You sword someone and they turn into a fireball. Fucking awesome.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:10 pm

Frank I'm not talking about bigger bonuses, I'm talking about growing angelic wings you can fold up into the astral plane when you hit level 10 if your distantly related to celestial, or growing twenty feet tall when it's convenient if you have a giant ancestor somewhere in your family history, if you're somehow related to a dragon you'd start breathing fire and shit, and it doesn't have to be something in your blood maybe you have the favor of some god so you start gaining bits of that power as you level up. And yes you just get the "you must be this tall to ride" bonuses too. And I'd be willing to bet there would be less backlash if you dumped the fighter from the game altogether and tapped into a different concept in people's minds.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 1:03 am

virgil wrote:Bit of a simplification, as the 'scope' of combat becomes larger as the power level rises. You can't kill Freddy unless you can enter dreams or pull people out of them. You can't stop Alucard unless your attacks are best described as strategic. And so on.

Not really. I don't know of any enemies in the monster manual that can't be killed by a magic weapon if the wielder is capable of getting in range if your melee attacks are suitably powerful. Incorporeals have the closest thing to a fighter immunity and that's at least partially bypassed by even the weakest of magic weapons.

Wall of Force and Forcecage are the only things that weapons or physical might can't prevail against, and it'd certainly be reasonable to give a fighter a way to cut through those, as well as mobility powers to follow fast moving things like dragons or they could be master of bow and sword, so they can shoot down fliers. Also sword techniques that let them launch ranged shockwaves works too.

As for getting to other planes, I don't think many people care if the fighter can't do that on his own. The fighter is part of a team, and it really doesn't matter if Wonder Woman has to use Batman's dimensional portal or not. If anything, the guy that gets stuck being the planar taxi is at a disadvantage because he's burning a spell slot to do it.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 2:50 am

Can we please move this fighter discussion to a different thread? Preferably one of the millions of fighter threads that have popped up over the last 6 months or so?

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Tue Feb 04, 2014 3:10 am

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Can we please move this fighter discussion to a different thread? Preferably one of the millions of fighter threads that have popped up over the last 6 months or so?

Done
Please thread shit over there if deemed necessary.

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:05 am

Since minus off-topic conversation the thread seems to have jammed, may as well answer.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Hrm. So with that book and maybe one or two others, how would I build my cleric in terms of restrictions if I wanted to be like the 3E Cleric Archer? That is, by level 9-12 of 2E D&D, my cleric should have:

1.) A selection of good utility powers that will get you through a lot of generic adventures.
2.) A suite of save-or-dies or blaster spells that can blow through encounters when humiliating the fighter isn't enough.
3.) And fighter-humiliating tricks and spell access?

How possible is that?

The Champion fighter/cleric kit in the Complete Dwarf isn't too bad. It does have a Charisma minimum but you get a free magic weapon, a couple of free proficiencies and also (unlike most multiclass characters) you can weapon specialize (and dwarf is a fairly solid race selection) Being multiclassed puts you a level behind a single-class either of the above but eh.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:14 am

I'm working on it. Truly, but the race write ups aren't doing me favors.

Tumbling Down · Post by **Tumbling Down** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 3:18 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Hrm. So with that book and maybe one or two others, how would I build my cleric in terms of restrictions if I wanted to be like the 3E Cleric Archer? That is, by level 9-12 of 2E D&D, my cleric should have:

1.) A selection of good utility powers that will get you through a lot of generic adventures.
2.) A suite of save-or-dies or blaster spells that can blow through encounters when humiliating the fighter isn't enough.
3.) And fighter-humiliating tricks and spell access?

How possible is that?

If we're still talking about this, then I'll have a go too. What you really need, Lago, is to look in the old Faiths and Avatars FR book and find a cheesy specialty priest kit. The combat focused ones usually get shit like exceptional Con scores and bonus ½ attacks like a Fighter (except they used the Druid XP table for some fucking reason, so they actually get them before the Fighter does). Some of the gods also have weapon lists that include stuff like long swords or even straight up lets you pick your own favoured weapon.

You can also get various ways of accessing Wizard spells, such as casting fire spells like a Wizard of your level (again, using the Druid xp chart), casting alteration spells like a Wizard of half your level (but without needing a spellbook with the spell in it), using items normally reserved for Wizards; Anyspell shows up here as well and lets you cast 5th level Wizard spells before an actual Wizard could even cast 4th level spells.

So, from the top of my head, if you're a Priest of Tyr, you get:
>An extra ½ attack at level 7 and 13
>Hold Person as an innate ability at level 1
>-2 to saves against your Law-sphere spells (which includes Hold Person and Command)
>Major access to over a dozen spheres
>Long swords and bastard swords on your list of allowed weapons
+Other shit

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 2:11 pm

darkmaster wrote:I'm working on it. Truly, but the race write ups aren't doing me favors.

think in wargame terms, but without the charts for games like Warhammer that just lays out the numbers. thus why the books need a rewrite to actually be able to FIND the shit in it. 2nd isnt as bad due to its layout, but 1st is just a tremendous mess for being able to find ANYTHING. sad really when there is a good game in there, but it requires Indiana Jones, army corp of engineers, and a strip mine operation to dig it out of all the rubble.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 4:15 am

Well, here we are again, it’s been a while. This is overdue. I’ll be honest, at first I moved state, and then I went off to school and lost the book for a little while, and then I just kind of forgot about this review entirely. And now here I am about to move state AGAIN but this time resolved to not let myself get side tracked. So, character races.

This section starts with a little primer, and here it reveals that you do, in deed, roll your stats first, and then pick you’re race. For those of you just joining us, the book does not tell you how to go about rolling your stats, because what you want to play the game, what kind of mainstream chode are you? This section also includes this interesting little tidbit.

Each racial stock has advantages and disadvantages, although in general human is superior to the others.

Classy game. Anyway, next is a table of what class you can be by race. It’s predictable, half orcs can only be clerics, fighters, thieves and assassins, dwarves are the same except they can’t be clerics, and the question mark hanging over all of this is why? Why do these restrictions exist? What’s the point? The answer is, as far as I can tell, because fuck you that’s why.

The next table is, if anything even more head-scratching. It gives maximum level for dwarf clerics, even though the last table explicitly said that dwarves can’t be clerics I seriously went between these tables four or five times the first time I read this, trying to figure out what this was about. It was only when I moved on that I learned, that the former table only applied to player characters. Dwarves can of course be clerics, but they apparently chain their clerics to the fucking alter so they can’t leave so you can’t play a dwarven cleric. Why? Because fuck you that’s why, you know what, fuck it, this review’s tagline is now “because fuck you that’s why.”

I legitimately do not think anyone ever used these tables, they’re bullshit, and they’re tedious to read and hard to understand. Like the table for maximum class levels has nine foot notes. Nine!

I had considered a Hitler reacts joke here, but I figured once in a single post was enough, even if the second were ironic.

And a couple of them are pretty long . The longest is for halflings and I quote.

Halfling fighters of Hairfeet sub-race, as well as all other types of sub-races with strength under 17, are limited to 4th level. Tallfellows of 17 strength and stouts of 18 strength can work up to 5th level. Tallfellows that somehow obtain 18 strength can work their way up to 6th level.

And while that is fairly self-explanatory, the text in this book is tiny and it’s all so smashed together that it’s actually kind of hard to even read. It also does not help that the book is making reference to terms that are not explained here. Tallfellows, Hairfeet, Stouts. These are evidently subraces of Halfling. But as to how they are different, what’s the advantage of any given one…

I looked ahead at the Halfling section in the races, and these terms are, to my knowledge, other than the stouts none of these are mentioned in this book again. The book, does say that for all the information about Halfling characters you can look in the monster manual. A book I don’t fucking own.

I have mentioned the atrocious fucking referencing in this book, but I need to clarify here, the referencing exists. But it is either worthless, like, “you can read about saving throws in the Combt: Saving Throws section” well, gee golly gosh mister book, thanks for that information, you going to tell me what page that’s on? No, well great, I guess I’ll go fucking hunt for it then. At least the book is short. Or it directs you to a different book. How about this AD&D, put all the information you need to make you’re player characters, in your book that is explicitly all about making player characters, and let people who are interested in being mister cavern get the books needed to do that.

Next is racial bonuses and penalties, dwarf con +1; cha -1, elf dex +1 con -1, half-orc str +1 con+2 cha -2, Halfling str -1 dex +1. Yawn.

Then we have a table summarizing ability score minimums and maximums by race and male female But Humans aren’t included because. I assume because they can get 18 in anything. Then we’re into the actual race descriptions. Dwarves first.

Dwarves live in hills and mountains, if you want to know about them, fuck you go buy the monster manual. You can be a fighter/thief but multiclassing isn’t explained here, so you’ll have to wait. The big one though is this.

Because of their very nature, dwarves are non-magical and do not ever use magical spells. However, this nature gives them a bonus with regard to their saving throws against… spells

I started my break in part because of this (the other part was I looked ahead at the armor rules), I told myself I wasn’t going to get angry at this, I told myself I wasn’t going to rant. However, this is fucking stupid. Okay, to put this in perspective, in Warhammer Fantasy, Dwarves are largely immune to and cannot use magic, but in Warhammer Fantasy that works because in universe a mixture of Buddhism and solipsism is literally true the world is in fact an illusion and does in fact bend to your will. So in Warhammer the priests of Sigmar don’t believe in Sigmar because they can call down his god’s miracles, but rather Sigmar can grant his priests miracles because they believe in him. It is heavily implied that the reason Dwarves are as they are is because they believe it to be true. But here the book just states it and you’re expected to accept it. Why is it like that? You guessed it, because fuck you that’s why. I do not know if this is explained in the monster manual, I do not own that book, so you know what, I choose to believe it isn’t. Maybe I’ll get that book one of these days and if I believe hard enough my assumption will turn out to be true.
This all in your head Luigi! It’s in your imaginiation!

So the dwarven racial bonus is for some reason based upon constitution and not level and you get a +1 to your saves for every 3 ½ points of con. Yes, three and a half because that isn’t a bitch and a quarter to track. I don’t know why this isn’t just 3, I assume Gigax wanted to fuck with people and short them a bonus point, but… I cannot for the life of me figure out how setting the value at 3 would have changed the value as long as you round down, as the game is doing. At least stats appear to be more or less static in this game so it’s unlikely this will change often. The maximum you can get at char gen is +5 and I do not know at what stages this bonus would be meaningful at. I kind of assume I’ll find out when I read about Magic-Users, but knowing this game monster’s determine their spell’s saves differently than mages do so it’s really a tossup if I’ll ever find out without some sage advice from one of you fine denizens. Dwarves also get the same bonus against poison, if it’s like later entries in D&D you don’t care. Dwarves have infravision, no mention of how this interacts with undead or cold blooded creatures, good, that wouldn’t be useful anyway. I’m not mad, I’m not even mad.
Well, maybe I’m a little put out…

You know what, no, fuck you game. This is information that would be imminently useful to everyone involved. You took the time to tell us about the progression of dwarves’ dumb save ability to the first fucking decimal point, information that I’m pretty sure is literally garbage. But even though one of the enemies the dwarves are most likely to fight are fucking kobolds you don’t bother to tell us if their dark vision works on lizards or not? Fuck it, moving on.

The dwarves also have the ability to tell you shit about caves. Some of it is worthless, like they have a 75% chance of being able to tell if a passage slopes (it doesn’t say if they can tell you by how much it slopes), some of it could be useful, like a 50% chance to detect pit traps. They also get a +1 to hit against goblinoids and impose a -4 to hit on giants, again, yawn.

Lastly the book decides to tell us that the dwarves don’t suffer their charisma penalty or have a maximum cha bonus when talking to other dwarves… So- like, are the dwarves supposed to be a caricature of the jews or is that just unfortunate? Because I am not sure if my NAZZI reference is becoming more apt, or more uncomfortable as this progresses.

Well, luckily the section on dwarves ends before we can start talking about camps, and we start on the elves. The elves get a 90% resistance to sleep spells, because fuck you that’s why, +1 to hit with bows, crossbows, short sword, and longsword I do not know if you care, they also get infravision, if they pass within 10 feet of a concealed door they have a 16 and 2/3% chance to detect it, if they’re looking for one you get a 33 and 1/3% chance to find a secret door and a 50% chance and they can, and if thye’re alone and not in metal armor they have a chance of to surprise monsters if you just walk up to them you get a 66 and 2/3% chance to surprise the monster but if you take a stick of dynamite and blow their door open you only get a 33 and 1/3% chance to surprise them. Okay, that’s not exactly what it says but it’s more or less. And if you’re wondering I do not round the percents here because that is what the book does, and yes it seems to be pointless.

Now I will skip the gnomes for a moment because Half-Elves are barely a thing of their own. So to make a half elf, take elves, give them ore available classs, reduce their sleep resistance to 30% alter their languages known, by the way that’s a thing. There you are winner. Okay Gnomes go.

Gnomes are Xenophobes. Great. Not even kidding, first line.

A gnomes preferred habitation is an area of rolling, rocky hills, well-wooded ad uninhabited by humans.

Maybe not totally xenophobic, but at very least pretty racist. Anyway, Gnomes actually have most of the abilities dwarves have, including the magic resistance, but they can be illusionists. Why can they use magic and dwarves can’t despite being, apparently, explicitly cousins and having similar abilities? Say it with me, because fuck you that’s why. Anyway, same magic resistance, same infravision, same tunnel sense but with different percents and slightly fewer options, same combat bonuses.

Halflings second verse same as the first, except they can’t use any magic again, get the poison resistance back, their infravision is only 30 feet instead of 60 unless you’re a stout and if you’re a stout you get the cave sense but only for determining if there’s a slope and what direction you’re going. Halflings also get the elvish stealth thing. So I’m going to say halflings are actually half dwarf half elf cross breeds but both races have killed anyone who talks about it for so long that even they’ve forgotten. Even the great annals of dwarven kind do not record this shameful secret.
These eyes have witnessed such shameful acts, I dare not recount such sorted tales in mixed company. Suffice to say, many beards were disheveled that day.

Half-Orcs… I- this- this is going to be uncomfortable. I’d tell you to remember when this came out, but it came out in 1978 I know that’s almost 40 years ago now, but come on, were social norms really that different at the time. Rather than an explanation, I think just giving you the excerpt and letting you read for yourself.

Orcs are fecund and create many cross-breeds, most of the offspring of such beign typically orcish. However, some one-tenth of orc-human mongrels are sufficently non-orcish to pass for human…

As it is assumed that player characters which are of the half-orc race are within the superior 10%...

… No, I’m not making an image joke about this, I mean, I couldn’t even think of… well. Alright, for you. Oh Archer, you’re incorigable.

Not cool game, really not cool. Anyway, they get infravision 60 feet and their charisma penalty doesn’t apply to half-orcs. And… that’s it, that’s half-orcs.

Humans are classic coke to everyone else’s exotic flavors, I do not think I can muster a yawn big enough.

Then the race section ends with a table to tell you how racist your character is based upon their birth. Again. Classy game. The only race that is outright hated are the half-orcs, and the races that hate them are the dwarves and oddly enough the gnomes. Is that a part of the gnome lore, they really fucking hate orcs? I have never read anything like that in any of the fiction. You’d think racial hatred of half-kobolds would be more appropriate.

And that’s the section. It was… actually pretty fun, except for the overt racism. That wasn’t fun.”

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 11:47 am

Because of their very nature, dwarves are non-magical and do not ever use magical spells. However, this nature gives them a bonus with regard to their saving throws against… spells

The cause of much debate, anger and gnome-hate once upon a time. The inconsistency is obvious as you say.

The maximum you can get at char gen is +5 and I do not know at what stages this bonus would be meaningful at. I kind of assume I’ll find out when I read about Magic-Users, but knowing this game monster’s determine their spell’s saves differently than mages do so it’s really a tossup if I’ll ever find out without some sage advice from one of you fine denizens.

The first ed saves aren't in the PHB at all. They're listed in a weird table in the DMG. The save categories are poison/paralyzation/death magic, wands, petrification/polymorph, breath weapons and spells. No those don't get used equally often.

The save chance is based on class and level so that 1st level fighters will basically never make their saves but top end fighters will make their saves most of the time, the other classes are less extreme but have for some reason wider level ranges for each category. Fighter's saves get better every 2 levels, but thieves and clerics get better every 3 or 4 IIRC, and magic users even longer. Every 6 levels? It's been a while since I looked at that table. There is little obvious rhyme or reason on it, but magic users are better at spell saves (which is used most often), clerics at the poison/paralyzation/death magic save (next most often), and thieves had some specialty I forget, probably because it seldom came up.

I legitimately do not think anyone ever used these tables, they’re bullshit, and they’re tedious to read and hard to understand. Like the table for maximum class levels has nine foot notes. Nine!

Yup, seldom used. Apparently the higher level limits for those with better stats came about to let players keep playing their characters when they hit the original level limits, so even before this book was printed the level limits were unpopular.

Pixels · Post by **Pixels** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 5:27 pm

Orca wrote:thieves had some specialty I forget, probably because it seldom came up.

I don't have access to books right now, but probably breath weapon. Save vs breath weapon was a catch-all for reflexes in early editions, which led to it being used in all sorts of non-breath weapon situations. Save vs breath weapon to avoid falling into a pit!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 6:48 pm

The sloping passages thing is a really weird metagame thing that Gygax did and thought was clever enough that he totes thought it would catch on with other DMs. The concept is that if you go to a deeper dungeon level, there are tougher monsters. So a sloping passage is a trap that makes you roll on a nastier wandering monster table without knowing this is going to happen.

That's so weirdly metagame that if you saw it in a computer game you'd call it out as being too computer gamey. But Gygax put it front and center in actual table top games to the point that dumb cargo cult assholes were still writing sloping passage detection chances in the 1990s.

-Username17

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 7:27 pm

That is insane, why did he thing such a thing was a good idea? Why would there necessarily be stronger monsters lower down? If you're idea is to surprise people with monsters just have the floor drop out and land you in a bugbear nest or something.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 7:51 pm

darkmaster wrote:That is insane, why did he thing such a thing was a good idea? Why would there necessarily be stronger monsters lower down? If you're idea is to surprise people with monsters just have the floor drop out and land you in a bugbear nest or something.

Because very metagame dungeon design considerations. Which is kind of the point. Obviously, it makes a lot of sense if you are designing a dungeon, that the players will get to level 10 after level 1, and since you want them to fight toughest enemies last, you put those on level 10.

But that is purely a fucking metagame thing for giant massive entire campaign dungeons. So noticing or not noticing a slope doesn't help characters know what they are facing, it only helps players know what they are facing.

Which is why everything about noticing slopes is so motherfucking dumb.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Apr 21, 2016 7:53 pm

I wrote the "must be 50% human to be a cleric at all and must be 100% human to be a cleric that isn't shit" part of the origin story for my world. Humans were the first person who have actual gods and clerics, and the warriors of the elves and dwarves couldn't stand against humans and their army of Cleric Archers. I didn't even have to think of reason less flimsy of "anyone could technically be clerics, humans just invented it first" because no one really questioned it (most didn't even read it, lol)

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 8:05 pm

Wow, wait, that's a rule? I did not see that anywhere in the race section, is it mentioned in the cleric entry? Okay, I have now read the cleric entry and that is not mentioned anywhere. But no, you're talking about the fact that only humans, half-elves, and half-orcs, can be PC clerics according to the table right? But everyone else has clerics, except the halflings who have druids instead, but you just can't play as them for... no adequately explained reason.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 8:22 pm

darkmaster wrote:But everyone else has clerics, except the halflings who have druids instead, but you just can't play as them for... no adequately explained reason.

Because Gary Gygax wanted humans to be the only playable race and found really passive-aggressive ways to enforce it instead of just finding the spine to ban non-human races.

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 8:42 pm

I still can't wrap my head around the slopes thing. Like, I understand and even accept the dungeon levels thing, but in a more vertical dungeon, I would expect the next tier of monsters to be a coupe hundred feet below the previous one. If you were to get any significant change in elevation via a passage sloped so slightly you don't notice it, you should expect tougher monsters anyway because you're deeper as in a mile further away from the exit.

The idea of a "sloped passage" delivering you to the next dungeon level without you noticing is breaking my brain.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 9:07 pm

Pretty sure Gygax had the idea and rolled with it without stopping to figure out how slight an incline has to be before people won't automatically notice they're descending and how long a corridor on such an incline has to go before it'll take you ten feet down.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Thu Apr 21, 2016 9:10 pm

ACKS, as part of its quest to come up with in-world justifications for every random decision Gygax made, even when those justifications are kind of half-assed, has this to say about dungeon levels:

Wandering monsters who establish a lair will choose the best
available room or area within the dungeon appropriate for
their size, displacing any less powerful monsters already in
that area (and taking their excess treasure, if any). Monsters
generally prefer to be deeper in dungeons where possible, as
the depth gives added security. As a result, the more powerful
monsters with the most treasure will generally be deep within
the dungeon, with progressively weaker monsters closer to the
entrance.

Its dwarves retain the ability to detect sloped passages.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Apr 21, 2016 9:15 pm

darkmaster wrote: But everyone else has clerics, except the halflings who have druids instead, but you just can't play as them for... no adequately explained reason.

I never saw that about "there are totally halfling druids and dwarf clerics, you just can't play as them" in 1st ed. I saw it in Rules Cyclopedia Basic (the dwarven cleric and halfling whistler racial classes) but I didn't see that in 1E. I have both the 1E PHB and DMG, can you cite a source on that?