Thoughts on the Gygax's AD&D (1E)

[Psychic Robot]

Someone fucked the thread. Please fix it.

[Plebian]

Someone fucked the thread. Please fix it.

well we try but you just insist on posting

[erik]

Talozin, bad sportsmanship or not, it sometimes blows to have your work at character building ended and to have to sit out a session on top of it all. Does not always turn out that way but it is certainly not uncommon for death of a PC to be a downer.

[Koumei]

Wow, solitaire is no fun at all.

Terrible example, Solitaire isn't fun.

One interesting thing I saw on the GW site was a small 40K battle (250points each, Elites only, models are independent as in Kill Teams), where they were cooperating against randomised foes. So they had their own "army" each (one Assassin, and one squad of Elite Scouts), and cooperated against the randomised guards (greater in number, with tanks) and boss fight. So it could be "we both win" or "we both lose" (or if one gets wiped out and the other wins, then you could argue a loss and a win).

Cooperative game (almost a roleplaying game without the MC). Still possible to lose. And more fun than the regular game.

[Fuchs]

Not everyone plays the game the same way. Dieing in D&D past the low levels means nothing, just a gold and sometimes exp penalty.

[shadzar]

Costs more without...
...
Hope that quote form the book helps...if you need more from it let me know.

From memory, the main way of gaining XP was treasure. For some of those training costs, you could gain the XP to level faster than you could gain the treasure to do so. Which leads to some odd situations.

The problem with the divergence in XP requirements is that the thief can level twice as fast as some other classes. I've had players wait and level up twice, but I've also been in a party where the thief wants his new toy now.

It isn't possible to level twice. Under the rules without removing them, you do NOT gain experience under a new level until you are at that level gaining it. If you have enough XP to get level 4 you stop gaining XP until you get the level. That is where the DING came in and people not wanting to train because they started "wanting the level NOW".

The system was set that way in part to give players choices. If the thief wants greater than the party needs at that time? If the party van wait a while, then the thief really isnt losing anything. He can steal more gold later to get XP, or kill monsters. I the party needs that "new toy" from the thief then they would elect to let him train now.

In no way could you stockpile XP and gain multiple levels at once.

The gaining of sufficient experience points is necessary to indicate that a character is eligible to gain a level of experience, but the actual award is a matter for you, the DM, to decide.

~~~

ONCE A CHARACTER HAS POINTS WHICH ARE EQUAL TO OR GREATER THAN THE MINIMUM NUMBER NECESSARY TO MOVE UPWARDS IN EXPERIENCE LEVEL, NO FURTHER EXPERIENCE POINTS CAN BE GAINED UNTIL THE CHARACTER ACTUALLY GAINS THE NEW LEVEL.

The all-caps is Gary's doing in the book to highlight the importance that you can't stockpile XP in order to gain multiple levels at once.

If you had player's leveling up twice, then that was your call and right as a DM to allow it, but the rules suggest against it.

Gold <-> XP was the secondary way of getting XP (DMG pg 85) because treasure was at DM discretion, however monsters had a constant XP value for them...well constant of sorts since each depended on all those factors of base XP + HP or monster + monster ability. Gold was just easiest to calculate XP from. I dont recall good how well the random treasure tables produced things, but otherwise you would have to have given lots of treasure (random or hand picked by you*) in order to get more XP from gold than monsters.

*You meaning a 1st edition DM.

[erik]

I am assuming for the purposes of people being brought down by death it is worse than a temporary status effect. Yes in higher levels death is sometimes, often temporary.

[talozin]

Talozin, bad sportsmanship or not, it sometimes blows to have your work at character building ended and to have to sit out a session on top of it all. Does not always turn out that way but it is certainly not uncommon for death of a PC to be a downer.

It can be a downer, absolutely. All the more so if you have to sit out a session on top of that; I would usually find some way to get the player back into the game, rather than throwing up my hands and going 'enh, suck it up', but nobody's perfect and sometimes the campaign is in a place where it's tricky to pull that off.

I don't blame someone for being down if they die unrecoverably. It's pretty rare in my experience, but it does happen. It's part of the game, and it doesn't mean you "lost."

[tzor]

Someone fucked the thread. Please fix it.

I was going to post another set of thoughts but with the expected downtime decided it was better to watch the Yankees game. I'll post something else tonight or tomorrow.

[tzor]

So if my post complained of a delay of game, pehaps a point where the later designers used too much time? I glanced at this rule and I realized I had completely forgotten about it, so ingraned was the notion of the 8 hour sleep of later editions.

Spell recovery, whether cleric/druid or magic-user/illusionist, requires about the same period of time. In order to pray and meditate for a new spell to replace one used, or in order to study and memorize such a spell, it is necessary that the spell-user rest and revitalize his or her mental faculties. Whether one or more spells are to be regained, the minimum time required for complete rest (usually sleep) is that required for the highest spell to be recovered. Minimum rest periods are shown below:
[/td][td]SPELL LEVEL[/td][td]1-2[/td][td]3-4[/td][td]5-6[/td][td]7-8[/td][td]9[/td][/tr]

Rest Time

4 hours

6 hours

8 hours

10 hours

12 hours

Thus, if a cleric or magic-uder needs only memorize first or second level spells, he or she need only sleep for 4 hours and will then be able to memorize or regain as many such spells as he or she is normally entitled to. On the other hand, if the character in question also wished to include a seventh level spell, rest time would be 10 full hours, even though but a single seventh level spell were to be regained, while a half dozen second level spells were also to be regained.

Once rested, an additional one-quarter hour per spell level must be spent in study/prayer and meditation in order to memorize the ability to cast each spell.

You know, there is something odd about this; the whole "daily" crap is just isn't there. I thought it was short term memory that was the first to go. Heck, the rules for sleep aren't all that strict either, although there are a lot of coffee breaks during the course of an adventure.

A party should be required to rest at least one turn in six (remember the average party packs a lot of quipment), and in addition, they should rest a turn after every time they engage in combat or any other strenuous activities.

On occasion a party may wish to cease movement and "hole up" for a long period, perhaps overnight, resting and recuperating and recovering spells.

Let's look at this in some detail, for full memorization a name magic user (11th level) has a max of 5th level spells and 51 spell levels total among all his spells. His rest would be 8 hours of rest and almost 13 hours of memorization. By the time he gets to 18th level and can cast 9th level spells he would need 12 hours of sleep and over a day (29 hours 45 minutes) of study!

So basically at low levels a cleric/magic-user can get a least three spell cycles per day and the great wizards need days to recover all of their spells, assuming that they used them all. This whole notion of vancian magic wassignificantly modified in the notion of "day" spells of 2E and things went downhill until vancian magic was removed in 4E.

[Novembermike]

That's actually a good find. I kept on feeling that 1st Ed had a number of balancing factors that kept wizards from being overpowered but I didn't remember it being that drastic. It actually fits the concept of Vancian magic much better though, where the powerful spells would be kept in reserve for long periods of time because of the trouble you had to go through to memorize them.

[K]

That's actually a good find. I kept on feeling that 1st Ed had a number of balancing factors that kept wizards from being overpowered but I didn't remember it being that drastic. It actually fits the concept of Vancian magic much better though, where the powerful spells would be kept in reserve for long periods of time because of the trouble you had to go through to memorize them.

Fighters were a lot more powerful too. Vorpal Swords would kill people outright and fighters got a lot of attacks. The numbers would basically mean you'd drop anything about 50% of the time and few things lasted more than a few turns.

Lots of spells caused aging too. I mean, Haste aged you a full year.

Some spells just did weird bullshit. For example, the thing where Mordenkainen's Disjuction removed your ability to cast spells permanently seemed to survive the various editions, thus proving that no one ever playtests high levels. Permanent HP damage and the like were always favorites.

[Novembermike]

Didn't fighters also get hundreds of followers at higher levels?

[PoliteNewb]

Didn't fighters also get hundreds of followers at higher levels?

Yeah, but it's not like they were really useful in a fight, most of the time. Hell, one dragon breathing fire or a fireball would take out most of them, regardless of saving throws.

It was mostly a prestige thing. Or useful for going to war against other armies.

[Plebian]

4e doesn't remove the pseudo-vancian casting mechanic, though. Wizards still get a pool of spells that they can memorize X number of depending on level.

just as valid a use of the term 'vancian' as 3e's, though not having played 1e the actual closer interpretation of vancian casting is neat, though it seems like that'd do nothing about 5 minute workdays(weeks) because as soon as your casters are out of spells/heals you're gonna stop as soon as possible. especially if going into negative HP puts you out of commission for a week.

also the whole followers thing was hilarious because I can't think of anyone who ever actually did army-on-army battles in D&D without abstracting it out to the point that you would roll, say, an entire company as one creature. it was a nerd penis extension thing, so you could say that you had this massive army of really cool guys behind you. actually bringing more than your highest-level follower along would only bog down the game, it seems, and that's how it worked when I messed around with AD&D's follower system.

D&D's just bad at large-scale tactics because it's focused around 4-6 people going up against a similar number, usually. there are too many details for it to make for a relatively fast-paced wargame, even if it was derived from one. and this is a good thing; if I wanted to play Warhams I would be playing Warhams.

[Novembermike]

D&D's just bad at large-scale tactics because it's focused around 4-6 people going up against a similar number, usually. there are too many details for it to make for a relatively fast-paced wargame, even if it was derived from one. and this is a good thing; if I wanted to play Warhams I would be playing Warhams.

1st was actually based on the rules for a wargame so it had built in rules for handling groups of minions, iirc.

[Doom]

Battles against dozens of enemies come up around once and adventure in AD&D. I remember playing Dragon Mountain with several hundred monsters running around....AD&D is not a great system for such fights, but in small-ish doses, it works.

4e can do it to, but only with almost all minions.

[Winnah]

The first time I used a type 5 or 6 demon against the party (the one that looks like a frog), the encounter spiraled out of control pretty quickly.

Opened with blasphemy then started summoning. Then kept using spells. So many demons popped up that when the summons could not engage the party, they would attempt to summon too. The whole encounter took about 4 hours with just over 100 demons and almost the entire party earned enough xp to level (l even let the guys that had bought it get their fair share of xp) . Not bad for a group in the 8-10 level range.

They guys I play with still talk about it. If I had run an encounter like that every week it would have lost some of it's impact.

[Plebian]

Battles against dozens of enemies come up around once and adventure in AD&D. I remember playing Dragon Mountain with several hundred monsters running around....AD&D is not a great system for such fights, but in small-ish doses, it works.

4e can do it to, but only with almost all minions.

see, you start strong then you end with a statement that makes no sense whatsoever because 4e is the exact same mechanics as 3e

I mean I get that you don't like 4e but the whole making shit up thing gets tired after a while, try having some real arguments once in a while

[Juton]

see, you start strong then you end with a statement that makes no sense whatsoever because 4e is the exact same mechanics as 3e

I might put this in my signature because of its zen-like profoundness.

[Quantumboost]

I might put this in my signature because of its zen-like profoundness.

Don't forget to include the last two sentences of the quoted post. Especially the part where the other system in question is AD&D.

[Plebian]

I might put this in my signature because of its zen-like profoundness.

Don't forget to include the last two sentences of the quoted post. Especially the part where the other system in question is AD&D.

I will go ahead and clue you in on a great secret; AD&D mechanics are basically identical to 3e mechanics are basically identical to 4e mechanics. it's all rolling a d20 against a target number; AD&D just used am overly complex formula to get at the exact same results and that was still just a less streamlined version of the 3e mechanic which is the same mechanic as 4e

fuck I hope the Illuminati forgive me for this

[Doom]

Actually, AD&D doesn't use any formula at all, it uses basically arbitrary charts, many of which can be well approximated by a formula.

For example, in 3e, a fighters BAB increases by 1 every level.

In AD&D, your THACO drops by 2, every two levels. So, no improvement in THACO when you go from level 1 to 2....then a two point improvement from level 2 to 3.

(Technically, it doesn't use THACO, either, but THACO was the first improvement on the charts)

I'm pretty sure Darwinism has "There's nothing wrong with 4e because 3e." tattooed on his forehead. At least I'll know him when I see him.

[Juton]

I might put this in my signature because of its zen-like profoundness.

Don't forget to include the last two sentences of the quoted post. Especially the part where the other system in question is AD&D.

I will go ahead and clue you in on a great secret; AD&D mechanics are basically identical to 3e mechanics are basically identical to 4e mechanics. it's all rolling a d20 against a target number; AD&D just used am overly complex formula to get at the exact same results and that was still just a less streamlined version of the 3e mechanic which is the same mechanic as 4e

fuck I hope the Illuminati forgive me for this

You're confusing dice with mechanic. Just because you're rolling d20s in all the systems do not mean they all have the same mechanic.

[tzor]

(Technically, it doesn't use THACO, either, but THACO was the first improvement on the charts)

I often wonder about that myself. I've gotten to the point where I am really torn on the issue. I remember the dissapointment at going to a "1E" game at a mini con and using THAC0. The counter argument, which leads to an optional rule in 1E highlights why tables have some interesting advantages that a straight forumla cannot provide.

[quote='DMG pg 82"]A quick glance at the progresion of number on the COMBAT TABLES will reveal that 20 is repeated. This reflects the fact that 20 indicates a "perfect" hit. It also incidentially helps to ensure that opponents with high armor class value are not "hit proof" in most cases. Should any DM find that this system offends his or her sensibilties, the following modification is suggested: Consider the repeated 20's as a perfectly aimed attack which does not gain any benefit from strength or magical properties of any sort - spell missle or weapon. That is the 20 must be obtained by the roll of natural 20. All bonuses accure up to and including a total of 20 so that even if a character attacked with a bonus strength of +3 and a +3 magic sword he or she would have to roll a natural 20 in order to score a hit on any creature normally hit by the second or successive repetions of 20.[/quote] He then goes on to explain by table how 21 would be (natural 20 with at least a +1 bonus).

Here we have the example of the natural 20 rule in later editions. But note that the natural 20 doesn't hit everything. It just gives you a chance to hit five more AC levels (and more if you have bonuses to your atack). Of course the natural 20 rule is an attempt to solve the over linear problems of THAC0 in the first place.

Which is better: Gygax's basic rule? Gygax's alternate rule? THAC0?

I'm not sure I can say. I lean to Gygax's alternate rule myself.